CHAPTER VIII.

THE ERA OF INVENTION.

Remarks on inventors and inventions.-Obstacles to the extension of the manufacture, from the rudeness of the machinery.-Invention of the fly shuttle by John Kay, in 1738; and of the drop box by Robert Kay.-The one-thread spinning wheel.-Invention of SPINNING BY ROLLERS, by John Wyatt, of Birmingham.-Description of the process of spinning.-Patent for spinning by rollers taken out, in 1738, in the name of Lewis Paul.-Proofs that Wyatt was the author of this great invention.-Cotton spinning mills at Birmingham and Northampton.-Extracts from Wyatt's MS. book on cotton spinning, and prices of yarn. Letter of Mr. Chas. Wyatt on his father's invention.-Paul's second patent for a spinning machine in 1758.-Probability that Sir Richard Arkwright knew of Wyatt's invention.-Claims of Thomas Highs to the invention of spinning by rollers.

WE have now arrived at the era of invention; and a series of inventions is to be opened, which for ingenuity and importance has never been equalled in any other manufacture.

I cannot better introduce a history, which, however splendid in its national results, is sometimes obscure as to the claims of individuals, and more often melancholy as to their fate, than by quoting the following excellent remarks on inventors and inventions from an old writer:-*

"Few new inventions were ever rewarded by a monopoly; for altho' the Inventor, oftentimes drunk with the opinion of his own merit, thinks all the world will

• A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions, published in 1679, and which I have only seen in the British Museum.

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invade and encroach upon him, yet I have observed that the generality of men will scarce be hired to make use of the new practices, which themselves have not throughly tried, and which length of time hath not vindicated from latent inconvenience; so as when a new invention is first propounded, in the beginning every man objects, and the poor inventor runs the Gantloop of all petulent wits; every man finding his several flaw, no man approving it unless mended according to his own device. Now not one of a hundred outlives this torture, and those that do are at length so changed by the various contrivances of others, that not any one man can pretend to the invention of the whole, nor well agree about their respective shares in the parts. And moreover this commonly is so long a-doing, that the poor inventor is either dead, or disabled by the debts contracted to pursue his design; and withal railed upon as a projector, or worse, by those who joyned their money in partnership with his wit; so as the said inventor and his pretences are wholly lost and vanisht." -p. 53.

Every stage in the improvement of the cotton manufacture illustrates the truth of these remarks. It is melancholy to contrast with the sanguine eagerness of inventors, the slowness of mankind to acknowledge and reward their merits,-to observe how, on many occasions, genius, instead of realizing fame and fortune, has been pursued by disaster and opposition,-how trifling difficulties have frustrated the success of splendid discoveries, and how those discoveries, snatched from the grasp of their broken-hearted authors, have brought princely fortunes to men whose only talent was in making money. When inventors fail in their projects,

no one pities them; when they succeed, persecution, envy, and jealousy are their reward. Their means

are generally exhausted before their discoveries become productive. They plant a vineyard, and either starve, or are driven from their inheritance, before they can gather the fruit.

Up to the year 1760, the machines used in the cotton manufacture in England were nearly as simple as those of India; though the loom was more strongly and perfectly constructed, and cards for combing the cotton had been adopted from the woollen manufacture.

The cotton manufacture, though rapidly increasing, could never have received such an extension as to become of great national importance, without the discovery of some method for producing a greater quantity and better quality of yarn with the same labour. None but the strong cottons, such as fustians and dimities, were as yet made in England, and for these the demand must always have been limited. Yet at present the demand exceeded the supply, and the modes of manufacture were such as greatly to impede the increase of production. The weaver was continually pressing upou the spinner. The processes of spinning and weaving were generally performed in the same cottage, but the weaver's own family could not supply him with a sufficient quantity of weft, and he had with much pains to collect it from neighbouring spinsters. Thus his time was wasted, and he was often subjected to high demands for an article, on which, as the demand exceeded the supply, the seller could put her own price. A high

Dr. Aikin says, "The weavers, in a scarcity of spinning, have sometimes been paid less for the weft than they paid the spinner, but durst not complain, much less abate the spinner, lest their looms should be unemployed."-Hist. of

and sustained price of yarn would indeed have attracted new hands to the employment, but such high price would itself have tended to keep down the rising manufacture, by making the goods too costly in comparison with other manufactures.

This difficulty was likely to be further aggravated by an invention which facilitated the process of weaving." In the year 1738, Mr. John Kay, a native of Bury, in Lancashire, then residing at Colchester, where the woollen manufacture was at that time, carried on, suggested a mode of throwing the shuttle, which enabled the weaver to make nearly twice as much cloth as he could make before. The old mode was, to throw the shuttle with the hand, which required a constant extension of the hands to each side of the warp.' By the new plan, the lathe (in which the shuttle runs) was lengthened a foot at either end; and, by means of two strings attached to the opposite ends of the lathe, and both held by a peg in the weaver's hand, he, with a slight and sudden pluck, was able to give the proper impulse to the shuttle. The shuttle thus impelled was called the flyshuttle, and the peg was called the picking-peg, (i. e. the throwing peg.) This simple contrivance was a great saving of time and exertion to the weaver, and enabled

Manchester, p. 167. Mr. Guest, in his "History of the Cotton Manufacture," states, that "it was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day; and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon, or a gown, was necessary, to quicken the exertions of the spinner." p. 12.

In the first print of Hogarth's admirable series, "Industry and Idleness," where the two apprentices are seen at their looms, the old form of shuttle and lathe is represented: the industrious apprentice has the shuttle in his hand, ready to throw it; and the shuttle of the idle apprentice hangs dangling by the thread at the end of the lathe, affording a plaything for the cat, whilst the lad sleeps.

one man to weave the widest cloth, which had before required two persons. "Mr. Kay brought this ingenious invention to his native town, and introduced it among the woollen weavers, in the same year, but it was not much used among the cotton weavers until 1760. In that year Mr. Robert Kay, of Bury, son of Mr. John Kay, invented the drop-box, by means of which the weaver can at pleasure use any one of three shuttles, each containing a different coloured weft, without the trouble of taking them from and replacing them in the lathe."* V

These inventions, like every other invention which has contributed to the extraordinary advance of the cotton manufacture, were opposed by the workmen, who feared that they would lose their employment; and such was the persecution and danger to which John Kay was exposed, that he left his native country, and went to reside in Paris.

It has been seen, that the great impediment to the further progress of the manufacture was the impossibility of obtaining an adequate supply of yarn. The onethread wheel, though turning from morning till night in thousands of cottages, could not keep pace either with the weaver's shuttle, or with the demand of the merchant.

The one-thread wheel, though much improved from the rude teak-wood wheel used in India, (see p. 68,) was an extremely slow mode of spinning; as may be supposed from the subjoined representation of a spinster at her work:

Guest, p. 8. Mr. Guest derived his information on these points "from a manuscript lent to him by Mr. Samuel Kay, of Bury, son of Mr. Robert Kay, the inventor of the drop-box." p. 30.