THE HISTORY

OF

THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

India the birth-place of the Cotton Manufacture.—England its second birth-place. -Early history and spread of the manufacture.-Effects of machinery.— Scanty materials for the history.—The principal materials of human clothing, cotton, flax, wool, and silk.-Cotton-wool, its appearance and qualities.— Its recommendations for clothing, compared with linen, both in hot and cold climates.

THE birthplace of the Cotton Manufacture is India, where it probably flourished long before the date of authentic history. But so rude are the implements of the Indian spinner and weaver, that no people possessing a physical organization less exquisitely adapted to give manual dexterity than that of the Oriental, have been able to work cotton into a fine cloth by the same processes. The mechanical inventions which have enabled the western nations to compete with, and in some respects greatly to surpass the Hindoos, and which have suddenly given to the cotton manufacture an unparalleled extension in Europe and America, have had their origin in England, and within the last age. England, therefore, is the second birth-place of the art; and it is the principal object of this volume to record the origin, progress, and present state of this important branch of industry in our own country.

B

Before entering, however, upon the history of the manufacture in England, it will be proper to inquire into its ancient existence, and to trace its course from East to West;-not merely because this is a subject of natural and legitimate curiosity, and one which has been strangely neglected, but also because the result of the inquiry affords, by contrast, the strongest possible proof of the utility of machinery, and of the importance of those particular inventions which are afterwards to be described. It will be found that the manufacture of cotton was introduced into Europe at a comparatively late period, and existed there like a tropical plant in northern latitudes, degenerate and sickly, till, by the appliances of modern science and art, it suddenly shot forth in more than its native luxuriance, and is now rapidly overspreading the earth with its branches. Within one age, by the aid of machinery, the manufacture has made greater progress than it had previously made in many centuries.

Mechanical knowledge has taught man to substitute for the labour of his own hands, the potent and indefatigable agency of nature. The operations which he once performed, he now only directs. Iron, water, steam, all mechanical powers, and all chemical agents, are his faithful drudges, and not merely yield their mighty forces to his command, but execute works much more subtle and delicate than his own dexterity could accomplish. By this means, manufactures of every kind have undergone a transformation scarcely less important than that which takes place in the caterpillar, when it is changed from a creeping into a winged insect. The new power given to the cotton manufacture will be best appreciated, by contrasting with the lofty flight

it has recently taken, its crawling progress in all former times.

The review of the early history of the manufacture will necessarily be brief. No materials exist for making it otherwise. Whilst the writers of antiquity, both sacred and profane, abound in allusions to clothing made of wool and flax, there are scarcely a dozen sentences to be found in the whole body of Greek and Latin literature, and not one in Hebrew, referring to cotton. The reason is, that the growth and manufacture of cotton were confined to those populous regions lying beyond the Indus, which were an unknown world to the nations bordering on the Mediterranean. To come to later times; the writers of the middle ages, and those who lived during the revival of arts and letters, in describing the progress of commerce, or the spoil of captured cities, or the garments of both sexes, continually mention stuffs of woollen, linen, silk, and gold, in all their varieties; but such a manufacture as that of cotton appears to have been unknown to them. Until modern times, therefore, nearly all the evidence is negative, with the exception of the reports brought by adventurous travellers, or gleaned by inquisitive naturalists.

Of the four great raw materials which furnish the clothing of men-cotton, flax, wool, and silk-the first two belong to the vegetable world, and the last two to the animal. Cotton, flax, and wool, having short and slender filaments, require to be spun into a thread before they can be woven into cloth; silk needs only that the threads spun by the worm should be twisted together, to give them the requisite strength.

Whilst the bounty of the Creator has furnished these

materials in inexhaustible abundance, his wisdom has given them in such forms as to exercise the industry and ingenuity of men in applying them to useful purposes, and in such situations as strongly to encourage the intercourse of different nations. Flax appears to have been indigenous in Egypt, and probably in other countries; the sheep is supposed to be a native of the mountainous ranges of Asia; the silk-worm was given to China; and the cotton-plant to India and America.

Among all the materials which the skill of man converts into comfortable and elegant clothing, that which appears likely to be the most extensively useful, though it was the last to be generally diffused, is the beautiful produce of the cotton-plant. This material bears so much resemblance to the earlier-known article of sheep's wool, that among the ancients it was called the "wool of trees;" by the Germans it is called baumwolle, or tree-wool; and in our own language it bears the name of cotton-wool; though the properties of this vegetable substance differ greatly from those of the animal fleece. Cotton is a white substance, and in some of its varieties cream-coloured, or of a yellow hue; it possesses downy softness and warmth, and its delicate fibres are sufficiently long, flexible, and tenacious, to admit of being spun into an extremely fine thread. It grows upon the plant enclosed within pods, which protect it from injury by dust or weather, until it is ripe and fit to be gathered, when the heat of the sun causes it to expand, and burst open the pod.

The following is a drawing of the cotton pod and flower belonging to the Annual Herbaceous Cotton Plant, (Gossypium Herbaceum)—

• Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, vol. iv. p. 312.

The fibres of cotton are shewn, by the microscope, to be somewhat flat, and two-edged or triangular, and to be not straight but contorted ;-a construction which causes the fibres to adhere to each other, and which gives warmth to cotton clothing. The fibres of flax, on the other hand, are straight tubes, with a smooth surface.

Cotton is produced both from annual plants and from trees, of which there are many varieties; and, under proper cultivation, it is raised in such abundance as to be the cheapest of all the materials of clothing.*

• The natural history of the cotton plant will be given in a subsequent chapter.