Facts and traditions collected for a family record

COTTON MANUFACTURE. 135
spinner. A gentleman whom I thought likely to know whether Mr
Egglesome was a cotton-spinner or a machine-maker, said, on being
referred to, that he believed Mr Egglesome was both a machine-maker
and a cotton-spinner ; and thus the point must be left in doubt. My
father became soon, however, a machine-maker on his own account,
selling the machines to those who were going to work them. He had
thus made two mules for some person who had stopped payment before
the mules were delivered ; and they were therefore thrown on my father's
hands. He determined to work them on his own account ; and he thus
added the business of a cotton-spinner to that of a machine-maker.
It may be interesting, at this point in our sketch of my father's per-
sonal history, to take a rapid survey of the principal inventions, and
other circumstances, by which the cotton manufacture had become, not
merely of great interest in the districts in which it was carried on, but
even of national importance. The materials are taken from Baines'
" History of the Cotton Manufacture."
In 1738,' John Kay took out a patent for the use of the fly-shuttle in
weaving, which was not, however, applied to the weaving of cotton till
about 1760. In 1738, too, a patent in the name of Lewis Paul, a
foreigner, but with which John Whyatt was also connected, was taken
out for spinning by rollers ; and, in 17^8, the same Lewis Paul took
out a patent for carding. The time was not, kowevei*, yet come ; for
these two patents, though evincing extraordinary mechanical genius on
the part of the inventors, and though perhaps the most important im-
provements ever made in the cotton manufacture, became almost extinct,
owing to mismanagement, in 1760 or 176-1. A carding-engine, in-
vented by Paul in 1748, was, however, in 1760, introduced by a gentle-
man of the name of Morris into the neighbourhood of Wigan, Lanca-
shire, from the cotton-spinning establishments in Northampton, where
these patents had been worked, and formed, perhaps, the sole link of