the fiber of which clung closely to the seed and would yield only
to human hands. The quickest and most skillful pair of hands
could separate only a pound or two of lint from its three pounds
of seeds in an ordinary working day. Usually the task was taken
up at the end of the day, when the other work was done. The
slaves sat round an overseer who shook the dozing and nudged the
slow. It was also the regular task for a rainy day. It is not
surprising, then, that cotton was scarce, that flax and wool in
that day were the usual textiles, that in 1783 wool furnished
about seventy-seven per cent, flax about eighteen per cent, and
cotton only about five per cent of the clothing of the people of
Europe and the United States.

That series of inventions designed for the manufacture of cloth,
and destined to transform Great Britain, the whole world, in
fact, was already completed in Franklin's time. Beginning with
the flying shuttle of John Kay in 1738, followed by the spinning
jenny of James Hargreaves in 1764, the water-frame of Richard
Arkwright in 1769, and the mule of Samuel Crompton ten years
later, machines were provided which could spin any quantity of
fiber likely to be offered. And when, in 1787, Edmund Cartwright,
clergyman and poet, invented the self-acting loom to which power
might be applied, the series was complete. These inventions,
supplementing the steam engine of James Watt, made the Industrial
Revolution. They destroyed the system of cottage manufactures in
England and gave birth to the great textile establishments of
today.

The mechanism for the production of cloth on a great scale was
provided, if only the raw material could be found.