370 Ch. 10 • Eighteenth-Century Economic And Social Change
not diffused for more than twenty years), which ultimately made it possible
to weave at a much greater speed, doubling productivity. But Kays invention,
too, has to be seen in the context of traditional manufacturing: its principal
effect was to increase the productivity of hand-loom weavers.
Gradually machines powered by water and then by steam eliminated
bottlenecks in textile production. In about 1764, James Hargreaves (c. 1720
1778), a carpenter and weaver, invented an apparatus known as the spin
ning jenny, which wrapped fibers around a spindle (a long, slender pin).
Drawing on medieval technology, Hargreaves multiplied the number of
thread spindles a worker could operate from one to eight, and then soon to
eighty spindles. In 1769, Richard Arkwright (1732—1792), a former barber
turned entrepreneur, borrowed some money from a publican and patented
a mechanized “water frame,” which, combining spindles and rollers,
became the first spinning mill. The water frame turned out a strong, coarse
yarn of quality that transformed the cotton industry and increased produc
tion of wool worsteds (combed wool). With the exception of its water
powered rollers, Arkwright built his power spinning machine out of the
same components as the ordinary spinning wheel that had been found in
Europe since medieval times. He had his portrait painted with his hand
touching his famous spinning machine, as the same painter might have
formerly depicted a country gentleman standing with his hand resting on a
fence, his hunting dogs sitting at his feet.
Cottage industry, artisanal workshops, and factory production often
coexisted within the same industry. With the gradual mechanization of spin
ning, weaving could only keep
pace with the rapid expansion
of the number of hand-loom
weavers. Even a rudimentary
power loom, invented in 1784,
was too expensive to compete
with domestic industry, which
continued to be based on the
availability of an inexpensive
workforce. Hand-loom weavers
survived well into the middle
decades of the nineteenth
century.
The inventions that slowly
revolutionized the textile indus
try did not inevitably lead to
factory production. Like frame
work knitting, the first spinning
jennys and mules were small
Richard Arkwright with his famous water frame enough to be adaptable to
at his fingertips. workshops and even some