tly
was the cotton manufacture developed as to demand an entire change in
the life of operatives, and hence arose the factory system. [Sidenote:
The steam-engine of Watt.] At a critical moment was introduced Watt's
invention, the steam-engine. His first patent was taken out in 1769, the
same year that Arkwright patented spinning by rollers. Watt's
improvement chiefly consisted in the use of a separate condenser, and
the replacement of atmospheric pressure by that of steam. Still, it was
not until more than twenty years after that this engine was introduced
into factories, and hence it was not, as is sometimes supposed, the
cause of their wonderful increase. It came, however, at a fortunate
time, nearly coincident with the invention of the dressing-machine by
Radcliffe and the power-loom by Cartwright.

[Sidenote: Bleaching by chlorine.] If the production of textile fabrics
received such advantages from mechanics, equally was it favoured by
chemistry in the discovery of bleaching by chlorine. To bleach a piece
of cotton by the action of the air and the sun required from six to
eight months, and a large surface of land must be used as a
bleach-field. The value of land in the vicinity of great towns presented
an insuperable obstacle to such uses. By chlorine the operation could be
completed in the course of a few hours, and in a comparatively small
building, the fibre being beautifully and permanently whitened.
[Sidenote: Calico-printing by cylinders.] Nor were the chemical
improvements restricted to this. Calico-printing, an art practised many
thousand years ago among the Egyptians, was perfected by the operation
of printing from cylinders.

It deserves to be remarked that the cotton manufacture was first
introduced into Europe by the Arabs. Abderrahman III., A.D. 930, caused
it to be commenced in Spain; he also had extensive manufactures of silk
and leather, and interested himself much in the culture of the sugar
cane, rice, the mulberry. One of the most valuable Spanish applications
of cotton was in the invention of cotton paper. The Arabs were also the
authors of the printing of calicoes by wooden blocks, a great
improvement on the old Indian operation of painting by hand.

[Sidenote: Extent of the cotton manufacture.] We may excuse the
enthusiastic literature of the cotton manufacture its boasting, for men
had accomplished works that were nearly God-like. Mr. Baines, writing in
1833, states that the length of yarn