Cotton Industry’s Early Development

This series has two easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Early Inventions.

Introduction
This series covers the development of the cotton industry up to the beginning of the American Revolution.

This selection is from Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13 by Thomas F. Henderson. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Time: to 1774

Up to the time when James Hargreaves, an English mechanic, invented (1767) and brought into use the spinning-jenny — so named after his wife, Jenny — the spinning of yarn was done altogether by hand. Richard Arkwright added to the jenny of Hargreaves a much more useful invention, the cotton-spinning frame, called a “water-frame” because it was driven by water. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented a still better machine, the spinning-mule. In this he utilized the principles of the jenny and of the frame, adding drawing-rollers, and thereby making a machine that could draw, stretch, and twist yarn at one operation. From this combination of features the mule received its name. Since the time of Crompton it has been greatly improved, and the spinning-room of a modern cotton-mill contains machinery as highly perfected as any that has been invented.

Spinning by machinery is the foundation of the modern textile industry. Soon after Arkwright’s invention of the spinning-frame, Edmund Cartwright invented the power-loom, the idea of which came to him while he was visiting Arkwright’s cotton-mills at Cromford. Cartwright took out his first patent in 1785. Within fifty years from that time there were at least one hundred thousand power-looms at work in Great Britain.

Arkwright’s invention quickly gave a great impetus to the cotton industry. Both the cultivation and the manufacture of cotton rapidly increased. Eli Whitney’s timely invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 hastened the general introduction of the new manufacturing machinery. For more than a century the making of cotton goods has been one of the leading industries of the world.

The first cotton-mill was built by Arkwright and Hargreaves at Nottingham, England. Not long afterward the earliest cotton-mill in America was built at Beverly, Massachusetts (1787). To aid the new industry, the Legislature of that State made a grant of five hundred dollars. Cotton manufacture rapidly increased in New England, and there until recently was the center of the American industry. Within the past few years, however, many cotton-mills have been built in various Southern States, and the cotton-belt region bids fair soon to become the chief seat of manufacture of its own great staple.

Since 1866 the cotton supply of the United States has increased from somewhat more than two million bales to about twelve million bales (1904). The world’s consumption of cotton in 1903 was nearly fifteen million bales. In the United States the annual consumption in cotton-mills is now about four million bales; in Great Britain, over three million bales; in Continental Europe, about five million bales. The number of spindles represented in the world’s cotton manufacture in 1903 was nearly 112,000,000; in the United States, about 22,240,000; Great Britain, 42,200,000; Continental Europe, 34,000,000. In 1903 the exports of cotton manufactures from the United States were valued at over $32,000,000. Nearly one-half of the exports went to China, the rest being divided among many countries.

These figures only furnish a slight concrete suggestion of the immense industrial and commercial importance of the invention that Arkwright and his associates and successors produced and perfected for mankind. What Eli Whitney did for the cultivation and handling of cotton they have done for the world-wide interests connected with its manufacture.

The gradual disuse of wigs is assigned by some as the reason that Richard Arkwright began to turn his attention to mechanical inventions as likely to afford him a new source of income; but as during his journeys he was brought into constant intercourse with persons engaged in weaving and spinning, his inquisitive and strongly practical intelligence would in any case have been naturally led to take a keen interest in inventions which were a constant topic of conversation among the manufacturing population. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay of Bury had so greatly increased the demand for yarn that it became difficult to meet it merely by hand labor. A machine for carding cotton had been introduced into Lancashire about 1760, but until 1767 spinning continued to be done wholly with the old-fashioned hand-wheel. In that year James Hargreaves completed his invention of the spinning-jenny, which he patented in 1770. The thread spun by the jenny was, however, suitable only for weft, and the roving process still required to be performed by hand. Probably Arkwright knew nothing of the experiments of Hargreaves, when, in 1767, he asked John Kay, a clockmaker then residing in Warrington, to “bend him some wires and turn him some pieces of brass.” Shortly afterward Arkwright gave up his business at Bolton, and devoted his whole attention to the perfecting of a contrivance for spinning by rollers. After getting Kay to construct for him certain wooden models, which convinced him that the solution of the problem had been accomplished, he is said to have applied to a Mr. Atherton, of Warrington, to make the spinning-machine, who, from the poverty of Arkwright’s appearance, declined to undertake it. He, however, agreed to lend Kay a smith and watch-tool maker to do the heavier part of the engine, and Kay undertook to make the clockmaker’s part of it. Arkwright and Kay then went to Preston, where, with the cooperation of a friend of Arkwright, John Smalley, described as a “liquor-merchant and painter,” the machine was constructed and set up in the parlor of the house belonging to the Free Grammar-school. The room appears to have been chosen for its secluded position, being hidden by a garden filled with gooseberry-trees; but the very secrecy of their operations aroused suspicion, and popular superstition at once connected them with some kind of witchcraft or sorcery. Two old women who lived close by averred that they heard strange noises in it of a humming nature, as if the devil were tuning his bagpipes, and Arkwright and Kay were dancing a reel, and so much consternation was produced that many were inclined to break open the place. The building has since been changed into a public-house, which is known as the Arkwright Arms. As a proof of the straits to which Arkwright was then reduced, and the degree to which he had sacrificed his comfort in order to obtain the means of completing his invention, it is said that his clothes were in such a ragged state that he declined, unless supplied with a new suit, to go to record his vote at the Preston election in 1768, which took place while he was engaged in setting up his machine. Having thoroughly satisfied himself of the practical value of his invention, he removed to Nottingham, an important seat of the stocking trade, whither Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, had removed the year previously, after his machines had been destroyed by a mob at Blackburn. Arkwright entered into partnership with Smalley from Preston, Kay continuing with him under a bond as a workman, and they erected a spinning-mill between Hockley and Woolpack Lane, a patent being taken out by Arkwright for the machine, July 3, 1769.

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