As there was scant enough money for food and clothing in the Arkwright house, so it followed that for schooling there was none at all. Young Richard would have stood a poor chance had it not been that his uncle Richard took pity on the boy growing up in a state of neglect and ignorance, and taught him to read. In later days he added something to this small beginning by attending classes in the winter evenings. And so the early years of his life passed, and in time the boy went out into the world, poorly and scantily enough armed for its difficult battle. Long years after he bemoaned his ignorance and want of education when he felt all the drawbacks, the trammelling, the holding-down of it, when he realised how it handicapped him in the race of life. And when he was an old man over fifty, after pressing into the day as many as sixteen working hours, he would steal an hour from sleep to learn English grammar and another hour to practise writing and spelling. But, poorly equipped as young Richard was in most ways, he went out into life provided with a great brain, and had he known it, that brain was to open to him a door through which--could he have looked then--he might have seen stretching away into the years a long vista of triumphs and successes. The boy began on a very low round of the ladder--a strange enough beginning for the future maker of the cotton world: he entered on his career as apprentice to a barber. But, boy as he was, he threw himself with energy and ardour--these two qualities that made him a great man later on--into the new business. He took a firm hold of it. He worked steadily at it for years, having most likely nothing in his mind higher than the setting up for himself--the becoming some day a master barber! It was this goal at that time that seemed to him getting on in life. So his boyhood sped away, and when his apprenticeship had come to an end he took the great and important step of setting up for himself. He left Preston and went to Bolton. Poor indeed must have been his stock of money at this point in his fortunes. It was no imposing shop he took, with windows and painted sign, but the smallest and poorest place to be had. He rented an underground cellar, but his eager spirit was to be damped neither by poverty nor a dreary outlook. He bent all his powers on getting customers, and as the first step to this he stuck out a placard above his cellar door with the scrawled invitation-- "_Come to the subterraneous barber, he shaves for a penny._" In the little world of hair-dressing the rude appeal made a small sensation. Here, as in other businesses, there was competition. Arkwright shaved for a penny. At this rate the subterraneous barber would draw away the customers of others! While the underground cellar would be crowded, their shops would be empty. And so they were forced to let down their prices, and others besides Arkwright shaved for a penny.