the Trent brought the
pottery of Etruria to Liverpool and carried other goods at a quarter of
the old cost of transport. The success of these undertakings was so
great that people went wild about canal-making, and between 1790 and
1794 eighty-one canal acts were obtained, many of them, of course, for
superfluous projects.

The principal factor in the industrial revolution which began during the
period under review was the substitution of machinery for hand labour in
textile manufactures. In 1760 spinning and weaving were domestic
industries, carried on, that is, in the homes of the workers. The women
and children in farm-houses and cottages spent their spare time in
spinning. The implements used in the cotton manufacture remained nearly
as simple as those of the Homeric age, save that weaving had been
facilitated by the use of the fly-shuttle. Since that invention the
weaver found it difficult to obtain enough yarn for his loom, until,
about 1767, a weaver named Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny by
which a child could work many spindles at once. Two years later
Arkwright, who introduced many inventions into the textile manufacture,
brought out a spinning machine worked by water-power. His water-frame
spun automatically and produced a yarn strong enough for warp, so that
for the first time pure cotton goods were manufactured in England, for
until then the cotton weft was woven on a warp of linen. This machine
was improved on by Crompton's mule, a cross between the jenny and the
water-frame, which spun a finer yarn, and so started the manufacture of
muslin in England; it was invented in 1775 and came into general use
about ten years later. The supply of cotton from India, the Bahamas,
and later from the southern states of America, was large, and the effect
of the new machinery on the manufacture can be gauged by the increase in
the import of cotton-wool from an average of 4,764,589 lbs. between 1771
and 1775 to 56,010,732 lbs. in 1800. The new labour-saving inventions
were at first regarded with jealousy by the workmen. Hargreaves had his
house gutted and his loom destroyed, and in 1799 a violent riot broke
out about Blackburn; Arkwright's works were burnt, and many machines in
the neighbourhood were broken to pieces. In and around Lancashire, where
the manufacture was chiefly carried on, the carding and spinning of wool
ceased to be domestic industries. Capitalists set up factories where
water-power was available,