All the great English inventors have sprung from families of small means, and have had to work for their living. Richard Arkwright, born at Preston, in Lancashire, December 23, 1732, was no exception to this rule. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and his parents were as poor as the proverbial church mice. He had no real education, only such as he could pick up by chance, but he made the most of such chances as came his way. He was apprenticed to a barber at Bolton, and later took up that business for himself. It was an occupation in which he would be apt to glean much gossip and many stray scraps of information, but little that would tend to broaden his mind. Perhaps he realized this for himself, and concluded that the hairdressing line was not to be his destiny, for when he was in the neighborhood of twenty-eight years of age he retired from his barber-shop, and became a traveling dealer in hair and dyes. This would at least allow him to see something more of the world. His prospects at this new trade were good. He had come upon a new method of dyeing hair and preparing it to be made into wigs. Wigs were the fashion, and Arkwright had an excellent process, and was an energetic and resourceful dealer. He saw something of the country world of England, the men and women in it, what they wanted, and what they needed. Doubtless his inventive mind was already revolving improvements for them. The dealer in dyes and wigs was a shrewd and canny man. Carlyle had this to say concerning him and his progress: “Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dirty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his! Spindles, shuttles, wheels, and contrivances, plying ideally within the same; rather hopeless-looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty.” There is always a strain of romance, or at least adventure, in the life of the itinerant pedlar, something of the free-footedness of the gypsy, and something of the acumen of those Eastern traders who traveled in caravans from the Orient. But doubtless we see the charm more clearly than the traveler himself. It may have been, and most likely was, a workaday job for Richard Arkwright. But consider the romance that underlay it! This country vendor of hair was to become one of the world’s great inventors, and to kneel before his sovereign for the accolade that was to make him knight. Figaro of Seville, famed as he was, was none superior to the Lancashire barber.