graphy! He was impatient of whatever interfered with his favourite pursuits; and the fact is too strikingly characteristic not to be mentioned, that he separated from his wife not many years after their marriage, because she, convinced that he would starve his family by scheming when he should have been shaving, broke some of his experimental models of machinery. Arkwright was a severe economist of time; and, that he might not waste a moment, he generally travelled with four horses, and at a very rapid speed. His concerns in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Scotland were so extensive and numerous, as to shew at once his astonishing power of transacting business and his all-grasping spirit. In many of these he had partners, but he generally managed in such a way, that, whoever lost, he himself was a gainer. So unbounded was his confidence in the success of his machinery, and in the national wealth to be produced by it, that he would make light of discussions on taxation, and say that he would pay the national debt! His speculative schemes were vast and daring; he contemplated entering into the most extensive mercantile transactions, and buying up all the cotton in the world, in order to make an enormous profit by the monopoly: and from the extravagance of some of these designs, his judicious friends were of opinion, that if he had lived to put them in practice, he might have overset the whole fabric of his prosperity!* Several of these interesting particulars concerning Sir Richard Arkwright I have received from a private source, on which full reliance may be placed ;—s source, I may add, by no means unfavourably disposed to Sir Richard. CHAPTER X. THE SPINNING MACHINERY (CONTINued.) Invention of the Mule by SAMUEL CROMPTON.-Description.-Powers of the mule. -Improved by others.-William Kelly applies water-power to drive the mule.Crompton takes out no patent; receives a grant from parliament: notice of his life.-Self-acting mule invented by Mr. W. Strutt; also by W. Kelly and others.-The self-acting mule of Roberts; its great success.-Improvements on the water-frame.-The throstle.-The fly frame.-The tube frame.-Retrospective glance at the inventions and improvements in cotton spinning-The great importance of these inventions.-Unparalleled progress of the Cotton Manufacture. Cotton wool imported from 1771 to 1790; from 1701 to 1800.Exports of British manufactured cottons from 1701 to 1800.-Comparative rates of progression in the manufacture before and after the mechanical inventions.-Estimated value of the manufacture, and number of cotton mills, mules, jennies, and spindles, in 1787. DURING the period that has now passed under review, Hargreaves and Arkwright had established the Cotton Manufacture by their spinning machines; but those machines were not adapted for the finer qualities of yarn. The water-frame spun twist for warps, but it could not be advantageously used for the finer qualities, as thread of great tenuity has not strength to bear the pull of the rollers when winding itself on the bobbins.* This defect in the spinning machinery was remedied by the invention of another machine, called the Mule, or the Mule Jenny, from its combining the principles of Arkwright's water-frame and Hargreaves's Encyl. Britannica, article " Cotton Manufacture." jenny. Like the former, it has a system of rollers, to reduce the roving; and, like the latter, it has spindles without bobbins to give the twist, and the thread is stretched and spun at the same time by the spindles, after the rollers have ceased to give out the rove. The distinguishing feature of the mule is, that the spindles, instead of being stationary, as in both the other machines, are placed on a moveable carriage, which is wheeled out to the distance of fifty-four or fifty-six inches from the roller-beam, in order to stretch and twist the thread, and wheeled in again to wind it on the spindles. In the jenny, the clasp, which held the rovings, was drawn back by the hand from the spindles; in the mule, on the contrary, the spindles recede from the clasp, or from the roller-beam which acts as a clasp. The rollers of the mule draw out the roving much less than those of the water-frame; and they act like the clasp of the jenny, by stopping and holding fast the rove, after a certain quantity has been given out, whilst the spindles continue to rècede for a short distance further; so that the draught on the thread is in part made by the receding of the spindles. By this arrangement, comprising the advantages both of the rollers and the spindles, the thread is stretched more gently and equably, and a much finer quality of yarn can therefore be produced.* This excellent machine, which has superseded the jenny, and to a considerable extent the water-frame, and which has carried the cotton manufacture to a perfection If the adaptation of the lines may be pardoned, for the sake of the exactness with which they apply, it may be said of Crompton's invention, compounded of the two former inventions— "The force of genius could no further go, To make a third, he joined the other two." |