COTTON MANUFACTURE - (From: "Beauties" 1802)
Near the upper end of the Dale is a spacious building, erected for the Manufacture of Cotton by the late Sir Richard ARKWRIGHT, and now [1802] belonging to his son, who resides in the beautiful demesne of Willersley. This mill is replete with the improved machinery employed in making cotton thread, "whose operations have been so elegantly described by Dr DARWIN, in a work which discovers the art, hitherto unknown, of clothing in poetical language, and decorating with beautiful imagery, the unpoetical operations of mechanical processes, and the dry detail of manufactures:"
Where Derwent guides his dusky floods,
Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,
The nymph Gossypia treads the velvet sod,
And warms with rosy smiles the wat'ry god;
His pond'rous oars to slender spindles turns,
And pours o'er massy wheels his foaming urns;
With playful charms her hoary lover wins,
And wheels his trident, while the Monarch spins.
First, with nice eye emerging Naiads cull
From leathery pods the vegetable wool;
With wiry teeth revolving cards release
The tangled knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece;
Next moves the iron hand with fingers fine,
Combs the wide card, and forms th'eternal line;
Slow with soft lips the whirling can acquires
The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires;
With quicken'd pace successive rollers move,
And these retain, and those extend, the rove.
Then fly the spokes, the rapid axles glow;
While slowly circumvolves the lab'ring wheel below.
Botanic Garden
The machinery by which the cotton is manufactured, is so complicated in its structure, that a clear conception of its powers, and mode of operation, can only be obtained from a minute inspection of all its parts, both in a state of rest, and in motion. The process by which the raw cotton is prepared for use, will, however, convey some idea of the ingenious mechanical contrivances that are employed to facilitate the production of the thread.
Carding:
When the cotton is sufficiently picked and cleaned (an operation that furnishes employment to a great number of women), it is carefully spread upon a cloth, in which it is afterwards rolled up in order to be carded. To the carding machine belong two cylinders of different diameters; the larger of which is covered with cards of fine wire; and over, and in contact with it, are fixed a number of stationary cards, that, in conjunction with the revolving cylinders, perform the operation of carding. The smaller cylinder is encompassed by fillet cards, fixed in a spiral form; and is also provided with an ingenious piece of machinery, called a crank. The spiral roll of cloth before mentioned being applied to the machine, is made to unroll very slowly, by means of rollers, so that it may continually feed the larger cylinder with its contents; when carded, the cotton passes from this to the smaller cylinder, which revolved in contact with the other, and is thence stripped off by the motion of the crank; not in short lengths, but in continuation; and having the appearance of a very thin fleece, which, if not intended to pass a second time through the carding machine, is immediately contracted, by passing betwixt a pair of rollers, into what is called a 'row', or length.
Sizing:
The next part of the process is that of sizing. The machine by which this is performed has two pairs of rollers, that are placed at a proper distance from each other, and revolve with different velocities, arising either from the variation of size in the pairs of rollers, from their performing a different number of revolutions in the same space of time, or from both these causes united. When the lengths of cotton are brought from the carding machine, several of them together are applied to the rollers now mentioned; and the effect now produced, is not only that the lengths, thus applied in conjunction, coalesce, and come out single, but also that the fibres of the cotton are drawn out longitudinally, by the different velocities and pressure of the rollers : hence the cotton is now termed a 'drawing'. This process is several times repeated, and several drawings are each time united, by passing together betwixt the rollers; the number introduced being so varied, that the last drawing may be of a size proportioned to the fineness of the thread into which it is intended to be spun.
Roving and Winding:
The cotton is now in a fit state for roving. This operation is performed by passing the last mentioned 'drawing' between two pairs of rollers, which revolve with different velocities, as in the former machine. It is then received into a round conical 'can', revolving with considerable swiftness. This gives the drawing a slight twisting, and prepares it for winding, which is done by hand, upon large bobbins, by the smaller children. When in this state, the cotton is applied to the spinning machine. Here it is passed between pairs of rollers, which revolving with various degrees of velocity, draw it out, and reduce it to a proper degree of tenuity : at the same time, it is sufficiently twisted by the revolving spindles upon which bobbins are placed; and the yard thus twisted is caused to wind on the bobbins, by the friction of their ends upon laths placed horizontally. These laths have another very essential office to perform, which is that of raising and falling the bobbins, so that the yarn may be spread over their whole length; otherwise the thread would require to be moved very frequently, as is the case in the common spinning wheel. When thus wound upon the bobbins, the cotton is regarded as ready for use.**
** Footnote: To render this statement of the various processes of the cotton manufacture more intelligible to those who have no previous knowledge of the business, we shall insert an extract from the Life of Sir Richard ARKWRIGHT (written, we believe, by Mr NICHOLSON) as published in Dr AIKIN's Biographical Dictionary:-
"The 'card' is a kind of brush made with wires instead of hairs; the wires not being perpendicular to the plane, but all inclined one way in a certain angle. From this description, such as are totally unacquainted with the subject, may conceive that cotton wool, being stuck upon one of those cards, or brushes, may be scraped with another card in that direction, that the inclination of the wires may tend to throw the whole inwards, rather than suffer it to come out. The consequence of the repeated strokes of the empty card against the full one, must be a distribution of the whole more evenly on the surface; and if one card be then drawn in the opposite direction across the other, it will, by virtue of the inclination of the wires, take the whole of the wool out of that card whose inclination is the contrary way.
"Spinning is of two kinds : in the one process, the carded wool is suddenly drawn out during the rapid rotation of a spindle, and forms a loose yarn; in the other, the material is spun by a well-known small engine, or wheel, which requires the spinner to draw the material out between the finger and thumb of each hand. If we suppose the machine itself to be left at liberty, and turned without the assistance of the spinner, the twisted thread, being drawn inwards by the bobbin, would naturally gather more of the material, and form an irregular thread, thicker and thicker, till at length the difficulty of drawing out so large a portion of the material as had acquired the twist, would become greater than that of snapping the thread, which would accordingly break. It is the business of the spinner to prevent this, by holding the material between the finger and thumb, that the intermediate part may be drawn out to the requisite degree of fineness previous to the twist, and separating the hands during the act of pinching.
"The objects of Mr ARKWRIGHT's improvements were carding and spinning. To effect these by machinery, it was required that the usual manoeuvre of the carder should be performed with square cards; or that cylinders, covered with the kind of metallic brushwork before described, should be made to revolve in contact with each other, either to card, or to strip; accordingly as their respective velocities, directions, and inclinations of their wires, might be adjusted : and with regard to spinning, it would become an indispensable condition, not only that the raw material should be nicely prepared, in order that it might require none of that intellectual skill which is capable of separating the knotty or imperfect parts as they offer themselves, but also that it should be regularly drawn out by certain parts, representing the fingers and thumbs of the spinner. The contrivance by which this last means was effected, consisted in a certain number of pairs of cylinders, each two revolving in contact with each other. Suppose a very loose thread, or slightly-twisted carding of cotton, to pass between one pair of cylinders (clothed with a proper facing to enable them to hold it), and let it be imagined to proceed from thence to another pair, whose surfaces revolve much quicker; it will be evident that the quicker revolution of the second pair, will draw out the cotton, rendering it thinner and longer when it comes to be delivered at the other side. This is precisely the operation which the spinner performs with her fingers and thumb; and if the cotton be then applied to a spinning apparatus, it will be converted into thread."
From these general principles, the improvement of Sir Richard ARKWRIGHT may certainly be deduced; yet there seems reason to believe, that the former would never have been so clearly stated, unless the machines had been previously seen in action. [End of footnote]
The first mill that was erected on these principles by Sir Richard ARKWRIGHT, was at Cromford village. Its establishment proved a source of much legal contention; for the manufacturers of Lancashire, who were apprehensive of what has actually been the result, that it would supersede the use of the hand machines then employed, formed a strong combination to impede its success (see: The Life of Mr Jedediah STRUTT, p.540) and endeavoured to destroy the validity of the patent, by contesting the originality of the invention; and though in two instances they obtained a favourable verdict, from particular circumstances, and lost it in a third, there cannot be a doubt, that every really essential part of the machinery derived its structure from the powerful genius of Mr ARKWRIGHT. The goods made by the cotton prepared by these mills, are very superior in quality, and manufactured with considerably less expense, than before the invention was perfected. A great quantity of the cotton spun by this machinery is used by hosiers, who find it more suitable to their purpose, than any other they can procure.
The two mills at Cromford, and a third at Masson, which was also built by Sir Richard, employ about 1150 persons; of these, 150 are men, 300 women, and 700 children. Proper attention is paid to the health and morals of the children, who are not admitted into the mills till they have been some time at school; and Sunday-schools are supported by Mrs ARKWRIGHT for their instruction afterwards. The mills are not worked by night, and are constantly kept very clean and neat. Both the Cromford mills are worked by the water that flows from Cromford Sough,** which throws out from forty to fifty tons of water per minute, and being partly supplied from warm springs, never interrupts the working of the mills, even in the most intense frosts. The fall from the mouth of the sough to the Derwent is about forty-five feet.
** Account of Cromford Sough, from p.302:- To remove water from the lead mines, many 'adits', or, as they are here termed, 'soughs', have been driven from the bottom of a neighbouring valley, and made to communicate with various works by different channels, or 'galleries' ....... One of the most considerable of these is at Wirksworth, called Cromford Sough. This is full two miles in length, and was driven at an expense of 30,000 pounds. The proprietors receive a certain proportion of lead ore from the mines; though the latter are now beneath the level, and of course but ineffectually drained by it. The relieving of the mines at Wirksworth by this adit, is, indeed, at this period [1802], only a secondary object; as the water delivered by it at Cromford has proved of amazing value. The late Sir R. ARKWRIGHT employed the stream to work his cotton mill; and it is still applied to a similar purpose, having the great advantage of not being liable either to considerable increase or diminution.
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