before a weaver
could be found to run it and teach others its use.

The first half of this century witnessed a vital struggle in England,
and to an extent in America, between hand and power machinery, and an
interesting race between spinning and weaving. Under old-time conditions
it was calculated that it took the work of four spinners, who spun
swiftly and constantly, to supply one weaver. As spinning was ever what
was known as a by-industry,--that is, one that chiefly was done by being
caught up at odd moments,--the supply both in England and America did
not equal the weavers' demands, and ten spinners had to be calculated to
supply yarn for one weaver. Hence weavers never had to work very hard;
as a rule, they could have one holiday in the week. What with Sundays,
wakes, and fairs, Irish weavers worked only two hundred days in the
year. In England the weaver often had to spend one day out of the six
hunting around the country for yarn for weft. So inventive wits were set
at work to enlarge the supply of yarn, and spinning machinery was the
result. Thereafter the looms and weavers were pushed hard and had to
turn to invention. The shuttle had always simply been passed from one
hand to the other of the weaver on either side of the web. The
fly-shuttle was now invented, which by a simple piece of machinery,
worked by one hand, threw the shuttle swiftly backward and forward, and
the loom was ahead in the race. Then came the spinning-jenny, which spun
yarn with a hundred spindles on each machine. But this was for weft
yarns, and did not make strong warps. Finally Arkwright supplied this
lack in water-twist or "throstle-spun" yarn. All these inventions again
overcrowded the weavers; all attempts at hand-spinning of cotton had
become quickly extinct. Wool-spinning lingered longer. Five Tomlinson
sisters,--the youngest forty years old,--with two pair of wool-cards and
five hand-wheels, paid the rent of their farm, kept three cows, one
horse, had a ploughed field, and made prime butter and eggs. One sister
clung to her spinning till 1822. Power-looms were invented to try to use
up the jenny's supply of yarn, but these did not crowd out hand-looms.
Weavers never had so good wages. It was the Golden Age of Cotton. Some
families earned six pounds a week; good clothes, even to the extent of
ruffled shirts, good furniture, even to silver spoons, good food,
plentiful ale and beer, entered every English cottage with the weaving
of