SPINNING YARNS
All good things, alas, come to an end and the McGregor's Christmas
holidays were no exception to this immutable law. A day arrived when
Carl, Mary and Tim were obliged to return to school, and following
swift on the heels of this dire occasion came a yet more lamentable one
when Uncle Frederick Dillingham was forced to go back to his ship and
sail for China. The latter calamity entirely overshadowed the former
and was a very real blow not only to Mulberry Court, where the captain
had become an object of universal pride and affection, but also to the
Harling family who had come to depend on his daily visits for cheer and
sunshine.
"I don't see why somebody else can't sail your ship to China, Uncle
Frederick, and let you stay here," wailed Mary.
"Somebody else sail my ship!" gasped the captain, every syllable of the
phrase echoing consternation. "Why, my dear child, I would no more turn
the command of the _Charlotte_ over to another person than you would
exchange your mother for somebody else's. The _Charlotte_ kind of
belongs to me, don't you see? She is my--well, I reckon I can't just
explain what she is. All I can say is that where she goes I go--if I am
alive."
"But--but the sea is so terrible," objected the timid Mary. "So
dangerous."
For answer Captain Dillingham burst into a peal of laughter.
"Dangerous? Why, lassie, there isn't a quarter a part the danger on the
water there is on land. I have come nearer to being killed right here
in Baileyville than ever I have while cruising in mid-ocean. Folks take
their lives in their hands every time they cross a city street. Then,
too, aren't there high buildings to topple over; flagpoles to snap
asunder, signs to blow down; chimneys to shower their bricks on your
head; not to mention the death-dealing currents that come through
telegraph and telephone wires? Add to this threatening collection trees
and snow-slides and slippery pavements and you have quite a list of
horrors. Danger! Why, the land is nothing but maelstrom of catastrophes
compared with which the serenity of the open sea, with nothing but its
moon and stars overhead, is an oasis of safety. Of course there are
certain things you must be on your guard against while on the
water--fogs, icebergs and gales. But where can you find a spot under
God's heaven entirely free from the possibilities of mishap of some
sort? I'd a hundred times rather take the risks the sea holds than run
my chances on land. Besides, aren't we a city, same as you? Just
because we are afloat and you can boast the solid ground under your
feet is it a sign we are not citizens with laws and duties? with the
wireless singing its messages to us wherever we go we certainly are not
cut off from the rest of the world."
For a moment he paused to catch his breath.
"No, siree!" continued he. "We folks on shipboard simply belong to a
floating republic, that's all. It's our country same as this is yours,
and we love it quite as much as you do."
"I never thought of the ocean that way," Mary returned with a
thoughtful smile. "It's always seemed to me a big, big place without
any--any streets or----"
"But we have streets, lassie," cried her uncle, instantly catching her
up. "Regular avenues they are. Travel 'em and you'll meet the passing
same as you would were you to drive along a boulevard. They are the
ocean highways, the latitudes and longitudes found to be the best paths
between given countries. In some cases the way chosen is shorter; or
maybe experience has proved it to be freer from fog or icebergs.
Anyhow, it has become an accepted thoroughfare and is as familiar to
seafaring men as if it had been smoothed down with a steam roller and
had a signpost set to mark it. Never think, child, of the ocean as a
lonely, uncharted waste of water. It is a nice quiet place with as much
sociability on it as a man wants. You don't, to be sure, rub elbows
with your neighbors as you do ashore; but on the other hand you don't
have to put up with their racket. Pleasant as it is to be on land the
hum of it gets on my nerves in time, and I am always thankful to be
back aboard ship."
"We'll miss you dreadfully, Frederick," his sister remarked.
"But remember I'll be putting in at various ports off and on," returned
the captain, "and be mailing you letters, postals and trinkets of one
sort and another. Moreover, you're all going to write to me, I
hope--even Martin. For if there's any one thing a sailor man looks
forward to it's the mail that awaits him in a foreign port. I must own
that with all the virtues the sea possesses the landlubber has the best
of us on mail service. Rural free delivery is one blessing we can't
boast. No blue-coated postmen come sauntering down our watery streets
to drop letters and papers into our boxes. We have to call for these
ourselves same as you might have to go to a post-office here ashore if
the government wasn't as thoughtful and generous as it is. Our
post-offices are sometimes pretty far apart, too, and I'm driven to
confess we don't always get our mail as often as we'd like. That's one
of the outs of seafaring. So when we do touch shore and go looking for
letters it is disappointing not to find any. Don't forget that. After
I'm gone you will get busy with your school, and your sewing, and your
fun, and you will not think so often about Uncle Frederick." He put up
a warning hand to stay the protest of his listeners. "You won't mean
to," continued he kindly, "but you'll do it all the same. It's human
nature."
This sinister prediction, however, did not prove true.
For days after Captain Dillingham said good-by to Baileyville, Mulberry
Court, the Harlings and the McGregors were inconsolable.
"The house isn't the same with Uncle Frederick gone, is it, Mother?"
commented Mary.
"No, it isn't. We miss him very much."
"I should say we did! Such a lot of things happen all the time that I
want to tell him," Carl broke in. "Why, only this morning the teacher
gave me a book to look up something and the first page I opened to had
a lot about foreign trade. A month ago I wouldn't have cast my eye over
it a second time but now, because of Uncle Frederick, that sort of
thing interests me. So I read along down the left-hand column and what
should it be about but the first spinning mills! I wished Uncle
Frederick could have read it."
"You must write him about it," flashed Mary. "What did it say, Carl?"
"Oh, I don't know," her brother answered awkwardly. "I'm not sure that
I can remember exactly. I wasn't learning it to recite."
"But you read it, didn't you?"
"Sure I did, Miss Schoolmarm!"
"Then you must remember some of it," Mary persisted.
"Oh, I remember scraps of it. It said at the outset that nobody really
knew when people began to spin. Most likely they got the idea from
pulling out fibers of cotton or wool long as they could make them with
their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and
longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end
fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some
sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They
would go walking round with a mass of material under one arm and this
crude spindle with the thread on it under the other. The book said that
even now in certain foreign countries there were peasants who did this.
It was during the reign of Henry VII that spindles and distaffs first
appeared in England. Afterward people improved on the idea and made
spinning wheels. The people of India had had these long before, so you
see they weren't really new; but they were new to England. To judge
from the book they weren't any great shakes of spinning wheels; still
they were better than nothing. Later on the English got finer ones such
as were used in Savoy and these not only had a spindle but a flyer and
bobbin. It was most likely these Saxony wheels that started inventors
trying to make something that would be better yet."
Holding the plug he was whittling for his double-runner up to the
light, Carl halted.
"I think you've done pretty well, son," remarked his mother over the
top of her sewing.
"I think so too," Carl returned with unaffected candor. "I had no idea
when I started that I could remember so much. I guess it was because I
was interested in the story and wasn't trying to learn it. When you
think you're learning things, you get to saying them over and over
until by and by what little sense there is in 'em seems to evaporate.
At least, that's the way it is with me. If I could just read and not
keep thinking that I was trying to learn I'd get on twice as well. Even
this page of stuff would have _looked_ different if I'd been going to
learn it. You see, you never have the chance to learn what you want to
at school; it's always what they pick out for you. Naturally you don't
care as much about it as you would if it was what you'd chosen
yourself."
Mrs. McGregor could not resist smiling in sympathy with this philosophy
of education, novel as it was.
"Now what the teacher sent me to look up in that book," went on Carl,
"was some old foreign treaty. Of course I read it over because she made
me. But do I remember a line of it? Nix! I told her what the book said
as fast as I could, so to get it off my soul before I forgot it. I
don't see what she cared about it for anyway, for it didn't seem to
hitch up to anything. But this spinning business hitched right up to
Uncle Frederick, Hal Harling and what we've been talking about. I don't
see why Miss Dewey couldn't have let me alone to learn about that."
"Probably she didn't dream you were interested in it," said Mary. "How
should she, pray?"
"I know it. I suppose she didn't," answered Carl with fairness. "She
certainly is no mind reader; and I didn't mention it."
"Then don't go blaming poor Miss Dewey," Mary retorted. "Besides, what
kind of a school would she have if every child in it refused to learn
anything but what he cared about. She would have fifty kids all going
fifty different ways."
Carl sighed. Plainly the flaws of the educational system were too many
for him. Nevertheless he attempted a modest defense of his theory.
"No, she wouldn't," contradicted he. "Some of 'em don't want to learn
anything anyhow, and since they have to they are as well pleased to
learn one thing as another. Billie Tarbox, for instance, hasn't any
preferences; he just hates all highbrow stuff alike. And the Murphys
and Jack Sullivan wouldn't care a hurrah what they learned. All Jack
wants to do when he grows up is to run a steam roller and if he can do
that he'll be perfectly satisfied."
"But he'll have to learn something before he can," observed Mrs.
McGregor.
"No, he won't, Ma. Mike Finnerty who lives in his block runs one and he
doesn't know a thing," Carl replied simply.
"On the contrary, I think you'll find Mr. Michael Finnerty knows much
more than you give him credit for," retorted Mrs. McGregor. "He
probably knows more than he himself realizes. He may not have learned
about engines out of books; but if not he has learned about them from
actual contact with them. All learning does not come from between book
covers, sonny. Experience is a wonderful teacher. Books simply give us
the same result without making us stumble along to learn everything
ourselves. They are somebody else's experience done up in a little
bundle and handed to us as a shorter cut. Mr. Michael Finnerty has had
to take the long way round to get his education, that is all. For
education is nothing but a training which enables us to live and be
useful to others; and if when we're through we can't do that all the
book learning in the world isn't going to be worth much to us."
"Why, Mother, I thought you were terribly keen on schools," ejaculated
Mary, aghast.
"So I am, my dear. A fine mind thoroughly trained is a glorious tool;
but far too often people forget that it is simply a tool. Just
sharpening and polishing it and never turning it to account for other
people isn't what it was made for. Learn all you can so you will be
able to help the world along the better. But don't just soak up and
soak up what books tell you and then store it away in your head like so
much old lumber."
"But what can you do with what you read, Ma?" Carl questioned, laying
down his whittling and facing his mother.
"Precisely what you have been doing this morning, for one thing," was
the quiet answer. "Pass it on to somebody else who hasn't read it. Mary
and I, for example, hadn't read about England and the early spinning
wheels. We hadn't the time to; nor had we the book. You've managed to
tell us quite a lot."
"Maybe I could tell you some more, if you wanted me to," said Carl,
urged on by altruistic impulse.
"Of course we do," his mother replied.
Carl took a long breath and considered thoughtfully.
"Well, what knocked me was that at first the English government didn't
want any cotton cloth made," began he.
"Why not? I should think they would have been delighted!" Mary put in.
"Oh, the English made a lot of woolen goods, and they had a hunch that
cotton cloth might cut into the trade for wool and fustians. So
Parliament passed a law placing a five-pound fine on any of the British
who wore things made of colored calico. As the restriction also covered
the use of painted, dyed or stenciled cottons it knocked out all these
products for hangings, bedspreads, or coverings."
"How horrid of them!" said Mary indignantly.
"They were darned afraid of their trade being interfered with, you
see," explained her brother. "I believe you could use an all blue
calico and of course there was no objection to making cotton cloth into
underclothes; also you were allowed to use a cloth woven of cotton and
wool. But you mustn't wear any pretty figured cotton dresses. When the
people heard that they kind of rose up, and when the government found
out they wouldn't stand for such a law, in 1736, after amending it,
they made another one letting folks wear any kind of decorated cloth
they had a mind to, so long as its warp was entirely of linen yarn.
This provided England with a market for her flax. But once the law was
passed the delighted manufacturers began to turn out colored cloth by
the bushelful, making any amount more than they could sell just because
they were allowed to. This led to another difficulty--where were they
going to get enough linen warp? The cottagers who worked at home with
their little spinning wheels could not begin to turn out the supply
that was needed, and weavers of cloth went traveling everywhere over
England buying up all the linen thread people would sell and begging
for more. And not only did they want linen warp but they wanted it
stronger and coarser so they could weave heavier cloth. Now the
spinning wheels only turned out single thread. What was to be done?"
"Well, what was to be done?" echoed Mary.
"It was trying to find an answer to all this weaving muddle that set
John Kay to inventing his flying shuttle," replied Carl. "Until then it
had taken two people to send the heavy shuttles with the warp on them
across the looms. His new flying shuttle did the same work with only
one person to operate it. You'd think that an improvement in weaving,
wouldn't you; and you'd have the right, if you worked out the idea, to
believe the weavers would be pleased?"
"Certainly," returned his mother.
"Well, instead of being pleased, the workmen were crazy," Carl
announced.
"Why?"
"Because they were such blockheads they were afraid Kay's invention was
going to put them out of their jobs. In fact, they got so soured on
poor old Kay that his life was actually in danger and he had to get out
of England. There's gratitude for you!" concluded the boy with a shrug.
"But later on they learned better, I suppose, and sent for him to come
back," Mary suggested. "That's the way people always do."
"These people didn't," was Carl's grim retort. "Not on your tin-type!
They never got Kay back again in spite of all he'd done for them.
Instead, he died somewhere abroad without receiving much of anything
for his invention. Wouldn't that make you hot? In the meantime, about
1738, a chap called Lewis Paul got out a double set of rollers that
would draw out thread and twist it--a stunt previously done by hand. So
it went. Here and there men all over England, knowing the need of
better spinning devices, went to it to see what they could do. John
Wyatt, who, like Paul, was a Birmingham native, tried spinning by means
of rollers; and for ever so long it was a question whether it was he or
Paul who should be credited with the invention of the roller and flyer
machine. After twenty years I believe Paul was granted the patent. In
point of fact, though, Arkwright thirty years before had tried to get a
patent on spinning by rollers, and no doubt both Lewis Paul and John
Wyatt got the suggestion from him. Anyhow, the idea spread like
wildfire and immediately no end of people went to work fussing with
rollers, flyers, and spindles. As a result, many small things were
added to improve the spinning contrivances in use at the time. Then in
1764, or thereabouts, along came James Hargreaves, a Lancashire
Englishman, with a machine that would spin eleven threads at once."
His listeners gave a little gasp.
"That was some stride ahead, wasn't it?" commented Carl, as proudly as
if he himself had done the deed. "Yes, siree! Hargreaves's spinning
jenny was a big step forward. And as usual it raised a row. When he got
it all perfected five years later and went to take out a patent on it,
his right to it was questioned and his life made miserable. But,
anyhow, people couldn't say he built on Arkwright or Paul, for whether
they liked it or not they had to admit his idea was quite new. His
jenny only spun cloth rovings, however. The rovings had to be prepared
first; that is, the cotton had to be carded and given its first twist.
After that Hargreaves was ready for it and could lengthen, twist, and
spin into yarn eleven threads of it."
"I hope the ungrateful workmen did not get after him as they did after
John Kay," Mary murmured.
"They did! At least, although they did not drive him out of England
they drove him out of Lancashire. So he went to Nottingham; and after
arming himself with his patent he and a Mr. James built a spinning mill
there, one of the first to be built in England."
"That must have made his fortune and repaid him for all his hard
labor," remarked Mrs. McGregor, as she held up a violet cloud of
spangled tulle and examined it critically.
"The book said he didn't make much money," Carl announced. "He wasn't
as poor as John Kay and did not die in want; but he certainly never
became rich."
"I suppose now that they had spinning factories England was satisfied,"
said Mary.
"Satisfied?" repeated Carl with scorn. "Satisfied because there was one
little measly spinning factory? You bet your life people weren't
satisfied! To be sure some of the hardest of the inventing was done.
But don't for a minute imagine you are through with Richard Arkwright.
He was still on the job."
"You told us about him before."
"Trying to get a patent on spinning by rollers? Yes, I did. Well, he
was still alive and of course when everybody was talking about spinning
he couldn't help hearing the gossip even if he did happen to be a
barber. In fact while he traveled round buying and selling hair for
wigs he must have met no end of people and talked with them, so I guess
he heard more of the news of the day than did lots of other men.
Barbers always seem to be sociable chaps. He was quite a mechanic, too,
in his way; machinery had always interested him."
"In spite of his making wigs and toupees for ladies and gentlemen?"
laughed Mrs. McGregor mischievously.
"Sure, Ma! He had been born in Lancashire just as Hargreaves had and so
he probably was particularly interested in Hargreaves. When anybody
from your own part of the world does anything smart you always are all
ears about it, you know. So Arkwright found out all he could by
gossiping about Hargreaves's spinning jenny, and no one was quicker to
see what such an invention would mean to England than he. The idea was
almost like a magnet to him. He hunted up Mr. Highs, who had
experimented a lot with spinning machinery, and talked with him; he
also met John Kay, who at one time had helped Highs. And because he was
such an intelligent listener and seemed to understand machinery so well
these men babbled to him about their hobby. Having heard all they had
to say Arkwright went off by himself and set quietly to work to try out
on a small scale certain notions of his own. These notions had to do
with spinning cotton by drawing rollers, and they worked perfectly.
That was enough for him. He announced his success, got his patent, was
knighted by the crown, and became rich. How's that for a yarn? Isn't it
like the story of Puss-In-Boots?"
"It is certainly magical," declared Mrs. McGregor, who had dropped her
work in her absorption. "I am glad, too, to know there was one inventor
who prospered."
"I am afraid he was the only one--at least of those interested in
spinning," replied Carl gravely.
"All the others both before and after him lost out so far as money
went."
"Who did come after Arkwright?" queried Mary.
"Crompton--Samuel Crompton," was the prompt reply. "He was a little boy
when Arkwright was tooting round the country trading hair and wigs. The
two men may even have happened to see one another somewhere. That
wouldn't be impossible, you know. Anyway, during the time that
Arkwright was fighting the right to his roller patent; going into
partnership with rich men who could finance his schemes; and building
his chain of mills at Nottingham, Cromford, and Matlock, Crompton was
growing up. As some of these mills were worked by horse power and some
by water power, the name of 'water frame' clung to Arkwright's
invention. Crompton, like everybody else who lived at the time, saw the
rivalry between Hargreaves's jenny and Arkwright's water frame. It was
of course silly that there should have been rivalry, for the two
machines did quite different sorts of work. Arkwright's water frame was
better for making the warp and long threads of cloth; and Hargreaves's
jenny turned out better weft, or the kind of thread that went from side
to side. It was only a matter of the sort of thread you needed,
understand."
"Then they certainly needn't have been jealous of one another,"
commented Mrs. McGregor.
"Fortunately in time they found that out and realized that each loom
had its advantages; to-day both are used--one for one purpose, one for
another. But no matter how many enemies Arkwright had everybody,
whether they liked him or not, was compelled to admit that he gave the
spinning industry a tremendous boost and did more toward starting our
present factory idea than did any one else. Not only was he a tireless
worker, but he was quick as a flash to see what was needed. Maybe he
wasn't any too scrupulous whose property he took; but at least he took
the things he seized more for the public good than his own, I really
believe. For instance, there was Lewis Paul's carding engine; he
introduced that into Lancashire and added to it a stripping comb, or
doffer, that made it about fifty per cent. better than it ever had been
before. That is what he did to everything he touched. He swooped down
on any machine he saw and then proceeded to improve it. It didn't
matter to him who it belonged to. Of course you can't do that, even if
you are an inventor," grinned Carl. "Naturally it got Arkwright in
wrong and he was given some pretty hard names. Still he did a lot of
good for all that. And, anyway, whatever he was, I take my hat off to
him because he began to study writing, spelling, and arithmetic when he
was fifty years old. That gets me!"
"Poor soul! He probably had no chance for an education when he was
younger," remarked Mrs. McGregor.
"No, he hadn't. But picture it! Jove! If I had gone that long without
books, and had been able to invent all sorts of things into the
bargain, darned if I wouldn't have stuck it out," Carl said.
"But you told us Arkwright became rich and was knighted," replied Mrs.
McGregor. "No doubt this resulted in his meeting educated people,
gentlemen and ladies, in whose company he felt ashamed, uncomfortable,
and at a disadvantage."
"I'd feel that way, wouldn't you?" nodded Mary. "I do feel so even when
I am with Uncle Frederick, and my teacher, and--and you, Mother."
"Don't include me, dear," protested her mother sadly. "Alas, I know
little enough. But it does help you to understand how that poor,
hard-working Richard Arkwright suffered. Often, I'll wager, he was
angry at himself for his lack of education even though it was not his
fault. I don't wonder, snubbed as he probably was at times, that he
determined he would learn something."
"His hard-earned education did not do him much good, Mother, for he
died when he was sixty," said Carl.
"Well, at least he lived long enough to see his success," Mary put in
brightly.
"He was luckier than Crompton," replied her brother.
"Oh, tell us about Crompton. Do you remember anything about him?" Mary
inquired.
"Crompton was one of the most important of the spinning inventors,"
continued Carl. "But he did not set out to be an inventor any more than
Arkwright did. To be sure he wasn't a barber or anything as ordinary as
that. He was a musician, a person of quite another sort, you see. His
family were better bred and started him out with a good education--the
very thing Arkwright lacked. Crompton might easily have mixed with the
class Arkwright wanted to mix with but he wasn't as good a mixer.
Instead of gossiping with everybody he met, as Arkwright had done,
Crompton kept by himself and lived quietly at home with his mother."
"A sensible lad!" Mrs. McGregor whispered.
"Maybe," grinned her son. "Still, it made people call Crompton
unsociable. I guess, though, most geniuses are that. They always seem
to be so in books; and Crompton certainly was a genius. He hadn't an
ounce of brain for business but he had no end of ideas; and it was
those that got him on in life. For you see, although the Cromptons were
what Ma would call 'gentle people', they were not rich. They were
comfortably off, though, and if the father had not died when the
children were small they might have been very well off indeed. As it
was, Mrs. Crompton had to help out the finances by carding, spinning,
and weaving cloth at home when her other work was done. Ever so many
other women did it, so it was considered an all right thing to do.
Since Kay's flying shuttle had made it possible to spin more stuff the
weavers, as I told you, were scouring the country for all the warp and
weft they could lay hands on, so everybody who could spin thread was
sure of a market. The prices offered, and the difficulties the weavers
were having to get material enough, were common talk at every English
cottage fireside. So of course it wasn't strange that Mrs. Crompton,
along with the rest of her neighbors, heard this gossip and also heard
about Hargreaves's spinning jenny. Now Samuel helped his mother to spin
evenings when he wasn't playing at the village theater and she decided
it would be nice to get one of these spinning jennies for him to use.
So she did, and it wasn't long before he could not only use it, but
could turn out weft enough for cloth to clothe the whole Crompton
family."
"Then I don't see but the Cromptons were nicely taken care of," Mary
announced.
"That wasn't the point, smartie!" her brother objected. "Of course they
were well enough off themselves, but the village of Bolton where they
lived was strong on its muslins and quilt materials and what the people
wanted was to be able to spin fine muslins such as were imported into
England from India and China. If such goods could be made by uneducated
Orientals why should not people as clever and ingenious as the English
make them?"
"Why, indeed?"
"They couldn't do it; I don't know why," answered Carl. "They just
could not contrive to draw fine enough thread. Of course Samuel
Crompton had always seen the Bolton goods since he was a little boy and
so knew as well as did everybody else in the town what a wonderful
thing it would be if finer thread could be made. So after his mother
got her spinning jenny for him he began to fuss round with it simply to
find out whether he could make it any better or not. He experimented
five years and at the end of that time he had made a 'muslin wheel'
that was something like Arkwright's water frame and something like
Hargreaves's jenny and yet wasn't like either of those things.
Therefore, as a joke, it was called a 'mule.'"
"Oh, I'm awfully glad he made it!" ejaculated the sympathetic Mary.
"Five years was such a long time to work. Wasn't it splendid of him!"
"Other people, I'm sorry to say, were not of your opinion," Carl
replied. "As I said before, the spinners and weavers were a crazy,
jealous lot. You remember how they treated Kay and Hargreaves? Well,
they hadn't improved any and were still just as mad at spinning
inventions and spinning inventors as they were before. Everything that
did away with hand labor was, they argued, an enemy and was going to
put them out of business."
"But how could they expect they were going to stop the progress of the
world?" asked Mrs. McGregor.
"They didn't think it was progress; they were just that stupid,"
returned Carl. "And I guess even if they had thought so it would have
been the same. They were determined to use nothing that reduced the
number of hand workers. So they set themselves to take out their
vengeance on all spinning machinery, and in order to put an end to it
mobs of workers went about smashing to atoms every spinning jenny they
could find that had more than twenty spindles."
"How nasty!" breathed Mary.
"How stupid!" rejoined her mother.
"Now, of course, Samuel Crompton wasn't going to have his new 'muslin
wheel' smashed to bits so he did not tell anybody what he had invented.
He simply took the thing to pieces and hid the parts round his
workroom. Some of them he put in the ceiling, some he tucked away under
the floor."
"Bully for him!" Mary cried. "It was a regular kid trick."
"I know it," agreed Carl. "He wasn't really a kid, though, because he
was twenty-seven years old at the time and was married and his wife had
just come to live at the big Crompton homestead. Well, after a little
while, things settled down and then Samuel Crompton dragged out the
parts of his hidden muslin wheel, put them together, and he and the
lady he had married went to work making the finest and strongest yarn
they could. Such fine thread had never before been made in all England
and you better believe when it began to appear it created a stir.
Everybody in Bolton went round trying to find out where it came from
and after the tidings spread about that the Cromptons were the people
who were producing the mysterious yarn, the town swelled with pride.
How was the thread made? That was the next question!"
"And the Cromptons didn't tell, of course."
"That's where you're wrong, Mary Ann! I wish they hadn't; but they
did."
"That was a pity," interrupted Mrs. McGregor.
"You'd have thought they would have been wise enough not to, wouldn't
you?" Carl observed. "But I told you Samuel Crompton had no great head
for business. He was trusting and decent, just the way Eli Whitney was.
He had no idea people would steal his invention. So when the mill
owners and factory folks came surging to his house, he not only let
them see the loom but even allowed some of them to try it when they
wrote out a promise or pledged their word that they would pay him for
the privilege."
Mrs. McGregor shook her head.
"I'm afraid," said she, "that was all he ever heard of the money."
"Of course it was, Ma! Evidently you know more about human nature than
poor Crompton did. He was utterly amazed when they wouldn't pay up. And
when there were others mean enough to hide in the room over his
workshop, bore holes in the floor, and spy down at the magic machine,
all was lost."
"He held no patent, then?"
"He hadn't one thing to protect him. The sharks just came down on him,
grabbed his idea, and walked away with it unmolested," answered Carl.
"Oh, that was pitiful--pitiful!" exclaimed Mrs. McGregor, laying aside
her work.
"It was a darn shame!" echoed her son.
"And the Cromptons never got any money at all?" asked Mary.
"Not then, anyhow."
"Well, at least Mr. Crompton had the joy of doing what he set out to
do--nobody could take that satisfaction away from him," mused Mrs.
McGregor.
"Yes, but would that have consoled you for finding that people were so
low-down?" answered Carl with scorn. "I'll bet that one fact
disappointed him more than the loss of the money. It would me."
"Greed, I regret to say, sonny, is at the bottom of most of the evils
of the world," retorted his mother sadly. "What finally became of the
Cromptons?"
"Oh, the whole thing got on Crompton's nerves and he moved to another
town where he buried himself," Carl answered. "After a while, though,
he came back to Bolton because he needed money and opened a little
factory there. It ran along for almost ten years, doing business on a
small scale. Imagine it! Then in 1800 some Manchester manufacturers
(who had probably got rich on his invention and whose consciences
troubled them most likely) collected a purse for him that his mill
might be enlarged. By this time as a result of various improvements
Crompton's idea had expanded until one of his looms had as many as
three hundred and sixty spindles, and another had two hundred and
twenty."
"And years before the spinners had destroyed those that boasted more
than twenty," commented Mary thoughtfully.
"I know it! Ironic, wasn't it? Poor old Crompton! He just didn't seem
to have any luck," asserted Carl.
"It wasn't want of luck, my dear, so much as want of wisdom--the wit to
grasp opportunity when it came," contradicted his mother.
"You mean 'there is a tide in the affairs of men', Ma, and all that?"
Carl grinned. "Who says I don't know Shakespeare when I meet him?
Anyhow, I guess Bill was right; he certainly was in this case. Even the
money the English government later collected and presented to Crompton
got dribbled away and lost in various unfortunate enterprises. Crompton
got poorer and poorer, and if it hadn't been that friends took care of
him he might almost have starved."
"And did his star never rise again?" inquired Mrs. McGregor.
"Never! He just died in poverty and left other people to grow rich on
what he had done."
"That is the world, I am afraid," was Mrs. McGregor's observation.
"Still he had given humanity a hand up and done a great service to his
generation. That knowledge was better than all the fortunes he could
have possessed."
"But he might so easily have had both, Ma," returned the practical
Carl. "I call the help to humanity slim comfort when you've been
cheated out of what should have been yours. I shouldn't even have been
grateful had I been Crompton for the fine monument they set up to his
memory long after he was dead. What they ought to have done was to
treat him square while he was alive to enjoy it."
"See that as you go through life you do not forget your own philosophy,
my son," cautioned his mother.