In the summer of 1784 a number of gentlemen were chatting, after dinner,
in a country house at Matlock in Derbyshire. Some extensive cotton-mills
had recently been set up in the neighbourhood, and the conversation
turned upon the wonderful inventions which had been introduced for
spinning cotton. There were one or two gentlemen present connected with
the "manufacturing interest," who were very bitter against Arkwright and
his schemes.
"It's all very well," said one of the grumblers, "but what will all this
rapid production of yarn lead to? Putting aside the ruin of the poor
spinners, who will be starved because they haven't as many arms as these
terrible machines, you'll find that it will end in a great deal more
yarn being spun than can be woven into cloth, and in large quantities of
yarn being exported to the Continent, where it will be worked up by
foreign weavers, to the injury of our home manufacture. That will be the
short and the long of it, mark my words."
"Well, but, sir," remarked a grave, portly, middle-aged gentleman of
clerical appearance, after a few minutes' reflection, "when you talk of
the impossibility of the weaving keeping up with the spinning, you
forget that machinery may yet be applied to the former as well as the
latter. Why may there not be a loom contrived for working up yarn as
fast as the spindle produces it. That long-headed fellow Arkwright must
just set about inventing a weaving machine."
"Stuff and nonsense," returned the "practical man" pettishly, as though
it were hardly worth while noticing the remarks of such a dreamer. "You
might as well bid Arkwright grow the cloth ready made. Weaving by
machinery is utterly impossible. You must remember how much more complex
a process it is than spinning, and what a variety of movements it
involves. Weaving by machinery is a mere idle vision, my dear sir, and
shows you know nothing about the operation."
"Well, I must confess my ignorance on the subject of weaving," replied
the clergyman; "but surely it can't be a more complex matter than moving
the pieces in a game of chess. Now, there's an automaton figure now
exhibiting in London, which handles the chess men, and places them on
the proper squares of the board, and makes the most intricate moves, for
all the world as if it were alive. If that can be done, I don't see why
weaving should baffle a clever mechanist. A few years ago we should have
laughed at the notion of doing what Arkwright has done; and I'm certain
that before many years are over, we shall have 'weaving Johnnies,' as
well as 'spinning Jennies.'"
Dr. Cartwright, for that was the clergyman's name, confidently as he
foretold that machine-weaving would be devised before long, little
dreamt at that moment that he was himself to bring about the fulfilment
of his own prediction. A quiet, country clergyman, of literary tastes, a
scholar, and poetaster, he had spent his life hitherto in the discharge
of his ministerial duties, writing articles and verses, and had never
given the slightest attention to mechanics, theoretical or practical. He
had never so much as seen a loom at work, and had not the remotest
notion of the principle or mode of its construction. But the chance
conversation at the Matlock dinner table suddenly roused his interest in
the subject. He walked home meditating on what sort of a process weaving
must be; brooded over the subject for days and weeks,--was often
observed by his family striding up and down the room in a fit of
abstraction, throwing his arms from side to side like a weaver jerking
the shuttles,--and at last succeeded in evolving, as the Germans would
say, from "the depths of his moral consciousness," the idea of a
power-loom. With the help of a smith and a carpenter, he set about the
construction of a number of experimental machines, and at length, after
five or six months' application, turned out a rude, clumsy piece of
work, which was the basis of his invention.
"The warp," he says, "was laid perpendicularly, the reed fell with the
force of at least half a hundredweight, and the springs which threw the
shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short,
it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a
slow rate, and only for a short time. This being done, I then
condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my
astonishment when I compared their easy modes of operation with mine.
Availing myself of what I then saw, I made a loom in its general
principles nearly as they are now made. But it was not till the year
1787 that I completed my invention."
Having given himself to the contrivance of a loom that should be able to
keep pace in the working up of the yarn with the jenny which produced
it, solely from motives of philanthropy, he felt bound, now that he had
devised the machine, to prove its utility, and bring it into use. To
have stopped with the work of invention, would, he conceived, have been
to leave the work half undone; and, therefore, at no slight sacrifice of
personal inclination, and to the rupture of all old ties, associations,
and ways of life, he quitted the ease and seclusion of his parsonage,
abandoned the pursuits which had formerly been his delight, and devoted
himself to the promotion of his invention. He set up weaving and
spinning factories at Doncaster, and, bent on the welfare of his race,
began the weary, painful struggle that was to be his ruin, and to end
only with his life. "I have the worst mechanical conception any man can
have," wrote his friend Crabbe, "but you have my best wishes. May you
weave webs of gold." Alas! the good man wove for himself rather a web of
dismal sack-cloth, sore and grievous to his peace, like the harsh shirts
of hair old devotees used to vex their flesh with for their sins. The
golden webs were for other folk's wear,--for those who toiled not with
their brain as he had done, but who reaped what they had not sown.
He had invented a machine that was to promote industry, and save the
English weavers from being driven from the field, as was beginning to be
the case, by foreign weavers; and masters and men were up in arms
against him as soon as his design was known. His goods were maliciously
damaged,--his workmen were spirited away from him,--his patent right was
infringed. Calumny and hatred dogged his steps. After a succession of
disasters, his prospects assumed a brighter aspect, when a large
Manchester firm contracted for the use of four hundred looms. A few days
after they were at work, the mill that had been built to receive them
stood a heap of blackened ruins.
Still, he would not give up till all his resources were exhausted,--and
surely and not slowly that event drew nigh. The fortune of L30,000 with
which he started in the enterprise melted rapidly away; and at length
the day came when, with an empty purse, a frame shattered with anxiety
and toil, but with a brave, stout heart still beating in his breast,
Cartwright turned his back upon his mills, and went off to London to
gain a living by his pen. As he turned from the scene of his
misfortunes, he exclaimed,--
"With firm, unshaken mind, that wreck I see,
Nor think the doom of man should be reversed for me."
The lion that has once eaten a man has ever after, it is said, a wild
craving after human blood. And it would seem that the faculty of
invention, once aroused, its appetite for exercise is constant and
insatiable. Cartwright having discovered his dormant powers, could no
more cease to use them than to eat. A return to his quiet literary ways,
fond as he still was of such pursuits, was impossible. An inventor he
was, and an inventor he must continue till his eye was glazed, and his
brain numbed in death. When a clergyman he set himself to study
medicine, and acquired great skill and knowledge in the science, solely
for the benefit of the poor parishioners, and now he gave himself up to
the labours of invention with the same benevolent motives. Gain had not
tempted him to enter the arena,--discouragement and ruin were not to
drive him from it. The resources of his ingenuity seemed inexhaustible,
and there was no limit to its range of objects. Wool-combing machines,
bread and biscuit baking machines, rope-making machines, ploughs, and
wheel carriages, fire-preventatives, were in turn invented or improved
by him. He predicted the use of steam-ships, and steam-carriages,--and
himself devised a model of the former (with clock-work instead of a
steam-engine), which a little boy used to play with on the ponds at
Woburn, that was to grow up into an eminent statesman--Lord John
Russell. To the very last hour of his life his brain was teeming with
new designs. He went down to Dover in his eightieth year for warm
sea-bathing, and suggested to his bathman a way of pumping up the water
that saved him the wages of two men; and almost the day before his
death, he wrote an elaborate statement of a new mode he had discovered
of working the steam-engine. Moved by an irresistible impulse to promote
the "public weal," he truly fulfilled the resolution he expressed in
verse,--
"With mind unwearied, still will I engage,
In spite of failing vigour and of age,
Nor quit the combat till I quit the stage."
In 1808 he was rewarded by Parliament for his invention of the
power-loom, and the losses it brought upon him, by a grant of L10,000.
He died in October 1823.