James Hargreaves was a weaver living in the village of Stanhill in
Lancashire. It is claimed that one day his daughter Jenny, accidentally knocked over over the family spinning wheel. The spindle continued to revolve and it gave Hargreaves the idea that a whole line of spindles could be worked off one wheel.
In 1764 Hargreaves built what became known as the Spinning-
Jenny. The machine used eight spindles onto which the thread was spun from a corresponding set of rovings. By turning a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. Later, improvements were made that enabled the number to be increased to eighty.
It is estimated that by the time James Hargreaves died in 1778, over 20,000 Spinning-Jenny machines were being used in Britain

In 1763 James Watt was sent a Newcomen steam engine to repair.
While putting it back into working order, Watt discovered how he could make the engine more efficient. Watt took his ideas to
Matthew Boulton, and for the next eleven years Boulton's factory produced and sold Watt's steam-engines. These machines were mainly used to pump water from mines. Watt's machine was very popular because it was four times more powerful than old versions.
Watt continued to experiment and by 1782 had produced a rotarymotion steam engine. His machine now drove on both the forward and backward strokes of the piston, and a sun-and-planet gear produced rotary motion. This new steam engine could be used to drive different types of machinery. In 1783 Richard Arkwright began using Watt's steam-engine in his textile mill. Others followed his lead and by 1800 there were over 500 of Watt's machines in Britain's mines and factories.
Watt calculated that a horse exerted a pull of 180 lb., therefore, when he made a machine, he described its power in relation to a horse, i.e. "a 20 horse-power engine".

Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney was born in Westboro,
Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825.
By April 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber.
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States. Prior to his invention, farming cotton required hundreds of man-hours to separate the cottonseed from the raw cotton fibers. Simple seed-removing devices have been around for centuries, however, Eli Whitney's invention automated the seed separation process. His machine could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily, making cotton production profitable for the southern states.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
An English rebel folk song celebrating the works of the Diggers back in the days of the revolution. Recorded by Billy Bragg amongst many others, and often sung by British socialists or anarchists.
In 1649
To St George's Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people's will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed
Reclaiming what was theirs
'We come in peace' they said
'To dig and sow
We come to work the land in common
And to make the waste land grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it can be
A common treasury for all
'The sin of property
We do disdain
No one has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Now everywhere the walls
Rise up at their command
'They make the laws
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feeds the rich
While poor men starve
'We work, we eat together
We need no swords
We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men
Though we are poor'
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now
From the men of property
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed -
Only the vision lingers on
'You poor take courage
You rich take care
The earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace'-
...
The order came ... to cut them down
THE ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT
The Enclosure Movement was a push in the 18th and 19th centuries to take land that had formerly been owned in common by all members of a village, or at least available to the public for grazing animals and growing food, and change it to privately owned land, usually with walls, fences or hedges around it. It became very common in the
1700s, and eventually the English Parliament passed the General Enclosure Act of 1801 and the
Enclosure Act of 1845, making enclosures of certain lands possible throughout England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland.
The English government and aristocracy started enclosing land because it would allow for better raising of crops and animals (particularly sheep for their wool). Large fields could be farmed more efficiently than individual plots allotted from common land. Sheep or cattle could graze in the enclosed fields without wandering into crops; the enclosed fields also allowed for better breeding, since some wandering bull couldn't sire calves that didn't have the tender meat the breeder was striving for. This was really the beginning of commercial farming.
However, the consequence for the people who had been tilling or grazing their animals on the land was often eviction, sending many of them to slums in the cities in hopes of finding work in the lowpaying factories spawned by the Industrial
Revolution. Even if they were employed on the now-enclosed land by its owner, the formerly selfsupporting peasants became much more dependent on the success of the owner's farming plans (as well as having more risk of eviction) and lost access to places where they used to gather firewood, fruit, nuts, and other supplements to their own crops. The enclosures done by Parliamentary Act were not quite as bad; each peasant received an amount of land that was supposed to be the equivalent of the common land they had used. But still, this changed the distribution of labor by taking many people out of agriculture.
Groups such as the Diggers resisted the enclosure of their lands. (see song to left.)