A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
A great 
saving was 
effected by 
ne 
or carding 
and 
cerebbling 
350 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
weavers in Gloucestershire in 1840; preparing the wool 
involved seven distinct processes, and double the number 
were necessary in order to render the cloth, as taken from the 
loom, fit for the market, Mr Miles gives a brief statement of 
the saving made by the introduction of machinery in each of 
the more important processes. So far as the preparation of 
the wool was concerned, the carding machinery patented by 
Lewis Paul in 1748 and introduced by him at Northampton. 
Leominster and Wigan®, appears to have come into general 
use before the close of the century, and though it displaced 
about 75 per cent. of the labour employed®, and some rioting 
occurred, we hear of wonderfully little disturbance in con- 
nection with its introduction. In 1793 Arthur Young, 
writing of Leeds, describes how he “viewed with great 
pleasure the machines for unclotting and puffing out wool, 1f 
I may use the expression, also for spinning and various other 
operationst.” Similarly we hear that in the West Riding, 
people in general approved of machinery for the preparatory 
processes, and when wool was given them to weave, took it 
to the “slubbing engine to be scribbled, carded and slubbed®.” 
Mr Howlett, writing from Dunmow in 1790, in enumerating 
various recent inventions, mentions mills «for grinding the 
wool preparatory to carding, by means of this the master 
1 The regularly apprenticed Yorkshire clothier had opportunities of becoming 
practically acquainted with all these processes. Joseph Coope of Pudsey near 
Leeds gave an interesting account of his training to the Committee on the State 
of the Woollen Manufacture in 1806. He had been taught when he was eight 
years old (1783) to spin with a wheel in his parents’ house, and subsequently, when 
jennies were introduced, to card and slub the wool in preparation for the jennies. 
He was bound apprentice for seven years when he was thirteen. “The first 
year,” he says, “1 was chiefly put to the loom, in the second year under the care 
of my master and a servant man, when I was not at the loom I was still employed 
in slubbing and carding. The second year I was put to the jenny, and towards 
the latter end of the second year, and during the third, I alternately spun my own 
web, and then wove it at the same time, a servant man was working and helped 
me in the same way.” In the fourth year “it was nearly the same only I was 
getting more proficient in it. The fifth and sixth years, or the two last years 
rather, my master considered me as competent to do what we commonly call 
a man’s day work.” Reports, 1806, mm. 647, printed pag. 31. 
3 Bischoff, 1. 313. Kay had invented a power machine for carding cotton 
before 1779. Rees, op. cit. 8.v. Cotton. 
8 Reports, 1840, xx1v. 390. 4 Annals of Agriculture, xxvu. 310. 
s Reports, Misc. 1806, ms. p. 992, printed pag. 400; also Mr Ellis’ evidence, 
Ib. 64.