The Story of the Cotton Plant

by Frederick Wilkinson

There had been very great opposition to the introduction of cotton goods into England by manufacturers and others interested in the wool and fustian trade, and matters even got so bad that the British Parliament was foolish enough to actually pass an Act in 1720, prohibiting "the use or wear in Great Britain, in any garment or apparel whatsoever, of any printed, painted, stained, or dyed calico, under the penalty of forfeiting to the informer the sum of £5."

Just as though this was not sufficiently severe, it was also enacted that persons using printed or dyed calico "in or about any bed, chair, cushion, window-curtain, or any other sort of household stuff or furniture," would be fined £20, and a like amount was to be paid by those who sold the stuff.

There can be no doubt whatever, that this Act was designed to strike a death-blow at the cotton industry, which at this time was beginning to make itself felt in the commerce of the country. A curious exception should be mentioned here. Calico, which was all blue, was exempted from the provisions of this Act, as were also muslins, fustians and neck-ties. However, in 1736 this iniquitous piece of legislation was somewhat relaxed, and Parliament was good enough to decree in the year just named that it would be lawful for anyone to wear "any sort of stuff made of linen yarn and cotton wool manufactured and printed or painted with any colour or colours within the kingdom of Great Britain, provided that the warp thereof be entirely linen yarn."

Now as half a loaf is better than none, the cotton manufacturers received a direct impulse by the partial removal of the obnoxious restriction, and very soon the supply was far ahead of the demand.

Manufacturers were crying out constantly for more weight and better stuff, but how by the mechanical means at the disposal of the spinners were they to get it? Lancashire historians say that it was no uncommon thing for weavers to travel miles in search of weft, and then many of them returned to their looms with only a quarter of the amount they required.

Another cause which acted in the direction of increasing the demand for yarns and weft was the invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay about 1738. Previous to his time, the heavy shuttles containing the wefts were sent across the looms by two persons. Now, by his new shuttle he dispensed with the services of one of these artisans, and by means of his arrangement for quickly sending the shuttle along the lathe of the loom, much more cloth was produced. Poor Kay suffered much by the cruel persecution of his countrymen, who ignorantly supposed that in bringing his new shuttle to such perfection, they would be deprived permanently of their occupations, with nothing but starvation looking them in the face. Of course, nothing could be wider of the truth than this, but Kay had to flee his country, and died in poverty and obscurity in a foreign land. Still the shuttle continued to be used, for the makers of cloth had learned that increased production meant more work, and possibly greater profit, and though Kay disappeared, his works remained behind. The demand for weft grew more and more. It has been said that it is the occasion which makes the man, and not man the occasion. It was so in this case, for here was a cry for some mechanical means to be discovered for satisfying the ever-increasing demand for cotton weft. Hitherto single threads only had been dealt with on the spinning machines, but the same year witnessed the introduction of an invention which in a few years completely revolutionized the spinning industry, and which enabled one worker to spin hundreds of threads at once.

The year 1738, which witnessed the birth of Kay's invention, also saw that of Lewis Paul, an artisan of Birmingham. This was a new method of spinning by means of Rollers. It should be remembered that this was thirty years before Arkwright attempted to obtain letters patent for his system of spinning by rollers.

Most of the readers of this little book will have seen what is known in domestic parlance as a clothes-wringer. Here the wooden or rubber rollers, by means of weights or screws, are made to squeeze out most of the moisture which remains after the garment has left the washing-tub. Now if two sets of such rollers could be put together, so that in section the four centres would coincide with the four angular points of a square, and the back pair could be made to have a greater surface velocity than the front pair, this arrangement would give something like the idea which Paul had in his mind at that time. Why make the back pair revolve at a greater rate? For this reason, that as the cotton was supplied to the front pair, and passed on to the second, remembering that these are going at a greater rate, it follows that the cotton would be drawn out in passing from the first to the second pair. Had the rollers been both going at the same speeds, the cotton would pass out as it went in, unaffected. Now it was this idea which Paul practically set out in his machine. From some reason or other, Paul's right to this patent has been often called into question, and up to 1858 it was popularly supposed to have been the sole invention of John Wyatt of Birmingham. In the year named, Mr. Cole, in a paper read before the British Association, proved that Paul was the real patentee, and established the validity of his claim without doubt.

The two distinguishing features of Paul's Spinning Machine were: (1) by means of the rollers and flyers he performed the operations of drawing-out and twisting, which had hitherto been done by the fingers and thumbs of the spinners; and (2) he changed the position of the spindle itself from the horizontal to the vertical.

A glance at the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, shows that this period (1760-1770) was most prolific of inventions specially relating to the various sections of the cotton industry. There were "improved spinning wheels," "a horizontal spinning wheel," and three other forms of "spinning machines" submitted to the above society between 1761 and 1767, in the hope of obtaining money grants in the shape of premiums, which had been offered to the best inventions for improving spinning machinery in general.