The early English cotton industryDaniels, George W. (George William)
History
The early English cotton industry
Daniels, George W. (George William)
Cotton machinery; Cotton trade -- Great Britain
In the 1769 patent Arkwright provided for the machinery to be driven
by horse-power. Two years later he erected his factory at Cromford,
where water-power was available. But at this time another power to
drive it was in preparation, Watt having taken out his patent for
his steam-engine in the same year as Arkwright obtained his first
patent.[268] It was not, however, until the last decade of the
eighteenth century that Watt’s steam-engine was much used in the
cotton industry, its first application in this direction being made at
Papplewick in Nottinghamshire in 1785, and it was not introduced into
Manchester until 1789.[269] There had been earlier efforts to utilise
steam, as in 1783 Ogden could state that in Manchester a factory had
been erected in which “Mr. Arkwright’s machines are setting to work by
a steam-engine, for carding and spinning of cotton.”[270]
[Footnote 268: Smiles, _Boulton and Watt_ (1904), p. 111.]
[Footnote 269: Ure, _ibid._, i., p. 286.]
[Footnote 270: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 16.]
The new spinning machinery was not introduced into use without
opposition, but the opposition to its use was small, compared with
the opposition to the patents granted in connection with it. Before
the patents were taken out, both Hargreaves and Arkwright had left
Lancashire for Nottingham. As already mentioned, Hargreaves did not
obtain his patent until 1770, and his removal to Nottingham followed
upon a machine-breaking episode in 1767, when the jenny was the
object of attention. Arkwright removed in the following year, and his
machinery appears to have been immune from attack until 1779--ten years
after he had obtained his first patent.
In that year a rising took place in north-west Lancashire, when an
attack was made upon the factories in the neighbourhood of Chorley,
particularly upon one at Birkacre, owned by Arkwright and his partners,
and the machinery destroyed. Afterwards the mob intended to proceed
to Bolton, Manchester, and Stockport, and finally to reach Cromford,
breaking the machinery as they went along.[271] Consequently, it is
hardly surprising that the inhabitants of Manchester were alarmed, and
called a meeting of magistrates, merchants, and gentlemen, when it
was resolved “to embody and arm a sufficient number of soldiers and
proper persons to defend the town and neighbourhood.”[272] Fortunately
their services were not required, as the rising terminated at Bolton.
In the next year, one of Arkwright’s partners petitioned the House of
Commons for redress for the destruction of the factory at Birkacre,
claiming that he had suffered loss to the extent of £4400, owing,
as he insisted, to lack of protection from the civil and military
authorities.[273]
[Footnote 271: Josiah Wedgwood was an eye-witness of this rising. His
account of it is quoted by Espinasse, _ibid._, pp. 424-426.]
[Footnote 272: _Manchester Mercury_, 12th October 1779.]
[Footnote 273: _J.H.C._, xxxvii., p. 926.]
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