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Spinners are small girls who walk up and down an aisle before a spinning-frame and piece up the threads which are forever breaking.
The apathy and vacillation of governments left them without defence; and had governments then represented public opinion completely, and had also controlled all labour and capital, the discovery in question, which was retarded for three generations, would in all probability have never been made at all. Arkwright's experience with regard to his spinning-frame was similar.
At a much more recent period new inventions have had to encounter serious rioting and machine-breaking fury. Kay of the fly-shuttle, Hargreaves of the spinning-jenny, and Arkwright of the spinning-frame, all had to fly from Lancashire, glad to escape with their lives. Indeed, says Mr.
From the fact that the spinning-frame was driven by water, it came to be known as the water-frame; since the application of steam it has been known as the throstle. As the yarn it produced was of a much harder and firmer texture than that spun by the jenny, it was specially suited for warp, but the Lancashire manufacturers declined to make use of it.
Strutt, of Derby, the possessors of patents for the manufacture of ribbed stockings, and erected his spinning-frame at Cromford, in Derbyshire, in a deep, picturesque valley near the Derwent, where he could obtain an easy command of water-power from a never-failing spring of warm water, which even during the severest frost scarcely ever froze.
Arkwright entered into partnership with Smalley from Preston, Kay continuing with him under a bond as a workman, and they erected a spinning-mill between Hockley and Woolpack Lane, a patent being taken out by Arkwright for the machine, July 3, 1769. The spinning-frame of Arkwright was the result of inventive power of a higher and rarer order than that necessary to originate the spinning-jenny.
Similar advancements have been effected throughout the whole compass of human labor and research; in the arts of Transportation and Locomotion, from the employment of the sheep and the goat as beasts of burden, to the steam-engine and the rail-road car; in the art of Navigation, from the canoe clinging timidly to the shore, to steam-ships which boldly traverse the ocean; in Hydraulics, from carrying water by hand in a vessel or in horizontal aqueducts, to those vast conduits which supply the demands of a city, and to steam fire-engines which throw a column of water to the top of the loftiest buildings; in the arts of Spinning and Rope-making, from the hand distaff to the spinning-frame, and to the machine which makes cordage or cables of any length, in a space ten feet square; in Horology or Time-keeping, from the sun-dial and the water-clock to the watch, and to the chronometer, by which the mariner is assisted in measuring his longitude, and in saving property and life; in the extraction, forging, and tempering of Iron and other ores having malleability to be wrought into all forms and used for all purposes, and supplying, instead of the stone hatchet or the fish-shell of the savage, an almost infinite variety of instruments, which have sharpness for cutting or solidity for striking; in the art of Vitrification or Glass-making, giving not only a multitude of commodious and ornamental utensils for the household, but substituting the window for the unsightly orifice or open casement, and winnowing light and warmth from the outward and the cold atmosphere; in the arts of Induration by Heat, from bricks dried in the sun to those which withstand the corrosion of our climate for centuries or resist the intensity of the furnace; in the arts of Illumination, from the torch cut from the fir or pine tree to the brilliant gas-light which gives almost a solar splendor to the nocturnal darkness of our cities; in the arts of Heating and Ventilation, which at once supply warmth for comfort and pure air for health; in the art of Building, from the hollowed trunk of a tree or the roof-shaped cabin, to those commodious and lightsome dwellings which betoken the taste and competence of our villages and cities; in the art of Copying or Printing, from the toilsome process of hand-copying, where the transcription of a single book was the labor of months or years, and sometimes almost of a life, to the power printing-press, which throws off sixty printed sheets in a minute; in the art of Paper-making, from the preparation of the inner bark of a tree, cleft off and dried at immense labor, to machinery from which there jets out an unbroken stream of paper with the velocity and continuousness of a current of water; in the art of Painting, from the use of the crayon, and artificial colors imperfectly blended, requiring whole days to present an incomplete picture, to the production, as by enchantment, of perfect likenesses in nature's own penciling, executed in a few seconds; in the art of Telegraphing, from communicating information by signs which may be seen from one station to another, to conveying intelligence to any given distance with the velocity of lightning; and, in addition to all these, in the arts of Moulding and Casting, of Designing and Engraving, of Preserving materials and of Changing their color, of Dividing and Uniting them, etc., etc., an ample catalogue, whose very names and processes would fill volumes.
Notable indeed is it that on the very day Watt obtained his first patent, January 5th, 1769, Arkwright got his spinning-frame patent. Only the year before Hargreaves obtained his patent for the spinning-jenny. These are the two inventors, with Whitney, the American inventor of the cotton-gin, from whose brains came the development of the textile industry in which Britain still stands foremost.
But this manufacture is now breathing its last; the cotton-gin, the spinning-frame, the mule with its countless spindles, and the power-loom are fearful competitors; and although British India still produces quite as much cotton as our Southern States, and while she exports at least eight hundred thousand bales annually to England and China, continues at the same time to make the larger part of her own clothing, flourishing cities, like Dacca and Delhi, once the seat of manufactures, are going to decay, and a large proportion of her people, willing to toil at six cents per day in occupations that have been transmitted for centuries in the same families, are either driven to the culture of the fields or compelled to spin and weave for a pittance the jute which is converted into gunny-cloth.
Carding and roving were all done by hand labor; and the spinning-frame, with thirty-two spindles, differed little from a common jenny, and was worked by a crank turned by hand.
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