Though illiterate and humble, he was one of the greatest inventors and improvers in the cotton manufacture. He seems to have received the original idea of his machine from seeing a one thread wheel accidentally overturned upon the floor, when both the wheel and the spindle continued to revolve. His first jenny consisted of only eight spindles. Aware of the value of the invention, but not extending his ambition to a patent, he kept it as secret as possible for a time, and used it merely in his own business. But in order to procure some clothing for his children he constructed several of his machines, and sold them in the neighbourhood. As soon as the new method of spinning became publicly known, instead of gaining for its author admiration and gratitude, the spinners raised an outcry that it would throw multitudes out of employment, and a mob broke into Hargreaves's house in 1767, and destroyed his jenny. Not content with this, they traversed the surrounding country, and demolished every one of the new machines which they met with. So great was the persecution which the inventor suffered, and the danger in which he was placed, that he retired to Nottingham, which became the cradle of two of the greatest inventions in cotton spinning. Here, in partnership with Mr. Thomas James, a joiner, he became the owner of a small spinning mill upon the jenny plan in 1768, and in 1770 he took out a patent for his invention. The number of spindles was now increased to sixteen, it soon came to be twenty or thirty, and no less than one hundred and twenty have since been used. The utility of the machine being ultimately universally appreciated, the interests of the manufacturers and weavers brought it into general use, in spite of all opposition. Mr. Hargreaves continued a master cotton spinner to the time of his death, which occurred at Nottingham, in April, 1778.

"The cotton manufacture, for some years after the great impulse was given to it, continued to move with comparative slowness. The power was applied, but it

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