Richard Arkwright

English inventor and industrialist

• Born: December 23, 1732
• Birthplace: Preston, Lancashire, England
• Died: August 3, 1792
• Place of death: Cromford, Derbyshire, England

Through exceptional drive, organizational ability, and unbounded confidence, Arkwright synthesized cotton spinning by machine into a continuous process under one roof and thereby established a factory system that was modeled during the Industrial Revolution.

Early Life

Richard Arkwright was the youngest of thirteen children. Only the barest details of his early life are known, an ignorance the older, successful Arkwright did nothing to dispel. His formal education was slight: His Uncle Richard taught him to read and write. While apprenticed to a barber at Kirkham, a village to the west of Preston, he is said to have attempted to improve on his meager educational skills and even attended a school in the winter months.

His apprenticeship completed, Arkwright moved the few miles to Bolton. There, he worked for a wig maker. His early career was marked by attempts to succeed in business for himself. He kept a public house that, after initial success, failed. It is said that at this time he exhibited a genius for mechanics, bleeding (a standard medical therapy of the time), and tooth drawing; both these latter two talents were taught as part of the traditional barber’s trade.

In 1755, Arkwright was married and a son, Richard, was born. What happened to his first wife is unclear. He was remarried in 1761. Following his second marriage, Arkwright was able to use his wife’s money to set himself up as a traveling merchant. Buying human hair at country fairs from impoverished young women, Arkwright dyed the hair with a process of his own and sold it to commercial wig makers. In this business he achieved quite a measure of success.

At that time, Lancashire was full of spinners and weavers working in their own homes. The demand for spun cotton was increasing and, despite certain improvements in the spinning process, the problem of mechanizing spinning remained unresolved. On his travels through the villages and towns, Arkwright heard discussions and speculations surrounding the solution to this pressing problem. So involved in the spinning question did Arkwright become that, by the late 1760’s, he was devoting all of his efforts to overcoming the technical difficulties of mechanizing the spinning process.

Life’s Work

By January, 1768, Arkwright and his paid assistant, the clock maker John Kay, set up a working model of a spinning machine in Preston. The machine, later known as the water frame, was not a profoundly original breakthrough, but it was a dramatic development. Like many inventors of this period, Arkwright drew heavily on the work of others. He lived at a time and in a place of great technological ferment. He reworked the ideas of others and came up with a new synthesis of existing ideas that led to a successful machine, in terms of both the quantity of production and the quality of the product.

Arkwright’s character was commented upon by many people. The futile attempts of his own son and of William Nicholson, secretary of the Chamber of Manufacturers, to compile materials for a biography of him a few years after his death demonstrate Arkwright’s secrecy and his determination to erase all records of the means by which he acquired such wealth. What is clear is that Arkwright prompted suspicion in his rivals, was generally feared for his aims, and was self-sufficient, domineering, and vulgar. His whole life seemed to be driven by the desire to make money. He generally began work at five in the morning and finished at nine in the evening. He often conducted his business in a coach driven by four powerful, swift horses while traveling between his various factories.

Upon viewing Joshua Wright’s famous portrait of Arkwright, Thomas Carlyle, the great nineteenth century English literary critic and liberal, described the industrialist as “a plain, almost gross, bag-cheeked, pot bellied Lancashire man, with an air of painful reflection, yet also of copious free digestion.” A close student of Arkwright’s career and a near contemporary, Edward Baines, was more substantial in his assessment: “His natural disposition was ardent, enterprising, and stubbornly persevering: His mind was as coarse as it was bold and active, and his manners were rough and unpleasing.” In this description, one can see a type—the self-made industrialist—that was to become more familiar as machine production spread to other industries and to other countries.

In April, 1768, mindful of the trouble suffered by James Hargreaves, who had been attacked by angry Lancashire cotton spinners afraid of unemployment, Arkwright decided to set up production in Nottingham in the English Midlands, where Hargreaves had found a more tranquil home. There, Arkwright needed increased financial backing and eventually found it in two successful stocking manufacturers, Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt.

The following year, 1769, a patent was granted for Arkwright’s new spinning machine, and a small factory was set up in Nottingham to produce cotton thread by means of the machine, powered by horses. Horsepower proved to be too expensive for Arkwright’s taste and so, in 1771, with Strutt’s backing, Arkwright could begin to develop his invention on a large scale by building a factory at Cromford, near Derby. The site was somewhat unusual. It was in the middle of nowhere, with no roads or other communications to the outside world and no nearby settlement. Its greatest asset was that it was located on the River Derwent, whose rushing waters could drive Arkwright’s machines, henceforth known as water frames. It was from the use of water power that early factories were often known as mills. In addition, hot springs running into the river above the mill ensured that the waters would not freeze in winter.

Over the years, Arkwright built up a community around his factory, the first of the cotton villages; he built houses and dormitories, a school, and a church. Roads were built to connect Cromford with Derby and Nottingham.

Armed with his patent for the water frame, Arkwright sought to expand his business. In 1773, he and his partners set up weaving workshops in Derby. There, for the first time in England, pure cotton cloth, or calico, was produced. The water frame made it possible. Previously, cotton had been combined with linen, since the method of hand spinning cotton produced a thread of uneven quality and strength. Linen thread was necessary as warp in weaving so as to avoid the problem of constant breakage of cotton thread when put under stress. Arkwright’s machine, through its use of pairs of rollers, was able to spin cotton to a uniform fineness and then twist the thread on spindles or flyers to give it strength. The quality of cotton thread was thus greatly improved, strengthened, and made more uniform.

Demand for the new calico cloth was immediate. At this point, Arkwright faced a serious problem. England’s wealth had been built originally upon wool and woolen textiles. The acquisition of India by England had led to competition at home with lighter imported cotton goods. To protect domestic woolen manufactures, Parliament passed an act in 1736 ordering a double duty to be paid on all cotton goods. If Arkwright were to succeed, he would have to secure a change in the law. Despite the opposition of the Lancashire manufacturers, Arkwright’s petition to Parliament resulted in a new law, the Calico Act of 1774, which acknowledged the fledgling pure cotton textile industry and swept away all impediments to its development.

Arkwright’s overwhelming competitive position in cotton spinning, protected as it was by his patent of 1769, was supplemented in 1775 by the grant of a second patent covering all parts of the spinning process. It caused a furor among other cotton manufacturers, who maintained that Arkwright claimed originality for machinery already in use: a carding machine, crank and comb, roving frame, feeder, and other, minor features. The only originality, it was claimed, lay in Arkwright’s arrangement of them into an integrated, powered system operating under one roof. In taking out this patent, Arkwright aimed to obtain a monopoly on spinning machinery and an overwhelming place in spinning output. His monopolistic tendencies were supplemented by plans at various times to buy up the entire world output of cotton; to apply his machinery, acquire new patents, and consequently acquire a monopoly for woolen and worsted spinning; and even, as he boasted, to pay the national debt.

The 1775 patent was, in effect, a declaration of war against the rest of the cotton industry. The Lancashire manufacturers in particular resented the very principle of patents and combined against Arkwright. In an action in the courts in 1781 for patent infringement, Arkwright’s case against a Lancashire cotton-mill owner, Colonel Mordaunt, was thrown out, his patent for the carding machine invalidated. Until this time, for a period of six years, Arkwright was able to expand his interests with Strutt, enter partnerships with several others to build more factories in the Midlands and Lancashire, collect royalties from licenses given under his patents, supply the machinery himself to licensees, and buy into their industrial activities. Thus, despite his failure to secure an extension of the water-frame patent beyond 1783 and the loss of his carding patent in 1781, Arkwright was still the richest cotton spinner in England, with the most, and the best-run, factories and the ability to set cotton-thread prices for the industry.

Further troubles came from cotton spinners themselves. Machinery threatened the livelihoods of thousands of them. The American Revolution led to a trade depression; many were impoverished and unemployed. The jenny, water frame, carding machine, and other new machines cut drastically the number of workers needed. The result was that factories, especially in Lancashire, the center of cotton production, were physically attacked and the machines were broken. Among the factories destroyed was Arkwright’s at Birkacre, then the largest in Great Britain. Fortunately, trade resumed and the cotton industry surged after 1779.

The campaign to resecure his cotton-spinning patents led Arkwright back into court in 1785. Initially, he was successful. His success so alarmed cotton manufacturers in Lancashire that, led by Sir Robert Peel, father of the future prime minister, they obtained a writ for a new trial. The case against Arkwright, as identified for the jury by Justice Buller, rested on three points: the originality of his invention, his claim to have developed it himself, and the sufficiency of his official specification of the invention. The two chief prosecution witnesses were John Kay, Arkwright’s paid assistant at the time the water frame was developed, and Thomas Highs, who Kay asserted was the original inventor. Kay said that he had made models for Highs and later duplicated them when asked by Arkwright. The claims of other inventors for aspects of Arkwright’s 1775 patent were also promoted. The special jury found against Arkwright on all three points. Arkwright lost all patent rights. Any other person would have been crushed by the four years of patent fights, but Arkwright was undaunted.

At the end of 1783, Arkwright financed Samuel Oldknow, who was to become the foremost muslin manufacturer in England. From 1784, Arkwright’s Scottish interests were firmly established: He helped finance the cotton mills of David Dale at New Lanark (whose son-in-law and successor was Robert Owen, the famous industrial reformer and Socialist) and mills in Perthshire and Ayrshire. In addition, Arkwright continued to build new mills of his own, expand existing ones, and replenish machinery in the light of the latest improvements. In 1790, Arkwright began to apply steam power to his works with a Boulton and Watt engine at his Nottingham factory. Thereafter, the water frame driven by steam power came to be called a throstle.

In 1786, Arkwright was knighted after he delivered a loyal address to George III upon the king’s escape from assassination. The following year, he was made High Sheriff of Derbyshire, an unusual honor for a person in trade. He apparently carried out his duties with flamboyance. His elegant coach was accompanied by thirty javelin men in sumptuous livery, and he provided great banquets during the period of the assize (a major regional law court). Like many successful merchants and later manufacturers, Arkwright invested in personal loans and land. In 1789, he purchased the manor of Cromford, beginning the construction of a church for his workers and a castle for himself. He died of complications related to his lifelong subjection to asthma, leaving his castle unfinished.

Significance

Much speculation has surrounded Sir Richard Arkwright’s development of the water frame. The language used to describe it and his other inventions in both patent descriptions was deliberately vague and misleading. Other persons have been put forward as the true originators of the various spinning machines claimed by Arkwright. The patent trials of 1781 and 1785 brought forth accusations taken up by later writers. Whatever the truth may be, and there is considerable doubt concerning Arkwright’s claims to originality, he is a seminal figure in the history of the Industrial Revolution. After the patent trials in which he had testified on Arkwright’s behalf, James Watt commented,

As to Mr. Arkwright, he is, to say no worse, one of the most self-sufficient, ignorant men I have ever met with, yet, by all I can learn, he is certainly a man of merit in his way, and one to whom Britain is much indebted, and whom she [Britain] should honour and reward, for whoever invented the spinning machine, Arkwright certainly had the merit of performing the most difficult part, which was the making it useful.

From the late 1770’s until his death, despite his clashes with the Manchester Committee of Trade over patent rights, Arkwright led the cotton industry. Indeed, in 1788, Arkwright’s name headed the trade’s fight against its most serious rival, the powerful British East India Company. Arkwright’s factory communities, with their twenty-four-hour production schedules, twelve-hour work shifts, massive employment of children, poor ventilation, paternalism, and work incentives (which included bonuses, distinctive clothing for prize workers, and annual celebrations) had been copied by numerous others by the end of the eighteenth century. His factory organization served as a model well into the nineteenth century. To Sir Edward Baines, Arkwright

possessed very high inventive talent, as well as an unrivalled sagacity in estimating at their true value the mechanical contrivances of others, in combining them together, perfecting them, arranging a complete series of machinery, and constructing the factory system—itself a vast and admirable machine, which has been the source of great wealth, both to individuals and to the nation.

Finally, according to Paul Mantoux, the great historian of the Industrial Revolution, Arkwright

personified the new type of the great manufacturer, neither an engineer nor a merchant, but adding to the main characteristics of both, qualifications peculiar to himself: those of a founder of great concerns, an organizer of production and a leader of men. Arkwright’s career heralded a new social class and a new economic era.

Bibliography

Baines, Sir Edward. History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966. Originally published in 1835 and a major source for subsequent works, this book’s frontispiece is the famous portrait that inspired Thomas Carlyle. Very informative about inventions, Arkwright (chapter 9), and the development of the industry.

Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures: Industry, Innovation, and Work in Britain, 1700-1820. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1994. An excellent survey of eighteenth century British industry, featuring two chapters on the textile industry, with information on Arkwright.

Daniels, George W. The Early English Cotton Industry. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1920. Good background treatment, especially concerned with breakthroughs in weaving. Chapters 3 and 4 deal substantially with Arkwright.

Deane, Phyllis. The First Industrial Revolution. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. One of the standard works on the causes, course, and consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Chapter 6 deals with the cotton industry and Arkwright’s part in it.

Fitton, R. S. The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1989. A biography of the Arkwright family by an author who has written a previous book on the subject.

Fitton, R. S., and A. B. Wadsworth. The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758-1830. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1973. Reconstructed largely from Strutt family letters and the business records of the Strutt company. Full of valuable insight and direct quotation concerning this important partnership, which dissolved in 1783. Contains the best account of Arkwright’s life and valuable insight into Arkwright’s business behavior.

Guest, Richard. A Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture: With a Disproval of the Claim of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of Its Ingenious Machinery. 1823. Reprint. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968. Advances the claim of Thomas Highs to authorship both of the water frame and of the spinning jenny. Excellent quotations from the 1785 patent trial and wonderful sketches of the various mechanical inventions. Arkwright was successful, the author claims, only because he made the clock maker John Kay drunk and stole the invention.

Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England. Translated by Marjorie Vernon. 1927. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Published originally in French (1906), this work is, in many ways, unsurpassed as an account of the Industrial Revolution.

Unwin, George. Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights: The Industrial Revolution in Stockport and Marple. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1924. A model business history drawn mainly from voluminous records discovered by chance in Oldknow’s factory, long abandoned following a fire. Very good for the business correspondence of Arkwright and his market position. Arkwright financed Oldknow, who became England’s foremost muslin manufacturer. In the complete absence of any business records of Arkwright himself, this and Fitton and Wadsworth’s work on the Strutts are the best sources for information about Arkwright’s business methods.