Whatever Hargreaves’ success may have been, there can be no question of the success attained by Richard Arkwright. That Arkwright was a great inventor may be disputed, but that he was a great man of business it is impossible to deny. It may be stated with some confidence that, had his name not been associated with the invention of machinery, he would have gained a prominent place in the early stages of modern industry. All that is known of his career supports the view. It was pre-eminently this characteristic which distinguished him from his less fortunate contemporaries. Whether the idea of spinning by rollers was his own or not, it is clear that when he left Preston for Nottingham in 1768, he realised that he had in his possession an invention which, with the aid of capital, would bring him material success, and he was able to convince others of the fact. His association with Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt[312]--particularly with the latter--was the tactical point in his career in the cotton industry. Strutt, by previous inventions, had already shown his ability as a mechanician[313]; he was also an established business man and a capitalist, able to realise the possibilities of Arkwright’s machinery. In every respect he was an ideal partner for Arkwright, and there can be little doubt that, if all the facts were known, much of the improvement of the machinery would have to be ascribed to him: the recorded instance of his rubbing the spinning rollers with chalk to prevent the cotton sticking to them is significant.[314] [Footnote 312: Baines, _ibid._, p. 151.] [Footnote 313: Felkin, _History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures_ (1867), p. 90.] [Footnote 314: _Ibid._] With Arkwright thus established, with his machinery with its potentialities, in the very district where silk-mills--the precursors of cotton-mills--had begun to arise more than a generation before,[315] the modern cotton industry organised on the lines of the factory system was inevitably born. It should be borne in mind that in the twelve years during which the privileges of the patents were enjoyed Arkwright and his partners did not merely hold the patents and draw premiums from them. In 1771 they erected their factory at Cromford in which, eight years later, three hundred workpeople were said to be employed. This was followed in 1773 by another at Derby, erected for the specific purpose of carrying on the new manufacture of calico. In 1776 another factory was erected at Belper; about the same time the one at Birkacre was established; and in 1780 the one at Manchester was erected, which was said to have cost £4000, and to be sufficiently large to contain six hundred workpeople.[316] [Footnote 315: Smiles, _Industry and Invention_ (1884), ch. iv., “John Lombe: Introducer of the Silk Industry into England.”