Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Arkwright took out his first patent in 1769, the same year that Watt patented his steam-engine with a separate condenser. A little later, with his partners Need and Strutt, he built a very complete factory at Cromford, on the Derwent River. He had already shown his power of originating and perfecting a working machine, now he showed an additional ability for organizing a great manufactory, and improving and adding new devices to his original model. This was the test of his strength, and perhaps the most wonderful part of his character. Many men have come upon new ideas, and many have sent them forth to improve the world’s work, but only a few have developed them, day in and day out, until they stand forth as a finished achievement. That is the gauge, the test that has proved the inventor. Not Watt’s first innovations on the stationary steam-engine, nor Stephenson’s building of his original locomotive, nor Arkwright’s discovery that rollers could be used to draw the cotton, but the years of trial and improvement Watt spent at Birmingham, and Stephenson in his shops at Killingworth, and Arkwright in his factory at Cromford, have made the three men famous in history. They were the years of patience and perseverance, which must come in the life of every great inventor to test his strength.

The country people about Cromford came to see Arkwright’s machines, and wonder at them, and sometimes to buy a dozen pairs of stockings that had been made of Arkwright’s yarn. But the big Manchester manufacturers refused to trade with him. The fine water-twist that was being spun on his spinning-frames was perfectly adapted to be used as warp, and would have supplied the demand for genuine cotton goods, which otherwise had to be imported from India. But, though they needed his yarn, the manufacturers would not buy it from him, and he was forced to find some way of using his large output himself. First he used it to manufacture stockings, and then, in 1773, to make, for the first time in England, fabrics entirely of cotton. This was the turning point in England’s trade in cotton goods. Heretofore she had not been able to meet the demands of her own people, now she was to commence a campaign that was ultimately to send her cloth to the farthest ends of the earth.

His powers of resistance were to be still further tested. An act was passed, based on the assumption that the English spinners could never compete with the fine Indian handiwork, that a duty of sixpence a yard should be levied on all calicoes, which were a variety of cotton goods originally imported from Calicut, in India. In addition, the sale of printed calicoes was forbidden. The customs officers immediately began to levy the duty on the products of Arkwright’s mills, claiming that the goods were in reality calicoes, although they were made in England. It followed that merchants who had ordered goods from the Cromford Mill cancelled their orders, rather than pay the duty, and again Arkwright found his cottons piling up on his hands.

The act was too unfair to stand, and after a time was repealed. Cotton and all mixed fabrics were taxed threepence per yard, and the prohibition on printed cotton goods was withdrawn. The opposition of rival manufacturers could not in the nature of things long retard what was to become one of the nation’s main industries.

He took out his second patent in 1775, and it embraced almost the entire field of cloth manufacture. It contained innumerable devices that he had worked out during the years he had been experimenting at his factory. It covered “carding, drawing, and roving machines for use in preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spinning.” The man who had been a vendor of wigs had now revolutionized the whole spinning world. He had taught men and women to work at his machines, instead of in the old way of individual hand labor, he had organized a great business, and was showing the world that more could be accomplished by the division of labor and its control by one mind than could ever have resulted from individual initiative. In this way he was taking a most vital part in the progress of those new economic ideas that were dawning into consciousness toward the close of the eighteenth century.

It is so easy to see the successful result, so difficult to appreciate the trials that have been undergone. We look at the great picture and we admire the genius of the artist, but how rarely we realize the no less wonderful patience, the no less wonderful struggle that underlies what we see. The creator has not wrought easily, that is certain; and his greatness consists in what he has overcome.

Arkwright was ill with asthma during many of the years when he was fighting for his fortune, and time and again it seemed as if his strength must fail before the task he had undertaken. But he was a great fighter, and so he won through. His workmen were offered bribes to leave his service, and teach his methods to rivals, his patents were infringed, right and left there was warfare, and he was fighting a score of enemies single-handed.

In 1781 he had to bring suit against Colonel Mordaunt, and eight other manufacturers, for infringing his patent. The influence of all the Lancashire cotton-spinners was aligned against his claims. They could not deny the fact that he had invented the spinning-jenny, but they said that the specifications of his patent were not sufficiently clear. The court upheld this contention, and declared the patent invalid. Arkwright withdrew the other suits he had started, and wrote and published his “Case,” in order to set forth to the world the truth of his claims.

In 1785 he brought his case again into court, and this time Lord Loughborough ruled that his patent was valid. On account of this conflict of decisions the matter was referred to the Court of King’s Bench. Here a Lancashire man named Highs, who had constructed a double jenny to work fifty-six spindles in 1770, was declared by Arkwright’s opponents to be the real inventor. It was said that Arkwright had stolen this man’s ideas. On such evidence Arkwright’s claims were denied, and his patent overruled. This was the species of constant warfare with which he had to occupy himself.

Manchester had fought against the spinning-frame for years, but it was to receive the chief fruits of its success. Arkwright built a mill there in 1780, and it prospered exceedingly, in spite of the fact that he no longer had the protection of his patents. He was such a good business man, such a splendid organizer, that he could overcome his enemies without that help, and in time he built up a fortune.