The sudden and extensive introduction of machinery at the close of the eighteenth century drove hand labor out of employment, and, for a time, caused great suffering among the masses; but in the end it created an ever increasing demand for labor—a new labor more skillful than the old. Moreover, it concentrated the laboring population in great centres of industry, thus creating a class consciousness which demanded that attention should be given to the rights of labor, created a new ideal of the dignity of toil and gave to the world that vision of the inclusive cause of labor which was destined to advance in a marvelous way to the social progress of mankind. Slavery had been abolished in England long before the Industrial Revolution, and yet, in the first quarter of the last century men in chains worked in the British coal-mines and were bought and sold when the property changed hands. For generations before the Industrial Revolution, the lord of the manor had ceased to demand the labor of the villein as his due, but while serfdom had been abolished, the traditions of it still remained; and it was not until the establishment of the factory that labor became free in fact as for generations it had been in name. The historical event, that great movement which led in our generation to a complete reconstruction of the social order, we call the “Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century.” It was an extremely complex event, originating in economic, political, and social conditions; but while it was the consequence of many causes, it derived its chief influence in the beginning from a series of remarkable inventions in the art of making textile fabrics. This art is as old as civilization, originating when men, advancing from barbarism, put aside the skins of beasts for raiment of their own making; but from the days of the first rude distaff and the simple bamboo loom until the time so recently past when, by a series of the most brilliant inventions known to any craft, the art was revolutionized, the implements remained unchanged. Up to the year 1769 the machines in use in the manufacture of cotton cloth in England were practically the same as those which for centuries had been employed in India. There were no factories as there are to-day: the cotton was spun and woven into cloth by hand, and both the spinning and the weaving were done in the cottages of the craftsmen.