He picked out the trade of a maker of mathematical instruments, and went to London to fit himself for it. He was apprenticed to a good master and made rapid progress, but the climate of London was bad for his health, and as soon as his term of instruction was finished he went back to Scotland. There he found it difficult to get employment, but at last he obtained permission to open a small shop in the grounds of the University of Glasgow, and to call himself “Mathematical-instrument-maker to the University.”

When the Newcomen engine was given to Watt to repair he studied it closely, and soon reached an important conclusion. A great amount of heat was lost whenever the cold water was let into the cylinder to condense the steam, and this loss vastly increased the expense of running the engine, and cut down its power. He saw that to prevent this loss the cylinder must be kept as hot as the steam that entered it. This led him to study the nature of steam, and he had soon made some remarkable discoveries in regard to it. He found that water had a high capacity for storing up heat, without a corresponding effect on the thermometer. This hidden heat became known as latent heat.

It was of course a matter of common knowledge that heat could be obtained by the combustion of coal or wood. Watt found that heat lay also in water, to be drawn out and used in what is called steam. If you change the temperature of water you find that it exists in three different states, that of a liquid, or water, that of a solid, or ice, and that of a gas, or steam. If water were turned into steam, and two pounds of this steam passed into ten pounds of water at the freezing point the steam would become liquid, or water, again, at 212° of temperature, but at the same time the ten pounds of freezing water into which the steam had been passed would also have been raised to 212° by the process. This shows that the latent heat of the two pounds of steam was sufficient to convert the ten pounds of freezing water into boiling water. That is the latent heat which is set free to work when the steam coming in contact with the cold changes the vapor from its gaseous to a liquid state. The heat, however, is only latent, or in other words of no use, until the temperature of the water is raised to 212°, and the vapor rises.

Mr. Lauder, a pupil of Lord Kelvin, writing of Watt’s “Discoveries of the Properties of Steam,” describes his results in this way: “Suppose you take a flask, such as olive oil is often sold in, and fill it with cold water. Set it over a lighted lamp, put a thermometer in the water, and the temperature will be observed to rise steadily till it reaches 212°, where it remains, the water boils, and steam is produced freely. Now draw the thermometer out of the water, but leaving it still in the steam. It remains steady at the same point—212°. Now it requires quite a long time and a large amount of heat to convert all the water into steam. As the steam goes off at the same temperature as the water, it is evident a quantity of heat has escaped in the steam, of which the thermometer gives us no account. This is latent heat.

“Now, if you blow the steam into cold water instead of allowing it to pass into the air, you will find that it heats the water six times more than what is due to its indicated temperature. To fix your idea: suppose you take 100 lbs. of water at 60°, and blow one pound of steam into it, making 101 lbs., its temperature will now be about 72°, a rise of 12°. Return to your 100 lbs. of water at 60° and add one pound of water at 212° the same temperature as the steam you added, and the temperature will only be raised about 2°. The one pound of steam heats six times more than the one pound of water, both being at the same temperature. This is the quantity of latent heat, which means simply hidden heat, in steam.

“Proceeding further with the experiment, if, instead of allowing the steam to blow into the water, you confine it until it gets to some pressure, then blow it into the water, it takes the same weight to raise the temperature to the same degree. This means that the total heat remains practically the same, no matter at what pressure.

“This is James Watt’s discovery, and it led him to the use of high-pressure steam, used expansively.”

Newcomen, in making his steam-engine, had simply made additions to Papin’s model. Watt had already done much more, for in trying to find how the engine might be made of greater service he had discovered at the outset the principle of the latent heat of steam. He knew that in Newcomen’s engine four-fifths of all the steam used was lost in heating the cold cylinder, and that only one-fifth was actually used in moving the piston. It was easy to see how this loss occurred. The cylinder was cooled at the top because it was open to the air, and was cooled at the bottom in condensing the steam that had driven the piston up so as to create a vacuum which would lower the piston for another stroke. Watt knew that what he wanted was a plan by which the cylinder could always be kept as hot as the steam that went into it. How was he to obtain this? He solved it by the invention of the “separate condenser.” This is how he tells of his discovery. “I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, early in 1765. I had entered the green by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street and had passed the old washing-house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection-water if I used a jet as in Newcomen’s engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at the depth of thirty-five or thirty-six feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air.... I had not walked farther than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.”

This was the discovery that gave us practically the modern steam-engine, with its countless uses in unnumbered fields. Newcomen’s engine was limited to the pressure of the atmosphere, Watt’s could use the tremendous force of steam under higher and higher pressure. He led the steam out of the cylinder and condensed it in a separate vessel, thereby leaving the cylinder hot. He closed the cylinder top, and prevented the loss of steam. The invention may seem simple enough as we study it, but as a matter of fact it was the attainment of this result of keeping the cylinder as hot as the steam that enters it that has given us our steam-engine.

The morning following that Sunday afternoon on which the idea of the condenser had occurred to Watt he borrowed a brass syringe from a college friend, and using this as a cylinder and a tin can as a condenser tried his experiment. The scheme worked, albeit in a primitive way, and Watt saw that he was on the track of an engine that would revolutionize the labor of men. But he saw also that it would take both time and money to bring his invention to its most efficient form.

His instrument-making business had prospered, he had taken in a partner, and the firm now employed sixteen workmen. About the same time he married, and rented a house outside the university grounds. Soon he was busily at work building a working model of his steam-engine.

A working model was very hard to make. Watt himself was a skilful mechanician, but the men who helped him were not. The making of the cylinder and the piston gave him the chief trouble. The cylinder would leak. It took him months to devise the tools that would enable him to make a perfect-fitting cylinder, and when he had accomplished that he still found that in one way or another a certain amount of steam would escape. Yet, although imperfect, his model was already many times more powerful than the Newcomen engine he had started with.

But before very long Watt found that this work was leading him into debt. He told his good friend Professor Black, who had discovered the latent heat of steam before Watt had, that he needed a partner to help him in his business of building engines. Black suggested Dr. Roebuck, who had opened the well-known Carron Iron Works near Glasgow. The two men met, and, after some negotiations, formed a partnership. Roebuck agreed to pay Watt’s debts to the sum of a thousand pounds, to provide the money for further experiments, and to obtain a patent for the steam-engine. In return for this he was to become the owner of a two-third interest in the invention.

It was more difficult to secure a patent in those days than in later times, for both the courts and the public considered that the right to make use of any new invention should belong to the whole world, and not alone to one man or to a few men. Watt’s models had to be very carefully made, and his designs very accurately drawn if he was to secure any real protection, and the preparation of these took a vast amount of time. But Roebuck continued to encourage him, and on January 5, 1769, he was granted his first patent, the very same day on which another great English inventor, Arkwright, obtained a patent for his spinning-frame. This first patent covered Watt’s invention of the condenser, but not his next invention, which was the double-acting engine, or in other words, a method by which the steam should do work on the downward as well as on the upward stroke.

With his patent secured Watt spent six months building a huge new engine, which he had ready for use in September, 1769. In spite of all his painstaking it was only a partial success. The cylinder had been badly cast, the pipe-condenser did not work properly, and there was still the old leakage of steam at the piston. Men began to doubt whether the new engine could ever be made to accomplish what Watt claimed for it, but although he realized the difficulties the inventor would not allow himself to doubt. Unfortunately his way was no longer clear. Dr. Roebuck met with reverses and had to end the partnership agreement, and Watt had to borrow money from his old friend Professor Black to secure his patent. To add to his distress his wife, who had been his best counselor, died.

Dr. Roebuck had owed money to a celebrated merchant of Birmingham named Matthew Boulton. Boulton had heard a great deal about Watt’s engine, and now consented to take Roebuck’s interest in Watt’s invention in payment of the debt. At the same time the firm of Boulton and Watt was formed, and in May, 1774, Watt shipped his trial engine south, and set out himself for Birmingham.

Boulton was a business genius, and Watt now found that he could leave financial matters entirely to his care, and busy himself solely with his engine. He had better workmen, better appliances, and better material in Birmingham than he had had in Glasgow, and the engine was soon beginning to justify his hopes. But the original patent had only been granted for fourteen years, and six of these had already passed. Boulton was not willing to put money into the building of a great factory until he was sure that the engines would be secured to the firm. Therefore more time had to be spent in obtaining an extension of the patent. This was finally done, and Watt was granted a term of twenty-four years. At once Boulton set to work, the first engine factory rose, and hundreds of men in England turned to Birmingham to see how much truth there was in the wonderful stories that had been spread abroad of the new invention.

Men soon learned that the stories were true. Orders began to flow in, and Watt had his hands full in traveling about the country superintending the erection of his steam-engines. The mines of Cornwall had become unworkable, and as a great deal depended on the success of the engine in such work, he traveled to Cornwall to make sure that there should be no faults. The miners, the engineers, and the owners had gathered to see the new engine. It stood the test splendidly, making eleven eight-foot strokes per minute, which broke the record. After that the other mines of Great Britain discarded the old expensive Newcomen engine, and sent in orders for Watt’s. The firm prospered, and the inventor began to feel some of the material comforts of success. He had married a second time, and made a home for his wife and children in Birmingham. Now, when he could spare the time from superintending the workmen and traveling over the country, he gave his thoughts to further inventive schemes.

Watt had not only invented the condenser and the double-acting engine, he had produced an indicator for measuring the pressure of steam in the cylinder, and also what was called the fly-ball governor, which took the place of the throttle-valve he had first used to regulate the speed of his engines. These improvements had so increased the uses of the engine that scores of rival inventors were abroad, and therefore he decided to secure a second patent. This he did in 1781, the patent being issued “for certain new methods of producing a continued rotative motion around an axis or centre, and thereby to give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines.” The next year he secured still another patent, and now he had so perfected his double-acting engine that it had a regular and easily controlled motion, in consequence of which, as he said in his specifications, “in most of our great manufactories these engines now supply the place of water, wind and horse mills, and instead of carrying the work to the power, the prime agent is placed wherever it is most convenient to the manufacturer.” This meant that the steam-engine had now reached the point where it could be made to serve for almost any purpose and placed in almost any position that might be required.

There was one further step for Watt to take in the development of his invention. He wished a more powerful engine than his double-acting one, and so he produced the “compound” engine. This was really two engines, the cylinders and condensers of which were so connected that the steam which had been used to press on the piston of the first could then be used to act expansively upon the piston of the second, and in this way the second engine be made to work either alternately or simultaneously with the first. And this compound engine is practically the very engine that we have to-day. Improvements have been made, but they have been made in details. The piston-rings invented by Cartwright have prevented the escape of steam, and so permitted the use of a higher pressure than Watt could achieve, and the cross-head invented by Haswell has provided the piston with a better bed on which to rest and freed it from a certain friction.

The firm of Boulton and Watt had a successful career, and in time the sons of the two partners took the latters’ places. Watt had occasion to protect his patents by a suit at law, but he was victorious in this, and by the time the patent rights had expired the firm had built up such a large business that it was safe from rivals. Confident of his son’s ability to carry on the business Watt at length retired, to busy himself in studying other inventions, to cultivate his garden, and to revisit familiar scenes in his beloved Scotland.

The steam-engine had come to take its place in the great onward march of progress. Men were already at work planning to make it move cars across the land and ships upon the sea. It was to revolutionize the manufacture of almost everything; what men and women had done before by hand it was now to do, and, devised at first because of the great need of a new way to work the coal mines, it was to provide a motive power to accomplish all kinds of labor.

Such is the story of how James Watt took Newcomen’s simple piston and cylinder and so harnessed steam that he could make it do the work he wanted.

V
ARKWRIGHT AND THE SPINNING-JENNY
1732-1792

All the great English inventors have sprung from families of small means, and have had to work for their living. Richard Arkwright, born at Preston, in Lancashire, December 23, 1732, was no exception to this rule. He was the youngest of thirteen children, and his parents were as poor as the proverbial church mice. He had no real education, only such as he could pick up by chance, but he made the most of such chances as came his way. He was apprenticed to a barber at Bolton, and later took up that business for himself. It was an occupation in which he would be apt to glean much gossip and many stray scraps of information, but little that would tend to broaden his mind. Perhaps he realized this for himself, and concluded that the hairdressing line was not to be his destiny, for when he was in the neighborhood of twenty-eight years of age he retired from his barber-shop, and became a traveling dealer in hair and dyes. This would at least allow him to see something more of the world.

His prospects at this new trade were good. He had come upon a new method of dyeing hair and preparing it to be made into wigs. Wigs were the fashion, and Arkwright had an excellent process, and was an energetic and resourceful dealer. He saw something of the country world of England, the men and women in it, what they wanted, and what they needed. Doubtless his inventive mind was already revolving improvements for them. The dealer in dyes and wigs was a shrewd and canny man. Carlyle had this to say concerning him and his progress: “Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dirty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, the man had notions in that rough head of his! Spindles, shuttles, wheels, and contrivances, plying ideally within the same; rather hopeless-looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty.”

There is always a strain of romance, or at least adventure, in the life of the itinerant pedlar, something of the free-footedness of the gypsy, and something of the acumen of those Eastern traders who traveled in caravans from the Orient. But doubtless we see the charm more clearly than the traveler himself. It may have been, and most likely was, a workaday job for Richard Arkwright. But consider the romance that underlay it! This country vendor of hair was to become one of the world’s great inventors, and to kneel before his sovereign for the accolade that was to make him knight. Figaro of Seville, famed as he was, was none superior to the Lancashire barber.

He traveled much through South Lancashire and Cheshire, and there he came in daily contact with the cotton-spinners. A weaver of great ingenuity and tireless purpose, James Hargreaves, had invented what was known as a spinning-jenny, an arrangement by which many spindles, fastened in a wooden frame, would work together by the turning of a fly-wheel. This machine could do the work of many spinners, and in a much shorter time. The rovings of cotton went under a bar-clasp that took the place of the spinner’s finger and thumb. This bar-clasp could be moved backward and forward on a rod as the spinner’s hand would do when stretching the thread and winding it on. It had a precision of action that resulted in a much greater regularity in the spun thread than by the earlier process. It was a very ingenious device, and Hargreaves deserved the greatest credit for the skill with which he solved the problem.

But the spinners did not take kindly to this improvement. When they discovered that Hargreaves could do more spinning with less work with his machine, and could supply his own loom with all the woof that was needed instead of keeping three or four spinners employed, they grew highly indignant. They did not realize that the demand for cotton cloth was far greater than the supply, and that they could all be profitably employed operating the spinning-jenny. That panic which has so often come over people when they learn of a new device entering their field of action struck the cotton-spinners, and Hargreaves was regarded as a foe rather than a friend. Hargreaves was driven from Lancashire to Nottingham, and many of his larger jennies were broken by mobs. A few of the smaller machines were saved, but the people’s mind was very evident.

Hargreaves’ improvement on the old-fashioned spinning-wheel dates from 1767, though he himself, it is said, had first used such a machine in 1764. Two men, Wyatt and Paul, of Birmingham, had earlier built a machine to spin stronger yarn than that usually used, but their machine had shown many defects, and they had abandoned its use. Arkwright knew of Hargreaves’ jenny, but not of the other machine, and as he came upon none in use in his travels he cannot be held to have been under any obligations to this earlier device.

The manufacture of cotton goods was in a primitive state in England. Pure cotton fabrics could not be made, and the fustians that were produced had a warp of linen yarn in them, due to the fact that no way was known by which cotton yarn of sufficient strength could be spun. Arkwright soon learned these difficulties that arose from the absence of cotton warp and the deficiency of cotton weft, and his alert mind commenced to wonder whether he could not so improve on Hargreaves’ jenny as to overcome these difficulties. He was not a skilled mechanic himself, and so, when he decided to take up the subject, he employed a clockmaker, named Kay, to help him. Realizing the hostility to any improvement on the part of the cotton-spinners, he gave out that he was engaged in building a machine to solve the world-old problem of perpetual motion.

Under this cloak he worked, and soon found that his new occupation was vastly more interesting than that of dealer in wigs had been. He was a shrewd man, and therefore, when he withdrew from that trade in 1767, it is probable that he foresaw that he was on the track of something better. His idea was that cotton could be spun by rollers, and he said that this thought occurred to him as he happened to watch a red-hot iron bar lengthened out by passing between two rollers. But the iron would necessarily have to be drawn out in such a process, while the cotton wool could be indefinitely packed together. It would have to be taken hold of, and forcibly stretched as it passed through the pair of rollers, if it were to be drawn out, and not merely compressed. His solution of this problem was a machine that had two pairs of rollers, which were called drawing-rollers, the first pair of which revolved slowly in contact with each other, while the second pair revolved more rapidly in a similar way. One roller of each pair was covered with leather, and the other was fluted lengthwise. The two were pressed together by means of weights. In this manner the adhesion of the cotton wool was safely secured, and there was no chance of the rollers slipping around without drawing it in. The cotton passed through the two pairs of rollers, and its extension depended entirely on the difference in the velocity of the revolutions of the two pairs. When the proper fineness had been obtained in this way, the cotton, as it passed from the second pair of rollers, was twisted into a firm strong thread by spindles attached to the frame.

Arkwright realized that he must have assistance in order to put his machines on the market. He applied to a Mr. Atherton, and the latter, although he considered the venture a hazardous one, sent him two workmen to help in building his first machine. When this was finished Arkwright went with it to Preston, and there set up his spinning-frame and began to use it in a room of the house that belonged to the Free Grammar School. His experiments convinced him of its success. Then he thought how he could best introduce his machine with least risk of rousing the popular fury. John Smalley, a liquor merchant and painter, had helped him build his machine, and after consultation, the two men decided to take the spinning-jenny to Nottingham, which lay in the heart of the frame-work stocking trade.

Arkwright’s great opportunity lay in the fact that the manufacture of cotton hosiery had hitherto had to be carried on on a limited scale, owing to the difficulty of obtaining yarn that was sufficiently strong for the stocking-frames that were then used. At first he and John Smalley were associated with the Messrs. Wright, Nottingham bankers, but these bankers, figuring on the experience that had befallen the inventors of other spinning machines, soon withdrew their aid. But Arkwright was more fortunate in his next step. Samuel Need, a Nottingham manufacturer of stockings, and his partner, Jedediah Strutt, of Derby, who had himself invented a device for making ribbed stockings, became interested in his machine, tested it carefully, and with the experience they had already gained as practical manufacturers, decided in its favor. It was their approval that started Arkwright on the road to fortune.

Arkwright took out his first patent in 1769, the same year that Watt patented his steam-engine with a separate condenser. A little later, with his partners Need and Strutt, he built a very complete factory at Cromford, on the Derwent River. He had already shown his power of originating and perfecting a working machine, now he showed an additional ability for organizing a great manufactory, and improving and adding new devices to his original model. This was the test of his strength, and perhaps the most wonderful part of his character. Many men have come upon new ideas, and many have sent them forth to improve the world’s work, but only a few have developed them, day in and day out, until they stand forth as a finished achievement. That is the gauge, the test that has proved the inventor. Not Watt’s first innovations on the stationary steam-engine, nor Stephenson’s building of his original locomotive, nor Arkwright’s discovery that rollers could be used to draw the cotton, but the years of trial and improvement Watt spent at Birmingham, and Stephenson in his shops at Killingworth, and Arkwright in his factory at Cromford, have made the three men famous in history. They were the years of patience and perseverance, which must come in the life of every great inventor to test his strength.

The country people about Cromford came to see Arkwright’s machines, and wonder at them, and sometimes to buy a dozen pairs of stockings that had been made of Arkwright’s yarn. But the big Manchester manufacturers refused to trade with him. The fine water-twist that was being spun on his spinning-frames was perfectly adapted to be used as warp, and would have supplied the demand for genuine cotton goods, which otherwise had to be imported from India. But, though they needed his yarn, the manufacturers would not buy it from him, and he was forced to find some way of using his large output himself. First he used it to manufacture stockings, and then, in 1773, to make, for the first time in England, fabrics entirely of cotton. This was the turning point in England’s trade in cotton goods. Heretofore she had not been able to meet the demands of her own people, now she was to commence a campaign that was ultimately to send her cloth to the farthest ends of the earth.

His powers of resistance were to be still further tested. An act was passed, based on the assumption that the English spinners could never compete with the fine Indian handiwork, that a duty of sixpence a yard should be levied on all calicoes, which were a variety of cotton goods originally imported from Calicut, in India. In addition, the sale of printed calicoes was forbidden. The customs officers immediately began to levy the duty on the products of Arkwright’s mills, claiming that the goods were in reality calicoes, although they were made in England. It followed that merchants who had ordered goods from the Cromford Mill cancelled their orders, rather than pay the duty, and again Arkwright found his cottons piling up on his hands.

The act was too unfair to stand, and after a time was repealed. Cotton and all mixed fabrics were taxed threepence per yard, and the prohibition on printed cotton goods was withdrawn. The opposition of rival manufacturers could not in the nature of things long retard what was to become one of the nation’s main industries.

He took out his second patent in 1775, and it embraced almost the entire field of cloth manufacture. It contained innumerable devices that he had worked out during the years he had been experimenting at his factory. It covered “carding, drawing, and roving machines for use in preparing silk, cotton, flax, and wool for spinning.” The man who had been a vendor of wigs had now revolutionized the whole spinning world. He had taught men and women to work at his machines, instead of in the old way of individual hand labor, he had organized a great business, and was showing the world that more could be accomplished by the division of labor and its control by one mind than could ever have resulted from individual initiative. In this way he was taking a most vital part in the progress of those new economic ideas that were dawning into consciousness toward the close of the eighteenth century.

It is so easy to see the successful result, so difficult to appreciate the trials that have been undergone. We look at the great picture and we admire the genius of the artist, but how rarely we realize the no less wonderful patience, the no less wonderful struggle that underlies what we see. The creator has not wrought easily, that is certain; and his greatness consists in what he has overcome.

Arkwright was ill with asthma during many of the years when he was fighting for his fortune, and time and again it seemed as if his strength must fail before the task he had undertaken. But he was a great fighter, and so he won through. His workmen were offered bribes to leave his service, and teach his methods to rivals, his patents were infringed, right and left there was warfare, and he was fighting a score of enemies single-handed.

In 1781 he had to bring suit against Colonel Mordaunt, and eight other manufacturers, for infringing his patent. The influence of all the Lancashire cotton-spinners was aligned against his claims. They could not deny the fact that he had invented the spinning-jenny, but they said that the specifications of his patent were not sufficiently clear. The court upheld this contention, and declared the patent invalid. Arkwright withdrew the other suits he had started, and wrote and published his “Case,” in order to set forth to the world the truth of his claims.

In 1785 he brought his case again into court, and this time Lord Loughborough ruled that his patent was valid. On account of this conflict of decisions the matter was referred to the Court of King’s Bench. Here a Lancashire man named Highs, who had constructed a double jenny to work fifty-six spindles in 1770, was declared by Arkwright’s opponents to be the real inventor. It was said that Arkwright had stolen this man’s ideas. On such evidence Arkwright’s claims were denied, and his patent overruled. This was the species of constant warfare with which he had to occupy himself.

Manchester had fought against the spinning-frame for years, but it was to receive the chief fruits of its success. Arkwright built a mill there in 1780, and it prospered exceedingly, in spite of the fact that he no longer had the protection of his patents. He was such a good business man, such a splendid organizer, that he could overcome his enemies without that help, and in time he built up a fortune.

When he had started his first mill at Nottingham Arkwright had been obliged to use horse-power, and it was owing to the expense of such a system that he had soon moved to Cromford, where he could obtain water-power from the Derwent River. It was this that gave his yarn the name of water-twist. But in his Manchester Mill he made use of a hydraulic wheel, supplied with water by a single-stroke atmospheric steam-engine. Later Boulton and Watt’s engines were installed, and with the most profitable results. As a result of these improvements the imports of cotton wool, which had averaged less than 5,000,000 pounds a year in the five years from 1771 to 1775, rose to an average of more than 25,000,000 pounds in the five years ending with 1790. England began to export cotton goods in 1781, which was sufficient evidence that the manufacture of such goods was proceeding more rapidly than the home demand for them. This was due largely to Arkwright’s invention, to his building up of factories on new methods, and to the great help furnished to all machinery by the steam-engines of James Watt.

This is the romance of the dealer in wigs and dyes. He had won fame and fortune, and a powerful position in his country. In 1786 he was appointed High Sheriff in Derbyshire, and the same year was knighted by George III. He died at Cromford in 1792.

His personality was strong, aggressive, dominating. Nothing could turn him from his course when he had made up his mind in regard to it. He was determined to make a fortune out of cotton-spinning, and he did, in spite of the loss of his patents, and the rivals who were always pursuing him. He stands high as inventor, and quite as high as one of the makers of modern commercial England.

VI
WHITNEY AND THE COTTON-GIN
1765-1825

Cotton-growing has been for a long time the main industry of the Southern United States, and the exporting of cotton by that part of the country has largely fed the mills of the world. Yet in 1784 the customs officers at Liverpool seized eight bags of cotton arriving on an American vessel, claiming that so much of the raw material could not have been produced in the thirteen states. In 1793 the total export of cotton from the United States was less than ten thousand bales, but by 1860 the export was four million bales. The chief reason for this marvelous advance was the cotton-gin, for which Eli Whitney applied for a patent in 1793.

Wherever cotton grew in the South there the cotton-gin was to be found. It brought prosperity and ease and comfort, it allowed the small as well as the large owner to have his share of the profits of the markets of the world. It gave the cotton country its living, and yet Whitney struggled for years to win the slightest recognition of his claims. He wrote to Robert Fulton, “In one instance I had great difficulty in proving that the machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the court-house.”

He came to the South from New England, having been born in Westborough, Worcester County, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765, educated at Yale College, and going to Georgia as teacher in a private family. General Greene, of Savannah, took a great interest in him, and taught him law. Whitney had been a good student, had an attractive personality, and had already shown a natural knack for mechanics. While he was teaching at the Greenes’ home he noticed that the embroidery frame that Mrs. Greene used tore the fine threads of her work. He asked her to let him study it, and shortly had made a frame on an entirely different plan that would do the same work without injuring the threads. His hostess was delighted with it, and spread the word of her young teacher’s ingenuity through the neighborhood.

As in all Southern mansions hospitality was rife at the Greenes’, and it happened that one evening a number of gentlemen were gathered there who had fought under the General in the Revolution. The subject of the growing of cotton came under discussion, and some one spoke of the unfortunate fact that no method had been found for cleaning the cotton staple of the green seed. If that could be done cotton could be grown with profit on all the land that was unsuited for rice. To separate a single pound of the clean staple from the green seed took a whole day’s work for a woman. There was little profit in trying to grow much cotton at such a rate, and most of the cotton picking was done by the negroes in the evenings, when the harder labor of the fields was finished. Then Mrs. Greene pointed to Eli Whitney with a smile. “There, gentlemen,” said she, “apply to my friend Mr. Whitney for your device. He can make anything.” The guests looked at the young man, but he hastened to disclaim any such abilities, and said that he had never even seen cotton-seed.

But in spite of his disclaimer he began to consider whether he could make a machine that would help to separate the seed from the cotton. He went to see a neighbor, Phineas Miller, and talked over his plans with him. Miller became interested, and gave him a room in his house where he might carry on his experiments. He had to use very primitive implements, making his own tools and drawing his own wire. He worked quietly, only Mr. Miller and Mrs. Greene knowing what he was doing.

Whitney worked on his machine all the winter of 1793, and by spring it was far enough completed to assure him of success. Mr. Miller, who was a lawyer with a taste for mechanics, and who was, again like Eli Whitney, a New Englander and graduate of Yale, married Mrs. Greene after the General’s death. It was he who actually made Whitney’s machine a business possibility by proposing that he should become a partner with the inventor, and bear all the expenses of manufacturing it until they should secure their patent. They drew up a legal agreement to this effect, dated May 27, 1793, and stipulating that all the profits should be equally divided between them.

There followed very soon the first dramatic scenes in the long battle between the owners of the cotton-gin and the public. The Southern people knew how invaluable such an invention would be to them; it meant food and shelter and better living all along the line; it would increase the value of their property a hundredfold. So as soon as it became bruited abroad that Eli Whitney had such a machine in his workroom that spot became the Mecca for the countryside. Crowds came to beg for a look at the wonderful machine, and hung about the house and plotted to get in. But Whitney and Miller were afraid to let people see the invention until they had made sure of their patents on it, and so they refused to let the crowds have a look at it. Then the more reckless of the crowds threw all sense of fairness to the winds, and broke into Mr. Miller’s house, seized the machine, and carried it off with them. Soon it was publicly displayed, and before Whitney could finish his model for the Patent Office a dozen machines, similar to his, were in use in the cotton fields.

Whitney’s cotton-gin was made of two cylinders of different diameters, mounted in a strong wooden frame. One cylinder had a number of small circular saws that were fitted into grooves cut into the cylinder. The other cylinder was covered with brushes, and so placed that the tips of the bristles of these brushes touched the saw-teeth. The raw cotton was put in a hopper, where it was met by the teeth of the saws, and torn from the seeds. The brushes then swept the cotton clear of the gin. The seeds were too large to go between the bars through which the series of saws protruded, and were kept apart by themselves. Of course many improvements were made upon this machine, but it was found that even in this original form it would enable one man, using two horse-power, to clean the seed from five thousand pounds of cotton in a day. That meant that fortunes could be made in the hitherto disregarded cotton fields of the South.

Whitney now went to Connecticut to finish certain improvements on the machine, to secure his patents, and to begin the manufacturing of as many gins as his partner Miller should find were needed in Georgia. The partners’ wrote frequently to each other, and their letters show the fierceness of the struggle they were waging to protect their rights. “It will be necessary,” wrote Miller, “to have a considerable number of gins in readiness to send out as soon as the patent is obtained in order to satisfy the absolute demands and make people’s heads easy on the subject; for I am informed of two other claimants for the honor of the invention of the cotton-gin in addition to those we knew before.”

The two men did everything in their power to hasten the building of their gins. They knew their rivals were unscrupulous, and were in fact already trying their best to prejudice the minds of the more conservative Georgia cotton-growers against them. But money was very scarce, and the manufacture of the machines proved so costly that Whitney found it impossible to furnish as many gins as his partner wanted.

Whitney applied for his patent in 1793. The following April he went back to Georgia, where he found unusually large crops of cotton had been planted, in expectation of using the gin. As there were not enough of his gins ready rivals were pushing their inferior machines. One of these, called the roller-gin, destroyed the seeds by crushing them between two revolving cylinders, instead of separating them by teeth. A large part of the crushed seed was, however, apt to stay in the cotton after it had passed through the machine, and this form of gin did not therefore produce as satisfactory results as did Whitney’s. Another rival was the saw-gin, which was almost identical with Whitney’s gin, except that the saw-teeth were cut in circular rings of iron instead of being made of wire. This machine infringed the partners’ patents, and caused them an almost endless series of expensive lawsuits.

Two years of conflict in the South proved the superiority of Whitney’s invention over all other machines, but resulted in little actual profit. In March, 1795, he went north to New York, where he was kept for several weeks by illness. When he got back to his factory in New Haven he found that fire had wiped out his workshop, together with all his gins and papers. He was $4,000 in debt, and virtually bankrupt. Yet he had great courage, and fortunately his partner Miller had the same faith. When Whitney sent him the news from New Haven, Miller replied, “I think we ought to meet such events with equanimity. We have been pursuing a valuable object by honorable means, and I trust that all our measures have been such as reason and virtue must justify. It has pleased Providence to postpone the attainment of this object. In the midst of the reflections which your story has suggested, and with feelings keenly awake to the heavy, the extensive injury we have sustained, I feel a secret joy and satisfaction that you possess a mind in this respect similar to my own—that you are not disheartened, that you do not relinquish the pursuit, and that you will persevere, and endeavor, at all events, to attain the main object. This is exactly consonant to my own determinations. I will devote all my time, all my thoughts, all my exertions, and all the money I can earn or borrow to encompass and complete the business we have undertaken; and if fortune should, by any future disaster, deny us the boon we ask, we will at least deserve it. It shall never be said that we have lost an object which a little perseverance could have attained. I think, indeed, it will be very extraordinary if two young men in the prime of life, with some share of ingenuity, and with a little knowledge of the world, a great deal of industry, and a considerable command of property, should not be able to sustain such a stroke of misfortune as this, heavy as it is.”

Whitney attempted to rebuild his factory, but the affairs of the firm were in extreme jeopardy. He had to pay twelve per cent. a year to borrow money for his work. Then certain English manufacturers reported that the cotton that was cleaned by Whitney’s gin was not of good quality. The struggle was a hard one. He wrote to Miller, “The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long time accumulating upon me are now become so great that it will be impossible for me to struggle against them many days longer. It has required my utmost exertions to exist without making the least progress in our business. I have labored hard against the strong current of disappointment which has been threatening to carry us down the cataract, but I have labored with a shattered oar and struggled in vain, unless some speedy relief is obtained.... Life is but short at best, and six or seven years out of the midst of it is to him who makes it an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted attention has been devoted to our business. I have sacrificed to it other objects from which, before this time, I might certainly have gained $20,000 or $30,000. My whole prospects have been embarked in it, with the expectation that I should before this time have realized something from it.”

Pirates now filled the field, and the lawsuits which they were compelled to bring to defend themselves went against them. Miller wrote to Whitney on May 11, 1797, “The event of the first patent suit, after all our exertions made in such a variety of ways, has gone against us. The preposterous custom of trying civil causes of this intricacy and magnitude by a common jury, together with the imperfection of the patent law, frustrated all our views, and disappointed expectations which had become very sanguine. The tide of popular opinion was running in our favor, the judge was well disposed toward us, and many decided friends were with us, who adhered firmly to our cause and interests. The judge gave a charge to the jury pointedly in our favor; after which the defendant himself told an acquaintance of his that he would give $2,000 to be free from the verdict, and yet the jury gave it against us, after a consultation of about an hour. And having made the verdict general, no appeal would lie.

“On Monday morning, when the verdict was rendered, we applied for a new trial, but the judge refused it to us on the ground that the jury might have made up their opinion on the defect of the law, which makes an aggression consist of making, devising, and using or selling; whereas we could only charge the defendant with using.

“Thus, after four years of assiduous labor, fatigue, and difficulty, are we again set afloat by a new and most unexpected obstacle. Our hopes of success are now removed to a period still more distant than before, while our expenses are realized beyond all controversy.”

The failure of that patent suit loosed all the pirates, and Whitney saw the cotton fields flooded with gins, all of which were really based on his invention, and yet from which he did not receive one penny. The public had given over paying any attention to his patents. Every one seemed determined that a machine which meant so much to the cotton lands should be free to all, irrespective of any legal or moral rights in the matter. Miller wrote him a little later, “The prospect of making anything by ginning in this state is at an end. Surreptitious gins are erected in every part of the country, and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among themselves that they will never give a cause in our favor, let the merits of the case be as they may.”