[402] Dobson, Evolution of the Spinning Machine, pp. 108 et seq.
[403] Clarke, Lancashire Gazetteer, p. 4. In the paragraph in which the above information is contained it is stated that in 1782, “after Sir Richard Arkwright’s improvements had furnished an abundant supply of that article (yarn), the manufacture was renewed here by Mr. Oldknow, who realised a large fortune in the production of Balasore handkerchiefs, and jaconet, and japanned muslins.” Cf. Autobiography of Robert Owen, i., p. 25: “The first British muslins were made when I was an apprentice with Mr. M‘Guffog (1781-1784), by a Mr. Oldknow at Stockport ... who must have commenced this branch in 1780, 1781, or 1782.... When I first went to Mr. M‘Guffog, there were no other muslins for sale except those made in the East Indies, and known as East India Muslins; but while I was with him, Mr. Oldknow began to manufacture a fabric which he called, by way of distinction, British Mull Muslin.” Cf. also quotation from Mr. Kennedy on pp. 130-131. Both Owen and Kennedy speak of Oldknow carrying on his manufacture at Stockport. If the information given in the Gazetteer is correct, it appears that he commenced elsewhere. The reference in the Gazetteer to Arkwright’s machinery ought to be, perhaps, to Crompton’s mule. If not, it would appear that Oldknow first began to experiment with yarn produced by the water-frame, and later utilised that produced by the mule.
[404] Infra, p. 190.
[405] “The manufacture of cotton cloth was at its best in India until very recent times, and the fine Indian muslins were in great demand and commanded high prices, both in the Roman Empire and in Mediæval Europe. The industry was one of the main factors in the wealth of ancient India, and the transfer of that industry to England and the United States, and the cheapening of the process by mechanical ginning, spinning and weaving, is perhaps the greatest single factor in the economic history of our own time” (Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (1912), p. 71).
[406] In 1815 a small amount of British yarn was sent to India; six years later it had become a regular export, and in 1829 amounted to 3,185,639 lbs. In 1815, 800,000 yards of British cloth were sent, and in 1830, 45,000,000 yards (Ure, ibid., i., p. 118). In 1831 the manufacturers and dealers in Bengal presented a petition regarding the import of British cotton goods (Baines, ibid., pp. 81-82).
[407] Before the outbreak of the European War it was estimated that nearly 80 per cent. of the total value of piece goods produced in the United Kingdom were exported. In 1913, British India took 36 per cent. and China 12 per cent. of the piece goods exported (Report of Committee on Textile Trades (1918), p. 60).
[408] Kennedy, Brief Memoir of Samuel Crompton, pp. 339, 344-345.
Heathcote’s machine was patented about 1809 and soon afterwards he is said to have obtained five guineas a yard for lace which in 1844 could be equalled at eighteenpence a yard (Dodd, Textile Manufactures of Great Britain (1844), pp. 210-211).
[409] Ure, ibid., p. 295.
[410] Economic Journal, June, 1915.