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i apprenticeship; this gave a good ground in law® and custom 
"for taking up the matter at all. 
Before the 249. The great development of cotton spinning suggested 
power-loom - : ; v 
came into the possibility of constructing a machine for weaving; this 
oo was actually done by Dr Cartwright®; but he had not the 
business ability? of Arkwright, and the invention did not 
tome into general use, or greatly affect either the conditions 
of the trade, or the employment of weavers, during at any rate 
the first few years of the nineteenth century’. Yet owing to 
| In 1801 Mr Justice Grose sentenced a man named Jouvaux to twelve months 
hard labour for ill-treating his apprentices. Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit. 14. 
3 A previous experiment had been made by John Kay, but seems never to have 
peen taken up; Woodcroft, op. cit. 4. Edmund Cartwright, who was a Kentish 
slergyman, knew nothing about the textile trades and had never interested him- 
self in machine construction, until he invented the power-loom. While at 
Matlock, in 1784, he had had some conversation with spinners there, who were 
sontending that such a vast quantity of yarn was now spun that it would soon be 
impossible to get hands to weave it. His suggestion that a weaving machine 
should be invented was apparently treated with scorn; but as he believed that 
only three movements were required in the process, he set himself to construct 
a maehine with the help of a carpenter and smith. His machine was cumbrous in 
the extreme, and it required two strong men to keep it going even slowly, but he 
was proud of his invention and patented it. It then occurred to him to go and see 
a weaver at work ; with the result that he was able to improve on his first rough 
attempt and to produce a machine which was eventually a commercial success; 
Dr Cartwright's own attempts to make it remunerative proved a failure, and it 
was nof till 1801 that mills were started at Glasgow, where it was worked to 
advantage. (Baines, 231.) 
8 The mill which Cartwright erected at Doncaster was not a success, and 
@rimshaw’s mill fitted with power-looms at Manchester in 1790 did not give 
satisfactory results. Guest, op. cit. 46. 
4 Power weaving hardly became a practical snccess till after the invention of 
the dressing-frame. “In the year 1803, Mr Thomas Johnson, of Bradbury in 
Cheshire, invented the Dressing Frame. Before this invention the warp was 
iressed in the Loom in small portions, as it unrolled from the beam, the Loom 
easing to work during the operation. Mr Johnson’s machine dresses the whole 
warp at once; when dressed the warp is placed in the Loom which now works 
without intermission. A factory for Steam Looms was built in Manchester, in 
1806. Soon afterwards two others were erected at Stockport, and about 1809, 
a fourth was completed in Westhoughton. In these renewed attempts to weave 
by steam, considerable improvements were made in the structure of the Looms, in 
the mode of warping, and in preparing the weft for the shuttle. With these 
improvements, aided by others in the art of spinning, which enabled the Spinners 
to make yarn much superior to that made in 1790, and assisted by Johnson's 
machine, which is peculiarly adapted for the dressing of warps for Steam Looms, 
the experiment succeeded. Before the invention of the Dressing Frame, one 
Weaver was required to each steam Loom, at present a boy or girl, fourteen or 
fifteen years of age can manage two Steam Looms, and with their help can weave 
three and a half times as much cloth as the best hand Weaver.” Guest, op. cit. 46.