In a country like ours, where men have learned to think, and where ingenuity therefore is at work, a deficiency in material or in labour to meet the demand of a market is sure to call forth invention. It is a century ago since it was perceived that spinning by machinery might give the supply which human labour was inadequate to produce, because, doubtless, the remuneration for that labour was very small. The work of the distaff, as it was carried on at that period, in districts partly agricultural and partly commercial, was, generally, an employment for the spare hours of the young women, and the easy industry of the old. It was a labour that was to assist in maintaining the family,--not a complete means for their maintenance. The supply of yarn was therefore insufficient, and ingenious men applied themselves to remedy that insufficiency. Spinning-mills were built at Northampton in 1733, in which, it is said, although we have no precise account of it, that an apparatus for spinning was erected. A Mr. Lawrence Earnshaw, of Mottram, in Cheshire, is recorded to have invented a machine, in 1753, to spin and reel cotton at one operation; which he showed to his neighbours and then destroyed it, through the generous apprehension that he might deprive the poor of bread. We must admire the motive of this good man, although we are now enabled to show that his judgment was mistaken. Richard Arkwright, a barber of Preston, invented, in 1769, the principal part of the machinery for spinning cotton, and by so doing he gave bread to about two millions of people instead of fifty thousand; and, assisted by subsequent inventions, raised the importation of cotton-wool from less than two million pounds per annum to a thousand million pounds; has enabled us to supply other nations with cotton manufactures to the enormous amount of thirty-three million pounds sterling, in one year, 1853; has raised the annual produce of the manufacture from two hundred thousand pounds sterling to at least sixty million pounds sterling; and has given direct employment to half a million of men, women, and young persons. [Illustration: Sir Richard Arkwright.]