The early English cotton industry

by George W. Daniels

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At this time the jenny had superseded the hand-wheel and was in use over a wide area, including such centres as Blackburn, Bury, Oldham, Ashton, and Stockport, but the stage had been reached when in turn, so far as cotton-spinning was concerned, the jenny was to be superseded by the mule.[386] To a lesser extent the same may be said of the mule in relation to the water-frame.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.