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In Manchester itself one sees not much else of "the cotton-spinning chorus" which has sent its name so far. The cotton is now spun in ten or twenty towns in the nearer or farther neighborhood of the great city, as every one but myself and some ninety millions of other Americans well know.
In 1790, Samuel Slater, once an apprentice to Strutt and Arkwright, built the mill at Pawtucket which taught Americans the art of cotton-spinning; and before 1795, Eli Whitney had invented the gin which easily cleansed the cotton boll of its seeds, and so made marketable the great crop we have spoken of.
I suspect very strongly, indeed I am convinced, that in certain occupations, teaching, for example, or surgery, a man begins by working clumsily and awkwardly, that his interest and skill rise rapidly, that if he is really well suited in his profession he may presently become intensely interested and capable of enormous quantities of his very best work, and that then his interest and vigour rapidly decline I am disposed to believe that this is true of most occupations, of coal-mining or engineering, or brick-laying or cotton-spinning.
But we must believe that in all occupations honesty is the rule, and dishonesty the exception. At all events, it is better that we should know what the manufacturers really are, from fact rather than from fiction. Let us first take a large manufacturing firm, or rather series of firms, well known in South Lancashire. We mean the cotton-spinning mills of the Messrs.
Where else, my boy, in this cotton-spinning hole, would you find a dinner like that for sixpence? Am I a benefactor to the species, sir, or am I not? 'Looks like it, Daddy, by the help of Miss Dora. 'Aye, aye, said the old man testily, 'I'll not deny that Dora's useful to the business. But the inspiration, Davy, 's all mine.
There were riots in England when manufacturers sought to introduce labor-saving methods in cotton-spinning; and when railroads were introduced among us there were doubtless thousands of draymen, stage-drivers, and boatmen who, if they had dared, would have torn up the rails and thrown them into the rivers, as the Chinese did along the Yangtze-Kiang.
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