Wherein he kept full forty men:
And also in his fulling mill,
Full twenty persons kept he still.”
Here, indeed, we have the factory system—in which the division of labor is a conspicuous feature—employed with all its modern details; but not the steam-driven factory, building great cities and changing the whole social life of the kingdom.
The original mode of converting cotton into yarn was by the use of distaff and spindle, a method still employed in the remote parts of India. The distaff is a wooden rod to which a bundle of cotton is tied loosely at one end, and which the spinner holds between the left arm and the body while with his right hand he draws out and twists the cotton into a thread. This simple process is the basis of all the complicated spinning machinery in use at the present time.
In a modern cotton factory there are three departments of labor, carding, spinning, and weaving; and we have now to consider briefly these three processes. The purpose of carding is to clean the cotton and lay the fibres in a uniform direction. This was at first accomplished by hand, the implement employed being little different from an ordinary comb; later an improved device was used consisting of a pair of large wire brushes. This, we must observe, was a primitive operation, and the amount of cotton which one person could thus prepare for spinning was very small.
We have already seen that the invention of the fly-shuttle so increased the demand for yarn that ingenious men were induced to make mechanical experiments for the purpose of supplying this demand—experiments which, in the end, led to the invention of the spinning-frame. The spinning-frame, in turn, increased the demand for carded cotton and skillful mechanics again set about to meet this new requirement, and the result was the building of the carding-engine. This invention was not made at once, nor by any particular individual; but was the result of a number of improvements made at different times and by different persons. One of these men was Thomas High, the inventor of the spinning-jenny; another was James Hargreaves who so improved the jenny that he is commonly called the inventor of it; and finally, Richard Arkwright himself took the crude machine devised by these men and perfected it. Thus it came about that the modern carding-engine as well as the spinning-frame, was made of practical value by this much-enduring, much-inventing barber.
The invention of the fly-shuttle, as we have seen, led to an increased demand for yarn, and this demand was further augmented about the year 1760 when the Manchester merchants began to export cotton goods in considerable quantities to Italy, Germany, and the North American colonies. It was then no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in the morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect yarn enough to serve him for the remainder of the day.
Ingenious mechanics set about the task of producing more yarn. The first of these was Thomas High, a reed maker, residing in the town of Leigh, who engaged one Kay, a clock-maker, and this is the same Kay who was afterwards employed by Arkwright to make the wheels and other apparatus for a spinning-machine. This machine was set up in the garret of High’s house. Now, Thomas High had a daughter who watched with keen interest the progress of his experiments—her name was Jane—and in honor of her he called the machine the spinning-jenny. It is commonly stated—even in so authoritative a history as Baines’s we find the error—that the credit for the original invention of the spinning-jenny is due to Hargreaves, he having made the first machine in 1767. But Guest has shown quite conclusively by the sworn statement of one Thomas Leather, a neighbor of High, that the latter completed a similar machine in 1764.
However this may be, James Hargreaves, a weaver of Stand-Hill, near Blackburn, perfected the original jenny and made it a practical working machine so that history has quite justly named him the author. From the first Hargreaves was aware of the value of his invention, but not having the ambition to obtain a patent he kept the machine as secret as possible, using it only to spin yarn for his own weaving. An unprotected invention of such importance, however, could not remain long the private property of a single weaver, and soon a knowledge of his achievement spread throughout the neighborhood; but instead of gaining admiration and gratitude for Hargreaves, the spinners raised the cry that the invention would throw multitudes out of employment and a mob broke into his house and destroyed his jenny.