from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in
the year 1845, the power and number of the machines
and the number of the workers is greater by one-half
than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this
industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has
thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting
it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy,
lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in
eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool
and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants,
and their neighbouring towns, Bolton with 60,000,
Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston
with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge with 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