Cartwright's power-loom was afterwards taken in hand and greatly improved by other ingenious persons--mechanics and weavers. "The names of many clever mechanics," says a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, "who contributed to advance it, step by step, through failure and disappointment, have long been forgotten. Some broke their hearts over their projects when apparently on the eve of success. No one was more indefatigable in his endeavours to overcome the difficulties of the contrivance than William Radcliffe, a manufacturer at Mellor, near Manchester, whose invention of the dressing-machine was an important step in advance. With the assistance of an ingenious young weaver in his employment, named Johnson, he also brought out the dandy-loom, which effects almost all that can be done for the hand-loom as to motion. Radcliffe was not, however, successful as a manufacturer; he exhausted his means in experiments, of which his contemporaries and successors were to derive the benefit; and after expending immense labour, and a considerable fortune in his improvements, he died in poverty in Manchester only a few years ago." To the Peel family the cotton manufacture is greatly indebted for its progress. Robert Peel, the founder of the family, developed the plan of printing calico, and his successors perfected it in a variety of ways. While occupied as a small farmer near Blackburn, he gave a great deal of attention to the subject, and made a great many experiments. One day, when sketching a pattern on the back of a pewter dinner-plate, the idea occurred to him, that if colour were rubbed upon the design an impression might be printed off it upon calico. He tested the plan at once. Filling in the pattern with colour on the back of the plate, and placing a piece of calico over it, he passed it through a mangle, and was delighted with seeing the calico come out duly printed. This was his first essay in calico-printing; and he soon worked out the idea, patented it, and starting as a calico-printer, succeeded so well, that he gave up the farm and devoted himself entirely to that business. His sons succeeded him; and the Peel family, divided into numerous firms, became one of the chief pillars of the cotton manufacture. To such perfection has calico-printing now been brought, that a mile of calico can be printed in an hour, or three cotton dresses in a minute; and so extensive is the production of that article, that one firm alone--that of Hoyle--turns out in a year more than 10,000 miles of it, or more than sufficient to measure the diameter of our planet.