th 40,000, and a whole list of
other manufacturing towns to spring up as if by a magic touch. The
history of South Lancashire contains some of the greatest marvels of
modern times, yet no one ever mentions them, and all these miracles are
the product of the cotton industry. Glasgow, too, the centre for the
cotton district of Scotland, for Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, has
increased in population from 30,000 to 300,000 since the introduction of
the industry. The hosiery manufacture of Nottingham and Derby also
received one fresh impulse from the lower price of yarn, and a second one
from an improvement of the stocking loom, by means of which two stockings
could be woven at once. The manufacture of lace, too, became an
important branch of industry after the invention of the lace machine in
1777; soon after that date Lindley invented the point-net machine, and in
1809 Heathcote invented the bobbin-net machine, in consequence of which
the production of lace was greatly simplified, and the demand increased
proportionately in consequence of the diminished cost, so that now, at
least 200,000 persons are supported by this industry. Its chief centres
are Nottingham, Leicester, and the West of England, Wiltshire,
Devonshire, etc. A corresponding extension has taken place in the
branches dependent upon the cotton industry, in dyeing, bleaching, and
printing. Bleaching by the application of chlorine in place of the
oxygen of the atmosphere; dyeing and printing by the rapid development of
chemistry, and printing by a series of most brilliant mechanical
inventions, a yet greater advance which, with the extension of these
branches caused by the growth of the cotton industry, raised them to a
previously unknown degree of prosperity.

The same activity manifested itself in the manufacture of wool. This had
hitherto been the leading department of English industry, but the
quantities formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which
is now manufactured. In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three
years lay unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie
if the newly invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun
it. The adaptation of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most
successfully accomplished. Then began the same sudden development in the
wool district, which we have already seen in the cotton districts. In
1738 there were 75,000 pieces of woollen cloth produced in th