the same thing as to materialise the design in a practical form. The inventor himself had not the money to pay the necessary expenses. But in 1767, Roebuck, the head of the ironworks at Carron, entered into a partnership with him, and supplied the cash for his experiments. Still, however, he was defeated by the apparently insuperable difficulty of obtaining exact workmanship in metals sufficiently hard. Watt's practical success did not begin till Boulton of Birmingham took Roebuck's place as his partner. In 1766, Watt, Boulton, and Wilkinson between them constructed the first really successful steam-engine for Wilkinson's ironworks at Boxley. From that time the steam-engine progressed with enormous rapidity. By the middle of the eighties it was operating for pumping, for blast furnaces, and for driving mills; and incidentally it was making iron and steel the necessary materials for machinery. Mills of every kind began to be driven by steam. Watt's steam-engine was first supplied to a silk mill, and to a cotton mill in 1785, and was adopted in Manchester and Glasgow, great cotton centres, in the next seven years. Before the end of the century, steam was definitely established as the grand motive power.

Textiles.

The jenny, the mule, and the power-loom affected all the textile industries within no very long time after Arkwright's invention. But they were applied first to cotton, and it was not until the machinery was widely adopted in connection with woollens and worsted, that they put an end to spinning and weaving as prevalent domestic industries. They were not, indeed, adapted immediately with success either to linen or to wool. The attempts to spin flax by machinery proved generally failures until 1793; but from that time flax-spinning progressed steadily. It was in the case of cotton that very much the most startling advance was made. In 1775, the whole amount of cotton imported was considerably less than five million pounds; fourteen years later it was over thirty-two and a half millions, or about seven times as much as at the earlier date. It is of some interest to observe that at this time the import from North

America was virtually nil, owing perhaps to the rupture of trade relations consequent upon the severance of the United States from the British Empire. The figures, however, are sufficient to show how rapidly the cotton industry sprang up from a position of comparative insignificance to one of absolutely first-rate importance. The other fabrics progressed; it cannot be said that they were driven out by cotton goods; the practical effect was that in an immensely enlarged market for fabrics of various sorts, the great bulk of the extra manufacture was absorbed by cotton. Cotton, iron, and coal were the raw material of the great manufacturing expansion of the nineteenth century.

lead.

British industries multiplied and progressed while the industries of the rest of the world stood still. Whether the The English steam-engine and steam-driven machinery would have soon been taken up on the Continent had there been no French Revolution, is perhaps a matter of doubt. The English machinery was, in the first place, adapted to specially British manufactures. But apart from that, Great Britain had an enormous advantage over her continental neighbours in the abundance of the supplies available for her of the three kinds of raw material above referred to-coal, iron, and cotton. Coal and iron came out of her own soil, and her maritime ascendency practically made cotton a British product. No nation which could not compete with her in the production of coal and iron and cotton would, in any case, have had much chance of challenging the lead which she secured in manufacture, especially in view of the peculiar outburst of inventive and manufacturing energy. But whatever chance there might have been otherwise was destroyed by the war, which swept off the seas all commerce which was not British, and prevented the foreign nations from applying energy or capital to manufacture.

The development of iron and of steam-power of themselves necessitated the development of coal-mining. If the failure of charcoal destroyed an industry in Sussex, the coal-fields, even before Watt's steam-engine was perfected, were already

giving more than the equivalent amount of employment. Every advance in the iron business involved a corresponding increase of furnaces, and of the consumption

Coal-mines.

of coal in furnaces; and every fresh application of steam-power called for fresh supplies of fuel. Consequently coal-mining, like cotton manufacture, passed from the position of a minor industry to one of first-class importance.

It was natural also that other industries associated with the textile trades should progress by the application of improved methods. Thus the adoption of the Bleaching chemical process for bleaching made the opera- and Printing. tion one which took fewer days than it had previously required months, although the durability of the fabric was somewhat injuriously affected. Similarly, printing on calico practically placed a new class of goods in the market when Bell's cylinder printing-machine in 1783 took the place of the old blocks or stamps applied by hand. Printed calico became a cheap and popular article, whereas before it had been far too expensive for general adoption.

The great development of pottery lies in a different field, though it also illustrates the productive energy of the period. Derby, Worcester, and Chelsea china achieved, Pottery. after 1750, an unprecedented reputation. But

the greatest name connected with this development is that of Josiah Wedgewood, in whose works at Etruria, in Staffordshire, the highest perfection, both of design and of material, was attained. It is worth while to note that Wedgewood never cared to protect himself against rivals by patenting any of his methods, with a single exception. He relied on sheer superiority of workmanship, and left his neighbours at liberty to adopt his processes if they could. And there is no reason to suppose that he ever repented that attitude. His example, however, is not one which many manufacturers have ventured to follow. It requires both courage and capacity of a quite unusual kind for a man to create a market for his own wares which depends simply on the supreme skill applied to their production.

CHAPTER XIX

Road
and River.

TRAFFIC

PROGRESS in communication and in methods of carriage corresponded closely with the progress of manufacture. A great increase of production serves no very useful purpose unless the product can be brought to market, and the process of bringing English goods to market in large quantities was a difficult one; how difficult it is not very easy for us to imagine. As compared with other countries, she possessed for the development of internal trade one negative advantage of great importance; the State did not interpose artificial barriers by the imposition of internal duties. In England and in Scotland, and in Great Britain after the Union, trade was entirely free. But very little was done to facilitate communication. Goods had to be conveyed from one part of the country to another in waggons or on pack-horses; and in exceptional cases where rivers were navigable, or could be made navigable, they could be conveyed by water. But the state even of the great highways was extremely unsatisfactory; and that of all the other roads in the country was deplorable. The coach journey from London to Edinburgh took seven days or more. The epithets applied to the roads by Arthur Young on his peregrinations, are always superlatives of condemnation; main roads were so bad that carts and coaches constantly broke down upon them. The swiftest means of communication was by mounted messengers; and the mounted messenger was by no means secure against being relieved of any valuables with which he might have been entrusted, by gentlemen of the road.

But a development of the means of internal communication was a necessary condition of manufacturing development, and especially perhaps of that of the Neglect coal and iron industries. Practically haulage of Means. by horses was the only means of conveying heavy goods from one part of the country to another, and haulage by horses along the villainous roads was extravagantly costly. Holland and, to a considerable extent, France had gone far towards solving the problem for themselves by means of canal systems. In Holland, indeed, canal construction was not only made comparatively easy by the nature of the land; it was a sheer physical necessity. England, by reason of abundant water, was comparatively well adapted for canal development. Nevertheless, in the middle of the eighteenth century all that had been done for the development of water traffic was the improvement of a few river-beds such as the Mersey and the Aire.

Canals.

The beginning of canal enterprise was due to the Duke of Bridgewater, who was determined to convey the coal from his pits at Worsley to Manchester by some more progressive method than that of employing pack-horses, eight of which were required to carry a ton of coal. The Duke procured an Act of Parliament authorising the construction of a canal from Worsley to Manchester in 1759. The planning and construction thereof were entrusted to that remarkable genius, James Brindley. Brindley. Brindley was a singularly uneducated person, who, to the day of his death, was totally unable to spell or to express himself grammatically. But he was a born engineer, who went on his way designing what superior critics called castles in the air, and turning them into solid facts very much to the confusion of the said critics. The canal, which was opened in 1761, was seven miles long, and its most astonishing feature was the aqueduct by which it was carried at a height of some forty feet across the Irwell. The Duke's confidence in his illiterate engineer was more than justified. The difference in the cost of carriage between