INDUSTRIES 



bridge were run by twenty-nine steam-engines 

 and only six water-wheels, and by 1831 the 

 former had increased to 38.'°^ Here we may 

 notice that a new motive power is now beginning 

 to be applied, just about a century after Watt's 

 steam-engine was coming into use. The first 

 electric-driven spinning-mill in Lancashire was 

 opened in 1905. It is the mill of the 'Acme' 

 Spinning Co. at Pendlebury, the work of which 

 is confined to the ring frame. Power is obtained 

 from the stations of the Lancashire Power Co., 

 at Outwood, near Radcliffe, some five miles 

 distant. The extension of electric driving may 

 mean great economic changes for Lancashire. 

 Ring-spinning, it should be observed, is a de- 

 velopment from throstle-spinning (the method 

 used by Arkwright in his water-frame). The 

 ring-frame appears to have been invented simul- 

 taneously by Thorpe in the United States and 

 Lee in the United Kingdom : the patent of the 

 former is dated 1828. 



Spinning by rollers related almost entirely to 

 the production of warps, and its elFect was to 

 cause the substitution of cotton warps for the 

 linen or woollen warps previously used. Ring- 

 spinning has since been substituted almost entirely 

 for throstle-spinning on the Arkwright frames. 

 The invention relating to weft-spinning corre- 

 sponding to the water-frames was the jenny 

 introduced by James Hargreaves, a weaver of 

 Stand Hill, near Blackburn, probably about 1764, 

 and first tried in a factory four years later.^"' It 

 was lighter than the water-frames, and therefore 

 continued to be worked by hand and horses for 

 many years. Crompton's mule, which combined 

 the principles of the rollers and the jenny, was 

 perfected somewhere about 1779.^"' Jennies and 

 mules were for long termed ' wheels ' because 

 they were worked by the turning of a wheel by 

 hand. Power weft-spinning began with the 

 semi-self-actor mule (1825), the invention of 

 Roberts, of the firm of Sharp, Roberts & Co., 

 machinists of Manchester, who afterwards brought 

 into the market the complete self-actor (1830), 

 the labour engaged upon which, when the 

 machinery had been set working satisfactorily, 

 was confined to the piecing of broken threads. 

 Roberts' original self-actor mule of 1825 was 

 the first of any economic value, though not the 

 first of any kind invented. Others had been 

 put forward by William Strutt, F.R.S. (son of 

 Arkwright's partner), before 1790 ; Kelly, for- 



'°° Edwin Butterworth, Hist, of Ashton, 144. 



"" Guest, in his Hist, of the Cotton Industry, attributes 

 this invention also to Thomas Highs, but no satisfac- 

 tory reasons are advanced to disprove the claims of 

 Hargreaves. The latter was unable to maintain his 

 patent as he had sold jennies before protecting them. 



"" Samuel Crompton was a weaver living at Hall- 

 in-the-wood near Bolton. His invention was not 

 patented. He received in recognition of its value 

 about £S°° (subscribed) in 1802 and a grant from 

 Parliament of ^^5,000 in 18 12. 



merly of Lanark Mills, in 1792 ; Eaton of 

 Wilne in Derbyshire ; Peter Ewart of Man- 

 chester ; de Jongh of Warrington ; Buchanan 

 of Catrine Works, Scotland ; Knowles of Man- 

 chester ; Dr. Brewster of America ; and others."" 

 From 1825 to March, 1834, Sharp, Roberts 

 & Co. had turned out 520 self-actors carrying 

 200,000 spindles,"" but these machines did not 

 win supremacy until after the cotton famine, 

 and even for some years thereafter the number 

 of hand-mules remained high. As late as 1882 

 the late secretary of the Bolton Operative Spin- 

 ners' Society wrote in his annual report that in 

 the previous five years the pairs of hand-mules 

 in his district had declined from 1,300 to 516. 

 There were many other inventions relating to 

 subsidiary processes, but their mention is im- 

 possible in the space at our disposal ; we ought, 

 however, just to refer to the scutching machine 

 for opening and cleaning cotton, invented by 

 Mr. Snodgrass of Glasgow, in 1797, and intro- 

 duced by Kennedy "'to Manchester in 1808 or 

 1809, and the cylinder carder invented by Lewis 

 Paul. Paul's carder was first tried in Lancashire 

 about 1760 by a Mr. Morris, who lived near 

 Wigan."^ Robert Peel was one of the first to 

 buy it, but he was compelled to set it aside be- 

 cause of its defects. It was ultimately improved 

 by Arkwright and others. Arkwright's son, we 

 may notice, constructed the first lap-machine. 



There is plenty of evidence to show that 

 jenny- and mule-spinning were carried on for 

 years in small businesses. Hargreaves worked a 

 tiny factory at Nottingham in partnership with 

 Thomas James. Crompton's first factory con- 

 sisted of two adjoining houses in Great Bolton 

 and the attics of a third in which he lived. 

 Later, in 1 800, he ' rented the top story of a 

 neighbouring factory, one of the oldest in Bolton, 

 in which he had two mules — one of 360 spindles, 

 the other of 220 — with the necessary prepara- 

 tory machinery. The power to turn the 

 machinery was rented with the premises.' "* 

 Edwin Butterworth gives several illustrations of 

 the growth of large businesses from very small 

 undertakings. In these circumstances it would 

 be futile to attempt to particularize beginnings. 

 In twist-spinning and power-manufacturing it 

 would be easier, but even in these branches of 

 the industry the numbers are so great that the 

 results would be but a string of names and a 



'"' See Baines, op. cit. 207. 



"° Stated by the patentees to Baines. See Baines, 

 op. cit. 207. 



'" James Kennedy, one of the pioneer factory- 

 masters, wrote a memoir of Crompton and an 

 account of the rise of the cotton trade in Lancashire. 

 They are printed in the Trans, of the Manchester Lit. 

 and Philosophical Soc. He also wrote his early recollec- 

 tions, which were issued with the above papers for 

 private circulation. 



"'Kennedy, Memoir of Crompton. 



"' French, Life of Crompton, 80. 



387 



