which arrived were directed to anchor by the side of the Dartmouth at
Griffin's wharf, that one guard might serve for all. The people of
Roxbury, on December 3d, voted that they were bound by duty to
themselves and posterity to join with Boston and other sister-towns to
preserve inviolate the liberties handed down by their ancestors. The
next day the men of Charlestown, as if foreseeing that their town was
destined to be a holocaust, declared themselves ready to risk their
lives and fortunes. On Sunday, the 5th, the committee of correspondence
wrote to Portsmouth in New Hampshire, to Providence, Bristol, and
Newport in Rhode Island, for advice and cooperation. On the 6th they
entreat New York, through MacDougall and Sears; Philadelphia, through
Mifflin and Clymer, to insure success by "a harmony of sentiment and
concurrence in action." As for Boston itself, the twenty days are fast
running out; the consignees conspire with the revenue officers to throw
on the owner and master of the Dartmouth the whole burden of landing the
tea, and will neither agree to receive it nor give up their bill of
lading nor pay freight. Every movement was duly reported, and "the town
became furious as in the time of the Stamp Act."
On the 9th there was a vast gathering at Newburyport of the inhabitants
of that and the neighboring towns, and, none dissenting, they agreed to
assist Boston, even at the hazard of their lives. "This is not a piece
of parade," they say, "but if an occasion should offer, a goodly number
from among us will hasten to join you."
On Saturday, the 11th, Rotch, the owner of the Dartmouth, is summoned
before the Boston committee with Samuel Adams in the chair, and asked
why he has not kept his engagement to take his vessel and the tea back
to London within twenty days of its arrival. He pleaded that it was out
of his power. "The ship must go," was the answer; "the people of Boston
and the neighboring towns absolutely require and expect it;" and they
bade him ask for a clearance and pass, with proper witnesses of his
demand. "Were it mine," said a leading merchant, "I would certainly send
it back." Hutchinson acquainted Admiral Montagu with what was passing;
on which the Active and the Kingfisher, though they had been laid up for
the winter, were sent to guard the passages out of the harbor. At the
same time orders were given by the Governor to load guns at the Castle,
so that no vessel, except coasters, might go to sea without a permit. He
had no thought of what was to happen; the wealth of Hancock, Phillips,
Rowe, Dennie, and so many other men of property seemed to him a security
against violence; and he flattered himself that he had increased the
perplexities of the committee.
The decisive day draws nearer and nearer; on the morning of Monday, the
13th, the committees of the five towns are at Faneuil Hall, with that of
Boston. Now that danger was really at hand, the men of the little town
of Malden offered their blood and their treasure; for that which they
once esteemed the mother-country had lost the tenderness of a parent and
become their great oppressor. "We trust in God," wrote the men of
Lexington, "that should the state of our affairs require it, we shall be
ready to sacrifice our estates and everything dear in life, yea, and
life itself, in support of the common cause." Whole towns in Worcester
County were on tiptoe to come down. "Go on as you have begun," wrote the
committee of Leicester on the 14th; "and do not suffer any of the teas
already come or coming to be landed or pay one farthing of duty. You may
depend on our aid and assistance when needed."
The line of policy adopted was, if possible, to get the tea carried back
to London uninjured in the vessel in which it came. A meeting of the
people on Tuesday afternoon directed and, as it were, "compelled" Rotch,
the owner of the Dartmouth, to apply for a clearance. He did so,
accompanied by Kent, Samuel Adams, and eight others as witnesses. The
collector was at his lodgings, and refused to answer till the next
morning; the assemblage, on their part, adjourned to Thursday, the 16th,
the last of the twenty days before it would become legal for the revenue
officers to take possession of the ship and so land the teas at the
Castle. In the evening the Boston committee finished their preparatory
meetings. After their consultation on Monday with the committees of the
five towns, they had been together that day and the next, both morning
and evening; but during the long and anxious period their journal has
only this entry: "No business transacted; matter of record."
At ten o'clock on the 15th, Rotch was escorted by his witnesses to the
custom-house, where the collector and comptroller unequivocally and
finally refused to grant his ship a clearance till it should be
discharged of the teas.
Hutchinson began to clutch at victory; "for," said he, "it is notorious
the ship cannot pass the Castle without a permit from me, and that I
shall refuse." On that day the people of Fitchburg pledged their word
"never to be wanting according to their small ability"; for "they had
indeed an ambition to be known to the world and to posterity as friends
to liberty." The men of Gloucester also expressed their joy at Boston's
glorious opposition, cried with one voice that "no tea subject to a duty
should be landed" in their town, and held themselves ready for the last
appeal.
The morning of Thursday, December 16, 1773, dawned upon Boston, a day by
far the most momentous in its annals. Beware, little town; count the
cost, and know well, if you dare defy the wrath of Great Britain, and if
you love exile and poverty and death rather than submission. The town of
Portsmouth held its meeting on that morning, and, with six only
protesting, its people adopted the principles of Philadelphia, appointed
their committee of correspondence, and resolved to make common cause
with the colonies. At ten o'clock the people of Boston, with at least
two thousand men from the country, assembled in the Old South. A report
was made that Rotch had been refused a clearance from the collector.
"Then," said they to him, "protest immediately against the custom-house,
and apply to the Governor for his pass, so that your vessel may this
very day proceed on her voyage for London."
The Governor had stolen away to his country house at Milton. Bidding
Rotch make all haste, the meeting adjourned to three in the afternoon.
At that hour Rotch had not returned. It was incidentally voted, as other
towns had already done, to abstain totally from the use of tea; and
every town was advised to appoint its committee of inspection, to
prevent the detested tea from coming within any of them. Then, since the
Governor might refuse his pass, the momentous question recurred,
"Whether it be the sense and determination of this body to abide by
their former resolutions with respect to the not suffering the tea to be
landed." On this question Samuel Adams and Young addressed the meeting,
which was become far the most numerous ever held in Boston, embracing
seven thousand men. There was among them a patriot of fervid feeling,
passionately devoted to the liberty of his country, still young, his eye
bright, his cheek glowing with hectic fever. He knew that his strength
was ebbing. The work of vindicating American freedom must be done soon,
or he will be no party to the great achievement. He rises, but it is to
restrain, and being truly brave and truly resolved he speaks the
language of moderation: "Shouts and hosannas will not terminate the
trials of this day, nor popular resolves, harangues, and acclamations
vanquish our foes. We must be grossly ignorant of the value of the prize
for which we contend, of the power combined against us, of the
inveterate malice and insatiable revenge which actuate our enemies,
public and private, abroad and in our bosom, if we hope that we shall
end this controversy without the sharpest conflicts. Let us consider the
issue before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most
trying and terrible struggle this country ever saw." Thus spoke the
younger Quincy. "Now that the hand is to the plough," said others,
"there must be no looking back," and the whole assembly of seven
thousand voted unanimously that the tea should not be landed.
It had been dark for more than an hour. The church in which they met was
dimly lighted, when at a quarter before six Rotch appeared, and
satisfied the people by relating that the Governor had refused him a
pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he had
finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word: "This meeting
can do nothing more to save the country." On the instant a shout was
heard at the porch; the war-whoop resounded; a body of men, forty or
fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door, and,
encouraged by Samuel Adams, Hancock, and others, repaired to Griffin's
wharf, posted guards to prevent the intrusion of spies, took possession
of the three tea-ships, and in about three hours three hundred forty
chests of tea, being the whole quantity that had been imported, were
emptied into the bay without the least injury to other property. "All
things were conducted with great order, decency, and perfect submission
to Government." The people around, as they looked on, were so still that
the noise of breaking open the tea-chests was plainly heard. A delay of
a few hours would have placed the tea under the protection of the
Admiral at the Castle. After the work was done, the town became as still
and calm as if it had been holy time. The men from the country that very
night carried back the great news to their villages.
The next morning the committee of correspondence appointed Samuel Adams
and four others to draw up a declaration of what had been done. They
sent Paul Revere as express with the information to New York and
Philadelphia.
The height of joy that sparkled in the eyes and animated the
countenances and the hearts of the patriots as they met one another is
unimaginable. The Governor, meantime, was consulting his books and his
lawyers to make out that the resolves of the meeting were treasonable.
Threats were muttered of arrests, of executions, of transportation of
the accused to England; while the committee of correspondence pledged
themselves to support and vindicate each other and all persons who had
shared in their effort. The country was united with the town, and the
colonies with one another more firmly than ever. The Philadelphians
unanimously approved what Boston had done. New York, all impatient at
the winds which had driven its tea-ship off the coast, was resolved on
following the example.
In South Carolina the ship with two hundred fifty-seven chests of tea
arrived on December 2d; the spirit of opposition ran very high; but the
consignees were persuaded to resign, so that, though the collector after
the twentieth day seized the dutiable article, there was no one to vend
it or to pay the duty, and it perished in the cellars where it was
stored.
Late on Saturday, the 25th, news reached Philadelphia that its tea-ship
was at Chester. It was met four miles below the town, where it came to
anchor. On Monday, at an hour's notice, five thousand men collected in a
town meeting; at their instance the consignee, who came as passenger,
resigned; and the captain agreed to take his ship and cargo directly
back to London and to sail the very next day. "The ministry had chosen
the most effectual measures to unite the colonies. The Boston committee
were already in close correspondence with the other New England
colonies, with New York and Pennsylvania. Old jealousies were removed
and perfect harmony subsisted between all." "The heart of the King was
hardened against them like that of Pharaoh," and none believed he would
relent. Union therefore was the cry; a union which should reach "from
Florida to the icy plains" of Canada. "No time is to be lost," said the
Boston press; "a congress or a meeting of the American States is
indispensable; and what the people wills shall be effected." Samuel
Adams was in his glory. He had led Boston to be foremost in duty and
cheerfully offer itself as a sacrifice for the liberties of mankind.
COTTON MANUFACTURE DEVELOPED
A.D. 1774
THOMAS F. HENDERSON
Up to the time when James Hargreaves, an English mechanic, invented
(1767) and brought into use the spinning-jenny--so named after his wife,
Jenny--the spinning of yarn was done altogether by hand. Richard
Arkwright added to the jenny of Hargreaves a much more useful invention,
the cotton-spinning frame, called a "water-frame" because it was driven
by water. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented a still better machine, the
spinning-mule. In this he utilized the principles of the jenny and of
the frame, adding drawing-rollers, and thereby making a machine that
could draw, stretch, and twist yarn at one operation. From this
combination of features the mule received its name. Since the time of
Crompton it has been greatly improved, and the spinning-room of a modern
cotton-mill contains machinery as highly perfected as any that has been
invented.
Spinning by machinery is the foundation of the modern textile industry.
Soon after Arkwright's invention of the spinning-frame, Edmund
Cartwright invented the power-loom, the idea of which came to him while
he was visiting Arkwright's cotton-mills at Cromford. Cartwright took
out his first patent in 1785. Within fifty years from that time there
were at least one hundred thousand power-looms at work in Great Britain.
Arkwright's invention quickly gave a great impetus to the cotton
industry. Both the cultivation and the manufacture of cotton rapidly
increased. Eli Whitney's timely invention of the cotton-gin in 1793
hastened the general introduction of the new manufacturing machinery.
For more than a century the making of cotton goods has been one of the
leading industries of the world.
The first cotton-mill was built by Arkwright and Hargreaves at
Nottingham, England. Not long afterward the earliest cotton-mill in
America was built at Beverly, Massachusetts (1787). To aid the new
industry, the Legislature of that State made a grant of five hundred
dollars. Cotton manufacture rapidly increased in New England, and there
until recently was the centre of the American industry. Within the past
few years, however, many cotton-mills have been built in various
Southern States, and the cotton-belt region bids fair soon to become the
chief seat of manufacture of its own great staple.
Since 1866 the cotton supply of the United States has increased from
somewhat more than two million bales to about twelve million bales
(1904). The world's consumption of cotton in 1903 was nearly fifteen
million bales. In the United States the annual consumption in
cotton-mills is now about four million bales; in Great Britain, over
three million bales; in Continental Europe, about five million bales.
The number of spindles represented in the world's cotton manufacture in
1903 was nearly 112,000,000; in the United States, about 22,240,000;
Great Britain, 42,200,000; Continental Europe, 34,000,000. In 1903 the
exports of cotton manufactures from the United States were valued at
over $32,000,000. Nearly one-half of the exports went to China, the rest
being divided among many countries.
These figures only furnish a slight concrete suggestion of the immense
industrial and commercial importance of the invention that Arkwright and
his associates and successors produced and perfected for mankind. What
Eli Whitney did for the cultivation and handling of cotton they have
done for the world-wide interests connected with its manufacture.
The gradual disuse of wigs is assigned by some as the reason that
Richard Arkwright began to turn his attention to mechanical inventions
as likely to afford him a new source of income; but as during his
journeys he was brought into constant intercourse with persons engaged
in weaving and spinning, his inquisitive and strongly practical
intelligence would in any case have been naturally led to take a keen
interest in inventions which were a constant topic of conversation among
the manufacturing population. The invention of the fly-shuttle by Kay of
Bury had so greatly increased the demand for yarn that it became
difficult to meet it merely by hand labor. A machine for carding cotton
had been introduced into Lancashire about 1760, but until 1767 spinning
continued to be done wholly with the old-fashioned hand-wheel. In that
year James Hargreaves completed his invention of the spinning-jenny,
which he patented in 1770. The thread spun by the jenny was, however,
suitable only for weft, and the roving process still required to be
performed by hand. Probably Arkwright knew nothing of the experiments of
Hargreaves, when, in 1767, he asked John Kay, a clockmaker then residing
in Warrington, to "bend him some wires and turn him some pieces of
brass." Shortly afterward Arkwright gave up his business at Bolton, and
devoted his whole attention to the perfecting of a contrivance for
spinning by rollers. After getting Kay to construct for him certain
wooden models, which convinced him that the solution of the problem had
been accomplished, he is said to have applied to a Mr. Atherton, of
Warrington, to make the spinning-machine, who, from the poverty of
Arkwright's appearance, declined to undertake it. He, however, agreed to
lend Kay a smith and watch-tool maker to do the heavier part of the
engine, and Kay undertook to make the clockmaker's part of it. Arkwright
and Kay then went to Preston, where, with the cooperation of a friend of
Arkwright, John Smalley, described as a "liquor-merchant and painter,"
the machine was constructed and set up in the parlor of the house
belonging to the Free Grammar-school. The room appears to have been
chosen for its secluded position, being hidden by a garden filled with
gooseberry-trees; but the very secrecy of their operations aroused
suspicion, and popular superstition at once connected them with some
kind of witchcraft or sorcery. Two old women who lived close by averred
that they heard strange noises in it of a humming nature, as if the
devil were tuning his bagpipes, and Arkwright and Kay were dancing a
reel, and so much consternation was produced that many were inclined to
break open the place. The building has since been changed into a
public-house, which is known as the Arkwright Arms. As a proof of the
straits to which Arkwright was then reduced, and the degree to which he
had sacrificed his comfort in order to obtain the means of completing
his invention, it is said that his clothes were in such a ragged state
that he declined, unless supplied with a new suit, to go to record his
vote at the Preston election in 1768, which took place while he was
engaged in setting up his machine. Having thoroughly satisfied himself
of the practical value of his invention, he removed to Nottingham, an
important seat of the stocking trade, whither Hargreaves, the inventor
of the spinning-jenny, had removed the year previously, after his
machines had been destroyed by a mob at Blackburn. Arkwright entered
into partnership with Smalley from Preston, Kay continuing with him
under a bond as a workman, and they erected a spinning-mill between
Hockley and Woolpack Lane, a patent being taken out by Arkwright for the
machine, July 3, 1769.
The spinning-frame of Arkwright was the result of inventive power of a
higher and rarer order than that necessary to originate the
spinning-jenny. It was much more than a mere development of the old
hand-wheel. It involved the application of a new principle, that of
spinning by rollers, and in the delicate adjustment of its various parts
and the nice regulation of the different mechanical forces called into
operation, so as to make them properly subordinate to the accomplishment
of one purpose, we have the first adequate examples of those beautiful
and intricate mechanical contrivances that have transformed the whole
character of the manufacturing industries. The spinning-frame consisted
of four pairs of rollers, acting by tooth and pinion. The top roller was
covered with leather to enable it to take hold of the cotton, the lower
one fluted longitudinally to let the cotton pass through it. By one pair
of rollers revolving quicker than another the rove was drawn to the
requisite fineness for twisting, which was accomplished by spindles or
flyers placed in front of each set of rollers. The original invention of
Arkwright has neither been superseded nor substantially modified,
although it has of course undergone various minor improvements.
The first spinning-mill of Arkwright was driven by horses, but finding
this method too expensive, as well as incapable of application on a
sufficiently large scale, he resolved to use water-power, which had
already been successfully applied for a similar purpose, notably in the
silk-mill erected by Thomas Lombe, on the Derwent at Derby in 1717. In
1771 Arkwright therefore went into partnership with Mr. Reed, of
Nottingham, and Mr. Strutt, of Derby, the possessors of patents for the
manufacture of ribbed stockings, and erected his spinning-frame at
Cromford, in Derbyshire, in a deep, picturesque valley near the Derwent,
where he could obtain an easy command of water-power from a
never-failing spring of warm water, which even during the severest frost
scarcely ever froze. From the fact that the spinning-frame was driven by
water, it came to be known as the water-frame; since the application of
steam it has been known as the throstle. As the yarn it produced was of
a much harder and firmer texture than that spun by the jenny, it was
specially suited for warp, but the Lancashire manufacturers declined to
make use of it. Arkwright and his partners therefore wove it at first
into stockings, which, on account of the smoothness and equality of the
yarn, were greatly superior to those woven from the hand-spun cotton.
In 1773 he began to use the thread as warp for the manufacture of
calicoes, instead of the linen warp formerly used together with the
cotton weft, and thus a cloth solely of cotton was for the first time
produced in England. It met at once with a great demand, but, on account
of an act passed in 1736 for the protection of the woollen manufactures
of England against the calicoes of India, it was liable to a double
duty, which at the instance of the Lancashire manufacturers was speedily
enforced. Notwithstanding their strenuous opposition, Arkwright,
however, in 1774 obtained an act specially exempting from extra duty the
"new manufacture of stuffs wholly made of raw cotton-wool." Up to this
time more than twelve thousand pounds had been expended by Arkwright and
his partners on machinery, with little or no return; but after the new
act the cotton manufacture created by his energy and genius developed
with amazing rapidity, until it became the leading industry of the North
of England.
While struggling against the mingled inertness and active opposition of
the manufacturers, Arkwright had all the while been busily engaged in
augmenting the capability and efficiency of his machinery, and in 1775
he brought out a patent for a series of adaptations and inventions by
means of which the whole process of yarn manufacture--including carding,
drawing, roving, and spinning--was performed by a beautifully arranged
succession of operations on one machine. With the grant of this patent,
every obstacle in the way of a sufficient supply of yarn was overcome,
and, whatever might happen to Arkwright, the prosperity of the cotton
manufacture was guaranteed. Afterward the invention was adapted for the
woollen and worsted trade with equal success.