Excellent as was the yarn produced by the spinning-jenny and the water-frame, compared with the old hand-spun stuff, it was coarse and full of knots; and when a demand arose for imitations of the fine India muslins, the weavers found they could produce but a very poor piece of work with such rough materials. Among those who were inconvenienced for want of a better sort of yarn was young Samuel Crompton, who lived with his widowed mother and two sisters in an old country house called Hall-in-the-Wood, near what was then the little rural town of Bolton in the Moors. When Samuel was only five years old his father died, and left his widow with the three chil The five years of labour and anxiety bore fruit in Just as Crompton had put the finishing touches to his mule, the weavers and spinners broke out in open riot at Blackburn, and scoured the country with the cry, "Men, not machines;" breaking every machine they could lay hands on. To keep himself out of trouble and save his mule, Crompton took it to pieces, and hid it in the roof of the hall. When the storm had swept past, he brought it out, put it together, and began to use it in his daily work. The fine yarn he turned out made quite a sensation, and the fame of his invention spread far and wide. People came from all quarters to get a sight of it; and when denied admittance, brought ladders and harrows, and climbed up to the window of the room where it stood. One pertinacious fellow actually ensconced himself for several days in the cockloft, from which he watched Crompton at work in the room below, through a gimlet hole he bored in the ceiling. Crompton lost all patience with this constant espionage. "Why couldn't folk let him enjoy his machine by himself?" he asked. A friend, whose advice he asked, urged him not to think of taking out a patent, but to make a present of his invention to the com Shy, simple, confiding, innocent of the cunning ways of the world, sadly backward in the study of mankind, and perhaps somewhat ungenial and unpractised to boot, Crompton, from the time when one would have thought he had set his foot on the first round of the ladder of fortune, went stumbling on from one misfortune to another, ill-used on every side, and unsuccessful in every effort to get on in the world. Wheedled out of his patent rights, cheated of the money promised him, his workmen lured away from him as soon as he had taught them the construction of the mule, he grew morbid and distrustful of everyone. He would have no more workmen; and as the production of his machines was thus restricted to the labours of his own hands, he could He then retired into comparative obscurity at Oldham, where he drudged away at weaving, farming, cow-keeping, and overseeing the poor, and found it no easy matter withal to support his family, for he had married some years before. Afterwards he re-appeared at Bolton as a small manufacturer; and there was a brief interval of sunshine. The muslin trade was very brisk, and the weavers walked about with five-pound notes stuck in their hats, and dressed out in ruffled shirts and top boots, like fine gentlemen. While this lasted Crompton found abundant sale for his superior yarn. But trade grew depressed, and the gloom settled over Crompton's life to its close. The idea was started of getting Parliament to do something for him; but he was too independent to supplicate government officials in person. Spencer Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was willing to befriend him; but Crompton's ill luck was at his heels. On the 11th of May 1812, Crompton When the subject of a grant to the inventor of the spinning-mule was brought up in the House a few days afterwards by Lord Stanley (now Lord Derby), only £5000 was proposed. No one thought of increasing it. "Let's give the man a £100 a-year," said an honourable member; "it's as much as he can drink." So the vote was agreed to; though at that very time the duty accruing to the revenue from the cotton wool imported to be spun upon the mule was £300,000 a-year, or more than £1000 a working day. The impulse which this invention gave to the cotton manufactures of Great Britain, and the commercial prosperity to which it led, enabled the country to bear the heavy drain of the war taxes; and it has been said, with no little truth, that Crompton contributed as much as Wellington to the downfall of Napoleon. As soon as it became known, the mule-spindle took the lead in cotton-spinning machines. In 1811 above 4,600,000 mule-spindles, made by The grant of £5000 was soon swallowed up in the payment of his debts, and in meeting the losses of his business. "Nothing more was ever done for him. The king, who was fond of patronizing merit, took no notice of him; his eldest son was promised a commission, which he did not get; and some time after, when struggling through life on only £100 a-year, the post of sub-inspector of the factories in Bolton became vacant; though he applied for the office, for which he was eminently qualified, he was passed over in favour of the natural son of one of the ex-secretaries of state—a man who did not know a mule from a spinning-jenny." Crompton spent his last days in poverty and privation, and died at the age of seventy-four, in 1827. FOOTNOTES: |