To be announced

Wool production was a cottage industry up to the 18th century. Then a dude made weaving more efficient with the invention of the flying shuttle. Other weavers who didn't invent this came to the inventor's house and wrecked his shit. The inventor of the flying shuttle died a poor man in Paris, after being screwed over by rich people who stole his design and refused to pay him for it.

Now that weaving was efficient, spinning had to follow suit, or else there wouldn't be enough wool thread to weave. So the spinning jenny was invented and it increased the production of thread. Other spinners who didn't invent this came to the inventor's house and wrecked his shit.

The inventor of the spinning jenny got screwed, too.

Demand increased for cloth, and so a dude came up with a spinning machine so big it had to be housed in a separate building powered by a water mill. But he had the economic protection to maintain the water loom as his property. The workers couldn't profit off it because the machine was too big to fit in their homes. They had to come to his factory to work. Other spinners who didn't invent this came to the developer's factory and wrecked his shit.

But the developer had already made enough money to patent his machine and open another factory somewhere else, and then another factory, and then when the time came he had enough money to open a huge steam powered mill (but that's later in the story.) So he didn't get screwed. So far the moral of this story is that it does not pay to be original.

But still there was more demand, and so a dude invented a loom that would weave even faster. He invented the power loom, and even set up a factory like the dude who developed the water frame, but he was an inventor of all kinds of stuff, so that meant that he would have to go broke too. But the government awarded him a nice sum of money in recognition of his invention, since he was a gentleman, so it cancelled out the dying ignobly and poor that usually happens to people who have the misfortune to invent things that change the course of history.

Yet another dude who did not learn from history invented the spinning mule, which combined the best features of the spinning jenny and the water frame spinner. But he was poor, so he got screwed out of his invention by a rich textile manufacturer who gave him fuck all for the secret to his invention, and set the spinning mule up for himself, since the inventor couldn't afford to. But other spinners who didn't invent this came to the manufacturer's factory and wrecked his shit, thus keeping up with tradition.

Cotton became popular and for a time cotton weaving was a cottage industry in resistance to the economic hegemony of linen and wool manufacturers' attempt to keep the fibre out of their land. But trends can't be bucked, and cotton demand went even higher. So the steam engine, a parallel invention that wasn't quite safe to use when it was first invented, was improved enough to operate cotton looms. so all the home based weavers were screwed into coming to factories to work for a factory owner instead of for themselves.

And they didn't have unions back then, comrade. raise your glass and shed a tear.

(I wrote this as part of my background notes for developing worldbuilding. all names have been omitted because I'm a lazy git.)