Iron, Steam & Money

by Roger Osborne

  The myths surrounding Arkwright’s invention of the water-frame are legion. There are claims that he was working on a perpetual-motion machine, that a sailor in his barber’s shop had told him of a Chinese spinning device, and that he stole the idea from a customer who was a cabinetmaker. The central legend, however, derives from Arkwright’s dealings with two local men – Thomas Highs and John Kay – and it has become the most contentious story of the Industrial Revolution.

  Thomas Highs was a reed-maker based in Leigh, Lancashire, and in the 1760s he too was working on ideas for a spinning machine. He enlisted the help of his neighbour John Kay, a clockmaker (a different John Kay from the inventor of the flying shuttle) and by 1765 the two men were working on a machine using rollers. Arkwright met Kay in March 1767 and again in October in Warrington where the clockmaker lived. Kay told Arkwright about his work with Highs, and with Arkwright’s input Kay was able to build a model based on the design he had developed with Highs. Arkwright took the machine to Manchester and then to Preston.

  According to Arkwright’s modern biographer, Robert Fitton, this is the point at which the claims of priority for Highs and Kay become secondary to the clear evidence of Arkwright’s singular inventive persistence. Essentially the two mechanics had designed and built a series of rollers, in the spirit of Lewis Paul, with a fly and bobbin taken from a Saxon wheel. Arkwright’s task was then to make this device fulfil its intended task of spinning fine, even, cotton thread. He had to address two problems. First, the spacing of the pairs of rollers was key to the drawing out of the thread and was related to the lengths of fibre within the cotton – too close and the internal fibres would break, too far apart and the thread would remain uneven. Second, the degree of pressure between each pair of rollers was essential to separating out the twisting of the thread, later in the process, from the earlier drawing. Arkwright understood that in the Saxony wheel the operator does this by hand, holding the roving so that the spinning action does not work its way back up into the undrawn thread; Lewis Paul’s machine had not managed this and the result was uneven, lumpy thread.

  In 1768 Richard Arkwright left Preston for Nottingham (co-incidentally the same year as James Hargreaves arrived there), then a town of 15,000 or so inhabitants with a tradition of stocking knitting. The reasons for Arkwright’s move from his native Lancashire have been hotly debated; some have argued that he went there to escape the notice of Thomas Highs, others have pointed to the potential hostility of Lancashire spinners. The pull may have been stronger than the push, though: here was a ready market for cotton yarn, as well as a few thousand workers used to working with, making and repairing complex textile machines – there were more than 1,200 knitting frames in Nottingham at that time.

  Arkwright arrived in Nottingham with two relatives, John Smalley and David Thornley, with whom he immediately went into partnership as ‘Joint Adventurers and Partners’ in a venture to exploit his new spinning machine. Each would put in enough money for a patent to be obtained and to exploit the invention for commercial gain. Each of the three was to own three-ninths of their company, and up to £500 the profits would be divided evenly. After that, Arkwright would take 10 per cent over and above the others. This arrangement was to last for fourteen years, but early on in the development of the enterprise Thornley could no longer put in the required funds and sold part of his share to Smalley.

  In July 1769 a patent was granted for Arkwright’s spinning frame. The specification drawing was detailed, showing not only how the thread was to be drawn and spun, but how the bobbins could be adjusted to run faster or slower, how weights kept the rollers tight and how the power was taken off from the main factory driveshaft via a wheel and belt. Almost immediately the partners took the lease on some land in Nottingham in order to build a cotton-spinning works. The cost was £105 up front, plus £50 rent per year, and the location in the ninety-one-year lease was specified as: ‘All that Messuage, Burgage and Tenement with the Outhouses Buildings Maltrooms Barn Stable Yard Garden Close or Paddock thereunto adjoining . . . in Nottingham . . . in or near two certain streets or Places there called Goosegate and Hockley.’3 This was near to the location of Hargreaves’s mill, established earlier in 1769. Soon more money was needed than Smalley could supply, and the partnership was forced to seek funds elsewhere. The Nottingham bankers Ichabod and John Wright were interested, but felt that they too had insufficient funds and passed Arkwright on to Samuel Need, an investor who had made a fortune from his investment in Jedediah Strutt’s Derby rib machine. Need persuaded Arkwright to show a model of his machine to Strutt and, in January 1770, in an agreement that would have vast historical effects, Samuel Need and Strutt handed over £500 in return for a half-share in Richard Arkwright & Co. Someone who knew all three men later commented: ‘Arkwright was the head, Strutt the hands and Need the sinews, for he had the purse.’4

  Immediately the firm commissioned a builder to construct a horse-powered mill on their land in Nottingham. However, even before this mill opened, the partners, in a radically bold move, decided to build a mill powered by water at Cromford, a remote village twenty-six miles away. Water had been used for textile mills before, notably at the Lombe silk mill in Derby and Lewis Paul’s Northampton mill, and it seems that Arkwright and Strutt were looking for large amounts of constant power for their machinery. The Derwent Valley was an established site for water-powered manufactories, already boasting a corn mill and a smelting mill for the local lead-mining operation. Looking back at Cromford, Arkwright described it as: ‘a place affording a remarkable fine Stream of Water, And in a Country very full of inhabitants vast numbers of whom & small children are constantly Employed in the Works’.5 The partners leased land and the rights to the waters of Bonsall Brook for £14 per year ‘Together with full and free Liberty Power and Authority . . . to Erect and Build one or more Mill or Mills for Spinning Winding or Throwing Silk Worsted Linen Cotton or other Materials and also such and so many Waterwheels Warehouses Shops Smithies and other Buildings Banks and Dams Gail Shuttles and other Conveniences as they should think proper for the effectual Working of the said Mills.’6

  They then bought Steephill Grange, a 1714 house, and used the stone to build a mill which became the template for industrial buildings across the world for the next 150 years. These buildings had little precedent in English or indeed world architecture, yet now they look as perfectly constructed as they could be. Arkwright had to work out how the power take-off from the waterwheel would operate, how the machinery would allow the work to flow without hold-ups or overstocking, how each operation would communicate physically with the others, and how the workers would best be positioned to run and repair the machines. Then he had to recruit men to build the machinery. Meanwhile he had to work out how much the mill would cost to run and how much profit he might make. All of this for a man who was trained as a wig-maker.

  Fortunately Arkwright seemed to have limitless confidence in himself and his invention, as well as in the demand for cotton thread. Recruiting workers from the families of local miners and craftsmen, his advert in the Derby Mercury on 13 December 1771 read:

  COTTON MILL, CROMFORD. 10th December 1771.

  WANTED Immediately, two Journeymen Clock-Maker, or others that understands Tooth and Pinion well: Also a Smith that can forge and file. Likewise two Wood Turners that have been accustomed to Wheel-making, Spoke-turning, &c. Weavers residing in his Neighbourhood, by applying at the Mill, may have good work. There is Employment at the above Place for Women, Children, &c., and good Wages.7

  Here we are witnessing a key factor in the Industrial Revolution: the fetching in of long-developed skills in mechanical trades and cloth trades into a unified production system. Workers such as George Hodges, whose indenture certificate survives, were hired on an eleven-year contract with weekly wages starting at ten shillings and rising to thirteen shillings for a thirteen-hour day, six-day week. Hodges was bound to the Arkwright firm for £10,000 – meaning that he could not leave bef
ore his contract was fulfilled without incurring a massive fine. This ensured that workers did not take the secrets of Arkwright’s production methods elsewhere.

  A long letter to his partner Jedediah Strutt, written from Cromford in March 1772, shows Arkwright in full flow: ‘Sir Yours yesterday came to hand together with a bill from mr Need Value £60. I have sent a little cotton spun on the one spindle & find no Difficanty in Getting it from the Bobbin & Dubeld & Twisted in the maner you see it at one opration one hand I think will do 40 or 50lb of it in one day from the bobbins it is spun upon.’ The letter continues for another 1,500 words or so, covering production, supplies, wayward workers, the possibility of spinning worsted wool on his machine, the need for a fire pump, as well as locks for the doors and a large knocker or bell in order to ‘Let no persons in to Look at the works except spinning.’8

  Once the first Cromford mill was up and running and making money for him, Arkwright began to show his unparalleled skill as a deal-maker. First he had to address a historic difficulty in the cotton industry. As we have seen the 1721 calico Act imposed duties on the sale of printed calicoes in order to protect British textiles from cheap Indian imports. While Arkwright’s frame made the Act redundant – calico and other fine cotton cloth was being produced at home – frustratingly, makers were being treated inconsistently by the notoriously fickle excise men. In June 1774 Arkwright and Strutt persuaded Parliament to pass an Act that distinguished home-made from Indian cotton which continued to be restricted. British cloth would have three blue threads running in the selvage and it would be stamped ‘British Manufactory’. The result was a massive influx of investment into the British cotton industry. British calicoes continued to attract a duty of 3d per length and the increase in duty revenues – from £710 in 1775, to £14,288 in 1780 and £44,732 in 1783 – shows the rapid expansion in the trade. Arkwright had pushed open the door.

  Even before the cotton boom, the barber from Bolton had become the world’s first industrialist. By 1775 he had developed a new carding machine that, together with his spinning frame, effectively covered the whole production process from raw cotton wool to finished thread. When he sought a patent for his new machine he saw no reason to include his original partners in this; in fact he wanted rid of Smalley, whom he now regarded as an impediment. But Smalley would not go quietly and the legal wrangles went on until February 1777, when he agreed to take £3,202 16s 5½d from Arkwright, Need and Strutt for his share in the original patent and the partnership’s mills in Nottingham and Cromford; he would also be paid £100 a month until the expiry of the original spinning-frame patent. Though he had agreed not to set up in competition, Smalley soon opened a thriving spinning mill at Holywell in Flintshire. When Samuel Need died in 1781 his executors sold his interests in the company to Arkwright and Strutt for around £20,000 – the two men were now in control of their own fortunes.

  Arkwright’s personal finances were cloaked in secrecy, but there can be no doubt that the Cromford mill and the licensing of his machinery to others brought huge financial success. By 1775, just three years after the opening of Cromford, Elizabeth Strutt wrote to her father Jedediah: ‘Mr Arkwright came here on Wednesday night & brought his daughter a very pretty letter from her Brother – and would you think it – a very elegant little watch whitch he bought for her at Manchester – on thursday morning they sett off from here to Birmingham my sister and Miss Arkwright in genteel riding dresses . . . They talk’d of going to France & the whole Town believes they are gone there but every body thinks they will not like it.’9

  Strutt too had become a wealthy man, as once again his daughter appreciated: ‘Findern [her mother’s home village] is a strange desolate place now – I used to think it very fine & have spent many a happy day there, but I think I am happier now – everyone is surprised when they consider what we are, and what we have been. I often think of it & I never think of it but my heart & eyes overflow with joy & gratitude. I can never thank you enough, nor ever repay the vast, vast debt I owe you.’10 That phrase ‘what we are, and what we have been’ speaks volumes; it was now possible to rise up in society and become something different through money.

  The original mill at Cromford was closest to Arkwright’s heart; he built a house there, became the ostensible lord of the manor, and based his business and social interests in the village. In 1776 a second mill, 130 feet long and seven storeys high, was put up at Cromford, doubling the firm’s output. Spinning work was now being done through the night and preparatory work in the day. In 1790 John Byng, the author of a series of travel diaries, wrote: ‘I saw the workers issue forth at 7 o’clock, a wonderful crowd of young people, made as familiar as eternal intercourse can make them; a new set then goes in for the night, for the mills never leave off working . . . these cotton mills, seven stories high, and fill’d with inhabitants, remind me of a first rate man of war; and when they are lighted up, on a dark night, look most luminously beautiful.’11

  In 1784 it was recorded that the Arkwright mills ‘are worked night and day or at least 23 of the 24 hours one hour is allowed for examining oiling and cleaning. There is a regular relief of hands watch and watch about as in a ship.’12

  Once the Cromford mills were a proven success, the stage was set for Arkwright to expand his industrial empire. In 1777 plans were laid for a new mill at Chorley in Arkwright’s native Lancashire. Around £4,400 had already been spent on the new building when disaster struck. The American War of Independence had cut off supplies of cotton to Lancashire hand-spinners and the sight of mechanised mills taking what little there was enraged them. Josiah Wedgwood described what he saw as he travelled to Bolton through the west side of Manchester on 2 October 1779: ‘In our way to this place, a little on this side of Chowbent, we met several hundred people in the road. I believe there might be about five hundred; and upon inquiring of one of them the occasion of their being together in so great a number, he told me they had been destroying some engines, and meant to serve them so through all the country.’13

  Two days later a crowd of around 8,000 destroyed Arkwright’s mill at Chorley, with rumours flying that the rioters also had his Derbyshire cotton mills in their sights. A hastily convened force of cavalry, passing through Derbyshire on its way to Manchester, calmed local fears, and the people of the Derwent Valley who had benefitted from Arkwright’s mills also took steps to defend them. In the event the rioters did not get to Cromford, and the rebellion subsided.

  Undeterred by his Chorley setback Arkwright immediately built a spinning mill at Harlam where he installed a steam engine to pump water. Arkwright and his son Richard also bought interests in mills across Derbyshire from Cressbrook to Wirksworth, Darley Abbey and just north of Cromford at Masson. The Masson mill, built in 1783, still stands, a timber-framed red-brick building, 150 feet long and thirty feet wide, five storeys high and topped with a fine cupola.14 Following a fire in November 1781 Arkwright rebuilt his original mill in Nottingham and began corresponding with Boulton & Watt; but he did not take the plunge and order a steam engine to drive the mill. Finally he became convinced of the advantage of steam over water power and, in 1790, ordered an engine to drive his mill at Hockley near Nottingham.

  From the mid-1770s until his death in 1792 Arkwright was a man on fire, making deals, buying and selling land, setting up new ventures with new partners and selling off others. No doubt this made him a desirable man to know, but also an exasperating man to deal with, as James Watt confirmed in 1784: ‘Some years ago he [Arkwright] applied to us at two different times for our advice which we took the trouble to give him, in one or more long letters, which he never had the manners to answer but followed his own Whims till he threw away several 1000£s and exposed his ignorance to all the world, & then in disgust gave up the scheme.’15 Watt’s frustration is understandable but, as we shall see, he later stood by Arkwright in his troubles over patents, and regarded him as a bona fide fellow inventor when others did not.

  Sir Richard Arkwright

/>   Arkwright extended his empire into Staffordshire, Manchester and, with a spectacular visit in 1784, Scotland. By then mills were already using his machines illegally at Penicuik, Rothesay and Dovecothall in Renfrew, and through legal licence at Paisley, where Corse, Burns & Co. had built a six-storey mill. While the American war disrupted cotton imports, it devastated the tobacco firms of Glasgow, who then became eager to diversify; Arkwright, on the other hand, battled continually with the Manchester cotton spinners and saw Scotland as an ideal ground for expansion. During his visit in the autumn of 1784, he was feted in Paisley where ‘for his good deeds done and to be done for the well and utility of the Burgh . . . was by the magistrates and Town Councill . . . Made and Created a free Burgess’. The Glasgow Mercury of 7 October 1784 went on to report: ‘Mr Richard Arkwright, Esq of Cromford, Derbyshire, the ingenious manufacturer of cotton yarn, was in town, on a tour to view the Manufactures of Scotland . . . On Friday [1 October] they were entertained by the Lord Provost and magistrates in the Town-hall, and Mr Arkwright presented with the freedom of the city.’16

  Arkwright was treated as a hero who would bring the riches of the cotton trade to Scotland. Among those who greeted him was David Dale, the owner of cotton mills at Lanark. One story suggests that Dale took Arkwright to the Clyde Falls immediately after a banquet, knowing that the site would impress his cash-rich visitor. Together they agreed to build mills at New Lanark, powered by the spectacular water flow, and spinning there began in 1786. The partnership ended soon after, however, and the mills would pass to Dale’s son-in-law Robert Owen in 1810, who became famous for his principles of common ownership and philanthropy. After his visit to the Clyde Falls Arkwright travelled on to Aberdeen, where he helped to set up a mill at Woodside and offered to train local workers at Cromford, and finally to Perth where cotton works were built at Stanley on the Tay.