it existing at the present day, constituting a wonderful monument of the highest mental attainments, of the most indefatigable industry, and of phenomena physical and moral such as are combined with equal effect in no other instance,—this most striking spectacle of all which the world of manufactures can present,—owes its origin and happy solution to Arkwright. It was at Cromford that he first tried the experiment, and established its success. In a factory he there constructed he introduced the multifarious processes of spinning, weaving, &c., conducted by a complete organisation of labour. They have constituted the ordinary operations of our gigantic cotton workshops ever since. The oldest mill in Manchester, reared by this benefactor of mankind, and, I believe, still standing, was built on Shude Hill in the year 1780. It was not here, however, that the mighty power of steam was first displayed. Watt applied the steam-engine in 1785, but at Papplewick in Nottinghamshire, where it spun the first cotton yarn produced by the new and wonder-working agent. In 1789 Manchester adopted the innovation. When the power-looms regularly took up their places in these huge bee-hives of human industry, the embodiment of the idea in its full consummation must have afforded infinite complacency to the mind of the projector. A mill with 50,000 spindles and 750 hands, producing three hanks of thread of 850 yards each, per spindle daily, in the opinion of an Arkwright, is a spectacle of vast and paramount interest, affording an amount of satisfaction and delight of which the votary of mere pleasure has never been able to form the slenderest conception. And to this add the beautiful and unerring expedients by which the web is knitted together with a rapidity next to miraculous, and at a cost comparatively so trifling, and the work of elaboration is arrived at its climax. The inventor of weaving by this magical process, that is to say, of these power-looms, I must not neglect to state was the Rev. E. Cartwright, of Hollander House, Kent, who, from a source apparently so little associated with the concerns of a factory, thus contributed that element of integrity which may be regarded as the masterly finishing stroke to the grandness and comprehensiveness of the system. This gradual introduction of mechanical auxiliaries did not fail in this instance any more than in all others, to arouse the antipathies of the prejudiced and the vulgar. Sir Robert Peel, the father of the illustrious statesman, was one among many who suffered from the hostility of a violent mob. His machinery at Altham was totally destroyed, and so much did he take this act of lawlessness to heart, that he withdrew at once to Burton in Staffordshire until a gentler spirit and calmer temper rendered his return safe and desirable.
Now, in order to obtain some notion of the wealth and importance of the “cotton lords” of the nineteenth century, with Sir Richard at their head, let us pause for a moment and survey the area of factories spreading over so wide a surface of the county of Lancashire. The district immediately around Manchester contains two hundred of these town-like workshops, each of the better class of which costs no less than 100,000l. This valuation is equally correct in its application to other numerous factories, uplifting their tall chimneys in neighbouring towns and villages of the same busy locality.
Within the parochial bounds of the town of Bolton we can count some 70; the parish of Bury furnishes 120 more; at Rochdale we reckon 100; in Oldham parish about twice as many; Ashton supplies upwards of 70; and Staley Bridge, taken with Hyde, more than 60; all of which places are situated within half a score of miles of their common metropolitan centre. This makes altogether a total of about 820 in factories, and therefore nearly as much in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Nor does this computation exhaust the subject, for if we extend the range of our circumspection over other districts still watered by the Mersey and its tributaries, we shall find groups and groups in thick abundance wheresoever we glance, without diverting our attention to those other important cotton establishments which have enriched and invigorated such large portions of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The amount of capital embarked in cotton industry, in England only, has been estimated, in the year 1860, at 100,000,000l., which, compared with the 35,000,000l. of twenty-five years ago, serves to give some idea, not only of the absolute immensity of the interest involved, but likewise of the rapidity with which it has attained its present enormous growth.
Manchester, of course, with its population of 500,000 persons, out of which are more than 24,000 spinners and weavers, and 700 calico-printers, by far and beyond all comparison figures the most prominently in this computation; and America is as surpassingly the leading market from which the yearly total of five millions of pounds of cotton is dispatched to satisfy the voracity of these factories. It has been calculated that 1,390,938,752 lbs. of this article was, from the different producers of the whole world, imported into Great Britain in 1860. This importation is, I believe, in magnitude unprecedented, and it will be readily believed it represents a consumption a deal larger than that of every other country on the earth taken collectively. When we consider, too, how rapidly it is increasing, the events of the day, so inevitably destructive of even the ordinary supply, acquire a commercial as well as a political significance, in which this kingdom is very chiefly and profoundly entangled. And to show the vast importance of our transatlantic resources, we have only to remember that out of the 4,321,000 bales, which on an average constitute the European demand for cotton annually, 3,500,000 come from America, of which one-sixth is shipped at Charlestown.
After England, but at a considerable distance, her receipts being not one-third in quantity those of this country, France is the greatest cotton-importing country of all. Her cotton goods are in high estimation, and though perhaps as to quality they may be in the main slightly superior to those of Switzerland, the Swiss, likewise, enjoy a long and well-deserved reputation for skill, taste, and excellence in this manufacture. The Prussians are not famous for their cottons, and the Russians even less
