CARDING AND WOOL-COMBING 651 
manufacturer has as much done for 13d. as used to be AD. 1776 
performed for 44d.'” The machinery for carding appears to aud thts 
have been quite acceptable in Yorkshire in 1806; and to had been 
have been ordinarily used by the domestic manufacturers®; re 
similar mechanism had been introduced into Gloucestershire 
some years earlier’. It is obvious, that as the trade could 
not expand to any considerable extent, the displacement of so 
much labour involved a loss of employment ; and the attempt 
to introduce machinery in the preparatory processes of the 
worsted manufacture gave rise to violent opposition. The 
worsted*, as distinguished from woollen, manufacture works up 
wools with long staple, the fibres of which are straightened 
out as in the linen or cotton manufacture; while the woollen but the in- 
manufacture, properly so called, is dependent on wools with rein of 
a short staple, the fibres of which have much tenacity, and for fhe are. 
which can thus be matted into a thick material like felt. rend 
Till the time of Edmund Cartwright, wool for the manufac- a 
ture of worsted had been combed by hand; but between the 
years 1790 and 1792 Cartwright perfected his second great 
invention. The estimate which he gave of the importance of 
his invention sounds like an exaggeration, but a brief ex- 
perience showed that there was no real over-statement; “a 
set of machinery consisting of three machines will require 
the attepdance of an overlooker and ten children, and will 
comb a pack, or 2401bs, in twelve hours. As neither fire 
nor oil is necessary for machine combing, the saving of those 
articles, even the fire alone, will, in general, pay the wages of 
the overlooker and children; so that the actual saving to the 
manufacturer is the whole of what the combing costs by the 
old imperfect ‘mode of hand combing. Machine combed 
wool is better, especially for machine spinning, by at least 
12 per cent., being all equally mixed, and the slivers uniform 
t Annals of Agriculture, Xv. p. 262. 
3 Reports, 1806, m, printed pagination 6, 32, 84. The scribbling machinery 
lisplaced about 750/y of the male labour employed in Gloncestershire in that 
process. Reports, 1840, xx1v. 390. 
8 About fifty years ago according to Mr Miles in 1840. 
+ Machine combing was introduced in 1794 at Tiverton, and did in one hour, 
with the employment of one overseer and eleven children, work that would 
have taken a good workman thirty hours: see Report in Commons Journals. 
1.1%. 399