and in proportion as the roads became
improved, waggons were employed instead of
pack-horses. At length came the inventions
of Watt and Arkwright, Crampton and
Hargreaves; and Lancashire underwent a social
revolution such as the world has rarely
witnessed.

Let a second Wallotty Trot enable us to
jump over a period of sixty or eighty years,
and set ourselves down in the middle of the
nineteenth century.

Scene the First: a Lancashire cotton-mill.
Take it where we will: it matters little—
Manchester, Bolton, Oldham, Ashton—any
will do. It is a brick building of vast length
and height, with as many windows as there
are days in a year, or perhaps more. Dull are
the bricks, unadorned are the windows, and
monotonous the whole appearance of the
structure: be factory labour good or bad, the
factory itself is certainly not a "thing of
beauty" in its externals. But it is a grand
machine in its organism—the mind, the
fingers, and the iron and steel, all work
together for one common end. A bale of
cotton goes in at one door, and the cotton
comes out at another, in the form of woven
calico or fustian; and a thousand human
beings may be marshalled in the path from
the one door to the other. The building
consists of six or eight stories, and each story of
vast rooms or galleries, with many-windowed
walls. There is machinery to lift the workers
to the upper floors; machinery to raise and
lower the cotton; machinery to work the
mules and the looms. There is gas for
winter-light, warm air for cold days, and
ventilating currents of cool air for warm
days. The cotton is conveyed in its bag,
perhaps to one of the upper floors, and
it travels downwards from floor to floor, as
the order of processes advances; a "devil"
tears the locks of wool asunder; a "scutcher"
blows away all the dirt; a "carding-machine"
lays all the fibres parallel; a "drawing
machine" groups them into slender ribbons;
a "roving machine" slightly twists them into
a soft spongy cord; a "mule" or a "throstle"
spins the roving into yarn; and men and
women, boys and girls, tend on the machines
while all this is being done. There is no
running about from cottage to cottage, to get
the carding done at one place, the spinning at
another, the weaving at a third; all is done
as part of one great process; and not only so,
but most of the machines feed themselves
with the material on which they are to work.
All the real labour is performed by machines;
the attendants are engaged in minor but nice
adjustments, which the machines cannot do
for themselves. It is a mistake to suppose,
as some do, that factory labour reduces the
factory workers to mere machines: their
duties require much quickness, delicacy, and
discrimination. And when the yarn has been
spun, and has been conveyed down to the
weaving-shed, we here find a thousand
wonderful machines weaving calico by miles; the
machines doing the hard work, and women
and girls attending to adjust and supply
them. And when the calico reaches the
warehouse, we find hydraulic presses and
steam presses to pack it into compact masses;
while, in the counting-house, the manufacturer
and his clerks are carrying on
correspondence with every part of the globe,
watching the pulsation of the market, and
making sales and purchases with (often) a
very slender margin of profit.

Scene the Second: a Leeds Flax Mill. If,
in respect to the Lancashire cotton factories,
one general type might serve for all, without
special reference to one particular establishment,
such is not the case in respect to flax-
mills; for there is one at Leeds so striking, so
original in its aspect, so advanced in its
organization, as to stand out in broad distinction
from all others. This is the celebrated
establishment of Messrs. Marshall. What
are the objects to be attained in a great
building devoted to manufactures? To
exercise a ready supervision over the whole
of the arrangements and operations; to
provide facilities of access to all the machinery;
to obtain a uniformity of temperature and
moisture (very important for some purposes);
to avoid draughts of air; to establish good
ventilation; all these, added to the ordinary
mechanical requirements of the work to be
done. Now, it occurred to Messrs. Marshall
that one monster room might effect all this; and
they constructed a monster room accordingly.
They procured designs and drawings from
M. Bonomi, derived from the temple architecture
of Egypt, and sought how to throw boldness
and massiveness into a one-story building.
An entrance like an Egyptian temple, a façade
of stone, surmounted with a bold cornice; a
chimney having the form and proportions of
the far-famed Cleopatra's needle—these meet
the eye on the exterior. In the interior we
find a room nearly four hundred feet in
length, by more than half of this in breadth
—five times as large in area as Westminster
Hall. The roof of this vast hall is supported
by half a hundred pillars, and is lighted by
ten thousand square feet of conical skylights,
occupying the summits of small domes or
ground arches. On the floor of this room are
ranged rows of machines in almost countless
number, by which the flax can be wrought
into linen yarn, and a thousand or more of
busy workers are tending these machines,
with ample space to move about. The two-acre
roof is formed of concrete so firm and
durable that vegetable mould can be spread
upon it, grass grown in the mould, and thus
a field made on the top of a factory. The
drainage of the field (the rain water of the
roof) is carried down the fifty hollow pillars
to the ground underneath, as was done at
the Crystal Palace. Beneath the vast room
are large machines and furnaces for
ventilating and warming it, and also some of the