“Taught him to chip the wood, and hew the stone,
Till by degrees the finished fabric rose;
Tore from his limbs the bloody-polluted fur,
And wrapped them in the woolly vestment warm,
Or bright in glossy silk and flowing lawn.”
Hen. It must require a great deal of knowledge, I suppose, for so many curious works; what kind of knowledge is most necessary?
Fa. There is not any which may not be occasionally employed; but the two sciences which most assist the manufacturer are mechanics and chymistry; the one for building mills, working mines, and in general for constructing wheels, wedges, pulleys, &c., either to shorten the labour of man, by performing it in less time, or to perform what the strength of man alone could not accomplish; the other in fusing and working ores, in dying and bleaching, and extracting the virtues of various substances for particular uses; making of soap, for instance, is a chymical operation; and by chymistry an ingenious gentleman has lately found out a way of bleaching a piece of cloth in eight-and-forty hours, which by the common process would have taken up a great many weeks. You have heard of Sir Richard Arkwright, who died lately?
Hen. Yes, I have heard he was at first only a barber, and shaved people for a penny apiece.
Fa. He did so; but having a strong turn for mechanics, he invented, or at least perfected a machine, by which one pair of hands may do the work of twenty or thirty; and, as in this country every one is free to rise by merit, he acquired the largest fortune in the country, had a great many hundreds of workmen under his orders, and had leave given him by the king to put Sir before his name.
Hen. Did that do him any good?