o repay the loan with interest more than two
hundred years later when the machine industry was conveyed to the
continent through the ingenuity of Lievin Bauwens, despite the
precautions taken to preserve it for the British Isles. About the same
time English colonists transported it to the United States. Since, as
transformed in England, the cotton industry, particularly spinning, has
spread throughout the civilized and semi-civilized world, though its
most important seat still remains the land of its greatest development.

Early history in England.

As early as the 13th century cotton-wool was used in England for
candle-wicks.[1] The importation of the cotton from the Levant in the
16th century is mentioned by Hakluyt,[2] and according to Macpherson it
was brought over from Antwerp in 1560. Reference to the manufacture of
cottons in England long before the second half of the 16th century are
numerous, but the "cottons" spoken of were not cottons proper as Defoe
would seem to have mistakenly imagined. Thus, for example, there is a
passage by William Camden (writing in 1590) quoted below, in which
Manchester cottons are specifically described as woollens, and there is
a notice in the act of 33 Henry VIII. (c. xv.) of the Manchester linen
and woollen industries, and of cottons--which are clearly woollens since
their "dressyng and frisyng" is noted, and the latter process, which
consists in raising and curling the nap, was not applicable to cotton
textiles. John Leland, after his visit to Manchester about 1538, used
these words--"Bolton-upon-Moore market standeth most by cottons; divers
villages in the Moores about Bolton do make cottons." Leland, it is
true, might conceivably be referring to manufactures from the vegetable
fibre, but it is exceedingly unlikely, since the term "cottons" would
seem to have been current with a perfectly definite meaning. The goods
were probably an English imitation in wool of continental cotton
fustians--which would explain the name. Again we may quote from the act
of 5 and 6 Edward VI., "all the cottons called _Manchester_, Lancashire
and Cheshire _cottons_, full wrought to the sale, shall be in length
twenty-two yards and contain in breadth three-quarters of a yard in the
water and shall weigh thirty pounds in the piece at least"; and from the
act 8 Elizabeth c. xi., "every of the said cottons being sufficiently
milled or thicked, clean scoured, well-wrought and full-dried, shall
weigh