By this time the mule had become the machine chiefly employed for fine spinning, not only round Bolton but in the manufacturing districts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and its general appropriation soon changed the neighbourhood of which Manchester was the centre from a country of small farmers to one of small manufacturers. Houses on the banks of streams whose currents would drive a wheel and shaft were eagerly seized upon; sheds were run up in similar situations; the clank of wheels and the buzz of spindles were heard in once solitary places in the valleys running off from the Irwell and upon the small streams that flowed down from the barren hills. Crompton’s mules, worked by hand, “were erected in garrets or lofts, and many a dilapidated barn or cowshed was patched up in the walls, repaired in the roof, and provided with windows to serve as lodging room for the new muslin wheels,” as they were called.
So great was the impetus given to manufacture by the invention of the mule that, within less than six years of its introduction, the number of inhabitants in Bolton had doubled; whilst in the neighbouring town of Bury, which had “its cotton manufacture originally brought from Bolton,” the increase was even more rapid. In order to provide for his increasing family, and, as is said, to escape the annoyance of his being re-elected overseer, Crompton, in 1791, removed from his pleasant little farm at Oldhams to a house in King Street, Bolton, where he enlarged his spinning operations, filling the attics over his own dwelling and those of the two adjoining houses with additional mules and machinery for manufacturing purposes—his elder boys being now able to assist him in his handicraft.
Five years later he had the misfortune to lose the loving and faithful partner of his joys and sorrows. She had been long ailing, and on the 29th of May, 1796, he followed her remains to their last resting place in the old churchyard at Bolton. It is stated that when he returned from the funeral he sat down broken-hearted and in utter despair; it must have been a sorrowful day for him, for she left him with a family of eight young children. Two of them were lying sick at the time in their cradles, and one died a short time after. The death of his wife made a deep impression on his mind and character. From his childhood he had been imbued with strong religious sentiments, and being of a naturally thoughtful and dreamy disposition, his religion was of a somewhat mystical kind; hence it is not surprising that he should have been led to withdraw from the communion of the Church of England and embrace the tenets of that amiable and philosophic teacher, Emanuel Swedenborg, who at that time had many followers in the town of Bolton. Crompton became a zealous member of the New Jerusalem Church, “taking entire charge of the psalmody,” and occupying his leisure hours in composing hymn-tunes for the choir, which was wont to assemble on Sunday evenings at his house to practise.
He struggled manfully to maintain his young family in comfort and respectability, but he was comparatively helpless in the conduct of business, and altogether unfitted to deal with the practical affairs of life. He wrote on one occasion:—
“I found to my sorrow I was not calculated to contend with men of the world; neither did I know there was such a thing as protection for me on earth! I found I was as unfit for the task that was before me as a child of two years old to contend with a disciplined army.”
When he did attempt to transact business, to such an extent was this weakness of character manifested that, as is said by his biographer—
“When he attended the Manchester Exchange to sell his yarns and muslins, and any rough-and-ready manufacturer ventured to offer him a less price than he had asked, he would invariably wrap up his samples, put them into his pocket, and quietly walk away.”
His countenance was not sufficiently bronzed to enable him to contend successfully with the chafferers on ’Change. Like Watt, who declared he would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain, he hated that jostling with the world inseparable from the conduct of extensive industrial or commercial operations; but, unlike Watt, he was not fortunate enough in the great crisis of his life to have met with a Boulton who had the quickness of perception to determine when to act and the energy of purpose to carry out the measures which his judgment approved.
It was not until 1800, twenty years after the invention of the mule, that any real attempt was made to recompense him for the sacrifices he had made, and for the inestimable benefits he had conferred upon the community in general and the district in which he laboured in particular. To Manchester belongs the credit of originating the movement. Two manufacturers there, Mr. John Kennedy, one of the founders of the great cotton-spinning firm of M’Connel and Kennedy, and Mr. George Lee, of the firm of Philips and Lee, appreciating the talents of the struggling inventor, started a subscription for the purpose of providing a comfortable competence for him in his declining years. The time was not opportune, and their efforts were in consequence only partially successful. It was the year in which Napoleon’s overtures for peace were haughtily and offensively rejected by Lord Grenville; the war with France had imposed additional burdens upon the people, who were already suffering from a prolonged depression of trade; the scarcity caused by a deficiency in the harvest was commonly regarded as a consequence of the war; the country was on the brink of famine; mobs paraded the streets, and the Habeas Corpus Act had to be suspended to avoid the social danger to which a continuance of the rioting must of necessity lead. Comparatively few subscriptions were received; the kindly effort stuck fast, and eventually it had to be abandoned.[52] Between four and five hundred pounds was all that could be realised, and that was handed to Crompton, who sunk it in his little manufacturing establishment for spinning and weaving. His biographer says—