Spinning mule Rhode Island. Development over the next century and a half led to an automatic mule and to finer and stronger yarn. The ring frame, originating in New England in the 1820s, was little used in Lancashire until the 1890s. It required more energy and could not produce the finest counts. Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in the same way that mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey (a female donkey is called a "jenny"). The
Spinning bee to see who could make the most homemade cloth, known as homespun. These contest became known as spinning bees. The Sons of Liberty often co-hosted these events with the Daughters of Liberty as a way to publicly support the Patriot cause against the British. Like other local festivities of the time, spinning bees included songs, picnics, and friendly competitions. Newspaper accounts, for example those from Rhode Island, also demonstrate that spinning bees attempted to use the spirit of competition to bridge the gap between married and unmarried women as well as lower- and upper-class women. The spinning bees would often