Eventually there was some relief given to the poor workers. By statute of 1773, wastes, commons, and fields having several owners with different interests may by three-quarters vote in number and in value of the occupiers cultivate such for up to six years. However, cottagers and those with certain sheep walks, or cattle pasture, may not be excluded from their rights of common. By statute of 1776, the Elizabethan statute restricting locations where cottages could be erected and their inhabitants was repealed because the industrious poor were under great difficulties to procure habitations.
Land could be rented out at ten times the original value. Land was typically rented out for 7, 14, or 21 years. Great fortunes were made by large landowners who built grand country estates. The manufacturers and merchants made much money, but agriculture was still the basis of the national wealth. As the population grew, the number of people in the manufacturing classes was almost that of the agriculturalists, but they had at least twice the income of the agriculturalists.
The greatest industry after agriculture was cloth. Most of this activity took places in the homes, but families could earn more if each family member was willing to exchange the informality of domestic work for the long hours and harsh discipline of the factory or workshop. More wool was made into cloth in the country. Dyed and finished wool cloth and less raw wool and unfinished broadcloth, was exported. Bleaching was done by protracted washing and open-air drying in "bleach fields". There were great advances in the technology of making cloth.
Thomas Lombe, the son of a weaver, became a mercer and merchant in London. He went to Italy to discover their secret in manufacturing silk so inexpensively. He not only found his way in to see their silk machines, but made some drawings and sent them to England hidden in pieces of silk. He got a patent in 1718 and he and his brother set up a mill using water power to twist together the silk fibers from the cocoons into thread [thrown silk] in 1719. His factory was five hundred feet long and about five stories high. One water wheel worked the vast number of parts on the machines. The machines inside were very tall, cylindrical in shape, and rotated on vertical axes. Several rows of bobbins, set on the circumference, received the threads, and by a rapid rotary movement gave them the necessary twist. At the top the thrown silk was automatically wound on a winder, all ready to be made into hanks for sale. The workman's chief task was to reknot the threads whenever they broke. Each man was in charge of sixty threads. There were three hundred workmen. Lombe made a fortune of 120,000 pounds and was knighted and made an alderman of London. After his patent expired in 1732, his mill became the prototype for later cotton and wool spinning mills in the later 1700s. There were many woolen manufacture towns. Clothiers might employ up to three thousand workers. At these, the spinning was done by unskilled labor, especially women and children in villages and towns. Weaving, wool combing, and carding were skilled occupations.
In 1733, clockmaker and weaver John Kay invented a flying shuttle for weaving. It was fitted with small wheels and set in a kind of wooden groove. On either side there were two wooden hammers hung on horizontal rods to give the shuttle and to and fro action. The two hammers were bound together by two strings attached to a single handle, so that with one hand the shuttle could be driven either way. With a sharp tap by the weaver, first one and then the other hammer moved on its rod. It hit the shuttle, which slid along its groove. At the end of each rod there was a spring to stop the hammer and replace it in position. It doubled the weavers' output. Now the broadest cloth could be woven by one man instead of two. This shuttle was used in a machine for cotton. But the manufacturers who used the flying shuttle combined together and refused to pay royalties to Kay, who was ruined by legal expenses. Now the price of thread rose because of increased demand for it. The weavers, who had to pay the spinners, then found it hard to make a living. But the process of spinning was soon to catch up.
In 1738, John Wyatt, a ship's carpenter who also invented the harpoon shot from a gun, patented a spinning machine whereby carded wool or cotton was joined together to make a long and narrow mass. One end of this mass was drawn in between a pair of rotating rollers, of which one surface was smooth and the other rough, indented, or covered with leather, cloth, shagg, hair, brushes, or points of metal. From here, the mass went between another set of rollers, which were moving faster than the first pair. This stretched the mass and drew it into any degree of fineness of thread by adjusting the speed of the second pair of rollers. Then the thread went by a flier, which twisted it. After this the thread was wound off onto spindles or bobbins, whose rotation was regulated by the faster pair of rollers. Or the mass could be drawn by rotating spindles directly from one pair of rollers. This machine was worked by two donkeys and was tended by ten female workers. Because of bankruptcy in 1742, the invention was sold to Edward Cave, the editor of "Gentleman's Magazine". He set up a workshop with five machines, each fitted with fifty spindles and worked by water wheels. Carding was done by cylindrical carding machines invented by Lewis Paul.
In 1764, the plant was bought by carpenter and weaver James Hargreaves. He was watching his wife spin when the spinning wheel tipped over onto its side. It continued to revolve, while the thread, held between two fingers, seemed to be spinning itself, even though the spindle was in a vertical instead of a horizontal position. It occurred to him that a large number of vertical spindles arranged side by side could be turned by the same wheel and that, therefore, many threads could be spun at once. He named his machine the "the Jenny" after his wife. This "spinning Jenny" could spin a hundred threads at a time. He patented it about 1770. The machine consisted of a rectangular frame on four legs. At one end was a row of vertical spindles. Across the frame were two parallel wooden rails, lying close together, which were mounted on a sort of carriage and slid backwards and forwards as desired. The cotton, which had been previously carded, stretched, and twisted passed between the two rails and then was wound on spindles. With one hand the spinner worked the carriage backwards and forwards, and with the other he turned the handle which worked the spindles. In this way, the thread was drawn and twisted at the same time. The jenny did the work of about 30 spinning wheels. No longer did it take ten spinners to keep one weaver busy. But manufacturers refused to pay him royalties for his invention. He was offered 3,000 pounds for his rights in the jenny, but refused it. The courts held that the model of his jenny had been used in industry before it was patented and any rights he may have had were declared to have lapsed. Nevertheless, he made over 4,000 pounds. The spinning jenny was used in many homes.
Richard Arkwright came from a poor family and was taught to read by an uncle. He became a barber and made wigs. He taught himself crafts necessary to invent and patent in 1769 a spinning frame worked by a water wheel, which he called a "water frame". He strengthened cotton thread by adding rollers to the spinning process which were able to strengthen the cotton thread and make it of even thickness so that it could be used instead of costly linen as the warp. With capital from two rich hosiers, he set up a workshop next to a swift and powerful river running down a narrow gorge. Then he turned his attention to weaving this thread with multiple spinning wheels in the first practical cotton mill factory. In 1773, he set up weaving workshops making pure cotton calicoes which were as good as Indian calicoes. He confronted the problem of a statute of 1721 which proscribed wearing or using printed, painted, stained or dyed calicoes e.g. in apparel, bed, chair, cushion, window curtain, and furniture, except those dyed all in blue, or else forfeit 20 pounds by a seller, 5 pounds by a wearer, and 20 pounds by other users. The purpose was to provide wool-working jobs to the poor, whose numbers had been increasing excessively because of lack of work. Arkwright argued that the statute should not include printed or painted cloth made in Great Britain in its ancient tradition of fustians with an all linen warp (for strength) and a cotton weft (for fineness). This statute was so "clarified" in 1735. When wool-weavers had expressed their opposition to imported printed cottons and calicoes by tearing them off people, a statute of 1720 provided that any one who willfully and maliciously assaulted a person in the public streets or highways with an intent to tear, spoil, cut, burn, or deface the garments or clothes of such person and carried this out was guilty of felony punishable by transportation for seven years. The prohibition against the manufacture and wearing and using of pure cotton fabrics came to an end in 1774 on arguments of Arkwright made to Parliament that his pure cottons would bleach, print, wash and wear better than fustians. This was the first all-cotton cloth made in England.
In 1775, Arkwright added machines to do work prefatory to spinning. Raw cotton was first fed by a sloping hose to a feeder that was perpetually revolving. From here it went a carding machine of three rollers of different diameters covered with bent metal teeth. The first, with teeth bent in the direction of its revolution, caught up the cotton fibers. The second, revolving in the same direction but much faster, carded the fibers into the requisite fineness by contact with the third, whose teeth and motion were in the opposite direction. Next, a crank and comb detached the carded cotton so that it came off as a continuous ribbon. Then the ribbon went into a revolving cone, which twisted it on itself. Eventually Arkwright became rich from his creation of the modern factory, which was widely imitated. He established discipline in his mills and he made his presence felt everywhere there, watching his men and obtaining from them the steadiest and most careful work. He provided housing and services to attract workers.
After cotton, the inventions of the spinning jenny and the water- powered frame were applied to wool. Silk and cotton manufacture led the way in using new machinery because they were recently imported industries so not bound down by tradition and legal restraint. Yarn production so improved that weavers became very prosperous. Cards with metal teeth were challenging the use of wood and horn cards with thistles on them in carding wool. Merchants who traveled all over the world and saw new selling opportunities and therefore kept encouraging the manufacturers to increase their production and improve their methods. Factory owners united to present suggestions to Parliament.