When James M‘Connel, John Kennedy, and Adam Murray left Scotland they became apprenticed to a man named Cannan, an uncle of James M‘Connel, who himself had migrated from the same district some time before.[400] This man was a machine-maker, and had established himself at Chowbent, a village about twelve miles from Manchester, which a gazetteer published in 1830 still noted for the excellent quality of cotton machinery made there.[401] Thus, so far as these men were concerned, there was nothing surprising in the fact that when they began business in Manchester it was primarily as machine-makers. [Footnote 400: Kennedy, _Early Recollections_ (1849), pp. 9-10. This man evidently gathered round himself a small colony of Scotsmen as there are others mentioned.] [Footnote 401: Clarke, _The New Lancashire Gazetteer_, pp. 33-34.] But there were other reasons which have to be taken into account. At this time the making of cotton machinery had not become a specialised branch of industry, and there was a lack of experienced workmen. The firm of Dobson & Rothwell, of Bolton (now the famous firm of Dobson & Barlow), only commenced in 1790, while the birth of other textile machinery firms lay far in the future.[402] Machine-making, indeed, was the business of workers in wood rather than of workers in metal. It was almost impossible for anyone to begin spinning on any considerable scale with the new machinery without first making it. As the spinning firm of M‘Connel & Kennedy expanded, it continued to make machinery for its own use long after it had ceased to accept orders from outsiders. [Footnote 402: Dobson, _Evolution of the Spinning Machine_, pp. 108 _et seq._] It was such men as these who became prominent when Crompton’s mule was being introduced into town factories. Their businesses in their early stages were a mixture of machine-making and fine cotton-spinning, and in either branch they could prosper. But, as regards many of them, the intense demand for the fine yarns produced by the mule, turned the balance in favour of spinning, and, as soon as convenient, they left the making of machinery to specialised firms. Although every branch of the cotton manufacture was affected in greater or lesser degree by Crompton’s invention, it was to the finer branches that it was supremely important. The previous inventions had made possible the manufacture of cotton calicoes, and had improved the manufacture of other goods, but they were not adequate to produce the quality of material required for the finest fabrics. For these, consumers in this country were still dependent upon the long-established cotton industry in the East. Five years before the date of Arkwright’s first patent Joseph Shaw, of Bolton, had attempted to make British muslins at a place called Anderton, near Chorley, but with little success, owing to the lack of suitable yarn.[403] It was this deficiency which Crompton’s machine supplied.