size, for a long time they were worked entirely by hand or
partially with the aid of horses or water. The first jenny- and
mule-factories were small for this reason, and also because skill in
the operative was a matter of fundamental importance,[1] as it was
not in twist-spinning on the water-frame. The size of the typical
weft-spinning mill suddenly increased after the scope for the
application of power was enlarged by the use of the self-actor
mule, invented in 1825 by Richard Roberts, of the firm of Sharp,
Roberts & Co., machinists, of Manchester. In 1830 Roberts
improved his invention and brought out the complete self-actor.
Self-actors had been put forward by others besides Roberts—for
instance by William Strutt, F.R.S. (son of Arkwright’s partner),
before 1790; William Kelly, formerly of Lanark mills, in 1792;
William Eaton of Wiln in Derbyshire; Peter Ewart of Manchester;
de Jongh of Warrington; Buchanan, of Catrine works, Scotland;
Knowles of Manchester; and Dr Brewster of America[2]—but
none had succeeded. And Roberts’s machines did not immediately
win popularity. For a long time the winding done by them was
defective, and they suffered from other imperfections. Broadly
speaking, until the American Civil War the number of hand-mules
in use remained high. It was for the fine “counts” in
particular that many employers preferred them.[3] About the end
of the ’sixties, however, and in the early ’seventies, great
improvements were effected in machinery, partly under the
stimulus of a desire to elevate its fitness for dealing with short-staple
cotton, and it became evident that hand-mules were
doomed. Here we may suitably refer to the scutching machine
for opening and cleaning cotton, invented by Mr Snodgrass of
Glasgow in 1797, and introduced by Kennedy[4] to Manchester in
1808 or 1809; the cylinder carder invented by Lewis Paul and
improved by Arkwright; and the lap-machine first constructed
by Arkwright’s son.
We now transfer our attention to that accumulation of improvements in manufacturing (as weaving is technically termed) which, taken in conjunction with the inventions already described, presaged the large factory system which Weaving machinery. covers Lancashire to-day. Gradually, for many years, the loom had been gathering complexities, though no fundamental alteration was introduced into its structure until 1738, when John Kay of Bury excited the wrath of his fellow-weavers by designing and employing the device of the fly-shuttle. For some unfathomable reason—for the opposition of the weavers hardly explains it, though they expressed their views forcibly and acted upon them violently—this invention was not much applied in the cotton industry until about a quarter of a century after its appearance. The plan was merely to substitute for human hands hammers at the ends of a lengthened lathe along which the shuttle ran, the hammers being set in motion by the jerking of a stick (the picking peg) to which they were attached by strings. The output of a weaver was enormously increased in consequence. In 1760 John Kay’s son Robert added the drop-box, by the use of which many different kinds of weft could be worked into the same fabric without difficulty. It was in fact a partitioned lift, any partition of which could be brought to a level with the lathe and made for the time continuous with it. The drop-box usefully supplemented the “draw-boy,” or “draught-boy,” which provided for the raising of warps in groups, and thereby enabled figured goods to be produced. The “draw-boy” had been well known in the industry for a long time; in 1687 a Joseph Mason patented an invention for avoiding the expense of an assistant to work it,[5] but there is no evidence to show that his invention was of practical value. Looms with “draw-boys” affixed, which could sometimes be worked by the weavers themselves, later became common under the name of harness-looms, which have since been supplanted by Jacquard looms, wherein the pattern is picked out mechanically.
The principle of the fly-shuttle was a first step towards the complete mechanizing of the action required for working a loom. The second step was the power-loom, the initial effort to design which was created by the tardiness of weaving as contrasted with the rapidity of spinning by power. After the general adoption of the jenny, supplies of yarn outran the productive powers of the agencies that existed for converting them into fabrics, and as a consequence, it would seem, some yarn was directed into exports which might have been utilized for the manufacture of cloth for export had the loom been more productive. The agitation for the export tax on yarn at the end of the 18th, and in the first years of the 19th century, is therefore comprehensible, but there was no foundation for some of the allegations by which it was supported. For a large proportion of the exported yarn, fabrics could not have been substituted, since the former was required to feed the hand-looms in continental homes and domestic workshops, against much of the product of which there was no chance of competing. The hand-loom was securely linked to the home of the peasant, and though he would buy yarn to feed his loom he would not buy cloth and break it up.[6]
Cartwright’s loom was not the first design adapted for weaving by power. A highly rudimentary and perfectly futile self-actor weaving machine, which would have been adapted for power-working had it been capable of working at all, had been invented by a M. de Gennes: a description of it, extracted from the Journal de sçavans, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for July and August 1678, and again in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1751 (vol. xxi. pp. 391–392). It consisted of mechanical hands, as it were, that shot in and out of the warp and exchanged the shuttle.[7] Another idea, which however proved fruitful, was that of grinding the shuttle through the warps by the agency of cog-wheels working at each end upon teeth affixed to the upper side of the shuttle. Though shuttles could not in this fashion be set in rapid movement, the machine turned out to be economical for the production of ribbons and tapes, because many pieces could be woven by it at once. These contrivances were known as swivel-looms, and in 1724 Stukeley in his Itinerarium curiosum wrote that the people of Manchester have “looms that work twenty-four laces at a time, which was stolen from the Dutch.” Ogden says also that they were set up in imitation of Dutch machines by Dutch mechanics invited over for the purpose. Another interesting passage relating to the swivel-looms will be found in the rules of the Manchester small-ware weavers dated 1756, where the complaint is made that the masters have acquired by the employment of “engine or Dutch looms such large and opulent fortunes as hath enabled them to vie with some of the best gentlemen of the country,” and it is alleged that these machines, which wove twelve or fourteen pieces at once, “were in use in Manchester thirty years ago.”[8] One power-factory at least was devoted to them as early as 1760, namely that of a Mr Gartside at Manchester, where water-power was applied, but the enterprise failed.[9] Cartwright’s invention was probably perfected in its
- ↑ See Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry, pp. 59 et seq.
- ↑ See Baines p. 207.
- ↑ “Counts” are determined by the number of hanks to the ℔. A hank is 840 yds. The origin of the hank of 840 yds. is probably that spinners used a winding-reel of 1½ yds. in circumference, so that 80 threads (one “lea” or “rap” according to old phraseology) would contain 120 yds., and seven leas (i.e. a hank) would contain 840 yds. A hank of seven leas was the common measure in the woollen industry, in which the reels were 1 yd. or 2 yds. in circumference. For details see an article on the subject in the Textile World Record, vol. xxxi. No. 1.
- ↑ The author of the memoir of Crompton (see bibliography).
- ↑ Specification 257.
- ↑ For further analysis of the arguments current see Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry, pp. 66 et seq.
- ↑ Also in the 17th century a John Barkstead was granted a patent for a method of manufacturing cotton goods, but the method is not described. 1691, Specification 276.
- ↑ In the parliamentary reports (1840), xxiv. p. 611, the invention of the swivel-loom is claimed for a “Van Anson.” It is a plausible supposition that by “Van Anson” is meant Vaucanson, as he appears to have improved the swivel-loom. But he could not have been the original inventor, since in 1724 (that is, when Vaucanson was at the most fifteen years of age) they were being employed in Manchester.
- ↑ Aikin, pp. 175–176, and Guest, p. 44. An explanation of the mechanism of the swivel-loom will be found in the Encyclopédie méthodique, manufactures, arts et métiers, pt. i. vol. ii. pp. 202, 208, and Recueil de planches, vol. vi. (1786), pp. 72-78.
