28-29 July 2007
Quarry Bank Mill
Looking at an OS map of Manchester, we will see that is great city of Industrial Britain presents a thick urban profile. Roads, buildings and railway lines are packed together almost without gaps. The M60 motorway circumscribes the city neatly but the reach of Manchester is like a monster throwing out its tentacles into its suburbs and satellite towns. Much of Manchester, like Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff and Lancaster to name a few, is the result of the Industrial Revolution.
Fortunately for me, I did not need to penetrate this urban monster. I would have been lost. I would have not known where to start or focus on anything precise. Yet I could sample the elements of history that made Manchester by a visit to Quarry Bank Mill, a cotton mill started in 1784, not many miles south of Manchester. I took a train from Chester, changed at Crewe and arrived at Wilmslow. From here it was pleasant walk by the river Bollin to the mill.
At Levant, I have seen the workings of a Cornish beam engine. Along the Oxford Canal, I have seen for the first time the workings of a canal lock. At Ironbridge, I have seen the world’s first iron bridge. At Coalport, I learnt from an expert guide the making of porcelain. At Nottingham, I learnt about lace making and the hosiery trade. At Southwell, I learnt about the workhouse. At Coventry, I traced the more modern evolution of the motorcar. At Ironbridge, I saw a replica of the world’s first steam locomotive built at Coalbrookedale for Richard Trevethick. But nowhere have I come close to realising the great changes of the Industrial Revolution than today at Quarry Bank Mill. The visit has been truly inspirational for me. I believe every student, be it of history, sociology, or science, will find his inspiration in this mill.
My greatest inspiration came from the machines that fill the mill. These machines are not static displays. They are regularly operated by qualified staff and volunteers. The mill is still active today and produces yarn and cloth but not in any commercial scale. To some extent, my inspiration from these machines came from my early exposure to their names in school. I have heard of the “spinning jenny”, the “water frame” and the “mule”. I have heard the names of their inventors. Yet school history was something I had studied with only a half-interest. Such study had never been an inspiration. To see the machines in operation, to study the intricacies of the processes, to understand the motivation of their inventors and to witness the factory floor come alive noisily as the threads twist and wind, is something else!
Traditionally, spinning had been done by hand and this was adequate to satisfy market demand, to consume the cotton produce and to match the speed at which cloth was woven from handspun yarn. In 1733, John Kay invented the “flying shuttle”. Previously, the shuttle had to be thrown by hand across the breadth of the loom to weave the weft. The weaver or his assistant had to catch the shuttle manually and bring it back across for the next weave. With the flying shuttle, the shuttle was by a thrown across by a jerk of a cord. A single weaver could weave much faster and could produce a broader cloth of a greater quality.
Knowing that necessity is the mother of all inventions, with the increased speed of weaving, the demand for yarn grew and the spinning process had to find its own inventors. First came James Hargreaves with his spinning jenny in 1765 followed by Richard Arkwright in 1769 with his water frame. Until the water frame, all these processes were carried out in the villages as a cottage industry. Middlemen used to deliver the raw materials to the villages and collect the finished cloth of the previous round. An entire household would be involved in the process – cleaning, carding, spinning and weaving. The water frame, on the other hand, needed water power to drive it. Mills as Quarry Bank Mill became established along rivers. The women and children had to commute to these mills for work while the men stayed at home weaving. This was the beginning of industrial factories and the death of cottage industries.
It was not long before men had to move to these factories. While spinning progressed with increased mechanization, weaving had to catch up with its own invention. The invention came surprisingly from another source: the steam engine from James Watt. It was a novel concept to see that heat and work were both forms of energy that could be converted from one to another. In 1784, Edmund Cartwright applied the principles of steam power to create the power loom. This took a few more years to reach industrial perfection. With the introduction of the power loom, the traditional weaving done by men for generations was no longer needed.
The causes of the Industrial Revolution are many. The Agricultural Revolution that preceded it laid the ground work. As population increased and less people were employed on the land, labour became more commonly available. The availability of raw materials from the colonies, that were also ready markets for the finished goods, provided the necessary economic sense against which investments could be made. The Bank of England was established in 1694. Financial markets as we know them today began to take shape. Loans could be obtained. Investors were willing to take calculated risks. Non-conformists as Samuel Greg of Quarry Bank Mill were independent thinkers who turned to commerce. As demand grew for goods, the pace of industrialization accelerated. Inventions added fuel to this growing pace. Factories grew in size and number, along with migration of people from villages to towns. The power of steam made transportation easy, both of people and of goods. Each invention, small or big, had a chain effect and triggered its own set of challenges, changes and growth.
This visit also brought out many social aspects of life and living. While in the middle ages it had been a common practice to undergo a period of training that led to trade, children were indentured for a fixed term during which time the mill owner provided food, clothing, lodging, basic education and a small wage. The parish was often thankful to get these extra mouths off their registers. It is said that workers at this mill were paid a little less than those at Manchester but their working conditions were better. Issues of health and safety were often debated. We can read reports of fingers caught in the machinery, workers made deaf by the constant noise or breathing polluted air. The Factory Act of 1833 sought to redress some of these evils but it took many more years to put them into practice. The introduction of machines naturally deprived many of gainful employment. They could not return to farming as the parliamentary acts of enclosure left many of them landless. Being disgruntled and jobless, they often destroyed machines and damaged factories. The Luddite riots of 1811 are noteworthy in this regard.
The highlight for me lay with the machines on the factory floor, in particular the “spinning mule”, made by Samuel Crompton in 1779. Before the process moves to the mule, cotton passes through a number of machines, many of which can be seen in operation at Quarry Bank Mill. While all these machines are static in their structures, the mule is an impressive machine that moves. A moving carriage consisting of the spindles moves away from the main structure that gives out the rovings. This carriage moves for about seven feet and as it does, it draws the thread and twists it at the same time. While the rovings stop, the carriage continues to move away for a little distance. The thread, now stretched between the carriage and the roller, flickers at the tip of the spindle for the final twist. As the carriage returns, the thread is wound on the spindle. With this movement of the carriage, we can see many such threads stretched in parallel and the spindles spinning together as if executing a perfectly choreographed dance. The voice of this noisy machine is music to a 21st century worker; his everyday noise is the spin of the hard disk on his computer.
I am inspired by these great inventors and the thrill of living in that age of early industrialization. I feel compelled to contribute something of a similar nature to this world. Only few of these inventions are really revolutionary in concept. All others are enhancements to a basic principle. Yet these little enhancements made the inventions much more practical for widespread acceptance. Take for example, the Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine. It was revolutionary yet it was James Watt’s invention that became popular due to many reasons. His engine with a separate condensing chamber was more efficient. He exploited the geometric properties of a parallelogram by which he could convert the up and down motion of a piston into rotary motion. He introduced the centrifugal governor, a simple addition based on the principle of feedback. Feedback is something we use even today in all automated systems, both electrical and mechanical.
For many decades now, we have not seen anything revolutionary happening. The growth of the Internet has been perhaps the only major thing but even that is generally viewed as an evolution rather than a revolution. Here it must be added that the people of the Industrial Revolution did not see themselves in a revolution. It was a termed coined much later by late Victorians. There are other parallels. Patenting inventions was a common thing. Arkwright’s patent prevented others copying his invention until many years later when his patent was cancelled. In other cases, inventors failed to patent their inventions. If the “mule” had been patented, the cotton industry might have taken longer to reach its potential. The same can be said of the Internet today. The Free Software Foundation has accelerated the development of good software from a wide knowledge base. Programs, including source code, can be downloaded for free. The world desires progress and it contributes to it by its own free will and dedication.
Leaving the mill, many things I have learnt in my travels seem to fall into place. Fine cotton cloth has long been a priced export from India. The British East India Company profited from its trade at the expense of Britain manufacturers. By early 18th century, Indian-made printed calicoes (derived from Calicut), chintz and muslin became popular in Britain and Europe. The British industry sought protectionism against these cheap and colourful Indian imports. Meanwhile, the British cotton industry grew and overtook wool and linen. Cotton began to be imported from across the Atlantic instead of from India for various reasons, not least of which was that it formed one side of the triangle in the Slave Trade. It was not long before India became an importer of cotton cloth from Britain. British cotton cloth was cheap and good but could never compete against the superior quality of Indian cloth. But the “mule” changed all that and the Indian handloom industry was destroyed for good. In this manner, India became a market for cloth rather than a source of cotton and cloth. Given this background, it is understandable why the spinning wheel became a forceful symbol of non-violence and civil disobedience. It was a symbolic weapon in India’s struggle for independence. Gandhi’s call for swaraj and swadeshi are seen visibly in the revival of the spinning-wheel and the making of khadi. Because British cotton industry was dependent on the Indian market, this had a direct effect. Many mills in Lancashire had to be closed within a few years. I can still recall an early black and white video of Gandhi’s visit to one of these affected mills. Today I have learnt that some of these machines were shipped to India where they continue to be used. There may be many differences between Indians and the British, but a simple thing that binds us together is a cotton thread.
