. History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain : with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe : a description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain, and a view of the present state of the manufacture and the condition of the classes engaged in its several departments. th of Spain, until the inven-tion of the spinning machinery in England. The next fact worthy of observation is, that duringthe lengthened period which has been under review, nomaterial improvement took place, in any country, in theim
. History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain : with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe : a description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain, and a view of the present state of the manufacture and the condition of the classes engaged in its several departments. th of Spain, until the inven-tion of the spinning machinery in England. The next fact worthy of observation is, that duringthe lengthened period which has been under review, nomaterial improvement took place, in any country, in theimplements by which cotton was spun and woven. Theinstrument used for spinning in all countries, from the THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 49 earliest times, was the distaff and spindle. This simpleapparatus was put by the Greek mythologists into thehands of Minerva and the Parcse; Solomon employsupon it the industry of the virtuous woman; to the pre-sent day the distaff is used in India, Egypt, and othercountries; its early use in France is attested by its beingfiguratively mentioned in one of the old constitutionalmaxims of the kingdom;* and our own poets oftenintroduce it in speaking of the occupations of gives a figure of a female spinning with thedistaff, which, he says, is of the fourth or fifth century,fand of which the following is a copy:—. * Le royaume de France ne tombe point en quenouillf.— the crown ofFrance never falls to the distaff, i. e. never descends to a woman. Dryden alludesto this saying in the lines— See my royal master murderd,His crown usurpd, a distaff in the Antiquity Explained, vol. iii. part ii. book v. c. 8: the plate is in p. 210 ofthat volume. G 50 THE HISTORY OF The only advance made in this department was inchanging the distaff for the one-thread spinning wheel,which has long been used in India for the coarse quali-ties of thread, and which has also obtained in China andin all European countries. But the wheel is an instru-
Size: 1390px × 1797px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookau, bookcentury1800, bookidcottonmanufact00bain, bookyear1835
