It was an unpretentious establishment, that first little cotton mill; it gave employment to not more than a dozen operatives, and the machinery was turned not by a great steam engine, but by a pair of patient horses harnessed to a treadmill,—yet it contained the germ of the modern factory and the modern factory system. Later, Arkwright built another and larger factory at Cromford in Derbyshire, driven by water power—from which circumstance his spinning-machine came to be called the water-frame. The cotton industry of England which Arkwright established developed slowly; in the five years, ending with 1775, the annual import of cotton into Great Britain was only four times the average import at the beginning of the century. But when in the year 1785 Arkwright’s patent was finally set aside and his spinning machinery became public property, a great extension of cotton manufacture followed, accompanied by a marvelous national prosperity. Arkwright, although deprived of his monopoly, was by this time so firmly established in the industry that he remained the dominant figure in the yarn market, fixing the price of the commodity for all other spinners; and thus he accumulated a great fortune. While Arkwright was without doubt perfectly familiar with the experiments of both Wyatt and High, nevertheless it was the Preston barber and not the original inventors who first produced yarn fit for weaving. It is proverbial that inventors seldom reap the harvest of wealth which they sow; they are the dreamers and their reward is in beholding a perfected mechanism—their work of art. So it was with Wyatt and High. They dreamed of spindles turned by power and saw their spindles turn; but Arkwright dreamed of a nation made rich and powerful by these same inventions, and he, too, lived to see his dream come true. Sir Richard Arkwright possessed all the qualities essential to success—tireless energy, enthusiasm, perseverance, and self-confidence. He believed in himself and so he compelled others to believe in him. His usual working day began at five o’clock in the morning and did not end until nine at night; when he was fifty years of age he lengthened this day by two hours, which he devoted to acquiring the education denied him in his youth. He had unbounded confidence in the success of his adventures and was accustomed to say that he would pay the national debt—an interesting circumstance, for surely by his genius the national debt was paid many times over.