CHAPTER XIV. Sir Richard Arkwright.-The Cotton Manufacture. We propose now to give some account of an individual, whose rise from a very humble origin to affluence and distinction was the result of his persevering attention to the improvement of the machinery employed in one of the most important branches of our manufactures, and whose name is intimately connected with the recent history of the commercial greatness of this country. We allude to the celebrated Sir RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. Arkwright was born on the 23d of December, 1732, at Preston, in Lancashire. His parents were very poor, and he was the youngest of a family of thirteen children; so that we may suppose the school education he received, if he ever was at school at all, was extremely limited. Indeed, but little learning would probably be deemed necessary for the profession to which he was bred,that of a barber. This business he continued to follow till he was nearly thirty years of age; and this first period of his history is of course obscure enough. About the year 1760, however, or soon after, he gave up shaving, and commenced business as an itinerant dealer in hair, collecting the commodity by travelling up and down the country, and then, after he had dressed it, selling it again to the wig-makers, with whom he very soon acquired the character of keeping a better article than any of his rivals in the same trade. He had obtained possession, too, we are told, of a secret method of dyeing the hair, by VOL. II. 2 F which he doubtless contrived to augment his profits; and perhaps, in his accidental acquaintance with this little piece of chemistry, we may find the germ of that sensibility he soon began to manifest to the value of new and unpublished inventions in the arts, and of his passion for patent-rights and the pleasures of monopoly. It would appear that his first effort in mechanics, as has happened in the case of many other ingenious men, was an attempt to discover the perpetual motion. It was in inquiring after a person to make him some wheels for a project of this kind, that in the latter part of the year 1767, he got acquainted with a clockmaker of the name of Kay, then residing at Warrington, with whom it is certain that he remained for a considerable time after closely connected. From this moment we may date his entrance upon a new career. The manufacture of cotton cloths was introduced into this country only towards the end of the seventeenth century; although stuffs, improperly called Manchester cottons, had been fabricated nearly three centuries before, which, however, were made entirely of wool. It is generally thought that the first attempt at the manufacture of cotton goods in Europe did not take place till the end of the fifteenth century, when the art was introduced into Italy. Before this, the only cottons known had been imported from the East Indies. The English cottons, for many years after the introduction of the manufacture, had only the weft of cotton; the warp, or longitudinal threads of the cloth, being of linen. It was conceived to be impracticable to spin the cotton with a sufficiently hard twist to make it serviceable for this latter purpose. Although occasionally exported too in small quantities, the manu factured goods were chiefly consumed at home. It was not till about the year 1760 that any considerable demand for them arose abroad. But about this time the exportation of cottons, both to the continent and to America, began to be carried on on a larger scale, and the manufacture of course received a corresponding impulse. The thread had hitherto been spun entirely, as it still continues to be in India, by the tedious process of the distaff and spindle, the spinner drawing out only a single thread at a time. But as the demand for the manufactured article continued to increase, a greater and greater scarcity of weft was experienced, till, at last, although there were 50,000 spindles constantly at work in Lancashire alone, each occupying an individual spinner, they were found quite insufficient to supply the quantity of thread required. The weavers generally, in those days, had the weft they used spun for them by the females of their family; and now "those weavers," says Mr. Guest, in his History of the Cotton Manufacture, "whose families could not furnish the necessary supply of weft, had their spinning done by their neighbours, and were obliged to pay more for the spinning than the price allowed by their masters; and even with this disadvantage, very few could procure weft enough to keep themselves constantly employed. It was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day; and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon, or gown, was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner." It was natural, in this state of things, that attempts should be made to contrive some method of spinning more effective than that which had hitherto been in use; and, in fact, several ingenious individuals seem to have turned their attention to the subject. Long before this time, indeed, spinning by machinery had been thought of by more than one speculator. A Mr. Wyatt, of Litchfield, is stated to have actually invented an apparatus for that purpose so early as the year 1733, and to have had factories built and filled with his machines, both at Birmingham and Northampton. These undertakings, however, not being successful, the machines were allowed to perish, and no model or description of them was preserved *. There was also a Mr. Laurence Earnshaw, of Mottram, in Cheshire, of whom "it is recorded," says Mr. Baines, in his History of Lancashire†, "that, in the year 1753, he invented a machine to spin and reel cotton at one operation, which he shewed to his neighbours, and then destroyed it, through the generous apprehension that he might deprive the poor of bread"- -a mistake, but a benevolent one. It was in the year 1767, as we have mentioned, that Arkwright became acquainted with Kay. In 1768 the two friends appeared together at Preston, and immediately began to occupy themselves busily in the erection of a machine for the spinning of cotton-thread, of which they had brought a model with them. They had prevailed upon a Mr. Smalley, who is described to have been a liquor merchant and painter of that place, to join them in their speculation; and the room in which the machine was fixed was the parlour of the dwelling-house attached to the free grammar-school, the use of which Smalley had obtained from his friend, the schoolmaster. At this time Arkwright was so poor that, an election contest having taken place in the town, of which he See Essay on the Cotton Trade, by Mr. Kennedy, Manchester Memoirs, second series, vol. iii, † Vol. i. p. 115. was a burgess, it is asserted that his friends, or party, *Baines's History of Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 484. |