Spinners to Weavers Ratio

(pronounced 'ray-she-oh', not 'rasher' as in 'ration', or 'rat-ee-oh' as in 'patio', or 'rat ten' as in rat10)

Through the 18th century, the cotton industry, as with many other industries in Britain, was experiencing much change. This change was largely caused by the move to industrialisation, and the concurrent inventions of better machines. Therefore, at this time, as machines involved in different processes were designed and used, the balance between spinners and weavers changed frequently. Prior to 1733, it took ten spinners to supply one weaver with a yarn. In the aforementioned year, John Kay invented the 'Flying Shuttle'. Although nowadays shuttles are expected to fly (otherwise someone gets in trouble for wasting billions of dollars of NASA's money), the 'Flying Shuttle' was in fact rather less interesting, and consequently more boring, device, enabling weavers to weave faster. This made the balance worse. However, between 1764 and 1767, James Hargreaves invented the 'Spinning Jenny', which spun cotton, not Jenny, thus speeding up the process of spinning. This made the balance rather more equal. This equalisation was continued by Richard Arkwright's 'Water Frame' (because it was powered by water, until steam power was discovered, and then it was powered by steam), designed in the 1770s (although R. A. copied the idea from someone else and was credited for the invention because he was a good businessman). This made the balance better but then Samuel Crompton invented the 'Spinning Mule', which spun cotton, not mules. (Look, that 'joke' is getting rather tedious, and it wasn't funny in the first place.) This was completed by 1779, and by this time, vast quantities of yarn were produced and the balance was totally reversed. Except some confusion exists over this matter, and so we shall instead believe that there were a vast number of spinners for every weaver. This is blatantly wrong, because it would be silly having one weary weaver weaving the yarn of six million, seven hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and sixty-six swift, speedy spinners. However this is what was taught, and so shall we make this our belief. Therefore vast representations of this were created by certain Gopsians, such as the following, where 'w' stands for 'weaver' and 's' stands for 'spinner':

w-ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss...................................

It is finally worth knowing that the balance was rectified by the early 19th century, with Edmund Cartwright's 'Power Loom' of 1784-7. (Moolrewop, backwards.)