Excellent as was the yarn produced by the spinning-jenny and the
water-frame, compared with the old hand-spun stuff, it was coarse and
full of knots; and when a demand arose for imitations of the fine India
muslins, the weavers found they could produce but a very poor piece of
work with such rough materials.
Among those who were inconvenienced for want of a better sort of yarn
was young Samuel Crompton, who lived with his widowed mother and two
sisters in an old country house called Hall-in-the-Wood, near what was
then the little rural town of Bolton in the Moors. When Samuel was only
five years old his father died, and left his widow with the three
children on her hands, to struggle through the world as best she could.
A hard-working, energetic, God-fearing woman, she buckled to the fight
with a stout heart and a resolute will. Her husband had been both farmer
and weaver, like most of the men in that quarter; and she did her best
to fill his place, looking after the little farm and the three cows, and
working at the loom, the yarn for which she taught the bairns to spin.
Whatever she took in hand she did with might and main, and the result
was, her webs were the best woven, her butter the richest, her honey the
purest, her home-made wines the finest flavoured of any in the district.
Small as her means were, she gave her boy the best education that could
be got in Bolton--first at a day-school, and afterwards, when he was old
enough to take his place by day between the treadles, at a night-school.
Rigid in her sense of duty, and resolute to do her own share of the
work, she exacted the same from others, and kept her lad tightly to the
loom. Every day he had to do a certain quantity of work; and there was
no looking her in the face unless each evening saw it done, and well
done too. Anxious to satisfy his mother, and yet get time for his
favourite amusement of fiddle-making and fiddle-playing, Sam grew
quickly sensitive of the imperfections of the machinery he had to work
with. "He was plagued to deeath," he used to say, "wi' mendin' the
broken threeads;" and could not help thinking many a time whether the
jenny could not be improved so as to spin more quickly, and produce a
better thread. By the time he came to man's estate, in 1774, his
thoughts had settled so far into a track, that he was able to begin
making a contrivance of his own, which he hoped would accomplish the
object he had in view. He had a few common tools which had belonged to
his father, but his own clasp-knife served nearly every purpose in his
ready hands. He had his "bits of things" filed at the smithy, and to get
money for materials, he fiddled at the theatre for 1s. 6d. a night.
Every minute he could spare from the task-work of the day was spent in
his little room over the porch of the hall in forwarding his invention.
As it advanced, he grew more and more engrossed with it, and often the
dawn found him still at work on it. The good folks down in Bolton were
sorely puzzled to think what light it was that was so often seen
glimmering at uncanny hours up at the old hall. The story went abroad
that the place was haunted, and that the ghost of some former resident,
uneasy from the sorrows or the sins of his past life, kept watch and
ward till cock crow, with a spectral lamp. The mystery was cleared up at
last. It was discovered that the ghost was only Sam Crompton "fashing
himself over bits of wood and iron;" and Sam was pointed out as a
"conjuror"--the cant term for inventor--when he walked through the town.
The five years of labour and anxiety bore fruit in 1779, when the
"mule-jenny" with its spindle carriage was finished and set to work. As
its name indicates, it was an ingenious cross between the jenny and the
water-frame, combining the best features of both with several novel
ones, which rendered it a very valuable machine.
Just as Crompton had put the finishing touches to his mule, the weavers
and spinners broke out in open riot at Blackburn, and scoured the
country with the cry, "Men, not machines;" breaking every machine they
could lay hands on. To keep himself out of trouble and save his mule,
Crompton took it to pieces, and hid it in the roof of the hall. When the
storm had swept past, he brought it out, put it together, and began to
use it in his daily work. The fine yarn he turned out made quite a
sensation, and the fame of his invention spread far and wide. People
came from all quarters to get a sight of it; and when denied admittance,
brought ladders and harrows, and climbed up to the window of the room
where it stood. One pertinacious fellow actually ensconced himself for
several days in the cockloft, from which he watched Crompton at work in
the room below, through a gimlet hole he bored in the ceiling. Crompton
lost all patience with this constant espionage. "Why couldn't folk let
him enjoy his machine by himself?" he asked. A friend, whose advice he
asked, urged him not to think of taking out a patent, but to make a
present of his invention to the community at large. Save me from my
friends, Crompton might well have cried. Simple, guileless fellow that
he was, he acted on his "friend's" advice, and on a number of
manufacturers putting down their names for subscriptions varying from a
guinea to a crown, threw open the invention to the world. When the time
came for the subscriptions to be called in, some of the manufacturers
actually were base enough to refuse payment of the paltry sums they had
promised, and overwhelmed with abuse the man by the fruit of whose brain
they were making their fortunes. When all the money was collected, it
amounted to only L60, just as much as built Crompton a new machine, with
no more than four spindles.
Shy, simple, confiding, innocent of the cunning ways of the world, sadly
backward in the study of mankind, and perhaps somewhat ungenial and
unpractised to boot, Crompton, from the time when one would have thought
he had set his foot on the first round of the ladder of fortune, went
stumbling on from one misfortune to another, ill-used on every side, and
unsuccessful in every effort to get on in the world. Wheedled out of his
patent rights, cheated of the money promised him, his workmen lured away
from him as soon as he had taught them the construction of the mule, he
grew morbid and distrustful of everyone. He would have no more workmen;
and as the production of his machines was thus restricted to the labours
of his own hands, he could not compete with the large factories, who
drew all the customers away from him. Peel, the father of the statesman,
offered him first a lucrative place of trust, and afterwards a
partnership; but he would not listen to him. He grew more wretched and
discouraged every day. In despair he cut up his spinning machines, and
hacked to pieces with an axe a carding machine he had invented,
exclaiming bitterly, "They shall not have this too."
He then retired into comparative obscurity at Oldham, where he drudged
away at weaving, farming, cow-keeping, and overseeing the poor, and
found it no easy matter withal to support his family, for he had married
some years before. Afterwards he re-appeared at Bolton as a small
manufacturer; and there was a brief interval of sunshine. The muslin
trade was very brisk, and the weavers walked about with five-pound notes
stuck in their hats, and dressed out in ruffled shirts and top boots,
like fine gentlemen. While this lasted Crompton found abundant sale for
his superior yarn. But trade grew depressed, and the gloom settled over
Crompton's life to its close.
The idea was started of getting Parliament to do something for him; but
he was too independent to supplicate government officials in person.
Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was willing to
befriend him; but Crompton's ill luck was at his heels. On the 11th of
May 1812, Crompton was talking with Peel and another gentleman in the
lobby of the House of Commons, when Perceval walked up to them, saying,
"You will be glad to know we mean to propose L20,000 for Crompton. Do
you think it will be satisfactory?" Crompton walked away out of delicacy
not to hear the answer. An instant afterwards there was a great shout,
and a rush of people in alarm. Perceval lay bathed in his own blood,
slain by the bullet of the assassin Bellingham. Crompton had lost his
friend.
When the subject of a grant to the inventor of the spinning-mule was
brought up in the House a few days afterwards by Lord Stanley (now Lord
Derby), only L5000 was proposed. No one thought of increasing it. "Let's
give the man a L100 a-year," said an honourable member; "it's as much as
he can drink." So the vote was agreed to; though at that very time the
duty accruing to the revenue from the cotton wool imported to be spun
upon the mule was L300,000 a-year, or more than L1000 a working day. The
impulse which this invention gave to the cotton manufactures of Great
Britain, and the commercial prosperity to which it led, enabled the
country to bear the heavy drain of the war taxes; and it has been said,
with no little truth, that Crompton contributed as much as Wellington to
the downfall of Napoleon. As soon as it became known, the mule-spindle
took the lead in cotton-spinning machines. In 1811 above 4,600,000
mule-spindles, made by his pattern, were in use. At the present time it
is calculated that there are upwards of 30,000,000 in use in Great
Britain; and the increase goes on at the rate of above 1,000,000 a-year.
In France there were in 1850 about 3,000,000 spindles on Crompton's
principle; and one firm of mule makers (Hibbert, Platt, and Company, of
Oldham), make mules at the rate of 500,000 spindles a-year. The immense
impetus given to trade, money, civilization, and comfort by this
invention is almost incalculable.
The grant of L5000 was soon swallowed up in the payment of his debts,
and in meeting the losses of his business. "Nothing more was ever done
for him. The king, who was fond of patronizing merit, took no notice of
him; his eldest son was promised a commission, which he did not get; and
some time after, when struggling through life on only L100 a-year, the
post of sub-inspector of the factories in Bolton became vacant; though
he applied for the office, for which he was eminently qualified, he was
passed over in favour of the natural son of one of the ex-secretaries of
state--a man who did not know a mule from a spinning-jenny."[B]
Crompton spent his last days in poverty and privation, and died at the
age of seventy-four, in 1827.