Mr. Baines gives the following sketch of the customary mode of conducting the cotton sales at Liverpool:-" Cotton is sold at Liverpool by brokers, who are employed by the importers, and are charged 10s. per £100 for their trouble in valuing and selling it. The buyers, who are the Manchester cotton-dealers, and the spinners all over the country, also employ brokers, at the same rate of commission, to make their purchases. The cotton is principally bought and sold by sample-the purchasers very rarely considering it necessary to examine the bulk. By the strict probity and honour invariably observed by the brokers in their dealings with each other, this immense business is conducted with a facility and despatch which have probably no parallel in any other market of the world, and which could not exist to the same extent in the sale of any other description of merchandize. It may be mentioned, as a proof both of the excellence of the arrangements for carrying on the business, and of the integrity of the parties engaged in it, that, though the sales are not made with the formalities necessary to render the bargains legally binding, a dispute or difficulty in their fulfilment is almost unknown. Whatever misunderstandings arise are at once settled by a reference to some of the brokers not interested in the transaction; and such is the good feeling which prevails among them, that on these occasions the decision is, with scarcely an exception, prompt and satisfactory." It is possible that, in the interval which has elapsed since Mr. Baines wrote his account of the Cotton Manufacture, whence the above is taken, the extension of railway communication may have somewhat modified the system of conducting sales between the merchants of Liverpool and the manufacturers farther east; but the main features are doubtless the same.

Our Manchester manufacturer, then, has purchased his bags of cotton, and is about to convey them to his factory, where yarn' is to be spun, preparatory to the weaving of calico, or muslin, or cotton velvet, or some one among the countless varieties of woven goods. But how to convey his bulky bags? Here we come at once to one of the most mighty phases in the history of Manchester- the formation of railways. Time was, when all who were interested in these matters thought that goods' traffic would far exceed in amount passenger traffic on railways; for the yearning was rather after cheap goods transit than quick passenger transit. The creative power of railways, whereby a new taste is imparted to the people, was yet to be developed: men only thought, then, of accommodating the existing traffic; and there seems, indeed, to have been good reason why an improved or cheapened mode was found of conveying cotton from Liverpool to Man

chester.

Not that the district was ill-provided with roads and canals on the contrary, hardly any other part of England equalled it in this respect. The turnpikeroads from Manchester to London, to Liverpool, to

Rochdale, to Bury, to Bolton, &c., are all very efficient, and if it were possible to make road conveyance adequate to the mighty wants of Manchester, these roads would not have been found wanting. But many years ago,indeed, soon after the rise of the Arkwright system, it was found that road conveyance was far too costly for the bulk of raw and manufactured produce; and hence the rise of water communication, as exemplified on the Bridgewater, the Mersey and Irwell, and other canals. But even the canals would not do-they had not the expansive quality (commercially speaking) which the requirements of the district needed. It was in 1826 that the merchants of Liverpool and the manufacturers of Manchester obtained an Act of Parliament for the construction of a railway between the two towns; and the history of the enterprise, between that period and 1830, will ever remain one of the most deeply interesting features in the history of commerce.

Little need we wonder if the turnpike trusts and the canal companies resisted the new order of things. Legal battles and parliamentary battles, leases and amalgamations, have gone on between the canals and the railways; and the result is that there is an immense traffic for nearly all. Nothing can more excite the attention of a stranger than the enormous trains of trucks laden with cotton, which run smoothly over the thirty miles between Liverpool and Manchester, and deposit their stores at the terminus: and the distance of time that intervenes between the transit of the bag of raw cotton in one direction, and that of the bale of wrought cotton in the other, by becoming shorter and shorter, as modes of conveyance and of manufacture became more rapid, is not an inapt measure of modern progress in these matters.

Two or three examples may be interesting here, to show what can be and has been done in regard to expeditious transit and manufacture. One of these runs as follows:-"A gentleman left Manchester in the morning, went to Liverpool, thirty miles off, purchased and took back with him to Manchester on the railway, 150 tons of cotton. This he immediately disposed of, and the article being liked, an offer was made to take another such quantity. Off he starts again, and actually, that evening, delivered the second 150 tons, having travelled 120 miles in four separate journeys, and bought, sold, and delivered, thirty miles off, at two distinct consecutive deliveries, 300 tons of goods in about twelve hours." In another example, "A merchant in Manchester wanted 1500 pieces of printed calico of a particular description in three colours, to be sent off the next day to America: not finding them at any of the warehouses, he went to Harpurhey, to Mr. Lockett's, who had nothing of the kind wanted; this was at five in the evening, and it was necessary to have the goods in Manchester the next day before one, to go by the railway to Liverpool. Mr. Alsop, who is at the head of Mr. Lockett's establishment, said he was willing to undertake the order at his own risk. He did so; the pieces were printed in three colours

dyed, glazed, packed, and sent off to Manchester by twelve o'clock; they reached Liverpool at three, were put on board, and the vessel sailed at five, just twentyfour hours after the order was given!" In a third instance, a Preston manufacturer purchased some raw cotton, which was despatched from Liverpool at three o'clock on a Friday morning. It was delivered at the Preston factory at eight minutes past nine o'clock; and before eleven o'clock part of it had passed through the several operations of mixing, scutching, carding, drawing, slubbing, roving, and spinning. At half-past eleven o'clock a portion of it was made into cloth by the power-loom; and at half-past four a portion of good shirting cloth was despatched by railway to Liverpool, where it reached by seven in the evening. Thus the same specimen of cotton went through all the stages of manufacture, from the raw fibre to the woven cloth, and travelled about eighty miles, all between three in the morning and seven in the evening! The Preston weaver wore a garment made of this cloth on the same evening.

MANCHESTER THE CENTRE OF A SYSTEM.

But we are somewhat anticipating our subject. The reader is to suppose that bags of cotton wool are transferred to Manchester by the railway from Liverpool; and he is then to follow the manufacturing history of this cotton. It is not that all the cotton which comes to Manchester is woven up into cloth in that town; but it is by keeping this busy centre constantly in the mind, that we can best appreciate the philosophy of the whole system. Every year (with some few exceptions) adds to the number of cotton factories. Even nine years ago (and they have largely increased since then) there were two thousand such factories in Lancashire, besides those in Cheshire and Yorkshire. Of these two thousand, rather less than two hundred were contained within the town and parish of Manchester; the other eighteen hundred being distributed in and around the towns of Bury, Wigan, Ashton, Bolton, Preston, Chorley, Blackburn, Oldham, Rochdale, Warrington, Prescott, Ormskirk, Lancaster, Eccles, and others of less note. The parish of Oldham alone rather exceeded that of Manchester in the number of cotton factories; but the hands employed in those factories were only half as many.

It is in transmitting the raw cotton from Manchester to these towns that the net-work of railways first strikes forcibly upon our attention. What may be the state of things when the Birkenhead and Lancashire, the Liverpool and Preston, the Liverpool and Bury, and other new railways are finished and brought into operation, time must show; but at present Manchester may be considered as the great centre from which cotton is distributed to all its neighbours; and the railways aid materially in this distribution. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had its terminus originally in the western part of Manchester; while the Manchester and Leeds Company terminated their

line in the Oldham-road, separated from the other station by a mass of factories and houses. But the impossibility of thus maintaining a connection between Lancashire and Yorkshire by railway, and the desirability of transmitting cotton to Oldham and Rochdale without unpacking at Manchester, led to the project of connecting the two lines by a junction branch, and erecting a joint station for both companies midway between the former termini. This is the history of the fine 'Victoria Station,' in the north-west part of Manchester, on the banks of the Irwell: a station which is scarcely paralleled in the kingdom for its traffic, especially in goods.

But why should Oldham and Rochdale alone be thus placed in connection with Liverpool, by such a junction at Manchester? The manufacturers of Bolton and Bury, of Chorley and Preston, asked this question; and an answer has been given by connecting the Manchester, Bolton, and Bury railway with the other two; though this connexion is not, perhaps, of so much importance, as Bolton has an outlet to Liverpool by another and an independent route. This principle of junction is being further carried out in other quarters. For instance, until recently, Ashton, Stalybridge, Dukinfield, and Hyde, were cut off from railway communication with Liverpool; because the Manchester and Sheffield line, which was best fitted to accommodate them, was severed both from the Manchester and Leeds, and from the Manchester and Liverpool; but by the recent construction of a branch from Ashton into the Leeds line, that town and its neighbours have a direct artery to Liverpool, by way of the Victoria station. Another example of the same kind is being furnished by the Manchester and Birmingham line; which, though passing through Stockport, Cheadle, Macclesfield, and other important towns, has no direct communication with Liverpool; but a "South Junction," is now being formed, intersecting the southern and densely-populated part of Manchester from the London station on the one side to the Liverpool station on the other. Lastly, by the construction of the Birkenhead, Lancashire, and Cheshire Junction Railway, now in progress, Manchester itself will obtain access to Birkenhead, without any reference to Liverpool.

By the independent way in which four railway companies originally set to work, Manchester has a greater number of railway-stations, or termini, than any town in the kingdom, the metropolis alone excepted. The four lines to Liverpool, to Bolton, to Leeds, and to Birmingham, all had different spots selected for their termini. The Sheffield line makes use of the terminus belonging to the Manchester and Birmingham Company; the Bury and Rosendale line uses the Bolton terminus; and it seems probable that when the several junctions are completed, the effective and practicallyused stations will be fewer than they are now.

Lest the reader should say that we promised to talk of cotton, but are really engaged with railways, we may here remind him that cotton and railways are the two main elements of Manchester greatness at the pre

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sent day, and must be viewed in their mutual bearings. If cotton gave birth to railways, railways help to give vigour and life-blood to cotton-the steam-engine is the handmaid to both.

Wonderful, indeed, are these cotton towns! If we draw a circle of-say fifteen miles' radius round the centre of Manchester-we find within this circle a

greater number of inhabitants than is contained within a circle of equal size having the heart of London as its centre. Vast as is our metropolis, yet when we do get into the open country (no easy matter now-a-days), no considerable town is met with for many miles; but in South Lancashire and North Cheshire, towns of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants are thickly strewed within the circle whose limits we have named; and every one of these towns contains the factories in which the raw material, cotton, is wrought up into usable form.

Cotton factories or mills may be divided into three classes these are spinning mills, weaving mills, and small-ware mills.

First, then, a 'cotton factory,' without any further distinction, is generally considered to mean a factory where cotton is spun into yarn, ready for the processes of the weaver. This yarn is not wrought into the thick and dense form necessary for sewing-thread, but is spun to that state which forms the warp and weft threads of the usual woven goods. Then another division is formed by the circumstance, that some factories are devoted wholly to the production of fine yarn, or 'high numbers' (denoting the number of yards to a pound, which is of course greater as the yarn is thinner), while others prepare only the twist' or stronger yarn. Many of the Manchester factories are twist factories' only. Establishments where yarn is further spun into the form of thread, are distinct from both of the other kinds. The yarn, brought to a proper state, is handed over to the weaver, whose business it is to interlace it into the endless varieties of cotton goods. If the poor hand-loom weaver, who is maintaining a battle, at fearful odds, against the steam-engine, is to do the work, then the yarn is transferred to the humble dwelling which serves to him the purpose both of workshop and of home; but if steam be called in to perform the work, then the order, the system, and the comprehensive arrangements of a large factory are necessary. Hence the weaving factories' with which the Manchester district is supplied, and in some of which as many as twelve or fourteen hundred power-looms are assembled. Even here the arrangements meet with further modification; for those manufacturers who make fustians, cotton velvets, or fancy goods, do not generally devote any part of their attention to plain calicoes and muslins: Lastly, all the subsidiary processes of bleaching, dyeing, and printing, are effected in buildings wholly distinct from those yet alluded to; sometimes all three combined, but very frequently separately.

Small-ware mills are those which manufacture sewing cotton, knitting cotton, tape, thread, and the num

berless little etceteras which may be found in every lady's workbox. The machinery for manufacturing these various articles differs of course very materially.

THE SPINNING FACTORIES.

When a bag of the cotton wool is transferred to a spinning factory, the routine to which it is subjected is pretty much the same in all establishments. Let the rambler look around him in Manchester, in the belt of streets surrounding the centre of the town: there he will see the huge brick factories, pierced with windows in long ranges, tier after tier, and presenting as little that is elegant or picturesque as can well be conceived, Whether the attempt will ever be made to give architectural character to these monster buildings, remains to be seen; but certain it is, that a person of taste has little to gratify him in such localities. In whichever of the surrounding towns we look-Stockport, Ashton, Oldham, Bolton, &c.—the dark masses of brickwork present nearly the same features.

One of the most celebrated cotton factories in the north is Orrell's, at Stockport; celebrated alike for its vast extent, and for the degree in which all modern improvements are brought to bear on its internal arrangements. There is scarcely anything of the kind more striking than the appearance of Stockport. The town stands at the junction of the rivers Tame and Mersey; the principal part of it being built on a steep and irregular hill, rising in some parts precipitously from the north bank of the Mersey. Across one of the valleys which bound Stockport, is one of the finest viaducts that engineering skill has ever produced. It crosses the Mersey at an elevation of no less than a hundred and eleven feet, measuring to the top of the parapet; or upwards of a hundred and twenty feet above the foundation of the viaduct. The work consists of twenty-six arches; the span of some of them being sixty-three feet. Eleven millions of bricks, and four hundred thousand cubic feet of stone, are said to have been employed in its construction! Probably in no other town in England is such an air of vastness imparted by a viaduct.

About four years ago, a description of Orrell's factory at Stockport, derived from personal observation, was published in the 'Penny Magazine;' and an extract from that description will be useful, in giving a general view of Manchester cotton factories; for al of them present nearly the same features, though not often in the same degree of completeness, as this one at Stockport.

"When we come within sight of the factory, its arrangement cannot appear otherwise than striking to a stranger; for the lofty chimney is separated from the factory itself by a public road, and stands isolated on a kind of rocky mount. Being a well-formed structure, this chimney (which, but for the smoke, looks more like an honorary column than anything else) presents a fine appearance. The furnaces that supply heat to the boilers for four large steam-engines, are

situated in a building at one end of the factory; and the smoke from these furnaces passes through a flue under the public road, into the chimney, which thus conveys it up into the atmosphere at a distance from the factory. When we come in front of the factory itself, we find it speckled over with windows to an enormous amount. The building extends, from end to end, nearly three hundred feet, having a centre and two projecting wings. There are six ranges of windows in neight, each range giving light to one floor or story of workshops. There are nearly a hundred windows in each of these ranges on the four sides of the building; so that the whole amount to not much fewer than six hundred. The perfect regularity with which the windows of modern factories are arranged, constitutes one of their most conspicuous features. The ground-floor is two hundred feet in depth, from front to back; but the upper floors are much less than this.

"Withinside the building, the extraordinary scene and deafening noise presented by the operations conducted on the ground-floor, are well calculated to bewilder a stranger; but of these, more anon: we will at present confine our attention to the upper floors. There are staircases conveniently situated for gaining access to the various floors; but, besides this, there is a very ingenious arrangement for mounting to any floor without the least exertion on the part of the person ascending.. There is a kind of square well, open from top to bottom of the factory, and measuring a few feet square. We place ourselves on a platform within this space, and, by pulling a rope, place the platform in connexion with certain moving machinery, by which it is carried up, supporting its load, animate or inanimate, safely. When we desire it to stop, on the level of any one of the floors, we have only to let go the rope, and the platform will stop. When we wish to descend, we pull another rope, which enables the machinery to give a reverse movement to the platform. "When, having ascended either by this piece of mechanism or by the staircase, we reach any of the upper floors, we find them to consist of very long rooms, lighted on all sides by windows, and filled with machinery so complicated and extensive, that we may well wonder how all can receive their movement from steam-engines in a remote part of the building. Yet such is the case. There are two engines for the spinning machinery, of eighty horse-power each, and two for the weaving machines (this being both a spinning and a weaving factory), of forty horse-power each. These splendid engines are supplied from six boilers; the fires for which consume more than twenty tons of coal per day; and the main-shaft from each engine is so connected with other shafts, both vertical and horizontal, as to convey motive-power to every floor, and to every machine in every floor."

vast arrangements involved in the preparation of the delicate fibres of the cotton plant.

Wonderful, indeed, are the steps whereby the cotton is wrought into the required form! When, in walking through the streets of Manchester, we see the large bags of cotton being conveyed to the various factories on low wagons or trucks, we have often the means of observing that the locks of wool are entangled and matted together in apparently inextricable confusion. Yet do the iron fingers of the spinning machinery--more delicate in their manipulations than even Hindoo fingers-unravel this mazy knot, and present every single fibre distinct and parallel.

It is this attainment of separation and parallelism in the fibres, that forms the triumph of the cotton manufacture. First, when a bag of raw cotton is brought to such a factory as has just been described, it is (usually) hauled up to the upper floor of the building, and the bags emptied. Here the mass of fibres, clotted and tangled together, requires at the outset to be rent asunder into smaller masses: to effect which, it is placed within a 'willow,' or hollow box, in which it is tossed about in such a way as to come in contact with iron spikes or teeth, whereby it is torn fibre from fibre into a loose mass. The workmen, with an expressiveness that often marks technical phraseology, give the name of "devil" to this tearing, boisterous, racketty machine, which seems to know no obstacles. While the matted fibres are becoming loosened, the dust and dirt mixed up with them are allowed to fall through an open wire screen, so as to become separated from the cotton.

Thus, then, the first stage presents us with the disentangled cotton, partially cleansed from dirt; and a further cleansing forms the object of the next process, that of 'scutching' or 'blowing.' Here the cotton is spread out on a flat surface, and beaten with flat bars, whereby the remaining dust is expelled from it; and this dust, by an admirably-planned blowing machine,' is blown completely out of the building, without coming in contact either with people or with machinery.

Then come those beautiful and complicated processes, whose object is to lay the fibres parallel, or to arrange them in an endless ribbon or card. In nothing did Arkwright more advance the manufacture, than in his inventions relating to these processes. In nothing has the dexterity of the machine-maker come more aptly in aid of the inventions of the practised spinner: the head to plan, and the hand to execute, are, indeed, here seen in worthy co-operation. Let us picture to ourselves the loosened mass of cleansed fibres, crossing and re-crossing each other at every imaginable angle. Let us imagine it placed, by children, in a tolerably even layer on an endless apron, or belt of cloth; along which apron it travels till caught by a series of teeth inserted in the surfaces of two cylinders in the card

direction; one in another: each one snatching little bits out of the mass, and combing them out straight;