A distinction should be made between the factory and the factory system. The latter was not new to England, having been employed during the Roman occupation; and with the introduction of the woolen industry under Edward III, we again find the factory system established on an extensive scale. John Winchcombe, commonly called Jack of Newbury, who died about the year 1520, made use of the factory system on a very extensive scale. In Fuller’s _Worthies_ you may read how he “was the most considerable clothier without fancy or fiction England ever beheld,” and how “his looms were his lands, whereof he kept one hundred in his house, each managed by a man and a boy.” Jack of Newbury was celebrated in a metrical romance, and the following lines taken from it contain an interesting description of his famous industrial establishment. “Within one room, being large and long, There stood two hundred looms full strong: Two hundred men the truth is so, Wrought in these looms all in a row; By every one a pretty boy Sat making quills with mickle joy. And in another place hard by A hundred women merily Were carding hard with joyful cheer Who, singing sat with voices clear; And in a chamber close beside Two hundred maidens did abide, * * * * * These pretty maids did never lin But in their place all day did spin: * * * * * Then to another room came they Where children were in poor array, And every one sat picking wool, The finest from the coarse to cull: The number was seven score and ten The children of poor silly men, Within another place likewise Full fifty proper men he spied, And these were sheer men every one, Whose skill and cunning there was shown: * * * * * A dyehouse likewise he had then Wherein he kept full forty men: And also in his fulling mill, Full twenty persons kept he still.” Here, indeed, we have the factory system—in which the division of labor is a conspicuous feature—employed with all its modern details; but not the steam-driven factory, building great cities and changing the whole social life of the kingdom. The original mode of converting cotton into yarn was by the use of distaff and spindle, a method still employed in the remote parts of India. The distaff is a wooden rod to which a bundle of cotton is tied loosely at one end, and which the spinner holds between the left arm and the body while with his right hand he draws out and twists the cotton into a thread. This simple process is the basis of all the complicated spinning machinery in use at the present time.