The early English cotton industry

by George W. Daniels

II

Like the jenny and unlike the water-frame, the mule in its early stages was entirely worked by hand, and was chiefly used in the cottages in country districts.[379] The method of spinning by it soon became well known “from the circumstance of the high wages that could be obtained by those working on it, above the ordinary wages of other artisans, such as shoemakers, joiners, hat-makers, &c. who on that account left their previous employment.... By their industry, skill, and economy, these men first becoming proprietors of perhaps a single mule, and persevering in habits so intimately connected with success, were afterwards the most extensive spinners in the trade.”[380]

It was also by such men that many minor improvements were effected in the mule: “For in the course of their working the machine if there was any little thing out of gear, each workman endeavoured to fill up the deficiency with some expedient suggested by his former trade; the smith suggested a piece of iron, the shoemaker a welt of leather, &c., all of which had a good effect in improving the machine. Each put what he thought best to the experiment, and that which was good was retained.... It would be vain to enumerate all the little additions to Crompton’s original machine; also as they arose so much out of one another, it is impossible to give to every claimant, what is exactly his due for improvements.”[381]

But there were more conspicuous improvements effected in the mule during the first six or seven years after it was made public, and among them were those of Henry Stones of Horwich, who, it is believed, was the first maker of mules after Crompton, either for his own use or for the use of others. His improvements consisted in the introduction of metal rollers, in place of wooden ones, and of a self-acting contrivance to stop them when they had given out the required length of roving, while various devices came into use for measuring the number of revolutions necessary for this purpose. One effect of the improvements of Stones was to allow the mule to be enlarged to 100 or 130 spindles.[382] Soon afterwards a man named Baker of Bury introduced other improvements which enabled the whole machine to be further enlarged, and another man, Hargreaves of Toddington (Tottington near Bury?), contrived a method for bringing out the carriage.[383]

But, in addition to improvements, there was also a development in connection with the mule in these early years. This was the invention of a machine called the “Billy” by a man at Stockport who, it may be noticed, again received a premium as a reward for his ingenuity.[384] Up to this time the mule had been used solely for the spinning of yarn. The rovings for spinning had to be made either on the spinning-wheel, or by Arkwright’s machinery. The “Billy” was a modification of the mule, or rather a combination of the mule and the jenny; but, instead of spinning rovings into yarn, it made the carded cotton into rovings. With this machine rovings could be made for the use of the mule, the jenny, or even the water-frame, to any required degree of fineness, and at a greatly reduced cost.[385] This modification of the mule, therefore, extended its own use, but it was not so with the jenny, although it was the jenny-spinners who subscribed the premium for the inventor.

At this time the jenny had superseded the hand-wheel and was in use over a wide area, including such centres as Blackburn, Bury, Oldham, Ashton, and Stockport, but the stage had been reached when in turn, so far as cotton-spinning was concerned, the jenny was to be superseded by the mule.[386] To a lesser extent the same may be said of the mule in relation to the water-frame. The mule, however, was pre-eminently a machine for spinning the finer counts of yarn; it was owing to this fact that it gave rise to new branches of trade; in spinning warp yarn and the coarser counts generally there was still scope for Arkwright’s spinning-machine. The mule and the jenny were rivals in a way, and to an extent that the mule and the water-frame were not.[387] Even this rivalry was absent as between the mule and Arkwright’s machinery for the processes preparatory to spinning, and with the cancellation of his patent roving-making for a time became a distinct business. This was exceedingly important to the small spinners, to whom the rovings were chiefly sold, as they now got the advantage of methods of preparation previously confined to mill-owners who had adopted the patent machinery.[388]

In 1790 William Kelly, manager of New Lanark Mills before Robert Owen came into possession, first applied water-power to the mule, and this at once led to its further enlargement.[389] Taking advantage of the greater driving power available, a Manchester machine-maker named Wright constructed a double mule, which gradually superseded the single mule. With this new construction, which contained about 400 spindles, “the spinner could superintend and operate upon four times the quantity of spindles compared with the former method.”[390]

The application of water-power did not mean, of course, that afterwards all the operations of the mule were mechanically performed, but, in 1792, Kelly took out a patent for a “self-actor” mule, which he expected young people would be able to operate. In later years the reason he put forward for its not coming permanently into use was that, owing to the introduction of the double mule and the rapid increase in the number of spindles, mule-minding continued to be the task of a man. Apparently there were other reasons, as, notwithstanding numerous efforts, a satisfactory “self-actor” mule was not invented until 1825, when a patent was taken out by Richard Roberts, the famous Manchester machine-maker, who also gave the finishing touches to the power-loom.[391] In the meantime, various other improvements had been effected in the mule, one of which was due to John Kennedy,[392] to whose writings we are indebted for so much of the information we possess of the development of the cotton industry in the later years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth centuries.

We have just seen that one consequence of the application of artificial power to the driving of the mule was an increase in its size. Another consequence, closely associated with the one mentioned, was the appearance of the mule in factories, as contrasted with the garrets of cottages, where it had been previously employed. So long as artificial power meant water-power, factories were necessarily erected by the side of streams, mainly in the country districts. When steam-power became available they could just as well be erected in the towns, and with the increasing complexity of machinery the presence there of skilful mechanics, who were lacking in the country districts, was an item of importance.[393]

This transition became conspicuous about 1790,[394] and at this time several men who later became noted cotton-spinners were entering the industry. It was now that Robert Owen heard “about great and extraordinary discoveries that were beginning to be introduced into Manchester for spinning cotton by new and curious machinery” and was induced to leave Satterfield’s to become a maker of mules.[395] Also John Kennedy and his partner James M‘Connel were on the point of founding the firm, among whose business material the following letters of Samuel Crompton have been discovered.[396] Enough has been said to indicate the eminence of John Kennedy in the cotton industry, and a novelist of a later day, taking as her hero a Manchester Blue-Coat apprentice in the early years of the nineteenth century, could indicate in no better way the exalted stage he had reached in his career than by allowing her readers to see him in conversation, almost as an equal, with the Manchester cotton-spinner, James M‘Connel.[397]

Both these men were members of a group of Scottish youths that migrated into Lancashire from a country district in Kirkcudbrightshire in the early eighties of the eighteenth century,[398] and they were not the only members of the group to gain prominent positions in Manchester. The brothers Adam and George Murray were equally prominent as cotton-spinners; James Kennedy, brother of John Kennedy, was scarcely less prominent as the head of another cotton-spinning concern; while a brother of James M‘Connel became manager of M‘Connel & Kennedy’s factory. If, to this group, we add Jonathan Pollard, and the Houldsworths, of whom Thomas and John were spinners in Manchester, while Henry left Manchester for Glasgow in 1799, and established a concern there, we have comprehended the principal spinners of fine yarn in the British cotton industry in the early years of the nineteenth century.[399] All these men commenced in business within a few years of each other, those of whom we have definite information having little capital, and, like Robert Owen, most of them commenced not so much as spinners as makers of cotton machinery.

When James M‘Connel, John Kennedy, and Adam Murray left Scotland they became apprenticed to a man named Cannan, an uncle of James M‘Connel, who himself had migrated from the same district some time before.[400] This man was a machine-maker, and had established himself at Chowbent, a village about twelve miles from Manchester, which a gazetteer published in 1830 still noted for the excellent quality of cotton machinery made there.[401] Thus, so far as these men were concerned, there was nothing surprising in the fact that when they began business in Manchester it was primarily as machine-makers.

But there were other reasons which have to be taken into account. At this time the making of cotton machinery had not become a specialised branch of industry, and there was a lack of experienced workmen. The firm of Dobson & Rothwell, of Bolton (now the famous firm of Dobson & Barlow), only commenced in 1790, while the birth of other textile machinery firms lay far in the future.[402] Machine-making, indeed, was the business of workers in wood rather than of workers in metal. It was almost impossible for anyone to begin spinning on any considerable scale with the new machinery without first making it. As the spinning firm of M‘Connel & Kennedy expanded, it continued to make machinery for its own use long after it had ceased to accept orders from outsiders.

It was such men as these who became prominent when Crompton’s mule was being introduced into town factories. Their businesses in their early stages were a mixture of machine-making and fine cotton-spinning, and in either branch they could prosper. But, as regards many of them, the intense demand for the fine yarns produced by the mule, turned the balance in favour of spinning, and, as soon as convenient, they left the making of machinery to specialised firms.

Although every branch of the cotton manufacture was affected in greater or lesser degree by Crompton’s invention, it was to the finer branches that it was supremely important. The previous inventions had made possible the manufacture of cotton calicoes, and had improved the manufacture of other goods, but they were not adequate to produce the quality of material required for the finest fabrics. For these, consumers in this country were still dependent upon the long-established cotton industry in the East. Five years before the date of Arkwright’s first patent Joseph Shaw, of Bolton, had attempted to make British muslins at a place called Anderton, near Chorley, but with little success, owing to the lack of suitable yarn.[403] It was this deficiency which Crompton’s machine supplied.

In the evidence given in 1812 before the Committee on Crompton’s petition it was claimed that the manufacture of the fine fabrics, the cambrics, and the muslins, which then existed was to be attributed almost entirely to the fine yarns produced by the mule.[404] Thus in the invention of the mule may be found one of the chief causes of the transference of the seat of an industry to the Western from the Eastern world, where it had been situated from time immemorial.[405] Even as the Committee was sitting, the cotton manufacturers of the United Kingdom were turning their eyes towards the East, not as a market from which cotton fabrics were imported, but as an extensive market for goods that they produced.[406] A century later, of their immense exports nearly one half was disposed of in that part of the world.[407]

Regarding this development of the manufacture of fine cotton goods in this country, a witness has left us such a succinct account that it cannot be omitted: “About 1790, the muslin trade received a stimulus at Stockport, from the efforts of the late Samuel Oldknow, whose spirit of enterprise extended to this branch of our manufacture. He took new ground by copying some of the fabrics imported from India, which at that time supplied this kingdom with all the finer fabrics, and which the mule-spun yarn alone could imitate. He was very successful in carrying on the ingenious processes which he had devised; but the French Revolution creating a panic and general stagnation for a time, he abandoned this branch of the trade, and betook himself to his large water-mill at Mellor, which was built in the year 1790. On his retiring from the manufacturing of fine muslin, Messrs. Horrocks, who had just established themselves at Preston as mule-spinners, took up what he had laid down. They became extensive manufacturers of cloth similar to that made by Oldknow, and supplied the same market, London. This gave a new stimulus in that district, and immediately upon the subsiding of the panic caused by the French Revolution, a market sprang up on the Continent for yarns of all kinds, but principally for muslin yarns, up to the highest numbers that could be pronounced.... The Scotch in Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, being long in the habit of weaving fine cambric from flax yarn, and silk friezes, had also turned their hands to the manufacture of fine cotton fabrics principally from the fine yarns produced by Hargreaves’ and other subsequent machines. The Lancashire manufacturers followed them in the thicker and firmer fabrics, and about 1805 or 1806 the Nottingham lace trade sprang up. Mr. Heathcote (formerly a whitesmith) invented a machine by which he could make lace similar to that of Brussels and Buckingham, which was worked by hand; and he principally if not wholly, at first, used fine flax yarns. Twofold fine cotton twisted together was found to answer very well as a substitute; and as it required the finest yarns, a great impulse was given towards perfecting the production of fine cotton yarn. It bore a high price, as the lace manufacturer had only to compete with hand-spun thread, and hand-made lace.”[408]

In this account Mr. Kennedy implies the existence of markets for fine yarns in Lancashire, at Nottingham, Glasgow, and on the Continent. To these must be added the market at Belfast, where, in 1800, in the town and within a circuit of ten miles 37,000 people were said to be employed in the cotton manufacture.[409] Glasgow was the most important market that the firm of M‘Connel & Kennedy supplied with fine yarns during Mr. Kennedy’s connection with it, which terminated in 1826, but from 1795 until that date merchants and manufacturers in Belfast and neighbourhood were among its most important customers.[410]

From what has been said it will be apparent, so far as the development of the cotton industry is concerned, that the period from the introduction of the jenny and Arkwright’s machinery to the first years of the nineteenth century may be divided into two parts, with a date about 1790 marking the division. During the first part the problem of providing adequate supplies of yarn for all kinds of cotton cloth was definitely solved, and a new cotton manufacture and a new system of organisation were born. In the second part that which had been achieved during the preceding twenty years was developed and consolidated, and the cotton industry, in its spinning branch, assumed its modern form. The average import of cotton from 1776 to 1780 amounted to 6-3/4 million pounds; from 1786 to 1790 the amount reached 25-1/2 million pounds; from 1796 to 1800 it increased to 37-1/2 million pounds; and during the next five years to nearly 58-1/2 million pounds; afterwards it increased very little until the conclusion of the war.[411] During the last decades of the eighteenth century cotton, particularly of the finer kinds, had assumed a new importance, and as a direct consequence of the developments in England, the problem of its adequate supply was already being solved by our kinsmen across the Atlantic.[412] In 1790 the United States had only just commenced to send small quantities of cotton into Great Britain; fifteen years later the import was no less than 32-1/2 million pounds.[413]