As the inventor made no effort to secure a patent, the mule became public property, and was generally adopted by manufacturers, but Crompton himself received no other reward than a grant of five thousand pounds voted him by Parliament in 1812. Although his means were small, he was always in easy circumstances, until the latter part of his life, when, being no longer able to work, he was reduced to poverty. Certain manufacturers who had profited by his invention then subscribed for the purchase of a life annuity, to which fund foreign as well as English spinners contributed. Crompton died on January 26, 1827. Having considered the inventions in the art of spinning, we now turn to the power loom built in 1785 by the Reverend Edmund Cartwright, of Hollander House, Kent. A loom moved by water power had been contrived as early as the seventeenth century by one De Gennes, and described as “a new engine to make linen cloth without the help of an artificer.” But the machine never came into general use; and in about the middle of the eighteenth century there is record of another power loom, also a French invention, which suffered a similar fate. Describing his own loom Cartwright says that in the summer of 1784 he fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester who were discussing Arkwright’s spinning-machinery. One of the company observed that, as soon as Arkwright’s patents expired, so many mills would be erected and so much cotton spun that hands could not be found to weave it. To this observation the ingenious clergyman replied that Arkwright should set his wits to work to invent a weaving-mill. But the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impractical. Cartwright argued, however, that, having seen exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess, he did not believe it more difficult to construct a machine which would weave. He kept this conversation in mind and later employed a carpenter and a blacksmith to carry his ideas into effect. Thus he built a loom which, to his own delight, produced a piece of cloth. The machine, however, required two powerful men to work it, but Cartwright, who was entirely unfamiliar with the art of weaving, believed that he had accomplished all that was required, and on the 4th of April, 1785, he secured a patent. It was only then that he commenced to study the method by which the craftsmen wove cloth, and he was astonished when he compared the easy working of the hand loom with his own ponderous engine. Profiting by his study, however, he produced a loom which in its general principles is precisely the same as the looms used to-day.