Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-07-09 00:00:00

A POPULAR HISTOIIY

Or THE

WORKING CLASSES.

ADDRESSED TOLTHE
.WORKLNG CLASSES

TITEMSELYES.

TREIR RISE AND PROGRESS-bOCIAL A.ND POLITICAL

PART SIXTH

CHAPTER FOURTH

HANICAL

INVENTIONS. AND DISCOVE4IS 'l'llE

:GHTEENTFI CENTURY

The eighteenth- century was peculiarly the age of
inventions and discoveries in the mechanical arts; all
of which more or less affected the interests and con-
dition of the working classes. It was the age of
1 improvements both in agriculture and manufSc-
;. The most important of these were introduced
in the following' succession :

In 1710, the thrashing machine was introduced.
from Holland, and about the same time it began to be
used in the northern parts of the island. In 1732
the celebrated Jethro Tull commenced his

experi-

ments on his farm in Berkshire. He was the first to
make known the process of drill husbandry, and
recommended the substitution of labour and arrange-
ment, in the place of manure and faJlows in the
culture of land, so that a rotation of crops, and the
cultivation of turnips, clover, and potatoes in the
field,became more general. But the greatest inven-
tions viere those afterwards discovered and applied
to manufacturing industry.

It was in the year 1764 that James Watt, a native
of Greenock, began his improvements in the appli
cation of steam, the powers of which mighty revolu
tionary agent still continue in progress of

development. By its aid it is considered that an
individual can now produce 200 times more goods
than he could in 1760; and, although the labours of
Watt are unnoticed in the general history of the
period, they have proved of more importance to man
than all the contemporary transactions of war and
diplomacy in which Europe was involved.
Three years later'James Hargraves, an ingenious
carpenter, of Blackburn, invented the spinning fenny,
the first of a series of improvements in the cotton
manufacture. At first, says Mr. M'Culloch, in his
statistical account of the British Empire, this admi-
rable machine enabled eight threads to be spun with
the same facility as one ; and it was subsequently
brought to such perfection that a child was able to
work no fewer than from eighty to one hundred
spindles. Hargraves, it appears, was directed, like
many other discoverers, to his labours by an accident.
A spinning-wheel was suddenly overturned in his

room, and continued to turn round as it lay upon th

✓ r
ground, the spindles revolving in a perpendicular posi-
tion. Hargraves noticed the occurrence, and the thought
instantly struck him that a number of spindles might
be made-to revolve by the motion of a single wheel. He
had repeatedly tried to move several spindles by the
common wheel, but the horizontal position of the
spindleS'had always perplexed his operations. But
he now,.saw how the object might be accomplished,
and immediately commenced a series of experiments
which _ended in the production of the Spinning
Jenny.•,={The first , machine was exceedingly rude,
being made with a pocket penknife, and such tools as
his cottage could furnish. The spinners. of Blackburn,
when they heard of Hargraves' operations, attacked
his house, and broke the machine in pieco.
The jenny, however, was only applicable to the

spinning of cotton for weft, being unable to give to
the yarn that degree of fineness requisite in the
warp; but this deficiency was soon afterwards sup-
plied by the introduction of the spinning frame,
which spins a vast number of threads of any degree
of tenuity and firmness, leaving to man merely to
feed th§;:machine with cotton, and to join the threads
when they happen to break. The introduction of
this extraordinary machine has usually been ascribed
to Richard Arlcwiigt, a native of Preston, and by
trade, Ak,,harber. Living in a manufacturing dis
tri-+

pOyment WAS

err thiit

ensued, and some I

oftlie new disco