Metcalf had a daughter married in Cheshire, to a person in the stocking business. The manufacturers in this line, in the neighbourhood of Stockport, talked of getting loads of money; and Metcalf thought that he would have a portion of it also: he accordingly got six jennies and a carding engine made, with other utensils proper for the business; bought a quantity of cotton, and spun yarn for sale, as several others did in the country. But it cost him much trouble and expence, before he got all his utensils fixed: the speculation, likewise failed; and a time came when no yarn could be sold without loss. Then Metcalf got looms, and other implements proper for weaving calicoes, jeans, and velverets:—for having made the cotton business an object of particular attention, he was become very well acquainted with the various branches of it. He got a quantity of calicoes whitened and printed, his velverets cut, dyed, &c. and having spun up all his cotton, he set off with about eight hundred yards of finished goods, intending to sell them in Yorkshire, which he did at Knaresborough and in the neighbourhood; and his son-in-law was to employ his jennies until he came back. On his return, coming to Marsden near Huddersfield, where he had made a road some years before, he found that there was to be a meeting, to let the making of a mile and an half of road, and the building of a bridge over; the river that runs by the town, so as to leave the former road, in order to avoid the steepness of a hill. At the persuasion of some of his friends, he staid till the meeting, and agreed with the trustees. The bridge was to be twelve yards in the span, and nine yards in breadth. These too he completed, and received a thousand pounds; but the season being wet, and the ground over which he had to bring his materials very swampy, and at a distance from the road, he lost considerably by it. In 1789 he was informed that there was a great quantity of road to be let in Lancashire: he accordingly went, and took a part between Bury and Eslington, and another part from Eslington to Ackrington; as also a branch from that to Blackburn. There were such hollows to fill, and hills to be taken down, to form the level, as was never done before: in several of the hollows the walls were ten yards high, before the battlements were put on the top. He had two summers allowed to finish this work in; but the trade in Lancashire being brisk, made wages very high, and the navigation at that time cutting through the country so employed the men, that it was a very difficult matter to procure a sufficiency of hands. The first summer the rains were so perpetual, that he lost about two hundred pounds; but in the next he completed the whole work, and received by the hands of Mr. Carr of Blackburn three thousand five hundred pounds; and, after all, was forty pounds loser by it.