In 1779 Samuel Crompton, another Lancashire inventor, produced an improved spinning machine called the spinning-mule. This invention combined the good qualities of the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves and the spinning-frame of Arkwright. Its chief point of excellence lay in the fineness of the threads which it spun; from this kind of thread could be made finer fabrics than were possible with the machines of Hargreaves and of Arkwright. Crompton was very poor. By day he worked at the loom or on the farm to earn bread for himself, his mother, and his two sisters, and at night he toiled away on his invention. No sooner had he perfected his machine than he was beset by persons seeking to rob him of its benefits. All kinds of devices were employed for learning the secret. Ladders were placed against his windows in order that unscrupulous spectators might get a view of the machine. He did not dare to leave the house, lest his secret be stolen from him. He had spent his last farthing upon the invention and had no funds for securing a patent. A manufacturer persuaded him to disclose to the trade the nature of his invention under promise of a liberal subscription; but Crompton received only a paltry sum amounting to less than $350. He finally saved up enough money to begin manufacturing on a small scale, but his rivals had already out-distanced him. He died in June, 1827, disspirited at the ill treatment he had received, but not until he had seen his invention a powerful agency in British cloth manufacturing. An interesting glimpse of the days when weaving was done by hand in England may be found in the first chapter of George Eliot's _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_. The hand-loom in weaving was superseded by the power-loom early in the nineteenth century. The loom was the invention of the Rev. Edmund Cartwright, an English clergyman, poet, and inventor. The date of the invention was 1785. Cartwright's first loom was very crude, but he subsequently improved it. The idea for the invention of his power-loom came to Cartwright after a visit to the spinning mills of Arkwright. He too was subjected to opposition from the weavers on account of his invention. At one time he was associated with Robert Fulton in his experiments in applying steam to navigation. CHAPTER XVII AERONAUTICS To fly in the air has been the dream of all peoples in all ages. "Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I fly away and be at rest!" sang the Psalmist. It would seem from the recent inventions in the science of aeronautics that this dream is to become in the near future a practical experience of our every-day lives.