the latter
class to one of the former, outside help must be obtained and much
delay often submitted to. Many a small master who had agreed to weave
up the raw material sent him by the master clothier within a given
time, or a cloth weaver who had planned to complete a piece by next
market day, was obliged to leave his loom and search through the
neighborhood for some disengaged laborer's wife or other person who
would spin the weft for which he was waiting. One of the very few
inventions of the early part of the century intensified this
difficulty. Kay's drop box and flying shuttle, invented in 1738, made
it possible for a man to sit still and by pulling two cords
alternately throw the shuttle to and fro. One man could therefore
weave broadcloth instead of its requiring two as before, and
consequently weaving was more rapid, while no corresponding change had
been introduced into the process of spinning.

[Illustration: Spinning-Jenny. (Byrn, _Invention in the Nineteenth
Century_. Published by the Scientific American Company.)]

Indeed, this particular difficulty was so clearly recognized that the
Royal Society offered a prize for the invention of a machine that
would spin several threads at the same time.

[Illustration: Arkwright's First Spinning-machine. (Ure: _History of
the Cotton Manufacture_.)]

No one claimed this reward, but the spirit of invention was
nevertheless awake, and experiments in more than one mechanical device
were being made about the middle of the century. The first to be
brought to actual completion was Hargreaves' spinning-jenny, invented
in 1764. According to the traditional story James Hargreaves, a small
master weaver living near Blackburn, on coming suddenly into the house
caused his wife, who was spinning with the old high wheel, to spring
up with a start and overset the wheel, which still continued whirling,
but horizontally, and with its spindle in a vertical position. He was
at once struck with the idea of using one wheel to cause a number of
spindles to revolve by means of a continuous band, and by the device
of substituting for the human hand a pair of bars which could be
successively separated and closed, and which could be brought closer
to or removed from the spindles on wheels, to spin several threads at
the same time. On the basis of this idea and with the help of a
neighboring mechanic he constructed a machine by which a man could
spin eight threads at the same time. In honor