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#Post#: 30602--------------------------------------------------
Sir Richard Arkwright
By: Aletheia Date: October 13, 2018, 7:32 am
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Richard was born poor. His parents couldn't afford to send him
to school, but his cousin taught him how to read and write.
Yet he ended up one of the richest people in England
[img alt=Related
image]
(HTM) http://www.daviddarling.inf
o/images/Arkwright.jpg[/img]
He began working as an apprentice barber and it was only after
the death of his first wife that he became an entrepreneur. His
second marriage to Margaret Biggins in 1761 brought a small
income that enabled him to expand his barber's business. He
acquired a secret method for dyeing hair and travelled around
the country purchasing human hair for use in the manufacture of
wigs. During this time he was often in contact with weavers and
spinners and when the fashion for wearing wigs declined, he
looked to mechanical inventions in the field of textiles to make
his fortune.
([/color]SOURCE
(HTM) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/arkwright_richard.shtml[color=rgb(66,<br
/>66, 66)])
In 1771 he set up a cotton factory in Cromford:
[img alt=File:Cromford 1771
mill.jpg]
(HTM) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Cromford_1771_mill.jpg/800px-Cromford_1771_mill.jpg[/img]
He didn't just build a dedicated building for it, large enough
for machines that couldn't fit in cottages. He set up an
aqueduct from the river to bring water to an overshot waterwheel
for power. He built cottages for workers (it employed 200
people), initially encouraging skilled textile workers to move
to Cromford, but eventually reached the point where he could
treat them as replaceable commodities (many of his workers were
children, trained just to operate his machines, and labour was
divided by machine, rather than a worker following an individual
item from start to finish)
The machines were operated day and night, by two 13-hour shifts,
with workers working six days per week. Bells rang at 5 am and
5 pm and the gates were shut precisely at 6 am and 6 pm. Anyone
who was late not only could not work that day but lost an extra
day's pay. Workers got 1 week of holiday per year, provided
they didn't leave the village.
He played the patent game vigorously, and made much of his money
be licensing technology to other factory owners, but he started
several factories himself, including the first to make use of
steam power. But what he is chiefly remembered for are the
technologies he improved to the point where it was a viable
economic proposition to use powered machines to produce useful
products:
The Water Frame
(HTM) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Arkwright-water-frame.jpg/220px-Arkwright-water-frame.jpg
The water frame is the name given to a spinning frame when water
power is used to drive it. Both are credited to Richard
Arkwright, who patented the technology in 1768. It was based on
an invention by Thomas Highs, and the patent was later
overturned.
The water frame is derived from the use of a water wheel to
drive a number of spinning frames. The water wheel provided more
power to the spinning frame than human operators, reducing the
amount of human labor needed and increasing the spindle count
dramatically. However, unlike the spinning jenny, the water
frame could spin only one thread at a time until Samuel Compton
combined the two inventions into his spinning mule in 1779.
The water frame was originally powered by horses at a factory
built by Arkwright and partners in Nottingham. In 1770 Arkwright
and partners built a water powered mill in Cromford, Derbyshire.
(SOURCE
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_frame)
The Carding Engine
[img alt=Drawing of Carding Machine
(1823)]
(HTM) https://spartacus-educational.com/TEXcard.jpg[/img]
Lewis Paul's carding patent is dated 30th August, 1748. A copy
of which, with the drawings, I have obtained from the Patent
Office. The machine had a horizontal cylinder, covered in its
whole circumference with parallel rows of cards, with
intervening spaces, and turned by a handle.
One of the first improvements made in the carding machine was
the fixing of a perpetual revolting cloth, called a feeder, on
which a given weight of cotton wool was spread, and, by which it
was conveyed to the cylinder. This was invented in 1772, by John
Lees, a Quaker, of Manchester
When Arkwright took out his patent for the carding machine, he
also included in it machines for drawing and roving. It consists
in drawing out the carding by rollers, and then doubling and
redoubling the slivers, which are called ends, so as to restore
them to nearly the same substance as at first. (SOURCE
(HTM) https://spartacus-educational.com/TEXcardingM.htm)
In a way, Arkwright reminds me of Bill Gates. Producing a more
effective carding machine wasn't an act of genius so much as one
of investment. He identified a bottleneck, and then invested
more than £10,000 (an enormous sum in those days) on
development, because it made economic sense for him to do so.
So why was it Cromford where the elements of the industrial
revolution first all came together? Why not the Netherlands,
Japan, or some other place?
#Post#: 30603--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: Aletheia Date: October 13, 2018, 7:39 am
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Cromford looks pretty random. It is a small town in
Derbyshire, right in the middle of Britain, away from the coast,
no coal or iron.
But it did have canals:
(HTM) https://www.waterwayroutes.co.uk/wr/49m3-rear-600.png
and they connected it to Liverpool, one of the great ports of
the world at the time, a lynchpin of the Atlantic trade:
(HTM) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry_Popkin/publication/49676792/figure/fig2/AS:267550521032718@1440800423998/The-Atlantic-trade-routes-between-Africa-the-New-World-and-Europe-The-trade-triangle.png
Unlike most of the rest of Europe, Britain's population had
increased by 250% over the previous 100 years, and while
prosperity was high (due to the cheap resources come in from the
Atlantic trade), the laws of the land did far more to protect
the property rights of the rich than they did to protect the
welfare of the poor.
Britain was becoming highly urbanised, and factories could be
built without regard for worker safety:
(HTM) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Adolph_Menzel_-_Eisenwalzwerk_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/800px-Adolph_Menzel_-_Eisenwalzwerk_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
All the individual elements of the industrial revolution existed
before 1771. The ship production in Venice used mass
production factory techniques. The work ethic, technology and
investment culture were present in other countries like the
Netherlands. Other countries had coal. Other countries had
efficient agriculture, leading to spare people who could become
industrial workers. Clocks, machine tools, and others
pre-cursors were available throughout Europe.
And, once the revolution had started, it was quickly copied in
places like America and Japan.
What caused the initial investment in automated production to
happen in Britain, rather than elsewhere, was economics.
Richard Arkwright had the money to invest, he could see the
potential return on investing in improving automated production
and in setting up cottages, aqueducts, etc. And for him, in
that time and place, it made economic sense. If he hadn't done
it, then 5 years later one of the other entrepreneurs in Britain
would have done it. He just saw it first.
Why was Britain the place which first had all the pre-conditions
to make that a profitable investment lined up like ducks in a
row?
#Post#: 30604--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: Aletheia Date: October 13, 2018, 7:42 am
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[font=arial]
Knowledge of innovation was spread by several means. Workers who
were trained in the technique might move to another employer or
might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a
study tour, gathering information where he could. During the
whole of the Industrial Revolution and for the century before,
all European countries and America engaged in study-touring;
some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil
servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state
policy. In other countries, notably Britain and America, this
practice was carried out by individual manufacturers eager to
improve their own methods. Study tours were common then, as now,
as was the keeping of travel diaries. Records made by
industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable
source of information about their methods.
Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of
informal philosophical societies, like the Lunar Society of
Birmingham, in which members met to discuss 'natural philosophy'
(i.e. science) and often its application to manufacturing. The
Lunar Society flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said
of them, "They were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of
that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century
revolutions, the Industrial Revolution".[211] (SOURCE)
Origins 1755–1765
The origins of the Lunar Society lie in a pattern of friendships
that emerged in the late 1750s. Matthew Boulton and Erasmus
Darwin met some time between 1757 and 1758, possibly through
family connections, as Boulton's mother's family were patients
of Darwin; or possibly though shared friendships, as both were
admirers of the printer John Baskerville and friends of the
astronomer and geologist John Michell, a regular visitor to
Darwin's house in Lichfield.[23] Darwin was a physician and poet
who had studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh; Boulton had left
school at fourteen and started work in his father's business
making metal goods in Birmingham at the age of 21. Despite their
different backgrounds they shared a common interest in
experiment and invention, and their activities would show
Darwin's theoretical understanding and Boulton's practical
experience to be complementary.[3] Soon they were visiting each
other regularly and conducting investigations into scientific
subjects such as electricity, meteorology and geology.[24]
Around the same time the Derby-based clockmaker John Whitehurst
became a friend, first of Boulton and subsequently of Darwin,
through his business supplying clock movements to Boulton's
ormolu manufacturing operation. Although older than both Boulton
and Darwin, by 1758 Whitehurst was writing to Boulton telling
excitedly of a pyrometer he had built, and looking forward to
visiting Birmingham "to spend one day with you in trying all
necessary experiments".[25]
Boulton, Darwin and Whitehurst were in turn introduced by
Michell to Benjamin Franklin when he travelled to Birmingham in
July 1758 "to improve and increase Acquaintance among Persons of
Influence",[26] and Franklin returned in 1760 to conduct
experiments with Boulton on electricity and sound.[27] Although
Michell seems to have withdrawn slightly from the group when he
moved to Thornhill (near Dewsbury) in 1767,[11] Franklin was to
remain a common link among many of the early members.[5]
The Lunar Circle 1765–1775
The nature of the group was to change significantly with the
move to Birmingham in 1765 of the Scottish physician William
Small, who had been Professor of Natural Philosophy at The
College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. There he
had taught and been a major influence over Thomas Jefferson, and
had formed the focus of a local group of intellectuals. His
arrival with a letter of introduction to Matthew Boulton from
Benjamin Franklin was to have a galvanising effect on the
existing circle, which began to explicitly identify itself as a
group and actively started to attract new members.[28]
The first of these was Josiah Wedgwood, who became a close
friend of Darwin in 1765 while campaigning for the building of
the Trent and Mersey Canal[29] and subsequently closely modelled
his large new pottery factory at Etruria on Boulton's Soho
Manufactory.[24]Another new recruit, Richard Lovell Edgeworth,
met Darwin, Small and Boulton in 1766 through a shared interest
in carriage design, and he in turn introduced his friend and
fellow Rousseau-admirer Thomas Day, with whom he had studied at
Corpus Christi, Oxford.[30] In 1767 James Keir visited Darwin in
Lichfield, where he was introduced to Boulton, Small, Wedgwood
and Whitehurst and subsequently decided to move to
Birmingham.[30]
The Lunar Circle also attracted more distant involvement. Joseph
Priestley, then living in Leeds and a close friend of John
Mitchell, became associated with the Society in 1767 when Darwin
and Wedgwood became involved with his work on electricity.[5] In
the same year James Watt visited Birmingham on the
recommendation of his business patron John Roebuck, being shown
around the Soho Manufactory by Small and Darwin in Boulton's
absence. Although neither Priestley nor Watt were to move to
Birmingham for several years, both were to be in constant
communication with the Birmingham members and central to the
circle's activities from 1767.[31]
By 1768 the core group of nine individuals who would form the
nucleus of the Lunar Society had come together with Small at
their heart.[16] The group at this time is sometimes referred to
as the "Lunar circle", though this is a later description used
by historians,[32] and the group themselves used a variety of
less specific descriptions, including "Birmingham Philosophers"
or simply "fellow-schemers".[33]
=====================================
You'll notice the number of Quakers and Unitarians mentioned.
Free thought in Britain was vastly enhanced by the 1689
Toleration Act, which (mostly as a response to several hundred
years of Protestant versus Catholic fighting) led onto greater
acceptance of non-standard views, both religious and otherwise.
I'd like to think that a third lynchpin of Britain's beating the
rest of the world to igniting the industrial revolution wasn't
just abysmal human rights, and the greedy accumulation of
profits, but also a bit of war-worn wisdom, that let us stop
fighting each other over beliefs, and instead use that energy
for sharing thoughts and entrepreneurship.[/font]
#Post#: 30605--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: Aletheia Date: October 13, 2018, 7:44 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[font=arial]
Why Britain (and Europe in general) started powerful empires is
well covered by the book by Jared Diamond:
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
If you have not read it, you ought to.
A second piece of the puzzle is supplied by Simon Schaffer, a
historian of Science:
(HTM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whfHal6m72k
Here's WikiPedia on some of the other parts:
Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations that
enabled entrepreneurs to pioneer the industrial revolution.[199]
Key factors fostering this environment were: (1) The period of
peace and stability which followed the unification of England
and Scotland; (2) no trade barriers between England and
Scotland; (3) the rule of law (enforcing property rights and
respecting the sanctity of contracts); (4) a straightforward
legal system that allowed the formation of joint-stock companies
(corporations); (5) absence of tolls, which had largely
disappeared from Britain by the 15th century, but were an
extreme burden on goods elsewhere in the world, and (6) a free
market (capitalism).[1]
Geographical and natural resource advantages of Great Britain
were the fact that it had extensive coastlines and many
navigable rivers in an age where water was the easiest means of
transportation and having the highest quality coal in
Europe.[1]:332
There were two main values that really drove the Industrial
Revolution in Britain. These values were self-interest and an
entrepreneurial spirit. Because of these interests, many
industrial advances were made that resulted in a huge increase
in personal wealth and a consumer revolution.[111] These
advancements also greatly benefitted the British society as a
whole. Countries around the world started to recognise the
changes and advancements in Britain and use them as an example
to begin their own Industrial Revolutions.[200]
The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also
concerns the massive lead that Great Britain had over other
countries. Some have stressed the importance of natural or
financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas
colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between
Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment.
[...]
The greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant base
may have allowed Britain to produce and use emerging scientific
and technological developments more effectively than countries
with stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain
emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not
ravaged by financial plunder and economic collapse, and having
the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant
fleets were destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy[203]).
Britain's extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured
markets were already available for many early forms of
manufactured goods. The conflict resulted in most British
warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating
effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe.
This was further aided by Britain's geographical position
– an island separated from the rest of mainland Europe.
Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the
Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key resources
it possessed. It had a dense population for its small
geographical size. Enclosure of common land and the related
agricultural revolution made a supply of this labour readily
available. There was also a local coincidence of natural
resources in the North of England, the English Midlands, South
Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron,
lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in
excellent conditions for the development and expansion of
industry. Also, the damp, mild weather conditions of the North
West of England provided ideal conditions for the spinning of
cotton, providing a natural starting point for the birth of the
textiles industry.
The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688
following the Glorious Revolution, and British society's greater
receptiveness to change (compared with other European countries)
can also be said to be factors favouring the Industrial
Revolution. Peasant resistance to industrialisation was largely
eliminated by the Enclosure movement, and the landed upper
classes developed commercial interests that made them pioneers
in removing obstacles to the growth of capitalism.[205] (This
point is also made in Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State.)
The French philosopher Voltaire wrote about capitalism and
religious tolerance in his book on English society, Letters on
the English (1733), noting why England at that time was more
prosperous in comparison to the country's less religiously
tolerant European neighbours. "Take a view of the Royal Exchange
in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice,
where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of
mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan [Muslim], and the
Christian transact together, as though they all professed the
same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but
bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist,
and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. If one
religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very
possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people
would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a
multitude, they all live happy and in peace."[206]
Britain's population grew 280% 1550–1820, while the rest
of Western Europe grew 50–80%. Seventy percent of European
urbanisation happened in Britain 1750–1800. By 1800, only
the Netherlands was more urbanised than Britain. This was only
possible because coal, coke, imported cotton, brick and slate
had replaced wood, charcoal, flax, peat and thatch. The latter
compete with land grown to feed people while mined materials do
not. Yet more land would be freed when chemical fertilisers
replaced manure and horse's work was mechanised. A workhorse
needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21 to 2.02 ha) for fodder while even early
steam engines produced four times more mechanical energy.
In 1700, 5/6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain, while the
Netherlands had none; so despite having Europe's best transport,
most urbanised, well paid, literate people and lowest taxes, it
failed to industrialise. In the 18th century, it was the only
European country whose cities and population shrank. Without
coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites for
mills by the 1830s.[207]
Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that high wages,
cheap capital and very cheap energy in Britain made it the ideal
place for the industrial revolution to occur.[208] These factors
made it vastly more profitable to invest in research and
development, and to put technology to use in Britain than other
societies.[208] However, two 2018 studies in The Economic
History Review showed that wages were not particularly high in
the British spinning sector or the construction sector, casting
doubt on Allen's explanation.[209][210]
But there's one other factor I'd like to bring up: religion and
the lunatics...
[/font]
#Post#: 30606--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: Aletheia Date: October 13, 2018, 7:46 am
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[font=arial]
It is interesting to think what the world might have been like
if, instead of Arkwright, an entrepreneur like Wedgwood or
Cadbury had been the first.
Josiah Wedgwood was born into a family of potters on 12 July
1730, at Burslem, Staffordshire. His father's death in 1739 led
him to an early start working as a 'thrower' in the pottery of
his eldest brother, Thomas, to whom he was later apprenticed. An
attack of smallpox seriously weakened Josiah, and in 1768 he had
to have his right leg amputated. This meant he was forced to
abandon throwing, but he subsequently gained a wider insight
into the potter's craft - for example the work of the 'modeller'
- and this encouraged his love of experimentation.
Wedgwood greatly improved the clumsy ordinary crockery of the
day, introducing durable, simple and regular wares. His cream
coloured earthenware was christened 'Queen's Ware' after Queen
Charlotte, who appointed him queen's potter in 1762. Other
eminent patrons included Empress Catherine II of Russia, who
ordered 952 such pieces in 1774.
Wedgwood experimented with barium sulphate (caulk), and from it
produced jasper, in 1773. Jasperware, which is used for a whole
host of ornaments, blends metallic oxides, often blue, with
separately moulded reliefs, generally white. Some such reliefs
were designed for Wedgwood by John Flaxman. Other wares included
black basaltes, frequently enhanced by 'encaustic' colours like
red, to imitate Greek vases.
Wedgwood was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1783,
primarily for inventing the pyrometer to measure oven
temperatures. He took a keen interest, too, in efficient factory
organisation, and in improving the transport of raw materials
and finished wares by canals, such as the Grand Trunk Canal, and
by road.
One of the wealthiest entrepreneurs of the 18th century,
Wedgwood created goods to meet the demands of the consumer
revolution and growth in wealth of the middle classes that
helped drive the Industrial Revolution in Britain.[7] He is
credited as the inventor of modern marketing, specifically
direct mail, money back guarantees, travelling salesmen,
carrying pattern boxes for display, self-service, free delivery,
buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues.[8] Wedgwood is
also noted as an early adopter/founder of managerial accounting
principles in Anthony Hopwood's "Archaeology of Accounting
Systems."
For the further comfort of his foreign buyers he employed
French-, German-, Italian- and Dutch-speaking clerks and
answered their letters in their native tongue.[35]
He was also a keen abolitionist.
Because he was a respected business man, people listened to his
views and he was able to convince friends and colleagues of the
evils of the Slave Trade. He also had the money to provide
financial assistance. From 1787, he actively participated in
this cause, becoming a member of one of the abolition
committees. His interest possibly developed through his
friendship with Thomas Bentley, his business partner, and his
association with Thomas Clarkson.
He read widely on the subject and became a shareholder in the
Sierra Leone Company, (which provided a colony for the
habitation of enslaved people who had been made free). On the
9th January 1792, Clarkson suggested that he might consider
helping to distribute a pamphlet compiled by William Fox,
calling for a sugar boycott. A man of ideas, Wedgwood wrote back
suggesting the pamphlet would have more impact if the society's
emblem (which showed an enslaved person in chains, kneeling,
with his hands lifted up to heaven) was included in the front.
The emblem's motto read: "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" He
proposed to have a woodcut made at his own expense and ordered
2000 more pamphlets.
Using his knowledge of the pottery trade, Wedgwood also had the
design reproduced in a porcelain cameo. He donated hundreds of
these to the Society for distribution. It became the most famous
image of the campaign. The emblem was worn by fashionable ladies
as a brooch or hair piece and, as Thomas Clarkson said, was the
first time that "fashion, which usually confines itself to
worthless things, was seen ... promoting the cause of justice,
humanity and freedom."
(SOURCE)(SOURCE)
=================================
The Cadbury family, with their Quaker beliefs that - all human
beings should be treated equally and should live in peace,
believed in social responsibility and social reform.
They improved working and social conditions for their employees
and the community.
A new factory, planned by George, was built on the site, and the
area became known as Bournville, after the small stream that
runs through the site.
George was driven by a passion for social reform and wanted to
provide good quality low cost homes for his workers in a healthy
environment - giving an alternative to grimy city life. So he
set about building a village where his workers could live.
George said of his plans: "If each man could have his own house,
a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings - then, I
thought, there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy
family life."
His aim was that one-tenth of the Bournville estate should be
"laid out and used as parks, recreation grounds and open space."
The brothers set new standards for working and living conditions
in Victorian Britain and the Cadbury plant in Bournville became
known as "the factory in a garden".
(SOURCE) (LINK)
[/font]
#Post#: 30608--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: uaxed Date: October 13, 2018, 9:29 am
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Which would suggest what?
#Post#: 30703--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: hotspice58 Date: October 15, 2018, 3:34 pm
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Interesting. Thank you for posting.
#Post#: 30795--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: PiscesFishy Date: October 16, 2018, 10:28 pm
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Bump for the laters.
#Post#: 31007--------------------------------------------------
Re: Sir Richard Arkwright
By: saphira1207 Date: October 22, 2018, 9:56 pm
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I love social history and found that really interesting! Thank
you! I need to look into why workers were considered so
disposable though.
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