The breaking out of the war in 1793, gave a great shock to this trade ; at first it was very severely felt ; but afterwards several of the most intelligent and well informed of those who were engaged in it, having more leisure, by the. decreased demand for their goods, than they formerly had, applied themselves to the farther improvement of the machinery used in the spinning of cotton. Attempts were also made to work a number of looms together by machinery ; and a factory was actu ally erected near Manchester to weave piece goods in this manner ; but it was burnt down before any judg ment could be formed how it could have succeeded. We shall afterwards see that the cotton manufacturers attained their object in a considerable degree, by the con struction of what ate called power looms.
In the year 1795, Dr Aikin published his History'of Manchester, from which we have gathered the follow ing miscellaneous information, respecting the state of the cotton district of England, at that period. Accord ing to him, the increase of value acquired by the raw material, in the labour expended upon it, in manufac tatting, was generally from 1000 to 5000 per cent. At Ashton-under-Lyne, a considerable quantity of twist and warps was made, for the heavy goods that were manufactured in Manchester. At Middleton, the cot ton trade was carried on in all its different processes ; a large twist manufactory had been established, and very considerable printing and bleaching works : In this place, as well as in many other parts of Lancashire, the cotton manufacture had supplanted the long esta blished manufactures, the weaving of muslin and nan keen having taken place of the weaving of silk. Even at Rochdale, which we have already noticed as distin guished at present for its manufacture of flannels, and other woollen goods, the cotton manufacture seems to have gained a footing when Dr Aikin wrote; but though it has spread beyond this place into Yorkshire, it does not seem to have flourished much or extensively here. In 1796, the muslin trade was in a flourishing condition at Bolton ; but, in consequence of the want of sufficient ly powerful streams, there were but few spinning facto ries in this town, or its neighbo.urhood : there were, however, many crofts for bleaching. We have already noticed that•Bolton was the original seat of the cotton manufacture; fustians having been made there about the middle of the 17th century ; from Bolton the cot ton trade spread to almost all the places in Lancashire, in which it is at present carried on ; among the rest, it spread to Bury, where it was in 1796, and is yet car ried on, in conjunction with the manufacture of flannels, Ev.c. The works of Sir Robert Peel, at this place, have
been already noticed : they embraced nearly all the sta ges and processes of the cotton manufacture, spinning, weaving, bleaching, and printing. The first species of cotton goods manufactured at Blackburn, were what were denominated Blackburn greys: these were plains of linen, warp shot with cotton. In 1795, this town had gone very extensively into the making of calicoes, and the fields in its vicinity were whitened with the material ly ing to bleach. Haslingdean has already been 'noticed, under the head of the woollen manufactures, as being a place in which woollen yarn is made : in 1795, twist for was spun in several of the factories in its neigh bourhood, the cotton trade having been there lately in troduced. We may here observe, that wherever the cotton trade gained a footing, (with very few and inconsiderable exceptions,) it preserved and extend ed itself: this most certainly is the case in nearly all the places in which, or in the vicinity of which, the manu facture of woollens is carried on, as in those parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, bordering on Lancashire. One of the most obvious and powerful causes of this is, . that the workmen can with little difficulty turn them selves to the woollen trade, if the cotton should suffer a partial or temporary depression. Our remarks respect ing the prevalence of the cotton over the woollen manu facture, is further confirmed by what had taken place about this period at Colne in Lancashire, where the ma nufacture of calicoes and dimities had, in a great mea sure, superseded the original and long established trade of making woollen and worsted goods.
But Dr Aikin's account of the places near Manches ter, is principally interesting and important in relation to our subject, from the account which it gives of Preston ; we shall afterwards have occasion to notice this town as one of the most flourishing scats of the cotton manufac ture: hut it was only a short time before 1795 that it had gained a footing here ; probably the general dispo sition and habits of its inhabitants, (for it was long known under the name of proud Preston,) presented a more formidable barrier to the introduction of the cotton trade, than would have been offered by any long-established manufacture. There had been here, however, a large mart for the sale of Lancashire linens ; a species of manufacture which we may remark the cotton trade has nearly rooted out of Lancashire, or at least out of those parts where it has gained a footing.