as about the average price, though many entertain an opinion that it will be much reduced. From land fresh brought under cultivation, in the best districts of America, the usual amount of produce is about 1000 lbs. weight per acre, which will yield about 300 lbs. of clean cotton, one able-bodied labourer being considered sufficient to cultivate eight acres of ground, when assisted by the aged, the infirm, and the young attached to the estate. When the ground has, however, been long brought under tillage, the produce is not expected to be much more than half this amount. In one of Captain Basil Hall's valuable works, he says that the whole number of negroes employed upon an estate of 200 acres was 122, of whom 48 were children, 4 too old to work; of the remaining 70, only 39 were considered “full hands," 16 were "three-quarter hands," 11 "half-hands," and 4 "quarter-hands;" the whole being equal to 57 ablebodied labourers, who are allowed during their intervals of work opportunity for cultivating their own provision grounds. On the authority of Mr. Woodbury, one of the ministers of the United States, it is asserted that the whole quantity of ground occupied by the cotton plant is upwards of two millions of acres, and that there are upwards of a million persons engaged in the business of its cultivation, in that country alone. The demand for cotton goods having been rising beyond the power of supply for a series of years, hope of profit impelled invention; and, among other contrivances, a machine was planned, and in 1738 a patent taken out for it, by Mr. Charles Wyatt of Birmingham, in the name of Lewis Paul, a foreigner with whom Wyatt was connected, and who was the principal inventor of the machine. Paul's plan was to spin the wool by means of several rollers; but it was ultimately abandoned, having been brought to no practical effect, although it was adduced when Arkwright, many years afterwards, endeavoured to bring his own invention into general use, as evidence that he was not the first inventor. Perhaps not, but he was certainly the person who in the end brought the principle into common application. The intrinsic merits of the steamengine as a motive agent must have been very apparent, for just at the time that James Watt was busily engaged in developing its merits and endeavouring to render it a perfect machine, and Mr. Miller of Dalswinton had glanced at it as a moving power, and Symington was intensely occupied in rendering it applicable to general purposes, M. De Gennes published in the Philosophical Transactions—the date is 1768—an account of a machine to make linen cloth without the aid of an artificer. It was to be worked by water power, and the description contains all the germs of the power-loom which was thereafter to produce such wonderful results. The chief difficulty which he conceived he had to overcome was breaking the threads of the warp, and this he said his machine would obviate, by preventing the shuttle from touching them, while he averred that it would set ten or twelve looms at work, and the cloth might be made to any width. Yet this machine, ingenious as it was, never appears to have been of any practical use, and subsequently, Mr. Austin, Mr. Miller, and two Frenchmen, named respectively Dolignon and Vancauson, attempted the same thing. Of these, only that designed by Mr. Austin was brought to any practical effect, and a power-loom was put up by him in the factory of Mr. Monteith near Glasgow, but after a short time even this was laid aside. During the series of years throughout which the adaptation of the hand-loom to extensive manufacturing purposes was being brought about, an individual came into existence who was to do away with the great difficulty which had hitherto been felt, and who arrived at fame, fortune, and honour, through the exercise of his own implanted genius and energy, and under the blessing of that Providence without whose aid nothing truly valuable can ever be achieved. Richard Arkwright was born of lowly parents in the town of Preston, in the year 1732; his boyhood was passed in indigent circumstances, and he was at length apprenticed to a barber. After he had served his time he set up a business for himself in the neighbouring town of Bolton, where he continued to follow his humble occupation till he was twenty-eight years of age. In 1760, he quitted his employment as a barber, and took to travelling up and down the country collecting hair, which he sold to the makers of wigs, who at that time had a business which, from the peculiar fashions of the time, was in great repute. RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. This new business of Arkwright's is one still somewhat extensively followed on the continent with no small profit; and a curious instance of the way in which it is made available, is said to have occurred not long since in one of the western counties of England. A wag, with as much wit as he had little of honesty, made his appearance there, when a report of a violent epidemic in the country was very prevalent, and coolly issued a notice to the rustic inhabitants of the place and its neighbourhood, intimating that he was sent down by the Government to cut the hair of all the residents in the district, with a view to prevent the spread of the cholera. As he had stated that his office was to be fulfilled free of expense, he had soon a numerous assemblage of patients, and quickly despoiled the country maidens of the luxuriant tresses with which nature had provided them. It is needless to observe that the quarantine agent had no commission from the Home Office, and that he doubtless made a very ample profit out of the rural credulity. VOL. II. D 49 Certainly he had reason for a hearty laugh at the expense of those by whom he had been believed. It is not to be supposed for a moment that Arkwright practised any such a trick as this for the improvement of his pecuniary resources; but it is stated that he possessed some peculiar secrets for dying hair, which greatly enhanced the value of the locks which he obtained from his customers. Whether he did possess such a secret seems somewhat doubtful, or at least discredit has been thrown upon the report, though it does not seem improbable, for the natural ingenuity of the man must have found vent in some shape or other. His first efforts in mechanics were made to discover the "perpetual motion," which, from the time at which Arkwright was engaged upon it till the end of the first quarter of the present century, was a popular object of curiosity and expectation; there being a prevailing notion that Government would reward the discoverer of it with £10,000. Not long after his entry on this, for him, hopeless discovery, he is found turning his attention towards some means of supplying the rapidly increasing demand for spun cotton-cotton weft for the weaver's loom. He proceeds to put together the rudiments of his design, and although struggling with poverty, he resolves, in 1767 or 1768, being then settled down at Preston, his native town, to bring his spinning machine into use. About the same time, a person named Hargreaves had obtained a patent for something of a similar purpose, and as Arkwright had already suffered much from the envy of others, he apprehended great obstruction in his design from Hargreaves, and consequently removed from his own neighbourhood to Nottingham, where he hoped to avoid that hindrance, and to get assistance in carrying out his designs. This, after some negotiation, he obtained from the highly respectable bankers, Messrs. Wright (a firm which still maintains its reputation), who advanced the means for carrying out his projects. They, however, at length became tired, and introduced him to a stocking-manufacturer of the name of Need, with whom he entered into an arrangement. But Mr. Need also shortly became weary; and being connected with Mr. Jedediah Strutt of Derby, the principal founder of the great house at Belper, and one of the ancestors of the late president of the Government Railway Board, that gentleman and Arkwright were shortly afterwards brought together. Mr. Strutt was himself a man of very considerable attainments in mechanics, and not long before had taken out a patent for an improvement of the stocking-frame, which is perhaps one of the most ingenious machines in existence, and is now used in the formation of fabrics the dealing in which constitutes one of our most extensive businesses. He pointed out to Arkwright several deficiencies in his machine, which all the inventive powers of the latter had been unable to supply. These, however, with his suggestions, were soon remedied; and, in 1769, Arkwright took out his first patent. The principal peculiarity consisted in the application of two pair of rollers, one pair thicker than the other, and placed at a little distance from them. Both the under rollers were fluted longitudinally like a crimping machine, and the upper ones were covered with leather so that they were enabled to take firm hold of the cotton as it passed through them. The rollers were so managed that while the first pair turned slowly the second were made to revolve with ten times the rapidity, so that the cotton which came from between the first hair in the form of a thick thread, was extended to ten times the length and fineness after it had passed through the second. Mr. Strutt and Mr. Need became Arkwright's partners in the concerns which it was intended to carry on under the patent, and their first mill, which was turned by horse power, was erected at Nottingham. The experiment was entirely |