either by hereditary lease, or by force of ancient custom, and had
hitherto held it as securely as if it had actually been their own
property. When the industrial workers withdrew from agriculture, a great
number of small holdings fell idle, and upon these the new class of large
tenants established themselves, tenants-at-will, holding fifty, one
hundred, two hundred or more acres, liable to be turned out at the end of
the year, but able by improved tillage and larger farming to increase the
yield of the land. They could sell their produce more cheaply than the
yeomen, for whom nothing remained when his farm no longer supported him
but to sell it, procure a jenny or a loom, or take service as an
agricultural labourer in the employ of a large farmer. His inherited
slowness and the inefficient methods of cultivation bequeathed by his
ancestors, and above which he could not rise, left him no alternative
when forced to compete with men who managed their holdings on sounder
principles and with all the advantages bestowed by farming on a large
scale and the investment of capital for the improvement of the soil.

Meanwhile, the industrial movement did not stop here. Single capitalists
began to set up spinning jennies in great buildings and to use
water-power for driving them, so placing themselves in a position to
diminish the number of workers, and sell their yarn more cheaply than
single spinners could do who moved their own machines by hand. There
were constant improvements in the jenny, so that machines continually
became antiquated, and must be altered or even laid aside; and though the
capitalists could hold out by the application of water-power even with
the old machinery, for the single spinner this was impossible. And the
factory system, the beginning of which was thus made, received a fresh
extension in 1767, through the spinning throstle invented by Richard
Arkwright, a barber, in Preston, in North Lancashire. After the steam-
engine, this is the most important mechanical invention of the 18th