p. 27Chapter II — Leaders of Industry—Inventors and Producers

“Le travail et la Science sont
désormais les maîtres du monde.”—De
Salvandy.

“Deduct all that men of the humbler classes have done
for England in the way of inventions only, and see where she
would have been but for them.”—Arthur
Helps.

One of the most strongly-marked
features of the English people is their spirit of industry,
standing out prominent and distinct in their past history, and as
strikingly characteristic of them now as at any former
period. It is this spirit, displayed by the commons of
England, which has laid the foundations and built up the
industrial greatness of the empire. This vigorous growth of
the nation has been mainly the result of the free energy of
individuals, and it has been contingent upon the number of hands
and minds from time to time actively employed within it, whether
as cultivators of the soil, producers of articles of utility,
contrivers of tools and machines, writers of books, or creators
of works of art. And while this spirit of active industry
has been the vital principle of the nation, it has also been its
saving and remedial one, counteracting from time to time the
effects of errors in our laws and imperfections in our
constitution.

The career of industry which the nation has pursued, has also
proved its best education. As steady application to work is
the healthiest training for every individual, so is it the best
discipline of a state. Honourable industry travels the same
road with duty; and Providence has closely linked both with
happiness. The gods, says the poet, have placed labour and
toil on the way leading to the Elysian fields. Certain it
is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet as that earned by his
own labour, whether bodily or mental. By labour the earth
has been subdued, and man redeemed from barbarism; nor has a
single step in civilization been made without it. Labour is
not only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing: only the idler
feels it to be a curse. The duty of work is written on the
thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of the hand, the
nerves and lobes of the brain—the sum of whose healthy
action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In the school of
labour is taught the best practical wisdom; nor is a life of
manual employment, as we shall hereafter find, incompatible with
high mental culture.

Hugh Miller, than whom none knew better the strength and the
weakness belonging to the lot of labour, stated the result of his
experience to be, that Work, even the hardest, is full of
pleasure and materials for self-improvement. He held honest
labour to be the best of teachers, and that the school of toil is
the noblest of schools—save only the Christian
one,—that it is a school in which the ability of being
useful is imparted, the spirit of independence learnt, and the
habit of persevering effort acquired. He was even of
opinion that the training of the mechanic,—by the exercise
which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily dealing
with things actual and practical, and the close experience of
life which he acquires,—better fits him for picking his way
along the journey of life, and is more favourable to his growth
as a Man, emphatically speaking, than the training afforded by
any other condition.

The array of great names which we have already cursorily
cited, of men springing from the ranks of the industrial classes,
who have achieved distinction in various walks of life—in
science, commerce, literature, and art—shows that at all
events the difficulties interposed by poverty and labour are not
insurmountable. As respects the great contrivances and
inventions which have conferred so much power and wealth upon the
nation, it is unquestionable that for the greater part of them we
have been indebted to men of the humblest rank. Deduct what
they have done in this particular line of action, and it will be
found that very little indeed remains for other men to have
accomplished.

Inventors have set in motion some of the greatest industries
of the world. To them society owes many of its chief
necessaries, comforts, and luxuries; and by their genius and
labour daily life has been rendered in all respects more easy as
well as enjoyable. Our food, our clothing, the furniture of
our homes, the glass which admits the light to our dwellings at
the same time that it excludes the cold, the gas which
illuminates our streets, our means of locomotion by land and by
sea, the tools by which our various articles of necessity and
luxury are fabricated, have been the result of the labour and
ingenuity of many men and many minds. Mankind at large are
all the happier for such inventions, and are every day reaping
the benefit of them in an increase of individual well-being as
well as of public enjoyment.

Though the invention of the working steam-engine—the
king of machines—belongs, comparatively speaking, to our
own epoch, the idea of it was born many centuries ago. Like
other contrivances and discoveries, it was effected step by
step—one man transmitting the result of his labours, at the
time apparently useless, to his successors, who took it up and
carried it forward another stage,—the prosecution of the
inquiry extending over many generations. Thus the idea
promulgated by Hero of Alexandria was never altogether lost; but,
like the grain of wheat hid in the hand of the Egyptian mummy, it
sprouted and again grew vigorously when brought into the full
light of modern science. The steam-engine was nothing,
however, until it emerged from the state of theory, and was taken
in hand by practical mechanics; and what a noble story of
patient, laborious investigation, of difficulties encountered and
overcome by heroic industry, does not that marvellous machine
tell of! It is indeed, in itself, a monument of the power
of self-help in man. Grouped around it we find Savary, the
military engineer; Newcomen, the Dartmouth blacksmith; Cawley,
the glazier; Potter, the engine-boy; Smeaton, the civil engineer;
and, towering above all, the laborious, patient, never-tiring
James Watt, the mathematical-instrument maker.

Watt was one of the most industrious of men; and the story of
his life proves, what all experience confirms, that it is not the
man of the greatest natural vigour and capacity who achieves the
highest results, but he who employs his powers with the greatest
industry and the most carefully disciplined skill—the skill
that comes by labour, application, and experience. Many men
in his time knew far more than Watt, but none laboured so
assiduously as he did to turn all that he did know to useful
practical purposes. He was, above all things, most
persevering in the pursuit of facts. He cultivated
carefully that habit of active attention on which all the higher
working qualities of the mind mainly depend. Indeed, Mr.
Edgeworth entertained the opinion, that the difference of
intellect in men depends more upon the early cultivation of this
habit of attention, than upon any great disparity between
the powers of one individual and another.

Even when a boy, Watt found science in his toys. The
quadrants lying about his father’s carpenter’s shop
led him to the study of optics and astronomy; his ill health
induced him to pry into the secrets of physiology; and his
solitary walks through the country attracted him to the study of
botany and history. While carrying on the business of a
mathematical-instrument maker, he received an order to build an
organ; and, though without an ear for music, he undertook the
study of harmonics, and successfully constructed the
instrument. And, in like manner, when the little model of
Newcomen’s steam-engine, belonging to the University of
Glasgow, was placed in his hands to repair, he forthwith set
himself to learn all that was then known about heat, evaporation,
and condensation,—at the same time plodding his way in
mechanics and the science of construction,—the results of
which he at length embodied in his condensing steam-engine.

For ten years he went on contriving and inventing—with
little hope to cheer him, and with few friends to encourage
him. He went on, meanwhile, earning bread for his family by
making and selling quadrants, making and mending fiddles, flutes,
and musical instruments; measuring mason-work, surveying roads,
superintending the construction of canals, or doing anything that
turned up, and offered a prospect of honest gain. At
length, Watt found a fit partner in another eminent leader of
industry—Matthew Boulton, of Birmingham; a skilful,
energetic, and far-seeing man, who vigorously undertook the
enterprise of introducing the condensing-engine into general use
as a working power; and the success of both is now matter of
history. [31]

Many skilful inventors have from time to time added new power
to the steam-engine; and, by numerous modifications, rendered it
capable of being applied to nearly all the purposes of
manufacture—driving machinery, impelling ships, grinding
corn, printing books, stamping money, hammering, planing, and
turning iron; in short, of performing every description of
mechanical labour where power is required. One of the most
useful modifications in the engine was that devised by
Trevithick, and eventually perfected by George Stephenson and his
son, in the form of the railway locomotive, by which social
changes of immense importance have been brought about, of even
greater consequence, considered in their results on human
progress and civilization, than the condensing-engine of
Watt.

One of the first grand results of Watt’s
invention,—which placed an almost unlimited power at the
command of the producing classes,—was the establishment of
the cotton-manufacture. The person most closely identified
with the foundation of this great branch of industry was
unquestionably Sir Richard Arkwright, whose practical energy and
sagacity were perhaps even more remarkable than his mechanical
inventiveness. His originality as an inventor has indeed
been called in question, like that of Watt and Stephenson.
Arkwright probably stood in the same relation to the
spinning-machine that Watt did to the steam-engine and Stephenson
to the locomotive. He gathered together the scattered
threads of ingenuity which already existed, and wove them, after
his own design, into a new and original fabric. Though
Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, patented the invention of spinning by
rollers thirty years before Arkwright, the machines constructed
by him were so imperfect in their details, that they could not be
profitably worked, and the invention was practically a
failure. Another obscure mechanic, a reed-maker of Leigh,
named Thomas Highs, is also said to have invented the water-frame
and spinning-jenny; but they, too, proved unsuccessful.

When the demands of industry are found to press upon the
resources of inventors, the same idea is usually found floating
about in many minds;—such has been the case with the
steam-engine, the safety-lamp, the electric telegraph, and other
inventions. Many ingenious minds are found labouring in the
throes of invention, until at length the master mind, the strong
practical man, steps forward, and straightway delivers them of
their idea, applies the principle successfully, and the thing is
done. Then there is a loud outcry among all the smaller
contrivers, who see themselves distanced in the race; and hence
men such as Watt, Stephenson, and Arkwright, have usually to
defend their reputation and their rights as practical and
successful inventors.

Richard Arkwright, like most of our great mechanicians, sprang
from the ranks. He was born in Preston in 1732. His
parents were very poor, and he was the youngest of thirteen
children. He was never at school: the only education he
received he gave to himself; and to the last he was only able to
write with difficulty. When a boy, he was apprenticed to a
barber, and after learning the business, he set up for himself in
Bolton, where he occupied an underground cellar, over which he
put up the sign, “Come to the subterraneous barber—he
shaves for a penny.” The other barbers found their
customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard,
when Arkwright, determined to push his trade, announced his
determination to give “A clean shave for a
halfpenny.” After a few years he quitted his cellar,
and became an itinerant dealer in hair. At that time wigs
were worn, and wig-making formed an important branch of the
barbering business. Arkwright went about buying hair for
the wigs. He was accustomed to attend the hiring fairs
throughout Lancashire resorted to by young women, for the purpose
of securing their long tresses; and it is said that in
negotiations of this sort he was very successful. He also
dealt in a chemical hair dye, which he used adroitly, and thereby
secured a considerable trade. But he does not seem,
notwithstanding his pushing character, to have done more than
earn a bare living.

The fashion of wig-wearing having undergone a change, distress
fell upon the wig-makers; and Arkwright, being of a mechanical
turn, was consequently induced to turn machine inventor or
“conjurer,” as the pursuit was then popularly
termed. Many attempts were made about that time to invent a
spinning-machine, and our barber determined to launch his little
bark on the sea of invention with the rest. Like other
self-taught men of the same bias, he had already been devoting
his spare time to the invention of a perpetual-motion machine;
and from that the transition to a spinning-machine was
easy. He followed his experiments so assiduously that he
neglected his business, lost the little money he had saved, and
was reduced to great poverty. His wife—for he had by
this time married—was impatient at what she conceived to be
a wanton waste of time and money, and in a moment of sudden wrath
she seized upon and destroyed his models, hoping thus to remove
the cause of the family privations. Arkwright was a
stubborn and enthusiastic man, and he was provoked beyond measure
by this conduct of his wife, from whom he immediately
separated.

In travelling about the country, Arkwright had become
acquainted with a person named Kay, a clockmaker at Warrington,
who assisted him in constructing some of the parts of his
perpetual-motion machinery. It is supposed that he was
informed by Kay of the principle of spinning by rollers; but it
is also said that the idea was first suggested to him by
accidentally observing a red-hot piece of iron become elongated
by passing between iron rollers. However this may be, the
idea at once took firm possession of his mind, and he proceeded
to devise the process by which it was to be accomplished, Kay
being able to tell him nothing on this point. Arkwright now
abandoned his business of hair collecting, and devoted himself to
the perfecting of his machine, a model of which, constructed by
Kay under his directions, he set up in the parlour of the Free
Grammar School at Preston. Being a burgess of the town, he
voted at the contested election at which General Burgoyne was
returned; but such was his poverty, and such the tattered state
of his dress, that a number of persons subscribed a sum
sufficient to have him put in a state fit to appear in the
poll-room. The exhibition of his machine in a town where so
many workpeople lived by the exercise of manual labour proved a
dangerous experiment; ominous growlings were heard outside the
school-room from time to time, and Arkwright,—remembering
the fate of Kay, who was mobbed and compelled to fly from
Lancashire because of his invention of the fly-shuttle, and of
poor Hargreaves, whose spinning-jenny had been pulled to pieces
only a short time before by a Blackburn mob,—wisely
determined on packing up his model and removing to a less
dangerous locality. He went accordingly to Nottingham,
where he applied to some of the local bankers for pecuniary
assistance; and the Messrs. Wright consented to advance him a sum
of money on condition of sharing in the profits of the
invention. The machine, however, not being perfected so
soon as they had anticipated, the bankers recommended Arkwright
to apply to Messrs. Strutt and Need, the former of whom was the
ingenious inventor and patentee of the stocking-frame. Mr.
Strutt at once appreciated the merits of the invention, and a
partnership was entered into with Arkwright, whose road to
fortune was now clear. The patent was secured in the name
of “Richard Arkwright, of Nottingham, clockmaker,”
and it is a circumstance worthy of note, that it was taken out in
1769, the same year in which Watt secured the patent for his
steam-engine. A cotton-mill was first erected at
Nottingham, driven by horses; and another was shortly after
built, on a much larger scale, at Cromford, in Derbyshire, turned
by a water-wheel, from which circumstance the spinning-machine
came to be called the water-frame.

Arkwright’s labours, however, were, comparatively
speaking, only begun. He had still to perfect all the
working details of his machine. It was in his hands the
subject of constant modification and improvement, until
eventually it was rendered practicable and profitable in an
eminent degree. But success was only secured by long and
patient labour: for some years, indeed, the speculation was
disheartening and unprofitable, swallowing up a very large amount
of capital without any result. When success began to appear
more certain, then the Lancashire manufacturers fell upon
Arkwright’s patent to pull it in pieces, as the Cornish
miners fell upon Boulton and Watt to rob them of the profits of
their steam-engine. Arkwright was even denounced as the
enemy of the working people; and a mill which he built near
Chorley was destroyed by a mob in the presence of a strong force
of police and military. The Lancashire men refused to buy
his materials, though they were confessedly the best in the
market. Then they refused to pay patent-right for the use
of his machines, and combined to crush him in the courts of
law. To the disgust of right-minded people,
Arkwright’s patent was upset. After the trial, when
passing the hotel at which his opponents were staying, one of
them said, loud enough to be heard by him, “Well,
we’ve done the old shaver at last;” to which he
coolly replied, “Never mind, I’ve a razor left that
will shave you all.” He established new mills in
Lancashire, Derbyshire, and at New Lanark, in Scotland. The
mills at Cromford also came into his hands at the expiry of his
partnership with Strutt, and the amount and the excellence of his
products were such, that in a short time he obtained so complete
a control of the trade, that the prices were fixed by him, and he
governed the main operations of the other cotton-spinners.

Arkwright was a man of great force of character, indomitable
courage, much worldly shrewdness, with a business faculty almost
amounting to genius. At one period his time was engrossed
by severe and continuous labour, occasioned by the organising and
conducting of his numerous manufactories, sometimes from four in
the morning till nine at night. At fifty years of age he
set to work to learn English grammar, and improve himself in
writing and orthography. After overcoming every obstacle,
he had the satisfaction of reaping the reward of his
enterprise. Eighteen years after he had constructed his
first machine, he rose to such estimation in Derbyshire that he
was appointed High Sheriff of the county, and shortly after
George III. conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. He
died in 1792. Be it for good or for evil, Arkwright was the
founder in England of the modern factory system, a branch of
industry which has unquestionably proved a source of immense
wealth to individuals and to the nation.

All the other great branches of industry in Britain furnish
like examples of energetic men of business, the source of much
benefit to the neighbourhoods in which they have laboured, and of
increased power and wealth to the community at large.
Amongst such might be cited the Strutts of Belper; the Tennants
of Glasgow; the Marshalls and Gotts of Leeds; the Peels,
Ashworths, Birleys, Fieldens, Ashtons, Heywoods, and Ainsworths
of South Lancashire, some of whose descendants have since become
distinguished in connection with the political history of
England. Such pre-eminently were the Peels of South
Lancashire.

The founder of the Peel family, about the middle of last
century, was a small yeoman, occupying the Hole House Farm, near
Blackburn, from which he afterwards removed to a house situated
in Fish Lane in that town. Robert Peel, as he advanced in
life, saw a large family of sons and daughters growing up about
him; but the land about Blackburn being somewhat barren, it did
not appear to him that agricultural pursuits offered a very
encouraging prospect for their industry. The place had,
however, long been the seat of a domestic manufacture—the
fabric called “Blackburn greys,” consisting of linen
weft and cotton warp, being chiefly made in that town and its
neighbourhood. It was then customary—previous to the
introduction of the factory system—for industrious yeomen
with families to employ the time not occupied in the fields in
weaving at home; and Robert Peel accordingly began the domestic
trade of calico-making. He was honest, and made an honest
article; thrifty and hardworking, and his trade prospered.
He was also enterprising, and was one of the first to adopt the
carding cylinder, then recently invented.

But Robert Peel’s attention was principally directed to
the printing of calico—then a comparatively unknown
art—and for some time he carried on a series of experiments
with the object of printing by machinery. The experiments
were secretly conducted in his own house, the cloth being ironed
for the purpose by one of the women of the family. It was
then customary, in such houses as the Peels, to use pewter plates
at dinner. Having sketched a figure or pattern on one of
the plates, the thought struck him that an impression might be
got from it in reverse, and printed on calico with colour.
In a cottage at the end of the farm-house lived a woman who kept
a calendering machine, and going into her cottage, he put the
plate with colour rubbed into the figured part and some calico
over it, through the machine, when it was found to leave a
satisfactory impression. Such is said to have been the
origin of roller printing on calico. Robert Peel shortly
perfected his process, and the first pattern he brought out was a
parsley leaf; hence he is spoken of in the neighbourhood of
Blackburn to this day as “Parsley Peel.” The
process of calico printing by what is called the mule
machine—that is, by means of a wooden cylinder in relief,
with an engraved copper cylinder—was afterwards brought to
perfection by one of his sons, the head of the firm of Messrs.
Peel and Co., of Church. Stimulated by his success, Robert
Peel shortly gave up farming, and removing to Brookside, a
village about two miles from Blackburn, he devoted himself
exclusively to the printing business. There, with the aid
of his sons, who were as energetic as himself, he successfully
carried on the trade for several years; and as the young men grew
up towards manhood, the concern branched out into various firms
of Peels, each of which became a centre of industrial activity
and a source of remunerative employment to large numbers of
people.

From what can now be learnt of the character of the original
and untitled Robert Peel, he must have been a remarkable
man—shrewd, sagacious, and far-seeing. But little is
known of him excepting from traditions and the sons of those who
knew him are fast passing away. His son, Sir Robert, thus
modestly spoke of him:—“My father may be truly said
to have been the founder of our family; and he so accurately
appreciated the importance of commercial wealth in a national
point of view, that he was often heard to say that the gains to
individuals were small compared with the national gains arising
from trade.”

Sir Robert Peel, the first baronet and the second manufacturer
of the name, inherited all his father’s enterprise,
ability, and industry. His position, at starting in life,
was little above that of an ordinary working man; for his father,
though laying the foundations of future prosperity, was still
struggling with the difficulties arising from insufficient
capital. When Robert was only twenty years of age, he
determined to begin the business of cotton-printing, which he had
by this time learnt from his father, on his own account.
His uncle, James Haworth, and William Yates of Blackburn, joined
him in his enterprise; the whole capital which they could raise
amongst them amounting to only about 500l., the principal
part of which was supplied by William Yates. The father of
the latter was a householder in Blackburn, where he was well
known and much respected; and having saved money by his business,
he was willing to advance sufficient to give his son a start in
the lucrative trade of cotton-printing, then in its
infancy. Robert Peel, though comparatively a mere youth,
supplied the practical knowledge of the business; but it was said
of him, and proved true, that he “carried an old head on
young shoulders.” A ruined corn-mill, with its
adjoining fields, was purchased for a comparatively small sum,
near the then insignificant town of Bury, where the works long
after continued to be known as “The Ground;” and a
few wooden sheds having been run up, the firm commenced their
cotton-printing business in a very humble way in the year 1770,
adding to it that of cotton-spinning a few years later. The
frugal style in which the partners lived may be inferred from the
following incident in their early career. William Yates,
being a married man with a family, commenced housekeeping on a
small scale, and, to oblige Peel, who was single, he agreed to
take him as a lodger. The sum which the latter first paid
for board and lodging was only 8s. a week; but Yates,
considering this too little, insisted on the weekly payment being
increased a shilling, to which Peel at first demurred, and a
difference between the partners took place, which was eventually
compromised by the lodger paying an advance of sixpence a
week. William Yates’s eldest child was a girl named
Ellen, and she very soon became an especial favourite with the
young lodger. On returning from his hard day’s work
at “The Ground,” he would take the little girl upon
his knee, and say to her, “Nelly, thou bonny little dear,
wilt be my wife?” to which the child would readily answer
“Yes,” as any child would do. “Then
I’ll wait for thee, Nelly; I’ll wed thee, and none
else.” And Robert Peel did wait. As the girl
grew in beauty towards womanhood, his determination to wait for
her was strengthened; and after the lapse of ten
years—years of close application to business and rapidly
increasing prosperity—Robert Peel married Ellen Yates when
she had completed her seventeenth year; and the pretty child,
whom her mother’s lodger and father’s partner had
nursed upon his knee, became Mrs. Peel, and eventually Lady Peel,
the mother of the future Prime Minister of England. Lady
Peel was a noble and beautiful woman, fitted to grace any station
in life. She possessed rare powers of mind, and was, on
every emergency, the high-souled and faithful counsellor of her
husband. For many years after their marriage, she acted as
his amanuensis, conducting the principal part of his business
correspondence, for Mr. Peel himself was an indifferent and
almost unintelligible writer. She died in 1803, only three
years after the Baronetcy had been conferred upon her
husband. It is said that London fashionable life—so
unlike what she had been accustomed to at home—proved
injurious to her health; and old Mr. Yates afterwards used to
say, “if Robert hadn’t made our Nelly a
‘Lady,’ she might ha’ been living
yet.”

The career of Yates, Peel, & Co., was throughout one of
great and uninterrupted prosperity. Sir Robert Peel himself
was the soul of the firm; to great energy and application uniting
much practical sagacity, and first-rate mercantile
abilities—qualities in which many of the early
cotton-spinners were exceedingly deficient. He was a man of
iron mind and frame, and toiled unceasingly. In short, he
was to cotton printing what Arkwright was to cotton-spinning, and
his success was equally great. The excellence of the
articles produced by the firm secured the command of the market,
and the character of the firm stood pre-eminent in
Lancashire. Besides greatly benefiting Bury, the
partnership planted similar extensive works in the neighbourhood,
on the Irwell and the Roch; and it was cited to their honour,
that, while they sought to raise to the highest perfection the
quality of their manufactures, they also endeavoured, in all
ways, to promote the well-being and comfort of their workpeople;
for whom they contrived to provide remunerative employment even
in the least prosperous times.

Sir Robert Peel readily appreciated the value of all new
processes and inventions; in illustration of which we may allude
to his adoption of the process for producing what is called
resist work in calico printing. This is accomplished
by the use of a paste, or resist, on such parts of the cloth as
were intended to remain white. The person who discovered
the paste was a traveller for a London house, who sold it to Mr.
Peel for an inconsiderable sum. It required the experience
of a year or two to perfect the system and make it practically
useful; but the beauty of its effect, and the extreme precision
of outline in the pattern produced, at once placed the Bury
establishment at the head of all the factories for calico
printing in the country. Other firms, conducted with like
spirit, were established by members of the same family at
Burnley, Foxhill bank, and Altham, in Lancashire; Salley Abbey,
in Yorkshire; and afterwards at Burton-on-Trent, in
Staffordshire; these various establishments, whilst they brought
wealth to their proprietors, setting an example to the whole
cotton trade, and training up many of the most successful
printers and manufacturers in Lancashire.

Among other distinguished founders of industry, the Rev.
William Lee, inventor of the Stocking Frame, and John Heathcoat,
inventor of the Bobbin-net Machine, are worthy of notice, as men
of great mechanical skill and perseverance, through whose labours
a vast amount of remunerative employment has been provided for
the labouring population of Nottingham and the adjacent
districts. The accounts which have been preserved of the
circumstances connected with the invention of the Stocking Frame
are very confused, and in many respects contradictory, though
there is no doubt as to the name of the inventor. This was
William Lee, born at Woodborough, a village some seven miles from
Nottingham, about the year 1563. According to some
accounts, he was the heir to a small freehold, while according to
others he was a poor scholar, [43a] and had to
struggle with poverty from his earliest years. He entered
as a sizar at Christ College, Cambridge, in May, 1579, and
subsequently removed to St. John’s, taking his degree of
B.A. in 1582–3. It is believed that he commenced M.A.
in 1586; but on this point there appears to be some confusion in
the records of the University. The statement usually made
that he was expelled for marrying contrary to the statutes, is
incorrect, as he was never a Fellow of the University, and
therefore could not be prejudiced by taking such a step.

At the time when Lee invented the Stocking Frame he was
officiating as curate of Calverton, near Nottingham; and it is
alleged by some writers that the invention had its origin in
disappointed affection. The curate is said to have fallen
deeply in love with a young lady of the village, who failed to
reciprocate his affections; and when he visited her, she was
accustomed to pay much more attention to the process of knitting
stockings and instructing her pupils in the art, than to the
addresses of her admirer. This slight is said to have
created in his mind such an aversion to knitting by hand, that he
formed the determination to invent a machine that should
supersede it and render it a gainless employment. For three
years he devoted himself to the prosecution of the invention,
sacrificing everything to his new idea. At the prospect of
success opened before him, he abandoned his curacy, and devoted
himself to the art of stocking making by machinery. This is
the version of the story given by Henson [43b] on the authority of an old
stocking-maker, who died in Collins’s Hospital, Nottingham,
aged ninety-two, and was apprenticed in the town during the reign
of Queen Anne. It is also given by Deering and Blackner as
the traditional account in the neighbourhood, and it is in some
measure borne out by the arms of the London Company of Frame-Work
Knitters, which consists of a stocking frame without the
wood-work, with a clergyman on one side and a woman on the other
as supporters. [44]

Whatever may have been the actual facts as to the origin of
the invention of the Stocking Loom, there can be no doubt as to
the extraordinary mechanical genius displayed by its
inventor. That a clergyman living in a remote village,
whose life had for the most part been spent with books, should
contrive a machine of such delicate and complicated movements,
and at once advance the art of knitting from the tedious process
of linking threads in a chain of loops by three skewers in the
fingers of a woman, to the beautiful and rapid process of weaving
by the stocking frame, was indeed an astonishing achievement,
which may be pronounced almost unequalled in the history of
mechanical invention. Lee’s merit was all the
greater, as the handicraft arts were then in their infancy, and
little attention had as yet been given to the contrivance of
machinery for the purposes of manufacture. He was under the
necessity of extemporising the parts of his machine as he best
could, and adopting various expedients to overcome difficulties
as they arose. His tools were imperfect, and his materials
imperfect; and he had no skilled workmen to assist him.
According to tradition, the first frame he made was a twelve
gauge, without lead sinkers, and it was almost wholly of wood;
the needles being also stuck in bits of wood. One of
Lee’s principal difficulties consisted in the formation of
the stitch, for want of needle eyes; but this he eventually
overcame by forming eyes to the needles with a three-square file.
[45] At length, one difficulty after
another was successfully overcome, and after three years’
labour the machine was sufficiently complete to be fit for
use. The quondam curate, full of enthusiasm for his art,
now began stocking weaving in the village of Calverton, and he
continued to work there for several years, instructing his
brother James and several of his relations in the practice of the
art.

Having brought his frame to a considerable degree of
perfection, and being desirous of securing the patronage of Queen
Elizabeth, whose partiality for knitted silk stockings was well
known, Lee proceeded to London to exhibit the loom before her
Majesty. He first showed it to several members of the
court, among others to Sir William (afterwards Lord) Hunsdon,
whom he taught to work it with success; and Lee was, through
their instrumentality, at length admitted to an interview with
the Queen, and worked the machine in her presence.
Elizabeth, however, did not give him the encouragement that he
had expected; and she is said to have opposed the invention on
the ground that it was calculated to deprive a large number of
poor people of their employment of hand knitting. Lee was
no more successful in finding other patrons, and considering
himself and his invention treated with contempt, he embraced the
offer made to him by Sully, the sagacious minister of Henry IV.,
to proceed to Rouen and instruct the operatives of that
town—then one of the most important manufacturing centres
of France—in the construction and use of the
stocking-frame. Lee accordingly transferred himself and his
machines to France, in 1605, taking with him his brother and
seven workmen. He met with a cordial reception at Rouen,
and was proceeding with the manufacture of stockings on a large
scale—having nine of his frames in full work,—when
unhappily ill fortune again overtook him. Henry IV., his
protector, on whom he had relied for the rewards, honours, and
promised grant of privileges, which had induced Lee to settle in
France, was murdered by the fanatic Ravaillac; and the
encouragement and protection which had heretofore been extended
to him were at once withdrawn. To press his claims at
court, Lee proceeded to Paris; but being a protestant as well as
a foreigner, his representations were treated with neglect; and
worn out with vexation and grief, this distinguished inventor
shortly after died at Paris, in a state of extreme poverty and
distress.

Lee’s brother, with seven of the workmen, succeeded in
escaping from France with their frames, leaving two behind.
On James Lee’s return to Nottinghamshire, he was joined by
one Ashton, a miller of Thoroton, who had been instructed in the
art of frame-work knitting by the inventor himself before he left
England. These two, with the workmen and their frames,
began the stocking manufacture at Thoroton, and carried it on
with considerable success. The place was favourably
situated for the purpose, as the sheep pastured in the
neighbouring district of Sherwood yielded a kind of wool of the
longest staple. Ashton is said to have introduced the
method of making the frames with lead sinkers, which was a great
improvement. The number of looms employed in different
parts of England gradually increased; and the machine manufacture
of stockings eventually became an important branch of the
national industry.

One of the most important modifications in the Stocking-Frame
was that which enabled it to be applied to the manufacture of
lace on a large scale. In 1777, two workmen, Frost and
Holmes, were both engaged in making point-net by means of the
modifications they had introduced in the stocking-frame; and in
the course of about thirty years, so rapid was the growth of this
branch of production that 1500 point-net frames were at work,
giving employment to upwards of 15,000 people. Owing,
however, to the war, to change of fashion, and to other
circumstances, the Nottingham lace manufacture rapidly fell off;
and it continued in a decaying state until the invention of the
Bobbin-net Machine by John Heathcoat, late M.P. for Tiverton,
which had the effect of at once re-establishing the manufacture
on solid foundations.

John Heathcoat was the youngest son of a respectable small
farmer at Duffield, Derbyshire, where he was born in 1783.
When at school he made steady and rapid progress, but was early
removed from it to be apprenticed to a frame-smith near
Loughborough. The boy soon learnt to handle tools with
dexterity, and he acquired a minute knowledge of the parts of
which the stocking-frame was composed, as well as of the more
intricate warp-machine. At his leisure he studied how to
introduce improvements in them, and his friend, Mr. Bazley, M.P.,
states that as early as the age of sixteen, he conceived the idea
of inventing a machine by which lace might be made similar to
Buckingham or French lace, then all made by hand. The first
practical improvement he succeeded in introducing was in the
warp-frame, when, by means of an ingenious apparatus, he
succeeded in producing “mitts” of a lacy appearance,
and it was this success which determined him to pursue the study
of mechanical lace-making. The stocking-frame had already,
in a modified form, been applied to the manufacture of point-net
lace, in which the mesh was looped as in a stocking, but
the work was slight and frail, and therefore
unsatisfactory. Many ingenious Nottingham mechanics had,
during a long succession of years, been labouring at the problem
of inventing a machine by which the mesh of threads should be
twisted round each other on the formation of the
net. Some of these men died in poverty, some were driven
insane, and all alike failed in the object of their search.
The old warp-machine held its ground.

When a little over twenty-one years of age, Heathcoat went to
Nottingham, where he readily found employment, for which he soon
received the highest remuneration, as a setter-up of hosiery and
warp-frames, and was much respected for his talent for invention,
general intelligence, and the sound and sober principles that
governed his conduct. He also continued to pursue the
subject on which his mind had before been occupied, and laboured
to compass the contrivance of a twist traverse-net machine.
He first studied the art of making the Buckingham or pillow-lace
by hand, with the object of effecting the same motions by
mechanical means. It was a long and laborious task,
requiring the exercise of great perseverance and ingenuity.
His master, Elliot, described him at that time as inventive,
patient, self-denying, and taciturn, undaunted by failures and
mistakes, full of resources and expedients, and entertaining the
most perfect confidence that his application of mechanical
principles would eventually be crowned with success.

It is difficult to describe in words an invention so
complicated as the bobbin-net machine. It was, indeed, a
mechanical pillow for making lace, imitating in an ingenious
manner the motions of the lace-maker’s fingers in
intersecting or tying the meshes of the lace upon her
pillow. On analysing the component parts of a piece of
hand-made lace, Heathcoat was enabled to classify the threads
into longitudinal and diagonal. He began his experiments by
fixing common pack-threads lengthwise on a sort of frame for the
warp, and then passing the weft threads between them by common
plyers, delivering them to other plyers on the opposite side;
then, after giving them a sideways motion and twist, the threads
were repassed back between the next adjoining cords, the meshes
being thus tied in the same way as upon pillows by hand. He
had then to contrive a mechanism that should accomplish all these
nice and delicate movements, and to do this cost him no small
amount of mental toil. Long after he said, “The
single difficulty of getting the diagonal threads to twist in the
allotted space was so great that if it had now to be done, I
should probably not attempt its accomplishment.” His
next step was to provide thin metallic discs, to be used as
bobbins for conducting the threads backwards and forwards through
the warp. These discs, being arranged in carrier-frames
placed on each side of the warp, were moved by suitable machinery
so as to conduct the threads from side to side in forming the
lace. He eventually succeeded in working out his principle
with extraordinary skill and success; and, at the age of
twenty-four, he was enabled to secure his invention by a
patent.

During this time his wife was kept in almost as great anxiety
as himself, for she well knew of his trials and difficulties
while he was striving to perfect his invention. Many years
after they had been successfully overcome, the conversation which
took place one eventful evening was vividly remembered.
“Well,” said the anxious wife, “will it
work?” “No,” was the sad answer; “I
have had to take it all to pieces again.” Though he
could still speak hopefully and cheerfully, his poor wife could
restrain her feelings no longer, but sat down and cried
bitterly. She had, however, only a few more weeks to wait,
for success long laboured for and richly deserved, came at last,
and a proud and happy man was John Heathcoat when he brought home
the first narrow strip of bobbin-net made by his machine, and
placed it in the hands of his wife.

As in the case of nearly all inventions which have proved
productive, Heathcoat’s rights as a patentee were disputed,
and his claims as an inventor called in question. On the
supposed invalidity of the patent, the lace-makers boldly adopted
the bobbin-net machine, and set the inventor at defiance.
But other patents were taken out for alleged improvements and
adaptations; and it was only when these new patentees fell out
and went to law with each other that Heathcoat’s rights
became established. One lace-manufacturer having brought an
action against another for an alleged infringement of his patent,
the jury brought in a verdict for the defendant, in which the
judge concurred, on the ground that both the machines in
question were infringements of Heathcoat’s patent. It
was on the occasion of this trial, “Boville v.
Moore,” that Sir John Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst),
who was retained for the defence in the interest of Mr.
Heathcoat, learnt to work the bobbin-net machine in order that he
might master the details of the invention. On reading over
his brief, he confessed that he did not quite understand the
merits of the case; but as it seemed to him to be one of great
importance, he offered to go down into the country forthwith and
study the machine until he understood it; “and then,”
said he, “I will defend you to the best of my
ability.” He accordingly put himself into that
night’s mail, and went down to Nottingham to get up his
case as perhaps counsel never got it up before. Next
morning the learned sergeant placed himself in a lace-loom, and
he did not leave it until he could deftly make a piece of
bobbin-net with his own hands, and thoroughly understood the
principle as well as the details of the machine. When the
case came on for trial, the learned sergeant was enabled to work
the model on the table with such case and skill, and to explain
the precise nature of the invention with such felicitous
clearness, as to astonish alike judge, jury, and spectators; and
the thorough conscientiousness and mastery with which he handled
the case had no doubt its influence upon the decision of the
court.

After the trial was over, Mr. Heathcoat, on inquiry, found
about six hundred machines at work after his patent, and he
proceeded to levy royalty upon the owners of them, which amounted
to a large sum. But the profits realised by the
manufacturers of lace were very great, and the use of the
machines rapidly extended; while the price of the article was
reduced from five pounds the square yard to about five pence in
the course of twenty-five years. During the same period the
average annual returns of the lace-trade have been at least four
millions sterling, and it gives remunerative employment to about
150,000 workpeople.

To return to the personal history of Mr. Heathcoat. In
1809 we find him established as a lace-manufacturer at
Loughborough, in Leicestershire. There he carried on a
prosperous business for several years, giving employment to a
large number of operatives, at wages varying from 5l. to
10l. a week. Notwithstanding the great increase in
the number of hands employed in lace-making through the
introduction of the new machines, it began to be whispered about
among the workpeople that they were superseding labour, and an
extensive conspiracy was formed for the purpose of destroying
them wherever found. As early as the year 1811 disputes
arose between the masters and men engaged in the stocking and
lace trades in the south-western parts of Nottinghamshire and the
adjacent parts of Derbyshire and Leicestershire, the result of
which was the assembly of a mob at Sutton, in Ashfield, who
proceeded in open day to break the stocking and lace-frames of
the manufacturers. Some of the ringleaders having been
seized and punished, the disaffected learnt caution; but the
destruction of the machines was nevertheless carried on secretly
wherever a safe opportunity presented itself. As the
machines were of so delicate a construction that a single blow of
a hammer rendered them useless, and as the manufacture was
carried on for the most part in detached buildings, often in
private dwellings remote from towns, the opportunities of
destroying them were unusually easy. In the neighbourhood
of Nottingham, which was the focus of turbulence, the
machine-breakers organized themselves in regular bodies, and held
nocturnal meetings at which their plans were arranged.
Probably with the view of inspiring confidence, they gave out
that they were under the command of a leader named Ned Ludd, or
General Ludd, and hence their designation of Luddites.
Under this organization machine-breaking was carried on with
great vigour during the winter of 1811, occasioning great
distress, and throwing large numbers of workpeople out of
employment. Meanwhile, the owners of the frames proceeded
to remove them from the villages and lone dwellings in the
country, and brought them into warehouses in the towns for their
better protection.

The Luddites seem to have been encouraged by the lenity of the
sentences pronounced on such of their confederates as had been
apprehended and tried; and, shortly after, the mania broke out
afresh, and rapidly extended over the northern and midland
manufacturing districts. The organization became more
secret; an oath was administered to the members binding them to
obedience to the orders issued by the heads of the confederacy;
and the betrayal of their designs was decreed to be death.
All machines were doomed by them to destruction, whether employed
in the manufacture of cloth, calico, or lace; and a reign of
terror began which lasted for years. In Yorkshire and
Lancashire mills were boldly attacked by armed rioters, and in
many cases they were wrecked or burnt; so that it became
necessary to guard them by soldiers and yeomanry. The
masters themselves were doomed to death; many of them were
assaulted, and some were murdered. At length the law was
vigorously set in motion; numbers of the misguided Luddites were
apprehended; some were executed; and after several years’
violent commotion from this cause, the machine-breaking riots
were at length quelled.

Among the numerous manufacturers whose works were attacked by
the Luddites, was the inventor of the bobbin-net machine
himself. One bright sunny day, in the summer of 1816, a
body of rioters entered his factory at Loughborough with torches,
and set fire to it, destroying thirty-seven lace-machines, and
above 10,000l. worth of property. Ten of the men
were apprehended for the felony, and eight of them were
executed. Mr. Heathcoat made a claim upon the county for
compensation, and it was resisted; but the Court of Queen’s
Bench decided in his favour, and decreed that the county must
make good his loss of 10,000l. The magistrates
sought to couple with the payment of the damage the condition
that Mr. Heathcoat should expend the money in the county of
Leicester; but to this he would not assent, having already
resolved on removing his manufacture elsewhere. At
Tiverton, in Devonshire, he found a large building which had been
formerly used as a woollen manufactory; but the Tiverton cloth
trade having fallen into decay, the building remained unoccupied,
and the town itself was generally in a very poverty-stricken
condition. Mr. Heathcoat bought the old mill, renovated and
enlarged it, and there recommenced the manufacture of lace upon a
larger scale than before; keeping in full work as many as three
hundred machines, and employing a large number of artisans at
good wages. Not only did he carry on the manufacture of
lace, but the various branches of business connected with
it—yarn-doubling, silk-spinning, net-making, and
finishing. He also established at Tiverton an iron-foundry
and works for the manufacture of agricultural implements, which
proved of great convenience to the district. It was a
favourite idea of his that steam power was capable of being
applied to perform all the heavy drudgery of life, and he
laboured for a long time at the invention of a
steam-plough. In 1832 he so far completed his invention as
to be enabled to take out a patent for it; and Heathcoat’s
steam-plough, though it has since been superseded by
Fowler’s, was considered the best machine of the kind that
had up to that time been invented.

Mr. Heathcoat was a man of great natural gifts. He
possessed a sound understanding, quick perception, and a genius
for business of the highest order. With these he combined
uprightness, honesty, and integrity—qualities which are the
true glory of human character. Himself a diligent
self-educator, he gave ready encouragement to deserving youths in
his employment, stimulating their talents and fostering their
energies. During his own busy life, he contrived to save
time to master French and Italian, of which he acquired an
accurate and grammatical knowledge. His mind was largely
stored with the results of a careful study of the best
literature, and there were few subjects on which he had not
formed for himself shrewd and accurate views. The two
thousand workpeople in his employment regarded him almost as a
father, and he carefully provided for their comfort and
improvement. Prosperity did not spoil him, as it does so
many; nor close his heart against the claims of the poor and
struggling, who were always sure of his sympathy and help.
To provide for the education of the children of his workpeople,
he built schools for them at a cost of about 6000l.
He was also a man of singularly cheerful and buoyant disposition,
a favourite with men of all classes and most admired and beloved
by those who knew him best.

In 1831 the electors of Tiverton, of which town Mr. Heathcoat
had proved himself so genuine a benefactor, returned him to
represent them in Parliament, and he continued their member for
nearly thirty years. During a great part of that time he
had Lord Palmerston for his colleague, and the noble lord, on
more than one public occasion, expressed the high regard which he
entertained for his venerable friend. On retiring from the
representation in 1859, owing to advancing age and increasing
infirmities, thirteen hundred of his workmen presented him with a
silver inkstand and gold pen, in token of their esteem. He
enjoyed his leisure for only two more years, dying in January,
1861, at the age of seventy-seven, and leaving behind him a
character for probity, virtue, manliness, and mechanical genius,
of which his descendants may well be proud.

We next turn to a career of a very different kind, that of the
illustrious but unfortunate Jacquard, whose life also illustrates
in a remarkable manner the influence which ingenious men, even of
the humblest rank, may exercise upon the industry of a
nation. Jacquard was the son of a hard-working couple of
Lyons, his father being a weaver, and his mother a pattern
reader. They were too poor to give him any but the most
meagre education. When he was of age to learn a trade, his
father placed him with a book-binder. An old clerk, who
made up the master’s accounts, gave Jacquard some lessons
in mathematics. He very shortly began to display a
remarkable turn for mechanics, and some of his contrivances quite
astonished the old clerk, who advised Jacquard’s father to
put him to some other trade, in which his peculiar abilities
might have better scope than in bookbinding. He was
accordingly put apprentice to a cutler; but was so badly treated
by his master, that he shortly afterwards left his employment, on
which he was placed with a type-founder.

His parents dying, Jacquard found himself in a measure
compelled to take to his father’s two looms, and carry on
the trade of a weaver. He immediately proceeded to improve
the looms, and became so engrossed with his inventions that he
forgot his work, and very soon found himself at the end of his
means. He then sold the looms to pay his debts, at the same
time that he took upon himself the burden of supporting a
wife. He became still poorer, and to satisfy his creditors,
he next sold his cottage. He tried to find employment, but
in vain, people believing him to be an idler, occupied with mere
dreams about his inventions. At length he obtained
employment with a line-maker of Bresse, whither he went, his wife
remaining at Lyons, earning a precarious living by making straw
bonnets.

We hear nothing further of Jacquard for some years, but in the
interval he seems to have prosecuted his improvement in the
drawloom for the better manufacture of figured fabrics; for, in
1790, he brought out his contrivance for selecting the warp
threads, which, when added to the loom, superseded the services
of a draw-boy. The adoption of this machine was slow but
steady, and in ten years after its introduction, 4000 of them
were found at work in Lyons. Jacquard’s pursuits were
rudely interrupted by the Revolution, and, in 1792, we find him
fighting in the ranks of the Lyonnaise Volunteers against the
Army of the Convention under the command of Dubois
Crancé. The city was taken; Jacquard fled and joined
the Army of the Rhine, where he rose to the rank of
sergeant. He might have remained a soldier, but that, his
only son having been shot dead at his side, he deserted and
returned to Lyons to recover his wife. He found her in a
garret still employed at her old trade of straw-bonnet
making. While living in concealment with her, his mind
reverted to the inventions over which he had so long brooded in
former years; but he had no means wherewith to prosecute
them. Jacquard found it necessary, however, to emerge from
his hiding-place and try to find some employment. He
succeeded in obtaining it with an intelligent manufacturer, and
while working by day he went on inventing by night. It had
occurred to him that great improvements might still be introduced
in looms for figured goods, and he incidentally mentioned the
subject one day to his master, regretting at the same time that
his limited means prevented him from carrying out his
ideas. Happily his master appreciated the value of the
suggestions, and with laudable generosity placed a sum of money
at his disposal, that he might prosecute the proposed
improvements at his leisure.

In three months Jacquard had invented a loom to substitute
mechanical action for the irksome and toilsome labour of the
workman. The loom was exhibited at the Exposition of
National Industry at Paris in 1801, and obtained a bronze
medal. Jacquard was further honoured by a visit at Lyons
from the Minister Carnot, who desired to congratulate him in
person on the success of his invention. In the following
year the Society of Arts in London offered a prize for the
invention of a machine for manufacturing fishing-nets and
boarding-netting for ships. Jacquard heard of this, and
while walking one day in the fields according to his custom, he
turned the subject over in his mind, and contrived the plan of a
machine for the purpose. His friend, the manufacturer,
again furnished him with the means of carrying out his idea, and
in three weeks Jacquard had completed his invention.

Jacquard’s achievement having come to the knowledge of
the Prefect of the Department, he was summoned before that
functionary, and, on his explanation of the working of the
machine, a report on the subject was forwarded to the
Emperor. The inventor was forthwith summoned to Paris with
his machine, and brought into the presence of the Emperor, who
received him with the consideration due to his genius. The
interview lasted two hours, during which Jacquard, placed at his
ease by the Emperor’s affability, explained to him the
improvements which he proposed to make in the looms for weaving
figured goods. The result was, that he was provided with
apartments in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, where
he had the use of the workshop during his stay, and was provided
with a suitable allowance for his maintenance.

Installed in the Conservatoire, Jacquard proceeded to complete
the details of his improved loom. He had the advantage of
minutely inspecting the various exquisite pieces of mechanism
contained in that great treasury of human ingenuity. Among
the machines which more particularly attracted his attention, and
eventually set him upon the track of his discovery, was a loom
for weaving flowered silk, made by Vaucanson the celebrated
automaton-maker.

Vaucanson was a man of the highest order of constructive
genius. The inventive faculty was so strong in him that it
may almost be said to have amounted to a passion, and could not
be restrained. The saying that the poet is born, not made,
applies with equal force to the inventor, who, though indebted,
like the other, to culture and improved opportunities,
nevertheless contrives and constructs new combinations of
machinery mainly to gratify his own instinct. This was
peculiarly the case with Vaucanson; for his most elaborate works
were not so much distinguished for their utility as for the
curious ingenuity which they displayed. While a mere boy
attending Sunday conversations with his mother, he amused himself
by watching, through the chinks of a partition wall, part of the
movements of a clock in the adjoining apartment. He
endeavoured to understand them, and by brooding over the subject,
after several months he discovered the principle of the
escapement.

From that time the subject of mechanical invention took
complete possession of him. With some rude tools which he
contrived, he made a wooden clock that marked the hours with
remarkable exactness; while he made for a miniature chapel the
figures of some angels which waved their wings, and some priests
that made several ecclesiastical movements. With the view
of executing some other automata he had designed, he proceeded to
study anatomy, music, and mechanics, which occupied him for
several years. The sight of the Flute-player in the Gardens
of the Tuileries inspired him with the resolution to invent a
similar figure that should play; and after several
years’ study and labour, though struggling with illness, he
succeeded in accomplishing his object. He next produced a
Flageolet-player, which was succeeded by a Duck—the most
ingenious of his contrivances,—which swam, dabbled, drank,
and quacked like a real duck. He next invented an asp,
employed in the tragedy of ‘Cléopâtre,’
which hissed and darted at the bosom of the actress.

Vaucanson, however, did not confine himself merely to the
making of automata. By reason of his ingenuity, Cardinal de
Fleury appointed him inspector of the silk manufactories of
France; and he was no sooner in office, than with his usual
irrepressible instinct to invent, he proceeded to introduce
improvements in silk machinery. One of these was his mill
for thrown silk, which so excited the anger of the Lyons
operatives, who feared the loss of employment through its means,
that they pelted him with stones and had nearly killed him.
He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a machine
for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a
dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or
skein of an equal thickness.

When Vaucanson died in 1782, after a long illness, he
bequeathed his collection of machines to the Queen, who seems to
have set but small value on them, and they were shortly after
dispersed. But his machine for weaving flowered silks was
happily preserved in the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers, and there Jacquard found it among the many
curious and interesting articles in the collection. It
proved of the utmost value to him, for it immediately set him on
the track of the principal modification which he introduced in
his improved loom.

One of the chief features of Vaucanson’s machine was a
pierced cylinder which, according to the holes it presented when
revolved, regulated the movement of certain needles, and caused
the threads of the warp to deviate in such a manner as to produce
a given design, though only of a simple character. Jacquard
seized upon the suggestion with avidity, and, with the genius of
the true inventor, at once proceeded to improve upon it. At
the end of a month his weaving-machine was completed. To
the cylinder of Vancanson, he added an endless piece of
pasteboard pierced with a number of holes, through which the
threads of the warp were presented to the weaver; while another
piece of mechanism indicated to the workman the colour of the
shuttle which he ought to throw. Thus the drawboy and the
reader of designs were both at once superseded. The first
use Jacquard made of his new loom was to weave with it several
yards of rich stuff which he presented to the Empress
Josephine. Napoleon was highly gratified with the result of
the inventor’s labours, and ordered a number of the looms
to be constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard’s
model, and presented to him; after which he returned to
Lyons.

There he experienced the frequent fate of inventors. He
was regarded by his townsmen as an enemy, and treated by them as
Kay, Hargreaves, and Arkwright had been in Lancashire. The
workmen looked upon the new loom as fatal to their trade, and
feared lest it should at once take the bread from their
mouths. A tumultuous meeting was held on the Place des
Terreaux, when it was determined to destroy the machines.
This was however prevented by the military. But Jacquard
was denounced and hanged in effigy. The ‘Conseil des
prud’hommes’ in vain endeavoured to allay the
excitement, and they were themselves denounced. At length,
carried away by the popular impulse, the prud’hommes, most
of whom had been workmen and sympathized with the class, had one
of Jacquard’s looms carried off and publicly broken in
pieces. Riots followed, in one of which Jacquard was
dragged along the quay by an infuriated mob intending to drown
him, but he was rescued.

The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, could not be
denied, and its success was only a question of time.
Jacquard was urged by some English silk manufacturers to pass
over into England and settle there. But notwithstanding the
harsh and cruel treatment he had received at the hands of his
townspeople, his patriotism was too strong to permit him to
accept their offer. The English manufacturers, however,
adopted his loom. Then it was, and only then, that Lyons,
threatened to be beaten out of the field, adopted it with
eagerness; and before long the Jacquard machine was employed in
nearly all kinds of weaving. The result proved that the
fears of the workpeople had been entirely unfounded.
Instead of diminishing employment, the Jacquard loom increased it
at least tenfold. The number of persons occupied in the
manufacture of figured goods in Lyons, was stated by M. Leon
Faucher to have been 60,000 in 1833; and that number has since
been considerably increased.

As for Jacquard himself, the rest of his life passed
peacefully, excepting that the workpeople who dragged him along
the quay to drown him were shortly after found eager to bear him
in triumph along the same route in celebration of his
birthday. But his modesty would not permit him to take part
in such a demonstration. The Municipal Council of Lyons
proposed to him that he should devote himself to improving his
machine for the benefit of the local industry, to which Jacquard
agreed in consideration of a moderate pension, the amount of
which was fixed by himself. After perfecting his invention
accordingly, he retired at sixty to end his days at Oullins, his
father’s native place. It was there that he received,
in 1820, the decoration of the Legion of Honour; and it was there
that he died and was buried in 1834. A statue was erected
to his memory, but his relatives remained in poverty; and twenty
years after his death, his two nieces were under the necessity of
selling for a few hundred francs the gold medal bestowed upon
their uncle by Louis XVIII. “Such,” says a
French writer, “was the gratitude of the manufacturing
interests of Lyons to the man to whom it owes so large a portion
of its splendour.”

It would be easy to extend the martyrology of inventors, and
to cite the names of other equally distinguished men who have,
without any corresponding advantage to themselves, contributed to
the industrial progress of the age,—for it has too often
happened that genius has planted the tree, of which patient
dulness has gathered the fruit; but we will confine ourselves for
the present to a brief account of an inventor of comparatively
recent date, by way of illustration of the difficulties and
privations which it is so frequently the lot of mechanical genius
to surmount. We allude to Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of
the Combing Machine.

Heilmann was born in 1796 at Mulhouse, the principal seat of
the Alsace cotton manufacture. His father was engaged in
that business; and Joshua entered his office at fifteen. He
remained there for two years, employing his spare time in
mechanical drawing. He afterwards spent two years in his
uncle’s banking-house in Paris, prosecuting the study of
mathematics in the evenings. Some of his relatives having
established a small cotton-spinning factory at Mulhouse, young
Heilmann was placed with Messrs. Tissot and Rey, at Paris, to
learn the practice of that firm. At the same time he became
a student at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, where
he attended the lectures, and studied the machines in the
museum. He also took practical lessons in turning from a
toymaker. After some time, thus diligently occupied, he
returned to Alsace, to superintend the construction of the
machinery for the new factory at Vieux-Thann, which was shortly
finished and set to work. The operations of the manufactory
were, however, seriously affected by a commercial crisis which
occurred, and it passed into other hands, on which Heilmann
returned to his family at Mulhouse.

He had in the mean time been occupying much of his leisure
with inventions, more particularly in connection with the weaving
of cotton and the preparation of the staple for spinning.
One of his earliest contrivances was an embroidering-machine, in
which twenty needles were employed, working simultaneously; and
he succeeded in accomplishing his object after about six
months’ labour. For this invention, which he
exhibited at the Exposition of 1834, he received a gold medal,
and was decorated with the Legion of Honour. Other
inventions quickly followed—an improved loom, a machine for
measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of the
“bobbin and fly frames” of the English spinners, and
a weft winding-machine, with various improvements in the
machinery for preparing, spinning, and weaving silk and
cotton. One of his most ingenious contrivances was his loom
for weaving simultaneously two pieces of velvet or other piled
fabric, united by the pile common to both, with a knife and
traversing apparatus for separating the two fabrics when
woven. But by far the most beautiful and ingenious of his
inventions was the combing-machine, the history of which we now
proceed shortly to describe.

Heilmann had for some years been diligently studying the
contrivance of a machine for combing long-stapled cotton, the
ordinary carding-machine being found ineffective in preparing the
raw material for spinning, especially the finer sorts of yarn,
besides causing considerable waste. To avoid these
imperfections, the cotton-spinners of Alsace offered a prize of
5000 francs for an improved combing-machine, and Heilmann
immediately proceeded to compete for the reward. He was not
stimulated by the desire of gain, for he was comparatively rich,
having acquired a considerable fortune by his wife. It was
a saying of his that “one will never accomplish great
things who is constantly asking himself, how much gain will this
bring me?” What mainly impelled him was the
irrepressible instinct of the inventor, who no sooner has a
mechanical problem set before him than he feels impelled to
undertake its solution. The problem in this case was,
however, much more difficult than he had anticipated. The
close study of the subject occupied him for several years, and
the expenses in which he became involved in connection with it
were so great, that his wife’s fortune was shortly
swallowed up, and he was reduced to poverty, without being able
to bring his machine to perfection. From that time he was
under the necessity of relying mainly on the help of his friends
to enable him to prosecute the invention.

While still struggling with poverty and difficulties,
Heilmann’s wife died, believing her husband ruined; and
shortly after he proceeded to England and settled for a time at
Manchester, still labouring at his machine. He had a model
made for him by the eminent machine-makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and
Company; but still he could not make it work satisfactorily, and
he was at length brought almost to the verge of despair. He
returned to France to visit his family, still pursuing his idea,
which had obtained complete possession of his mind. While
sitting by his hearth one evening, meditating upon the hard fate
of inventors and the misfortunes in which their families so often
become involved, he found himself almost unconsciously watching
his daughters coming their long hair and drawing it out at full
length between their fingers. The thought suddenly struck
him that if he could successfully imitate in a machine the
process of combing out the longest hair and forcing back the
short by reversing the action of the comb, it might serve to
extricate him from his difficulty. It may be remembered
that this incident in the life of Heilmann has been made the
subject of a beautiful picture by Mr. Elmore, R.A., which was
exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1862.

Upon this idea he proceeded, introduced the apparently simple
but really most intricate process of machine-combing, and after
great labour he succeeded in perfecting the invention. The
singular beauty of the process can only be appreciated by those
who have witnessed the machine at work, when the similarity of
its movements to that of combing the hair, which suggested the
invention, is at once apparent. The machine has been
described as “acting with almost the delicacy of touch of
the human fingers.” It combs the lock of cotton at
both ends, places the fibres exactly parallel with each
other, separates the long from the short, and unites the long
fibres in one sliver and the short ones in another. In
fine, the machine not only acts with the delicate accuracy of the
human fingers, but apparently with the delicate intelligence of
the human mind.

The chief commercial value of the invention consisted in its
rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine
spinning. The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select
the most suitable fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce
the finer sorts of yarn in much larger quantities. It
became possible by its means to make thread so fine that a length
of 334 miles might be spun from a single pound weight of the
prepared cotton, and, worked up into the finer sorts of lace, the
original shilling’s worth of cotton-wool, before it passed
into the hands of the consumer, might thus be increased to the
value of between 300l. and 400l. sterling.

The beauty and utility of Heilmann’s invention were at
once appreciated by the English cotton-spinners. Six
Lancashire firms united and purchased the patent for
cotton-spinning for England for the sum of 30,000l.; the
wool-spinners paid the same sum for the privilege of applying the
process to wool; and the Messrs. Marshall, of Leeds,
20,000l. for the privilege of applying it to flax.
Thus wealth suddenly flowed in upon poor Heilmann at last.
But he did not live to enjoy it. Scarcely had his long
labours been crowned by success than he died, and his son, who
had shared in his privations, shortly followed him.

It is at the price of lives such as these that the wonders of
civilisation are achieved.