rest, for their looms and gardens, and knew nothing of the mighty
movement which, beyond their horizon, was sweeping through mankind. They
were comfortable in their silent vegetation, and but for the industrial
revolution they would never have emerged from this existence, which,
cosily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings.
In truth, they were not human beings; they were merely toiling machines
in the service of the few aristocrats who had guided history down to that
time. The industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its
logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from
them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to think
and demand a position worthy of men. As in France politics, so in
England manufacture, and the movement of civil society in general drew
into the whirl of history the last classes which had remained sunk in
apathetic indifference to the universal interests of mankind.

The first invention which gave rise to a radical change in the state of
the English workers was the jenny, invented in the year 1764 by a weaver,
James Hargreaves, of Standhill, near Blackburn, in North Lancashire. This
machine was the rough beginning of the later invented mule, and was moved
by hand. Instead of one spindle like the ordinary spinning-wheel, it
carried sixteen or eighteen manipulated by a single workman. This
invention made it possible to deliver more yarn than heretofore. Whereas,
though one weaver had employed three spinners, there had never been
enough yarn, and the weaver had often been obliged to wait for it, there
was now more yarn to be had than could be woven by the available workers.
The demand for woven goods, already increasing, rose yet more in
consequence of the cheapness of these goods, which cheapness, in turn,
was the outcome of the diminished cost of producing the yarn. More
weavers were needed, and weavers' wages rose. Now that the weaver could
earn more at his loom, he gradually abandoned his farming, and gave his
whole time to weaving. At that time a family of four grown persons and
two children (who were set to spooling) could earn, with eight hours'
daily work, four pounds sterling in a week, and often more if trade was
good and work pressed. It happened often enough that a single weaver
earned two pounds a week at his loom. By degrees the class of farming
weavers wholly disappeared, and was merged in the newly