HARGREAVES, JAMES, whose name will ever lie remembered in connection with the cotton manufacture of this country, as the inventor of the carding-machine and the spinning-jenny, was an artisan at Stanhill, near Blackburn, where he was born. Hargreaves was an illiterate man, and supported himself and family by weaving and spinning, carried on in his own house, according to the custom of the time. In 1760 he invented the carding-machine, as a substitute for the use of hand•cards; and four years later, he produced the spinning-jenny. Hargreaves had frequently tried to spin with two or three spindles at once, holding the several threads between the fingers of his left hand, but the horizontal position of the spindles frustrated his attempt. One of his children, however, is said to have upset the spinning-wheel while he was at work, and as he retained the thread in his hand, the wheel -continued revolving horizontally, and the spindle vertically. The observation of these motions produced the thought, that if a number of these spindles were placed upright and side by side, many threads could be spun at once. Hargreaves now put his idea into practice, and the result was the jenny, at which he and lds family worked, till the large amount of cotton which[ they spun having excited suspiclon, his fellow-spinners, imbued with strong prejudices machinery, broke into his house and destroyed Ids frame. lie then removed to
Nottingham in 1708, where he erected a spinning-mill. Two years later, he took out a patent for his machine; and discovering that it was in use by manufacturers in Lanca shire )vithout his permission, brought an action for £7,000 damages. Pending the trial, he was offered by a company £3,000 for the use of the jenny, but refused; and it having been proved that he sold some of his machines before the patent was obtained, it was thereby declared to have been invalidated. and his claim for compensation fell to the ground. Thus the inventor was but little benefited by his work. Hargreaves continued to carry on business as a yarn manufacturer, in conjunction with a Mr. Jones, with moderate success, till Ins death in April, 1778, when his share in the mill was bought by his partner for .4.'400. his country never gave Hargreaves any reward for the invention to which so much of its wealth is due; yet it is but just to the memory of the late sir Robert Peel to state, that one of his last acts as a British minister, was to bestow on the youngest and only surviving daughter of this inventor, the sum of £230 from the royal bounty fund.