Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

placed in his hands to repair, he forthwith set himself to

learn all that was then known about heat, evaporation, and

condensation,—at the same time plodding his way in mechanics and

the science of construction,—the results of which he at length

embodied in his condensing steam-engine.

 

For ten years he went on contriving and inventing—with little hope

to cheer him, and with few friends to encourage him. He went on,

meanwhile, earning bread for his family by making and selling

quadrants, making and mending fiddles, flutes, and musical

instruments; measuring mason-work, surveying roads, superintending

the construction of canals, or doing anything that turned up, and

offered a prospect of honest gain. At length, Watt found a fit

partner in another eminent leader of industry—Matthew Boulton, of

Birmingham; a skilful, energetic, and far-seeing man, who

vigorously undertook the enterprise of introducing the condensing-engine into general use as a working power; and the success of both

is now matter of history. {5}

 

Many skilful inventors have from time to time added new power to

the steam-engine; and, by numerous modifications, rendered it

capable of being applied to nearly all the purposes of manufacture-

-driving machinery, impelling ships, grinding corn, printing books,

stamping money, hammering, planing, and turning iron; in short, of

performing every description of mechanical labour where power is

required. One of the most useful modifications in the engine was

that devised by Trevithick, and eventually perfected by George

Stephenson and his son, in the form of the railway locomotive, by

which social changes of immense importance have been brought about,

of even greater consequence, considered in their results on human

progress and civilization, than the condensing-engine of Watt.

 

One of the first grand results of Watt’s invention,—which placed

an almost unlimited power at the command of the producing classes,-

-was the establishment of the cotton-manufacture. The person most

closely identified with the foundation of this great branch of

industry was unquestionably Sir Richard Arkwright, whose practical

energy and sagacity were perhaps even more remarkable than his

mechanical inventiveness. His originality as an inventor has

indeed been called in question, like that of Watt and Stephenson.

Arkwright probably stood in the same relation to the spinning-machine that Watt did to the steam-engine and Stephenson to the

locomotive. He gathered together the scattered threads of

ingenuity which already existed, and wove them, after his own

design, into a new and original fabric. Though Lewis Paul, of

Birmingham, patented the invention of spinning by rollers thirty

years before Arkwright, the machines constructed by him were so

imperfect in their details, that they could not be profitably

worked, and the invention was practically a failure. Another

obscure mechanic, a reed-maker of Leigh, named Thomas Highs, is

also said to have invented the water-frame and spinning-jenny; but

they, too, proved unsuccessful.

 

When the demands of industry are found to press upon the resources

of inventors, the same idea is usually found floating about in many

minds;—such has been the case with the steam-engine, the safety-lamp, the electric telegraph, and other inventions. Many ingenious

minds are found labouring in the throes of invention, until at

length the master mind, the strong practical man, steps forward,

and straightway delivers them of their idea, applies the principle

successfully, and the thing is done. Then there is a loud outcry

among all the smaller contrivers, who see themselves distanced in

the race; and hence men such as Watt, Stephenson, and Arkwright,

have usually to defend their reputation and their rights as

practical and successful inventors.

 

Richard Arkwright, like most of our great mechanicians, sprang from

the ranks. He was born in Preston in 1732. His parents were very

poor, and he was the youngest of thirteen children. He was never

at school: the only education he received he gave to himself; and

to the last he was only able to write with difficulty. When a boy,

he was apprenticed to a barber, and after learning the business, he

set up for himself in Bolton, where he occupied an underground

cellar, over which he put up the sign, “Come to the subterraneous

barber—he shaves for a penny.” The other barbers found their

customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard,

when Arkwright, determined to push his trade, announced his

determination to give “A clean shave for a halfpenny.” After a few

years he quitted his cellar, and became an itinerant dealer in

hair. At that time wigs were worn, and wig-making formed an

important branch of the barbering business. Arkwright went about

buying hair for the wigs. He was accustomed to attend the hiring

fairs throughout Lancashire resorted to by young women, for the

purpose of securing their long tresses; and it is said that in

negotiations of this sort he was very successful. He also dealt in

a chemical hair dye, which he used adroitly, and thereby secured a

considerable trade. But he does not seem, notwithstanding his

pushing character, to have done more than earn a bare living.

 

The fashion of wig-wearing having undergone a change, distress fell

upon the wig-makers; and Arkwright, being of a mechanical turn, was

consequently induced to turn machine inventor or “conjurer,” as the

pursuit was then popularly termed. Many attempts were made about

that time to invent a spinning-machine, and our barber determined

to launch his little bark on the sea of invention with the rest.

Like other self-taught men of the same bias, he had already been

devoting his spare time to the invention of a perpetual-motion

machine; and from that the transition to a spinning-machine was

easy. He followed his experiments so assiduously that he neglected

his business, lost the little money he had saved, and was reduced

to great poverty. His wife—for he had by this time married—was

impatient at what she conceived to be a wanton waste of time and

money, and in a moment of sudden wrath she seized upon and

destroyed his models, hoping thus to remove the cause of the family

privations. Arkwright was a stubborn and enthusiastic man, and he

was provoked beyond measure by this conduct of his wife, from whom

he immediately separated.

 

In travelling about the country, Arkwright had become acquainted

with a person named Kay, a clockmaker at Warrington, who assisted

him in constructing some of the parts of his perpetual-motion

machinery. It is supposed that he was informed by Kay of the

principle of spinning by rollers; but it is also said that the idea

was first suggested to him by accidentally observing a red-hot

piece of iron become elongated by passing between iron rollers.

However this may be, the idea at once took firm possession of his

mind, and he proceeded to devise the process by which it was to be

accomplished, Kay being able to tell him nothing on this point.

Arkwright now abandoned his business of hair collecting, and

devoted himself to the perfecting of his machine, a model of which,

constructed by Kay under his directions, he set up in the parlour

of the Free Grammar School at Preston. Being a burgess of the

town, he voted at the contested election at which General Burgoyne

was returned; but such was his poverty, and such the tattered state

of his dress, that a number of persons subscribed a sum sufficient

to have him put in a state fit to appear in the poll-room. The

exhibition of his machine in a town where so many workpeople lived

by the exercise of manual labour proved a dangerous experiment;

ominous growlings were heard outside the school-room from time to

time, and Arkwright,—remembering the fate of Kay, who was mobbed

and compelled to fly from Lancashire because of his invention of

the fly-shuttle, and of poor Hargreaves, whose spinning-jenny had

been pulled to pieces only a short time before by a Blackburn mob,-

-wisely determined on packing up his model and removing to a less

dangerous locality. He went accordingly to Nottingham, where he

applied to some of the local bankers for pecuniary assistance; and

the Messrs. Wright consented to advance him a sum of money on

condition of sharing in the profits of the invention. The machine,

however, not being perfected so soon as they had anticipated, the

bankers recommended Arkwright to apply to Messrs. Strutt and Need,

the former of whom was the ingenious inventor and patentee of the

stocking-frame. Mr. Strutt at once appreciated the merits of the

invention, and a partnership was entered into with Arkwright, whose

road to fortune was now clear. The patent was secured in the name

of “Richard Arkwright, of Nottingham, clockmaker,” and it is a

circumstance worthy of note, that it was taken out in 1769, the

same year in which Watt secured the patent for his steam-engine. A

cotton-mill was first erected at Nottingham, driven by horses; and

another was shortly after built, on a much larger scale, at

Cromford, in Derbyshire, turned by a water-wheel, from which

circumstance the spinning-machine came to be called the water-frame.

 

Arkwright’s labours, however, were, comparatively speaking, only

begun. He had still to perfect all the working details of his

machine. It was in his hands the subject of constant modification

and improvement, until eventually it was rendered practicable and

profitable in an eminent degree. But success was only secured by

long and patient labour: for some years, indeed, the speculation

was disheartening and unprofitable, swallowing up a very large

amount of capital without any result. When success began to appear

more certain, then the Lancashire manufacturers fell upon

Arkwright’s patent to pull it in pieces, as the Cornish miners fell

upon Boulton and Watt to rob them of the profits of their steam-engine. Arkwright was even denounced as the enemy of the working

people; and a mill which he built near Chorley was destroyed by a

mob in the presence of a strong force of police and military. The

Lancashire men refused to buy his materials, though they were

confessedly the best in the market. Then they refused to pay

patent-right for the use of his machines, and combined to crush him

in the courts of law. To the disgust of right-minded people,

Arkwright’s patent was upset. After the trial, when passing the

hotel at which his opponents were staying, one of them said, loud

enough to be heard by him, “Well, we’ve done the old shaver at

last;” to which he coolly replied, “Never mind, I’ve a razor left

that will shave you all.” He established new mills in Lancashire,

Derbyshire, and at New Lanark, in Scotland. The mills at Cromford

also came into his hands at the expiry of his partnership with

Strutt, and the amount and the excellence of his products were

such, that in a short time he obtained so complete a control of the

trade, that the prices were fixed by him, and he governed the main

operations of the other cotton-spinners.

 

Arkwright was a man of great force of character, indomitable

courage, much worldly shrewdness, with a business faculty almost

amounting to genius. At one period his time was engrossed by

severe and continuous labour, occasioned by the organising and

conducting of his numerous manufactories, sometimes from four in

the morning till nine at night. At fifty years of age he set to

work to learn English grammar, and improve himself in writing and

orthography. After overcoming every obstacle, he had the

satisfaction of reaping the reward of his enterprise. Eighteen

years after he had constructed his first machine, he rose to such

estimation in Derbyshire that he was appointed High Sheriff of the

county, and shortly after George III. conferred upon him the honour

of knighthood. He died in 1792. Be it for good or for evil,

Arkwright was the founder in England of the modern factory system,

a branch of industry which has unquestionably proved a source of

immense wealth to individuals and to the nation.

 

All the other great branches of industry