With this musical friend [says French] he on winter nights practised the homely tunes of the time by the dim light of his mother’s kitchen fire or thrifty lamp; and in many a summer twilight he wandered contemplatively among the green lanes or by the margin of the pleasant brook that swept round her romantic old residence.
And so passed the years of his adolescence—a virtuous, reserved, and industrious youth. The help and stay of a widowed mother—who, if a strict disciplinarian, yet devoted her best energies to the well-being of her family—shunning society, having no companions, and working diligently at his solitary loom, Crompton, if he found little leisure for amusement had at least abundance of time to think, and a thinker he became to his country’s advantage.
While young Crompton was assiduously assisting his widowed mother, labouring at his loom by day and amusing himself with his fiddle by night, some of the artisans of his own county were exercising their inventive faculties on the rude appliances of their handicraft, for up to that time there had been little or no improvement on the art of Penelope in spinning and weaving—the distaff was still in common use, every thread being spun singly by the fingers of the spinner, and the machinery in vogue, if by such a name it could be called, was as primitive as that used by the Hindoo. Practical observation enabled them to elaborate their mechanical contrivances step by step, and so a series of progressive inventions followed each other. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay, of Bury, and the spinning jenny by Hargreaves, of Blackburn, gave a great impetus to the cotton manufacture, for by the former the productive power of the loom was greatly increased, whilst by the latter the supply of weft kept pace with the requirements of the weaver, but the mule was the real pivot on which its subsequent prosperity turned.
The spinning jenny of Hargreaves is believed to have been invented in the year 1764. It was kept a secret for some time, but before the close of the decade it had got into pretty general use in Lancashire, and was at that time so far perfected that a child could work with it eight spindles at one time. In 1769, Crompton, who was then a lad of sixteen years, spun on one of Hargreaves’s machines the yarn which he afterwards wove into quilting, but the machine had many palpable imperfections; the yarn which it turned off had less tenacity than that produced by the old-fashioned single-thread wheel, and much time was lost in piecing the ever-breaking thread; but in Crompton’s case the appointed task had to be got through, whatever difficulties might arise, for Mrs. Crompton was inexorable, and to avoid the maternal reproaches much time had to be given to the loom that might otherwise have been spent in pleasant companionship with the fiddle. For five long years the poor weaver lad led this lonesome, uneventful, all work and no play sort of life; no wonder, then, that he became reserved, shy and uncompanionable. For five long years he struggled on, following the dull, unremitting round of labour on his wearisome treadmill, without one single ray of cheering hope to brighten the gloom of his monotonous existence, when his ingenuity was driven to make such improvements in the spinning machine as would ultimately relieve him of the annoyances he was subjected to.
The time was not propitious for inventors. Hargreaves had been persecuted and ruined by the populace, and Arkwright had to remove to Nottingham to escape the popular animosity. Manufacturers were jealous lest their craft should be endangered, and workmen, in their ignorant prejudice against the introduction of new machines, resolved upon their destruction, while, by the common people, those who effected improvements were accounted “conjurors,” a name of reproach given to those who were supposed to possess unnatural skill, and to hold commerce with the powers of darkness.
It was in 1774, when he was in his twenty-first year, that the first faint conception of the mule floated through Crompton’s brain. The yarn spun by Hargreaves’s jenny could only be used for “weft,” by reason of its lacking the firmness and tenacity required in the long threads or “warp,” while that produced from Arkwright’s water frame was too coarse for the manufacture of muslins and other delicate fabrics in imitation of those imported from India. Crompton proceeded silently with the task he had set himself, even the members of the household having little idea of the way in which he occupied his time in the hours stolen from sleep when his day’s work was done. Indeed, it was the system of night work that first drew the attention of his family and neighbours to his proceedings. “Strange and unaccountable sounds,” says the authority we have previously quoted, “were heard in the Old Hall at most untimely hours, lights were seen in unusual places, and a rumour became current that the place was haunted.” On investigation the young mechanical genius was found to be the ghost that had caused so much trouble and alarm to the good people of the locality.
Crompton’s difficulty was increased by the fewness of his tools—those he possessed being such as his father had used in his rude attempts at organ building, supplemented by a clasp knife, which is said to have done excellent service; some others he purchased with such cash as he could spare from his slender earnings, and the money he received for his services at the Bolton Theatre, where, during the season, he was content to fiddle for the scanty pittance of eighteenpence a night. Five years of silent, secret, unremitting labour were spent in the realisation of his idea. Wanting in mechanical knowledge, destitute of proper tools, and having to learn the use of the imperfect ones he could procure, it is matter for surprise that in five years he succeeded in making his machine practically useful. His experiences at this time he thus relates in a MS. document he circulated about seventy years ago:
The next five years had this addition added to my labour as a weaver, occasioned by the imperfect state of cotton spinning, viz., a continual endeavour to realise a more perfect principle of spinning; and though often baffled, I as often renewed the attempt, and at length succeeded to my utmost desire at the expense of every shilling I had in the world.
Neither poverty nor want of mechanical skill was permitted to hinder him. After much trembling and fretting from impecuniousness on the one hand, and the inquisitiveness of interlopers on the other; after matchless patience and unflinching perseverance; after many failures and disappointments, success at length crowned his efforts; his dream had become a reality, the mule[50] was an accomplished fact. In that same year, 1779, just as he was about to test its merits by putting it into actual work, an outbreak occurred among the Lancashire spinners and weavers; the riotous proceedings which had driven Hargreaves from his home were renewed, and while the storm was raging Crompton, fearing the mob might wreak their vengeance upon his wheel, prudently took it to pieces and hid the parts away in the cocklofts of the old hall. The incident is thus described by a recent writer:—
Crompton was well aware that his infant invention would be still more obnoxious to the rioters than Hargreaves’s jenny, and appears to have taken careful measures for its protection or concealment should they have paid a domiciliary visit to the Hall-in-the-Wood. The ceiling of the room in which he worked is cut through, as well as a corresponding part of the clay floor of the room above, the aperture being covered by replacing the part cut away. This opening was recently detected by two visitors, who were investigating the mysteries of the old mansion; but they could not imagine any use for a secret trap-door until, on pointing it out to Mr. Bromiley, the present tenant, he recalled to his memory a conversation he had had with Samuel Crompton during one of his latest visits to the Hall many years ago. Mr. Crompton informed Mr. Bromiley that once, when he was at work on the mule, he heard the rioters shouting at the destruction of a building at “Folds” (an adjoining hamlet), where there was a carding engine. Fearing that they would come to the Hall-in-the-Wood and destroy his mule, he took it to pieces and put it into a skip which he hoisted through the ceiling into the attic by the trap-door, which had, doubtless, been prepared in anticipation of such a visit, and which now offers a curious evidence of the insecurity of manufacturing inventions in their early infancy. The various parts were concealed in a loft or garret near the clock, and there they remained hid for many weeks ere he dared to put them together again. But in the course of the same year the Hall-in-the-Wood wheel was completed and the yarn spun upon it used for the manufacture of muslins of an extremely fine and delicate texture.