where did cotton come from during the industrial revolution
History of cotton The Lancashire textile mills were major parts of the British industrial revolution. Their workers had poor working conditions: low wages, child labour, and 18-hour work days. Richard Arkwright created a textile empire by building a factory system powered by water, which was occasionally raided by the Luddites, weavers put out of business by the mechanization of textile production. In the 1790s, James Watt's steam power was applied to textile production, and by 1839 200,000 children worked in Manchester's cotton mills. Karl Marx, who frequently visited Lancashire, may have been influenced by the conditions of workers in these mills in writing Das Kapital.[24]
Cotton mill Although some were driven by animal power, most early mills were built in rural locations near to fast-flowing rivers and streams and had water wheels to power them.[3] The development of viable rotative steam engines by Boulton and Watt led from 1781 to the growth of larger, steam-powered mills and allowed them to be concentrated in urban mill towns, most notably Manchester, which with neighbouring Salford had more than 50 mills by 1802.[4]