“The factory system in England takes its rise from this period. Hitherto the cotton manufacture had been carried on almost entirely in the houses of the workmen: the hand or stock-cards, the spinning-wheel, and the loom, required no larger apartment than that of a cottage. A spinning-jenny of small size might also be used in a cottage, and in many instances was so used; when the number of spindles was considerably increased, adjacent workshops were used. But the water-frame, the carding-engine, and the other machines which Arkwright brought out in a finished state, required both more space than could be found in a cottage, and more power than could be applied by the human arm. Their weight also made it necessary to place them in strongly-built mills, and they could not be advantageously turned by any power then known but that of water.”
“The use of machinery was accompanied by a greater division of labour than existed in the primitive state of the manufacture; the material went through many more processes, and of course the loss of time and the risk of waste would have been much increased, if its removal from house to house at every stage of the manufacture had been necessary. It became obvious that there were several important advantages in carrying on the numerous operations of an extensive manufacture in the same building. Where water-power was required, it was economy to build one mill, and put up one water-wheel, rather than several. This arrangement also enabled the master-spinner himself to superintend every stage of the manufacture; it gave him a greater security against the wasteful or fraudulent consumption of the material; it saved time in the transference of the work from hand to hand; and it prevented the extreme inconvenience which would have resulted from the failure of one class of workmen to perform their part, when several other classes of workmen were dependent upon them. Another circumstance which made it advantageous to have a large number of machines in one manufactory was, that mechanics must be employed on the spot to construct and repair the machinery, and that their time could not be fully occupied with only a few machines.”
“All these considerations drove the cotton-spinners to that important change in the economy of English manufactures, the introduction of the factory system; and when that system had once been adopted, such were its pecuniary advantages that mercantile competition would have rendered it impossible, even had it been desirable, to abandon it.” (Baines, ‘History of Cotton Manufacture,’ pages 183, 185.)
It was not to be expected that Arkwright would enjoy undisturbed so valuable a monopoly as that which he had created, and many persons infringed his patents, in the belief that he was not the real owner of the inventions which he claimed. An attempt was made in 1772 to set aside his first patent for the water-frame; but this failed, and he retained the enjoyment of that patent unquestioned till the expiration of the fourteen years. To preserve his second patent, for the carding, drawing, and roving machines, he brought several actions against master-spinners, one of which, against Colonel Mordaunt, was tried in 1781, and a verdict was obtained for the defendant, setting aside the patent. Arkwright for some time did not contest this decision. But in 1785, he made another attempt to establish his second patent before a court of law; and in the first instance obtained a verdict in his own favour, but on the cause being reheard, the patent was finally declared invalid.
Notwithstanding this defeat, Arkwright rapidly acquired a very large fortune, through the magnitude of his concerns, and his industry, penetration, and skill in business. On the dissolution of his partnership with the Messrs. Strutt about 1783, the extensive works at Cromford fell to his share. In 1786, he was High Sheriff of Derbyshire, and was knighted, on occasion of presenting an address to the King. We find no other record worth notice of the last years of his life. He died, August 3, 1792, in his sixtieth year.
Arkwright’s originality and honesty as an inventor have been violently impugned by Mr. Guest, in his History of the Cotton Manufacture. The arguments on the other side may be seen in the Edinburgh Review, No. 91, to which Guest published a reply. Mr. Baines’s History of the Cotton Manufacture, which we have chiefly followed and largely quoted from in this account, contains the latest and fullest account which we have seen of Arkwright’s character and history. There appears to have been some alloy of selfishness and disingenuousness in his disposition, some ground for the statement of counsel in the trial of 1785: “It is a notorious story in the manufacturing counties; all men that have seen Mr. Arkwright in a state of opulence have shaken their heads, and thought of these poor men, Highs and Kay, and have thought, too, that they were entitled to some participation of the profits.” Still it becomes us to speak with gentleness of the faults of a person to whose talents, nationally speaking, we owe so much: and there is much to be said in extenuation of them, in consideration of the lowness of his original calling, of the self-complacency and sensitive jealousy common to almost all schemers, and the fascination of wealth when it flows largely and unexpectedly upon a man bred in extreme poverty. As an inventor Arkwright’s merit is undeniable. Mr. Baines, who seems to have judged calmly and impartially, assigns to him the high praise, that “in improving and perfecting mechanical inventions, in exactly adapting them to the purposes for which they were intended, in arranging a comprehensive system of manufacturing, and in conducting vast and complicated concerns, he displayed a bold and fertile mind, and consummate judgment, which, when his want of education, and the influence of an employment so extremely unfavourable to mental expansion as that of his previous life, are considered, must have excited the astonishment of mankind. But the marvellous and ‘unbounded invention,’ which he claimed for himself and which has been too readily accorded to him—the creative faculty which devised all that admirable mechanism, so entirely new in its principles, and characteristic of the first order of mechanical genius—which has given a new spring to the industry of the world, and within half a century has reared up the most extensive manufacture ever known—this did not belong to Arkwright.” * * * * * * *
“The most marked traits in the character of Arkwright were his wonderful ardour, energy, and perseverance. He commonly laboured in his multifarious concerns from five o’clock in the morning till nine at night; and when considerably more than fifty years of age, feeling that the defects of his education placed him under great difficulty and inconvenience in conducting his correspondence, and in the general management of his business, he encroached upon his sleep, in order to gain an hour each day to learn English grammar, and another hour to improve his writing and orthography! He was impatient of whatever interfered with his favourite pursuits; and the fact is too strikingly characteristic not to be mentioned, that he separated from his wife not many years after his marriage, because she, convinced that he would starve his family by scheming when he should have been shaving, broke some of his experimental models of machinery. Arkwright was a severe economist of time; and, that he might not waste a moment, he generally travelled with four horses, and at a very rapid speed. His concerns in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Scotland, were so extensive and numerous as to show at once his astonishing power of transacting business, and his all-grasping spirit. In many of these he had partners, but he generally managed in such a way that, whoever lost, he himself was a gainer. So unbounded was his confidence in the success of his machinery, and in the national wealth to be produced by it, that he would make light of discussions on taxation, and say that he would pay the national debt! His speculative schemes were vast and daring; he contemplated entering into the most extensive mercantile transactions, and buying up all the cotton in the world, in order to make an enormous profit by the monopoly; and from the extravagance of some of these designs, his judicious friends were of opinion that, if he had tried to put them in practice, he might have overset the whole fabric of his prosperity.”
Engraved by W. Holl.
COWPER.
From a Picture in the Possession of the Publisher.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
