The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production - J. A. Hobson

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increment of inventive effort successfully applied there brings a higher remuneration than if applied to any of the more forward processes. So the movement is amenable to the ordinary law of "Supply and Demand" enforced by the usual economic motives. As the invention of the fly-shuttle gave weaving the advantage, more and more attention was concentrated upon the spinning processes and the jenny was evolved; the deficiency of the jenny in spinning warp evolved the water-frame, which for the first time liberated the cotton industry from dependence upon linen warp: the demand for finer and more uniform yarns stimulated the invention of the mule. These notable improvements in spinning machinery, with their minor appendages, placed spinning ahead of weaving, and stimulated the series of inventions embodied in the power-loom. The power-loom was found to be of comparatively little service until the earlier processes of dressing and sizing had been placed on a level of machine development by the efforts of Horrocks and others. Not until after 1841 was an equilibrium reached in the development of the leading processes. So likewise each notable advance in the machinery for the main processes has had the effect of bringing an increase of inventive energy to bear upon the minor and the subsidiary processes—bleaching, dyeing, printing, etc. Even now the early process of "ginning" has not been brought fully into line in spite of the prodigious efforts, made especially in the United States, to overcome the difficulties involved in this preparatory stage of the cotton industry.

      The following schedule will serve to show the relation of the growth of the cotton industry as measured by consumption of raw cotton to the leading improvements of machinery.

Cotton Imported. lbs. Inventions &c.
1730 1,545,472 1730 Wyatt's roller-spinning (patented 1738).
1738 Kay's fly-shuttle.
1741 1,645,031 1748 Paul's carding-machine (useless until improved by Lees, Arkwright, Wood, 1772–74).
1764 3,870,392 1764 Hargreave's spinning-jenny (patented 1770), for weft only.
1764 Calico-printing introduced into Lancashire.
1768 Arkwright perfects Wyatt's spinning-frame (patented 1769), liberating cotton from dependence on linen warp.
1771 to 1775 4,764,589 1771 Arkwright's mill built at Cromford.
1775 Arkwright takes patents for carding, drawing, roving, spinning.
1779 Crompton's mule completed (combining jenny and water-frame, producing finer and more even yarn).
1781 5,198,775
1785 18,400,384 1785 Cartwright's power-loom. Watt and Boulton's first engine for cotton-mills.
1792 34,907,497 1792 Whitney's saw-gin.
1813 51,000,000 1813 Horrocks' dressing-machine.
1813 51,000,000 1813 Horrocks' dressing-machine.
1830 261,200,000 1830 The "Throstle" (almost exclusively used in England for spinning warp).
1832 287,800,000 1832 Roberts' self-acting mule perfected.
1841 489,900,000 1841 Bullough's improved power-loom. Ring spinning (largely used in U.S.A., recently introduced into Lancashire).

      From this schedule it is evident that the history of this trade may be divided with tolerable accuracy into four periods.

      (1) The preparatory period of experimental inventions of Wyatt, Paul, etc., to the year 1770.

      (2) 1770 to 1792 (circa), the age of the great mechanical inventions.

      (3) 1792 to 1830, the application of steam power to manufacture and improvements of the great inventions.

      (4) 1830 onward, the effect of steam locomotion upon the industry (1830, the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway).

      If we measure the operation of these several industrial forces within these several periods, as they are reflected on the growing size of the cotton industry, we shall realise the accumulative character of the great industrial movement, and form some approximately accurate conception of the relative importance of the development of mechanical inventions and of the new motor-power.

      § 7. The history of the cotton industry is in its main outlines also the history of other textile industries. We do not possess the same means of measuring statistically the growth of the woollen industries in the period of revolution; but since, on the one hand, many of the spinning and weaving inventions were speedily adapted into the woollen from the cotton industry, while the application of steam to manufacture and the effects of steam locomotion were shared by the older manufacture, the growth of the trade in the main conforms to the same divisions of time. The figures of imported wool are not so valuable a register as in the case of cotton, because no account is taken of home-produce, but the following statistics of foreign and colonial wool imported into England serve to throw light upon the growth of our woollen manufactures.

      STATISTICS OF WOOL IMPORTED INTO ENGLAND.

lbs. lbs.
1766 1,926,000 1830 32,305,000
1771 1,829,000 1840 49,436,000
1780 323,000 1850 74,326,000
1790 2,582,000

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