From cottage to mill

Since the Middle Ages, making woollen cloth had been England´s main industry. Most of the work was done by country people in their own homes. Labourers´ wives would spin and weave when they had time to spare. Their husbands helped when there was no work for them on the farm.

Rich clothiers bought the raw wool, employed the spinners and weavers, and sold the finished cloth. Most of the time, they could sell all the cloth that was made. So they were glad when inventors came up with machines that could spin and weave more quickly.

From the mid-eighteenth century, inventors brought about a massive change. John Kay´s "flying shuttle" made weaving much faster. Then James Hargreaves, with his "spinning jenny", gave the spinner the power to work sixteen spindles at once. By and large, though, spinners and weavers still worked in their own homes, making woollen cloth.

Weavers in England had made cloth that was part-cotton and part linen for some time. (The yarn was not strong enough for pure cotton cloth.) But Richard Arkwright´s "water frame" spun strong cotton yarn. And the "water frame" was driven by a water-wheel, not by hand or foot. Arkwright and a partner started a water-driven cotton-mill near Derby in 1771.

Samuel Crompton´s "mule" spun fine, smooth cotton yarn. Before long, British cotton cloth was the best in the world. It was also the cheapest, because the spinning was done on machines, in mills. The power in the mills at first was water. In the 1790s, though, came the first cotton-mills with machines that were worked by steam.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 - 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993, page 19