When he had started his first mill at Nottingham Arkwright had been obliged to use horse-power, and it was owing to the expense of such a system that he had soon moved to Cromford, where he could obtain water-power from the Derwent River. It was this that gave his yarn the name of water-twist. But in his Manchester Mill he made use of a hydraulic wheel, supplied with water by a single-stroke atmospheric steam-engine. Later Boulton and Watt’s engines were installed, and with the most profitable results. As a result of these improvements the imports of cotton wool, which had averaged less than 5,000,000 pounds a year in the five years from 1771 to 1775, rose to an average of more than 25,000,000 pounds in the five years ending with 1790. England began to export cotton goods in 1781, which was sufficient evidence that the manufacture of such goods was proceeding more rapidly than the home demand for them. This was due largely to Arkwright’s invention, to his building up of factories on new methods, and to the great help furnished to all machinery by the steam-engines of James Watt.
This is the romance of the dealer in wigs and dyes. He had won fame and fortune, and a powerful position in his country. In 1786 he was appointed High Sheriff in Derbyshire, and the same year was knighted by George III. He died at Cromford in 1792.
His personality was strong, aggressive, dominating. Nothing could turn him from his course when he had made up his mind in regard to it. He was determined to make a fortune out of cotton-spinning, and he did, in spite of the loss of his patents, and the rivals who were always pursuing him. He stands high as inventor, and quite as high as one of the makers of modern commercial England.
VI
WHITNEY AND THE COTTON-GIN
1765-1825
Cotton-growing has been for a long time the main industry of the Southern United States, and the exporting of cotton by that part of the country has largely fed the mills of the world. Yet in 1784 the customs officers at Liverpool seized eight bags of cotton arriving on an American vessel, claiming that so much of the raw material could not have been produced in the thirteen states. In 1793 the total export of cotton from the United States was less than ten thousand bales, but by 1860 the export was four million bales. The chief reason for this marvelous advance was the cotton-gin, for which Eli Whitney applied for a patent in 1793.
Wherever cotton grew in the South there the cotton-gin was to be found. It brought prosperity and ease and comfort, it allowed the small as well as the large owner to have his share of the profits of the markets of the world. It gave the cotton country its living, and yet Whitney struggled for years to win the slightest recognition of his claims. He wrote to Robert Fulton, “In one instance I had great difficulty in proving that the machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the court-house.”
He came to the South from New England, having been born in Westborough, Worcester County, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765, educated at Yale College, and going to Georgia as teacher in a private family. General Greene, of Savannah, took a great interest in him, and taught him law. Whitney had been a good student, had an attractive personality, and had already shown a natural knack for mechanics. While he was teaching at the Greenes’ home he noticed that the embroidery frame that Mrs. Greene used tore the fine threads of her work. He asked her to let him study it, and shortly had made a frame on an entirely different plan that would do the same work without injuring the threads. His hostess was delighted with it, and spread the word of her young teacher’s ingenuity through the neighborhood.
As in all Southern mansions hospitality was rife at the Greenes’, and it happened that one evening a number of gentlemen were gathered there who had fought under the General in the Revolution. The subject of the growing of cotton came under discussion, and some one spoke of the unfortunate fact that no method had been found for cleaning the cotton staple of the green seed. If that could be done cotton could be grown with profit on all the land that was unsuited for rice. To separate a single pound of the clean staple from the green seed took a whole day’s work for a woman. There was little profit in trying to grow much cotton at such a rate, and most of the cotton picking was done by the negroes in the evenings, when the harder labor of the fields was finished. Then Mrs. Greene pointed to Eli Whitney with a smile. “There, gentlemen,” said she, “apply to my friend Mr. Whitney for your device. He can make anything.” The guests looked at the young man, but he hastened to disclaim any such abilities, and said that he had never even seen cotton-seed.