[Footnote 403: Clarke, _Lancashire Gazetteer_, p. 4. In the paragraph in which the above information is contained it is stated that in 1782, “after Sir Richard Arkwright’s improvements had furnished an abundant supply of that article (yarn), the manufacture was renewed here by Mr. Oldknow, who realised a large fortune in the production of Balasore handkerchiefs, and jaconet, and japanned muslins.” Cf. _Autobiography of Robert Owen_, i., p. 25: “The first British muslins were made when I was an apprentice with Mr. M‘Guffog (1781-1784), by a Mr. Oldknow at Stockport ... who must have commenced this branch in 1780, 1781, or 1782.... When I first went to Mr. M‘Guffog, there were no other muslins for sale except those made in the East Indies, and known as East India Muslins; but while I was with him, Mr. Oldknow began to manufacture a fabric which he called, by way of distinction, British Mull Muslin.” _Cf._ also quotation from Mr. Kennedy on pp. 130-131. Both Owen and Kennedy speak of Oldknow carrying on his manufacture at Stockport. If the information given in the _Gazetteer_ is correct, it appears that he commenced elsewhere. The reference in the _Gazetteer_ to Arkwright’s machinery ought to be, perhaps, to Crompton’s mule. If not, it would appear that Oldknow first began to experiment with yarn produced by the water-frame, and later utilised that produced by the mule.] In the evidence given in 1812 before the Committee on Crompton’s petition it was claimed that the manufacture of the fine fabrics, the cambrics, and the muslins, which then existed was to be attributed almost entirely to the fine yarns produced by the mule.[404] Thus in the invention of the mule may be found one of the chief causes of the transference of the seat of an industry to the Western from the Eastern world, where it had been situated from time immemorial.[405] Even as the Committee was sitting, the cotton manufacturers of the United Kingdom were turning their eyes towards the East, not as a market from which cotton fabrics were imported, but as an extensive market for goods that they produced.[406] A century later, of their immense exports nearly one half was disposed of in that part of the world.[407] [Footnote 404: _Infra_, p. 190.] [Footnote 405: “The manufacture of cotton cloth was at its best in India until very recent times, and the fine Indian muslins were in great demand and commanded high prices, both in the Roman Empire and in Mediæval Europe. The industry was one of the main factors in the wealth of ancient India, and the transfer of that industry to England and the United States, and the cheapening of the process by mechanical ginning, spinning and weaving, is perhaps the greatest single factor in the economic history of our own time” (Schoff, _The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea_ (1912), p. 71).]