tracted, by a kind of intellectual alchymy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced it for his own use to its true value and to its simplest form. And thus it often happened that a great deal more was learned from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever have derived from the most faithful study of the originals; and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that invaluable assistance."

CHAPTER X.

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 manufacture, and whose name is intimately connected with the recent history of the commercial greatness of his country. We allude to the celebrated Sir RICHARD ARKWRIGHT. Arkwright was born December 23, 1732, at Preston, in Lancashire, England. 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 con

tinued 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 dying the hair, by which he doubtless contrived to augment his profits; and perhaps, in his accidental acquaintance with this little piece of chymistry, we may find the germe of that sensibility he soon began to manifest to the value of new and unpublished inventions in the arts, and of his passion for patentrights and the pleasures of monopoly.

It would appear that his first efforts 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 England 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 until 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 manufactured 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 was 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 the 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

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wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new riband 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 that 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, that in the year 1753, he invented a machine to spin and reel cotton at one operation, which he showed 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 that town of which he was a burgess, it is asserted that his friends or party, were obliged to subscribe to get him a decent suit of clothes before they could bring him into the poll-room. As soon as the election was over, he and Kay left Preston, and, carrying with them their model, betook themselves to Nottingham, the apprehension of the hostility of the people of Lancashire to the attempt he was making to introduce spinning by machinery having, as Arkwright himself afterward stated, induced him to take this step. On arriving at Nottingham, he first made arrangements with Messrs. Wrights, the bankers, for obtaining the necessary supply of capital; but they, after a short time, having declined to continue their advances, he took his model to Messrs. Need and Strutt, stocking weavers of that place, the latter of whom was a particularly ingenious man, and well qualified, from his scientific acquirements, of which he had possessed himself under many disadvantages, to judge of the adaptation of the new machinery to its proposed object. An inspection of it perfectly satisfied him of its great value; and he and Mr. Need immediately agreed to enter into partnership with Arkwright, who accordingly, in 1769, took out a patent for the machine as its inventor. A spinning-mill, driven by horse power, was at the same time erected and filled with the frames; being, unless we include those erected many years before by Mr. Wyatt, the first work of the kind that had been known in England. In 1771 Arkwright and his partners established another mill at Cromford, in the parish of Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, the machinery in which was set in motion by a waterwheel; and in 1775 he took out a second patent, including some additions which he had made to his original apparatus.

In what we have hitherto related, we have carefully confined ourselves to facts which are univerVOL. II.-R