There can be no better illustration of the truth of the old saying, that "Necessity is the mother of invention," than to read the early history of the cotton manufacture, and the difficulties under which the pioneers of England's greatest industry laboured. The middle years of the eighteenth century act as the watershed between the old and the new in cotton manufacture, for up to 1760 the same type of machinery was found in England which had existed in India for centuries. But a change was coming, and as a greater demand arose for cotton goods, it became absolutely necessary to discover some better way of manipulating cotton, in order to get off a greater production. "When inventors fail in their projects, no one pities them; when they succeed, persecution, envy, and jealousy are their reward." So says Baines, and it would appear, from reference to the history of the cotton industry, to be only too true. Certain it is, that the early inventors of the machinery for improving cotton spinning did not reap the advantages which their labours and inventions entitled them to. They ploughed and sowed, but others reaped. Among the most celebrated of the early inventors, the following stand out in great prominence--John Kay, Lewis Paul, John Wyatt, Richard Arkwright, Thomas Highs, James Hargreaves, and Samuel Crompton. When and how spinning originated no one can say, though it can be traced back through many, many centuries. Several nations claim to have been the first to discover the art, but when asked for proof the initial stages are greatly obscured by impenetrable clouds of mystery. For example, the Egyptians credit the goddess Isis with the discovery, the Greeks Minerva, the Chinese the Emperor Yao. It is related of Hercules, that, when in love with Omphale, he debased himself by taking the spindle and spinning a thread at her feet. This form of work was considered to belong only to women, and by spinning for her in this position he was thought to have greatly humiliated himself. If Hercules were back again, and could stand between two modern mules and see the men and boys engaged in spinning hundreds of threads _at once_, no doubt he would wonder, just as we do to-day at his fabled feats. It is not difficult to imagine that very early on in the world's history the twisting together of strands of wool and cotton would force itself upon the attention of the ancients. If the reader will take a little cotton wool in the left hand and by means of the first finger and thumb of the right take a few cotton fibres and gently twist them together and at the same time draw the thread formed outwards, it will be seen how very easy it is (from the nature of the cotton) to form a continuous thread.