The woollen manufacture—Divisions of employment—Early history—Prohibitory laws—The Jacquard loom—Middle-age legislation—Sumptuary laws—The silk manufacture—Ribbon-weaving—The linen manufacture—Cloth-printing—Bleaching.

Those who have not taken the trouble to witness, or to inquire into, the processes by which they are surrounded with the conveniences and comforts of civilized life, can have no idea of the vast variety of ways in which invention is at work to lessen the cost of production. The people of India, who spin their cotton wholly by hand, and weave their cloth in a rude loom, would doubtless be astonished when they first saw the effects of machinery, in the calico which is returned to their own shores, made from the material brought from their own shores, cheaper than they themselves could make it. But their indolent habits would not permit them to inquire how machinery produced this wonder. There are many amongst us who only know that the wool grows upon the sheep's back, and that it is converted into a coat by labour and machinery. They do not estimate the prodigious power of thought—the patient labour—the unceasing watchfulness—the frequent disappointment—the uncertain profit—which many have had to encounter in bringing this machinery to perfection, and in organizing the modes of its working, in connection with labour. Further, their knowledge of history may have been confined to learning by rote the dates when kings began to reign, with the names of the battles they fought or the rebels they executed. Of the progress of commerce and the arts they may have been taught little. The records of wool constitute a real part of the history of England; and form, in our opinion, a subject of far more permanent importance than the scandalous annals of the wives of Henry VIII., or the mistresses of Charles II.

Let us first take a broad view of the more prominent facts that belong to our woollen manufacture; and then proceed to notice those of other textile fabrics.

The reader will remember that when the fur-traders refused to advance to John Tanner a supply of blankets for his winter consumption, he applied himself to make garments out of moose-skins. The skin was ready manufactured to his hands when he had killed and stripped the moose; but still the blanket brought from England across the Atlantic was to him a cheaper and a better article of clothing than the moose-skin which he had at hand; and he felt it a privation when the trader refused it to him upon the accustomed credit. It never occurred to him to think of manufacturing a blanket; although he was in some respects a manufacturer. He was a manufacturer of sugar, amongst the various trades which he followed. He used to travel about the country till he had found a grove of maple-trees; and here he would sit down for a month or two till he had extracted sugar from the maples. Why did he not attempt to make blankets? He had not that Accumulated Knowledge, and he did not work with that Division of Labour, which are essential to the manufacture of blankets—both of which principles are carried to their highest perfection when capital enables the manufacture of woollen cloth, or any other article, to be carried forward upon a large scale.

We will endeavour to trace what accumulations of skill, and what divisions of employment, were necessary to enable Tanner to clothe himself with a piece of woollen cloth. We shall not stop to inquire whether the skill has produced the division of employment, or the division of employment has produced the skill. It is sufficient for us to show, that the two principles are in joint operation, unitedly carrying forward the business of production in the most profitable manner. It is enough for us to know, that where there is no skill there is no division of employment, and where there is no division of employment there is no skill. Skill and division of employment are inseparably wedded. If they could be separated, they would in their separation cease to work profitably. They are kept together by the constant energy of capital, devising the most profitable direction for labour.

Before a blanket can be made, we must have the material for making a blanket. Tanner had not the material, because he was not a cultivator. Before wool can be grown there must be, as we have shown, appropriation of land. When this appropriation takes place, the owner of the land either cultivates it himself, which is the earliest stage in the division of agricultural employment,—or he obtains a portion of the produce in the shape of corn or cattle, or in a money payment. Hence a tenantry. But the tenant, to manufacture wool at the greatest advantage, must possess capital, and carry forward the principle of the division of employment by hiring labourers. We use the word manufacture of wool advisedly; for all farming processes are manufacturing processes, and invariably reduce themselves to change of form, as all commercial processes reduce themselves to change of place. If the capital of the farmer is sufficient to enable him to farm upon a large scale, he divides his labourers; and one becomes a shepherd, one a ploughman,—one sows the ground, and one washes and shears the sheep, more skilfully than another. If he has a considerable farm, he divides his land, also, upon the same principle, and has pasture, and arable, and rotation of crops. By these divisions he is enabled to manufacture wool cheaper than the farmer upon a small scale, who employs one man to do everything, and has not a proper proportion of pasture and arable, or a due rotation of crops. At every division of employment skill must be called forth in a higher perfection than when two or more employments were joined together; and the chief director of the skill, the capitalist himself, or farmer, must require more skill to make all the parts which compose his manufactury work together harmoniously.

But we have new divisions of employment to trace before the wool can be got to the manufacturer. These employments are created by what may be called the local division of labour. It is convenient to rear the sheep upon the mountains of Wales, because there the short and thymy pastures are fitted for the growth of wool. It is convenient to manufacture the wool into cloth at Leeds, because coals are there at hand to give power to the steam-engines, with which the manufacture is carried on. The farmer in Wales, and the manufacturer of cloth at Leeds, must be brought into connection. In the infancy of commerce one or both of them would make a journey to establish this connection; but the cost of that journey would add to the cost of the wool, and therefore lessen the consumption of woollen cloth. The division of employment goes on to the creation of a wool-factor, or dealer in wool, who either purchases directly from the grower, or sells to the manufacturer for a commission from the grower. The grower, therefore, sends the wool direct to the factor, whose business it is to find out what manufacturer is in want of wool. If the factor did not exist, the manufacturer would have to find out, by a great deal of personal exertion, what farmer had wool to sell; or the farmer would have to find out, with the same exertion, what manufacturer wanted to buy wool. The factor receives a commission, which the seller and buyer ultimately unite in paying. They co-operate to establish a wool-factor, just as we all co-operate to establish a postman; and just as the postman, who delivers a number of letters to a great many individuals, does that service at little more cost to all, than each individual would pay for the delivery of a single letter, so does the wool-factor exchange the wool between the grower and the manufacturer, at little more cost to a large number of the growers who employ him, than each would be obliged to pay in expenses and loss of time to travel from Wales to Leeds to sell his wool.

We have, however, a great many more divisions of employment to follow out before the wool is conveyed from Wales to Leeds or Bradford. If the packs are taken on shipboard, and carried down the Mersey to Liverpool, we have all the variety of occupations, involving different degrees of skill, which make up the life of a mariner; if they go forward upon the railroad to Manchester, we have all the higher degrees of skill involved in their transport which belong to the business of an engineer; or if they finally reach their destination by canal, we have another division of labour that adjusts itself to the management of boats in canals. But the ship, the railroad, the canal, which are created by the necessity of transporting commodities from place to place, have been formed after the most laborious exercise of the highest science, working with the greatest mechanical skill; and they exist only through the energy of prodigious accumulations of capital, the growth of centuries of patient and painful labour and economy.

We have at length the wool in a manufactury at Leeds or Bradford. The first class of persons who prepare the wool, are the sorters and pickers. It is their business to separate the fine from the coarse locks, so that each may be suited to different fabrics. There is judgment required, which could not exist without division of labour; and the business, too, must be done rapidly, or the cost of sorting and picking would outweigh the advantage. The second principal operation is scouring. Here the men are constantly employed in washing the wool, to free it from all impurities. It is evident that the same man could not profitably pass from the business of sorting to that of scouring, and back again,—from dry work to wet, and from wet to dry. When the wool is out of the hands of the scourers it comes into those of the dyers, who colour it with the various chemical agents applied to the manufacture. The carders next receive it, who tear it with machines till it attains the requisite fineness. From the carders it passes to the slubbers, who form it into tough loose threads; and thence to spinners, who make the threads finer and stronger. There are subdivisions of employment which are not essential for us to notice, to give an idea of the great division of employment, and the consequent accumulation of peculiar skill, required to prepare wool to be made into yarn, to be made into woollen cloth.

The next stages in the manufacture are the spinning, the warping, the sizing, and the weaving. These are all distinct operations, and are all carried forward with the most elaborate machinery, adapted to the division of labour which it enforces, and by which it is enforced.

But there is a great deal still to be done before the cloth is fit to be worn. The cloth, now woven, has to be scoured as the wool was. There is a subsequent process called burling, at which females are constantly employed. The boiling and milling come next, in which the cloth is again exposed to the action of water, and beaten so as to give it toughness and consistency. Dressers, called giggers, next take it in hand, who also work with machinery upon the wet cloth. It has then to be dried in houses where the temperature is sometimes as high as 130 degrees, and where the men work almost naked. It is evident that the boilers and dressers could not profitably work in the dry-houses: and that there must be division of employment to prevent those sudden transitions which would destroy the human frame much more quickly than a regular exposure to cold or heat, to damp or dryness. The cloth must be next cropped or cut upon the face, to remove the shreds of wool which deform the surface in every direction. When cut, it has to be brushed dry by machinery, to get out the croppings which remain in its texture. This done, it is dyed in the shape of cloth, as it was formerly dyed in the shape of wool. Then come a variety of processes, to increase the delicacy of the fabric:—singeing, by passing the cloth within a burning distance of red-hot cylinders; frizing, to raise a nap upon the cloth; glossing, by carrying over it heavy heated plates of iron; pressing, in which operation of the press red-hot plates are also employed; and drawing, in which men, with fine needles, draw up minute holes in the cloth when it has passed through the last operation. Then comes the packing; and after all these processes it must be bought by a wholesale dealer, and again by a retailer, before it reaches the consumer. Between the growth of the fleece of wool, and the completion of a coat by a skilful tailor,—who, it is affirmed, puts five-and-twenty thousand stitches into it,—what an infinite division of employments! what inventions of science! what exercises of ingenuity! what unwearied application! what painful, and too often unhealthy labour! And yet if men are to be clothed well and cheaply, all these manifold processes are not in vain; and the individual injury in some branches of the employ is not to be compared to the suffering that would ensue if cloth were not made at all, or if it were made at such a cost that the most wealthy only could afford to wear it. But for the accumulation of knowledge, and the division of employments, engaged in the manufacture of cloth, and set in operation by large capital, we should each be obliged to be contented with a blanket such as John Tanner desired, and very few indeed would even obtain that blanket: for if skill and division of labour were, not to go on in one branch, they would not go on in another, and then we should have nothing to give in exchange for the blanket. The individual injury to health, also, produced by the division of labour, is not so great, upon the average, as if there were no division. All the returns of human life in this country show an extremely little difference in the effect upon life, even of what we consider the most unhealthy trades; and this proceeds from that extraordinary power of the human body to adapt itself to a habit, however apparently injurious, which is one of the most beautiful evidences of the compensating principle which prevails throughout the moral world.

The wool manufacture of Great Britain employs very nearly three hundred thousand persons; in the various processes connected with the production of cloth, worsted, flannel, blankets, and carpets. What a contrast to all this variety of labour is the history of the earlier stages of the manufacture of woollen cloth. It is unnecessary to go back to the time of Henry III., when the production of wool was in such an imperfect state through flocks of sheep being scattered over immense tracts of waste land, that a manor in Surrey was held under the crown by the tenure of gathering wool for the Queen. According to the record, Peter de Baldewyn was to gather the wool from the thorns that had torn it from the sheep's back; and if he did not choose to gather it he was to forfeit twenty shillings.[23] In the time of Edward III., according to Fuller, in his 'Church History,' the English clothiers were wholly unskilful; "knowing no more what to do with their wool than the sheep which wear it, as to any artificial and curious drapery, their best cloth being no better than frieze, such their coarseness for want of skill in the making." When the Flemish clothiers came into England, the manufacture improved; in spite of the regulating power of the state, which was perpetually interfering with material, quality, and wages. In time wool became the chief commodity of England. The woolsack of the House of Lords was typical of this staple industry; and of the mode also in which the majesty of legislation sat heavy upon the produce. To encourage the manufacture nothing was to be woven but wool. From the cradle to the grave all were to be wrapt in wool. The genius of prohibition prevented the exchange of wool with other manufactured commodities; and, therefore, to keep up rents, Narcissa was "odious in woollen," and a Holland shirt—for British linen did not exist—was a rare commodity, cheap at "eight shillings an ell," as in the days of Dame Quickly.

This was the state of things at the end of the 17th century, and somewhat later. The manufacturers clamoured against the exportation of wool; and the agriculturists at the same time resisted the importation of Irish and Scotch cattle. The parliament listened to both sets of clamourers. It said to the people:—You of trade shall not be ruined by the land selling wool to foreigners—there shall be no competition; you shall buy the wool at the lowest price. And then parliament turned round to the complaining grazier, and said,—the cloth-maker and his men shall not ruin you by buying meat cheap—no Irish cattle or Scotch sheep shall come here to lower your prices. From 1664 to 1824 the exportation of wool was strictly prohibited. The importation was sometimes prevented by high duties—sometimes encouraged by low. The manufacture was constantly struggling with these attempts of the state to hold a balance between what were so universally considered as conflicting interests. In 1844 the whole system was abandoned. In 1853, we imported one hundred and seventeen million lbs. of sheep and lamb's wool—of which three-fifths came from Australia—and two million of alpaca and llama wool. The wool-growers at home still found a ready market; the great body of the population had good coats and flannels and blankets; and, in addition, we exported ten million pounds sterling of woollen manufactures.

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The employment of wool in the manufacture of broadcloth and flannel was, a few years ago, almost the entire business of the woollen factories. The novel uses to which wool is now applied, and the almost innumerable varieties of articles of clothing which are produced from long wool and short wool—from combinations of alpaca wool and coarse wool, of wool with cotton, of wool with silk—together with the introduction of brilliant dyes and tasteful designs, formerly unknown—have established vast seats of manufacture which are almost peculiar to our country, and have converted, in a few years, humble villages into great cities. The finest Paisley shawls rival the elaborate handicraft of Hindustan; and, what is of more importance, the humblest female may purchase a tasteful article of dress at a price which a few years ago would have been thought fabulous. The wonderful variety of patterns which we see in these and other productions of modern skill are effected by the Jacquard apparatus, in which the pattern depends upon the disposition of holes pierced in separate bits of pasteboard. In common weaving, the weft threads pass alternately under and over the entire warp threads, which are lifted up to allow the weft in the shuttle to traverse from one side to the other. The Jacquard apparatus determines, by the number and arrangement of the holes in the cards, which of the separate warp threads shall be so lifted; for at every throw of the shuttle the blank part of each card moves a series of levers which raise certain warp threads; while other levers, passing into the holes in the card, do not affect the other warp threads. In this way, patterns of the greatest complexity are woven in cotton, and worsted, and silk; so that even a minute work of art, such as a portrait or a landscape, may be produced from the loom. Every pattern requires a separate set of cards. We do not expect this brief notice to be readily understood. Those who would comprehend the extent of ingenuity involved in the principle of this invention, and the beautiful results of which it is capable, should witness its operation in a Halifax power-loom. In a bobbin-net machine the cards are connected with a revolving pentagonal bar, each side of which is pierced with holes, corresponding with the pins or levers above. When a card comes over the topmost side of the pentagon the levers drop; but those pins only which enter through the holes in the card affect the pattern which is being worked. Any one who views this complicated arrangement in a Nottingham lace-machine, requires no small amount of attention to comprehend its mysterious movements; and when the connection is perceived between that chain of dropping cards, and the flower that is being worked in the lace, a vague sense of the manifold power of invention comes over the mind—we had almost said an awful sense.

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If there be one thing more remarkable than another in the visible condition of the people of Great Britain, it is the universality of useful, elegant, and cheap clothing. There is very small distinction in the ordinary coat and trowsers of the peer and the best dress of the artisan; and not a great deal more in the gown and shawl of the high-born lady and those of the handmaid of her toilet. Perhaps the absence of mere finery, and the taste which is an accompaniment of superior education, constitute the chief difference in the dress of various ranks. This feature of the present times is a part of our social history.

For several centuries the domestic trade of the country was hemmed round and fettered by laws against extravagance in dress, which had always been a favourite subject for the experimentalizing of barbarous legislation. An act of 1463, recites that the Commons pray their lord the king to remember that in the times of his noble progenitors, ordinances and statutes were made for the apparel and array of the commons, as well of men as of women, so that none of them should use or wear any inordinate or excessive apparel, but only according to their degrees. However, we find that all these ordinances had been utterly fruitless. The parliament makes new ordinances. The nobles, according to these, may wear whatever they please; knights and their wives were to wear no cloth of gold, or fur of sables; no person under the state of a lord to wear any purple silk; no esquires or gentlemen and their wives any silk at all; no persons not having possessions of the yearly value of forty pounds, any fur; and, what is cruel indeed, no widow but such as hath possessions of the value of forty pounds, shall wear any fur, any gold or silver girdle, or any kerchief that had cost more than three shillings and four-pence; persons not having forty shillings a-year were denied the enjoyment of fustian and scarlet cloth; the yeoman was to have no stuffing in his doublet; nor servants in husbandry, broadcloth of a higher price than two shillings a yard. The length of gowns, jackets, and cloaks, was prescribed by the same statute; and the unhappy tailor who exceeded the length by the breadth of his nail, was to be mulcted in the same penalties as those who flaunted in skirts of more than needful longitude. The men and women of the mystery and workmanship of silk prefer their piteous complaint to parliament, that silk-work ready wrought is brought into the realm. If it had occurred to them to petition that the gentlemen and their wives might be permitted to wear satin, as well as the lords, their piteous complaint of want of occupation might have been more easily redressed than by foreign prohibition. Sumptuary laws have long been abolished; but to them succeeded the laws of custom, which prescribed one sort of dress to one condition of people, and another to another. We cannot doubt which state gives most employment to manufacturers, the law of exclusiveness or the law of universality. If the labourer and artificer were still restricted, by enactment or by custom, to the wearing of cloth of a certain price per yard, we may be quite sure that the manufacture of the finer cloths would be in no flourishing condition; and if the servant-maid could not put on her Sunday gown of silk, we may be equally clear that the silk-trade would continue to be the small thing that it was half a century ago, when it had the full benefit of restriction, instead of being, as it is now, one of the great staple trades of the country.

When the frame-work knitters of silk stockings petitioned Oliver Cromwell for a charter, they said, "the Englishman buys silk of the stranger for twenty marks, and sells him the same again for one hundred pounds." The higher pride of the present day is that we buy seven million pounds of raw silk from the stranger, employ a hundred and fourteen thousand of our own people in the manufacture of it by the aid of machinery, and sell it to the stranger, and our own people, at a price as low as that of the calico of half a century ago. In 1853 the exports of silk manufactures, including those of silk mixed with other materials, silk-yarn and silk-twist, amounted to the enormous sum of two millions sterling, having doubled since 1849. In 1826, when the ruin of our silk-trade was boldly prophesied as the sure result of the reduction of the prohibitive duties on foreign silk, the exports of our silk manufactures did not reach two hundred thousand pounds. William Huskisson, the great statesman who produced this mighty change, was then denounced in parliament as "an insensible and hard-hearted metaphysician."

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When a boy who keeps silk-worms upon mulberry leaves, puts a spinning-worm into a little paper bag, and finally obtains an oval ball of silk,—he does, upon a small scale, what is done in the silk-growing countries upon a large scale. When he winds off his cocoon of silk upon a little reel, he is engaged in the first process of silk making. There must be myriads of silk-worms reared to produce the seven million pounds of raw silk that Great Britain manufactures. The school-boy, from three or four silk-worms, can obtain a little skein of silk, which he carefully puts between the leaves of a book, and looks at it again and again, in delight at its glossy beauty. Perhaps he does not take the trouble to think how many such skeins would be required to produce a pair of silk stockings. As the school-boy puts his skein into a book, so the silk-producers of India, Italy, Persia, and Turkey, send us their hanks of silk, which we call by various names, made up as shown in the opposite page. In Egypt, a silk-producing country, a woman has a simple machine for preparing the hanks of silk for the purposes of[Pg 247]
[Pg 248]commerce. She winds the silk upon a reel. She has no moving power but that of her hand and arm. In England a woman also attends to a winding-machine, by which the silk is transferred to bobbins, for the purpose of being spun to various degrees of fineness. She has no labour to perform, beyond providing a supply of material to be wound, removing a bobbin when it is filled, placing an empty one in its place, and occasionally piecing a broken thread. She is doing what the machine cannot do—adjusting her operations to many varying circumstances. The machine is moved by the steam-engine; but the steam-engine, the reels, and the bobbins would work unavailingly, without the guidance of the mind that waits upon and watches them.

The peculiarity in the manufacture of silk-twist, or thread, as distinguished from that of cotton, or flax, or wool, is that it is produced naturally in one uninterrupted length. The object of the machinery of a silk-mill is, not to combine short fibres in a continuous thread by spinning, but to wind and twist, so as to unite many slight threads already formed into one thread of sufficient strength for the purpose of weaving, or of sewing. The subsequent processes are the same as with the fibrous substances. The machinery by which these processes are carried on has been improved, by successive degrees, since Thomas Lombe erected the first silk-mill at Derby, in the beginning of the 18th century. He obtained a patent which expired in 1732; and parliament, refusing to renew his patent, granted him a compensation, upon the condition that he should deposit an exact model of his machinery in the Tower of London. That model was shown to the visitors of the Tower in the present century; and, by comparison with the vast array of spindles in a modern silk-mill, would seem as inefficient as the flail compared with the thrashing-machine.

Ribbon-weaving is a branch of the silk manufacture, in which our country is rapidly attaining an excellence as regards beauty of design, which may fairly compete with the best productions of the French looms.

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Thomas Firmin, a philanthropic writer, who published 'Proposals for the Employment of the Poor,' in 1681, says, "It is a thing greatly to be wished that we could make linen cloth here as cheap as they send it us from abroad." He thought the poor might then be employed; but he despairingly adds, "if that cannot be done, nor any other way found out to employ our poor people, we had much better lose something by the labour of our poor, than lose all their labour;" and so he proposes to give those who were idle flax and hemp to spin in spacious workhouses. The notion was a benevolent one; and it was the favourite scheme, for half a century, to destroy idleness and beggary in England, by setting up manufactories at the public cost. Defoe saw the fallacy of the principle, and resisted it with his strong common sense: "Suppose now a workhouse for the employment of poor children sets them to spinning of worsted. For every skein of worsted these poor children spin, there must be a skein the less spun by some poor person or family that spun it before." Defoe saw that there could be no profitable increase of labour without increase of consumption; and he argues that if the Czar of Muscovy would order his people to wear stockings, and we could supply them, the poor might then be set to work. The increase of consumption, all over the world, is produced by the inventions which diminish the cost of production. We now make linen cloth here cheaper than it is sent to us from abroad; and the result is that in 1853 we exported our linen manufactures to the extent of six million pounds sterling; and employed a hundred thousand persons in the manufacture. In the flax-mill of Messrs. Marshall, at Leeds, where all the operations of spinning are carried on in one enormous room, five times as large as Westminster-hall, seventy thousand lbs. of flax are worked up weekly into yarn. The question of flax-cultivation in these kingdoms has been agitated of late years; and the course of political events has rendered the consideration of an increased home supply, a matter of pressing importance. It is not an easy matter to provide for the demand. The great flax-mill at Leeds would require the flax-cultivation of six thousand acres, to keep its spindles at work for one year.

Having thus noticed the leading processes of the manufacture of cotton, of wool, of silk, of linen, we may conclude this chapter with a brief mention of the art that gives to many of the fabrics produced their chief beauty—the art of printing cloth in colours. This art applies to the finest as well as the commonest productions of the loom; and the science of the British dyer, the beauty of his patterns, and the perfection of his machinery, have now given us an eminence in this department of industry which can only be preserved by constant efforts towards perfection of design and durable brilliancy of colour.

There is a striking, although natural parallel, between printing a piece of cloth and printing a sheet of a book, or a newspaper. Block-printing is the impress of the pattern by hand; as block-books were made four centuries ago. We have no block-books now; for machinery has banished that tedious process. But block-printing is used for costly shawls and velvets, which require to have many colours produced by repeated impress from a large number of blocks, each carrying a different colour. Except for expensive fabrics, this mode is superseded by block-printing with a sort of press, in which several blocks are set in a frame. Here again is somewhat of a similarity to the operation of the book-press. Lastly, we have cylinder-printing, resembling the rapid working of the book-printing machine, each producing the same cheapness. As the pattern has to be obtained from several cylinders, each having its own colour, there is great nicety in the operation; and the most beautiful mechanism is necessary for feeding the cylinder with colour; moving the cloth to meet the revolving cylinder; and giving to the cylinder its power of impression. But those who witness the operation see little of the ultimate effect to be obtained in the subsequent processes of dyeing. Fast colours are produced by the use in the pattern of substances called mordants; which may be colourless themselves but receive the colour of the dye-bath, which colour is only fixed in the parts touched by the mordant, and is washed out from the parts not touched. When what is called a substantive colour is at once impressed upon the white cloth, much of the beauty is also derived from subsequent processes. The chemist, the machinist, the designer, and the engraver—science and art—set the calico-printing works in activity; and the carrying on these complicated processes can only be profitably done upon a large scale. In the earlier days of our cotton manufacture there were small print-works in the neighbourhood of London, where the imperfect machinery was turned by water-power. The steam-engine of one Lancashire factory now produces more printed cottons and muslins than all the rivers of southern England in the last century. The calico-printers now number about twenty-seven thousand persons. But no direct enumeration can be made of the employments that are required merely to produce the dyes with which the calico-printer works. The mineral and vegetable kingdoms, and even the animal kingdom, combine their natural productions in the colours of a lady's dress. The sulphur-miner of Sicily, the salt-worker of Cheshire, the hewer of wood in the Brazils, the Negro in the indigo plantations of the East and West Indies, the cultivator of madder in France, and the gatherer of the cochineal insect in Mexico, are all labourers for the print-works of England and Scotland. The discoveries of science, in combination with the experience of practice, has set all this industry in motion, and has given a value to innumerable productions of nature which would otherwise be useless and unemployed. But these demands of manufactures do more—they create modes of cultivation which are important sources of national prosperity. Jean Althen, a Persian of great family, bred up in every luxury, became a slave in Anatolia, when Kouli-Khan overthrew the Persian empire. For fourteen years he worked in the cotton and madder-fields. He then escaped to France, carrying with him some madder-seeds. Long did he labour in vain to attract the attention of the government of Louis XV. to his plans. At length, having spent all the fortune which he had acquired by marriage with a French heiress, he obtained the patronage of the Marquis de Caumont, in his attempts to introduce the cultivation of madder into the department of Vaucluse. His life was closing in comparative indigence when a new branch of industry was developed in his adopted country. The district in which he created a new industry has increased a hundred-fold in value. The debt of gratitude was paid by a tablet to his memory, erected sixty years after he was insensible to human rewards. We starve our benefactors when they are living; and satisfy our consciences by votive monuments. Althen's daughter died as poor as her father. The tablet was erected at Avignon when the family was extinct.

There is a process connected with the production of clothing which we must briefly refer to, as one of the signal examples of the axiom of our title—'Knowledge is Power.'

Let us suppose that chemistry had not discovered and organised the modes in which bleaching is performed; and that the thousands of millions of yards of calico and linen which we weave in this country had still to be bleached, as bleaching was accomplished in the last century. We knew nothing about the matter, and our linen was then sent over to Holland to go through this operation. The Dutch steeped the bundles of cloth in ley made by water poured upon wood ashes—then soaked them in buttermilk—and finally spread them upon the grass for several months. These were all natural agencies which discharged the colouring matter without any chemical science. It was at length found out that sulphuric acid would do the same work in one day which the buttermilk did in six weeks; but the sun and the air had still to be the chief bleaching powers. A French chemist then found out that a new gas, chlorine, would supersede the necessity for spreading out the linen for several months; and so the acres of bleaching ground which we were using in England and Scotland—for we had left off sending the brown and yellow cloth to Holland—were free for cultivation. But the chlorine was poisonous to the workmen, and imparted a filthy odour to the cloth. Chemistry again went to work, and finally obtained the chloride of lime, which is the universal bleaching powder of modern manufactures. What used to be the work of eight months is now accomplished in an hour or two; and so a bag of dingy raw cotton may be in New York on the first day of the month, and be converted into the whitest calico before the month is at an end.

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