854 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
flying shuttle; but we have incidental notices of jennies In 
various parts of the country. In 1791 spinning-jennies were 
in use at Barnstaple and Ottery S. Mary; they had caused 
some uneasiness among the spinners, but had had no sensible 
effect on the trade’. At Kendal there was machine spinning 
at the same date; at first it seemed to hurt the hand 
spinning, but the complaints on this head did not continue® 
The true character of the competition was becoming apparent 
however; for it was observed, at Pucklechurch, that the 
machines were ousting the inferior spinners, and that there 
was a demand for finer threads, so that the spinners, who 
were paid by the pound, were obliged to do more work for 
the same money®. In Cornwall, in 17954, the competition of 
jennies was clearly felt; and in other cases, the improved 
rates for weaving rendered the women and children inde- 
pendent, and unwilling to “rival a woollen jenny.” There 
were riots at Bury in Suffolk in 1816° which seem to have 
been partly directed against these implements, and this 
probably means that they were of comparatively recent intro- 
duction in the Eastern Counties at that date®. 
In the last decade of the eighteenth century we have a 
competition between two methods of spinning—Dby the wheel, 
wd spine and by the domestic machines known as jennies. The 
ning with . . 
the whee jennies would have ousted the wheels under any circumstances 
seased tobe sooner or later, but there were other causes at work which 
tive, accelerated the change. Chief among these was the scarcity 
of wool, with a consequent diminution of employment and 
such low rates of pay that hand spinning ceased to be a 
remunerative occupation. The change became the subject of 
not part of a domestic weaver's equipment, but a machine which competed with 
wage-earning workmen. See below, p. 662. 
L Annals of Agriculture, Xv. 494. 2 Ib. 497. 8 Jb. 585. 
4 “The earnings by spinning have for the last year been much curtailed, 
owing to the woolstaplers using spinning engines near their place of residence, in 
preference to sending their wool into the country to be spun by hand.” Annals 
of Agriculture, Xxv1. 19. § Annual Register, 1816, p. 70. 
6 T. writing in 1779 notices that distaff spinning was still maintained in 
Norfolk. Letters on the Utility and Policy of employing Machines, p. 14. It is 
said that spinning—presumably with a wheel—was introduced by an Ttalian— 
Anthony Bonvis—about 1505, and that the making of Devonshire kerseys began 
about the same time (C. Owen, Danger of the Church and Kingdom from Foreigners, 
48). The wheel had come into general use in England, but had not apparently 
penetrated into the area where the textile arts had been longest established. On 
the modes of spinning in different localities in 1596, 8. P. D. El. Ad. xxx. 71. 
A.D. 1776 
—1850.