=245. The domestic system preparatory to the great revolution in manufactures in the eighteenth century.=—Not until the latter part of the eighteenth century were the times ripe for the great technical changes in manufacture, which the introduction of machinery implied. Then the advance came with the speed of revolution. In the lifetime of an ordinary man (1770-1840) the whole face of England changed; the great textile towns and the “black country” of the coal and iron industry grew up; canals and railroads cut through the agricultural districts to connect the industries with each other and with the outside world; a social and political revolution accompanied the economic. No attempt can here be made to describe the changes in detail, and the discussion of the factory system and other features of the present organization to which they gave rise can better be postponed. The following paragraphs will suggest the development in some of England’s chief export industries. =246. Progress of the cotton manufacture.=—The cotton manufacture was the first to show the possibilities of the application of machinery. Two main processes are to be distinguished in the manufacture of cotton, as in that of other textiles; first, the spinning of the yarn from the fiber, and second, the weaving of the yarn into cloth. The first great improvement was the invention by Kay in 1738 of the fly-shuttle, which saved the time and energy of the weaver and enabled him to double his output of cloth. Still, the industry was small and grew slowly. The amount of raw cotton imported from Turkey and the West Indies would seem now perfectly insignificant, and was exceeded by the amount of linen yarn imported from Ireland alone. The cotton manufacture was hampered especially by the slowness of cotton spinning (six spinners working with the old-fashioned wheel were needed to supply yarn to one weaver); and by the weakness of the yarn, which required linen to be used for the warp of cloth. Inventions which met these difficulties were the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, patented 1770, which enabled a spinner to make eight threads at once instead of one (later, twenty, thirty, even one hundred and twenty); and Arkwright’s roller spinning frame, patented 1769, which made cotton yarn strong enough for warp, by stretching the strand before it was twisted. Improvements followed in other processes (carding, printing, etc.); water-power was used more generally, and a mere beginning made with the application of steam. A Kentish clergyman, Cartwright, invented a power loom which greatly increased the possibilities of weaving but which did not become a practical success until the nineteenth century; long after 1800 the hand-loom weavers kept up a hopeless struggle in competition with it.