on bales to about twelve million bales
(1904). The world's consumption of cotton in 1903 was nearly fifteen
million bales. In the United States the annual consumption in
cotton-mills is now about four million bales; in Great Britain, over
three million bales; in Continental Europe, about five million bales.
The number of spindles represented in the world's cotton manufacture in
1903 was nearly 112,000,000; in the United States, about 22,240,000;
Great Britain, 42,200,000; Continental Europe, 34,000,000. In 1903 the
exports of cotton manufactures from the United States were valued at
over $32,000,000. Nearly one-half of the exports went to China, the rest
being divided among many countries.

These figures only furnish a slight concrete suggestion of the immense
industrial and commercial importance of the invention that Arkwright and
his associates and successors produced and perfected for mankind. What
Eli Whitney did for the cultivation and handling of cotton they have
done for the world-wide interests connected with its manufacture.

The gradual disuse of wigs is assigned by some as the reason that
Richard Arkwright began to turn his attention to mechanical inventions
as likely to afford him a new source of income; but as during his
journeys he was brought into constant intercourse with persons engaged
in weaving and spinning, his inquisitive and strongly practical
intelligence would in any case have been naturally led to take a keen
interest in inventions which were a constant topic of conversation among
the manufacturing population. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay of
Bury had so greatly increased the demand for yarn that it became
difficult to meet it merely by hand labor. A machine for carding cotton
had been introduced into Lancashire about 1760, but until 1767 spinning
continued to be done wholly with the old-fashioned hand-wheel. In that
year James Hargreaves completed his invention of the spinning-jenny,
which he patented in 1770. The thread spun by the jenny was, however,
suitable only for weft, and the roving process still required to be
performed by hand. Probably Arkwright knew nothing of the experiments of
Hargreaves, when, in 1767, he asked John Kay, a clockmaker then residing
in Warrington, to "bend him some wires and turn him some pieces of
brass." Shortly afterward Arkwright gave up his business at Bolton, and
devoted his whole attention to the perfecting of a contrivance for
spinning by roll