Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/326

306 shuttle was followed by the spinning jenny, which worked several spindles at once. This innovation threw many out of work and was stoutly opposed by the uneducated workers, unable to look ahead. But no opposition can stay new inventions.

A new spinning machine, worked by water-power, was attacked by the old hand-workers, and the first water-mill in England was burned to the ground. But such things must be, and before long the water-wheel was an accepted thing and cotton workers were collected together in a factory on the banks of some little stream, the home industry slowly languished, and the old spinning-wheel became a thing of the past. These labour-saving inventions created an increasing demand for cotton goods, as the following figures distinctly indicate. In 1775 the importation of cotton into England was over four million pounds; ten years later it was over eleven millions, and in 1789 it had risen to over thirty-two millions, while as yet the American importation had hardly begun.

The carriage of these ever-increasing goods by means of rumbling wagons and pack-horses stumbling along the rotten and lonely roads was already totally inadequate, when the idea of