THE COTTON INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 19637, 17 August 1927, Page 5

THE COTTON INDUSTRY

CROMPTON AND HIS MULE. The citizens of Bolton recently celebrated the centenary of the death of Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule, who as much as any man enriched Lancashire, though not himself. How Crompton toiled at his invention for five years as a young man before marriage when lie would rather have played the fiddle; how at length ho perfected if, surreptitiously and with few tools; how jealously ho guarded it when it had begun to astonish those who saw the fine muslin it could turn out; how Arkwright, tho flourishing ex-barber, who had lelt Lancashire for Nottingham, came to scent a rival; and how, rather than destroy his machine, since ho could not keep it secret, and had no patent ami no means of purchasing one, ho gave it to tho public—these arc stories that belong as much to history as to biography, says ‘The Times.’ For the gift once given—some BOS seems in have been tho most he ever got out of it—it proved to he of a Promethean quality, awaiting only successive adaptations to make it, moroaud more efficient and useful. Lancashire was a wild slrcich of country when he was born, and the towns m it were contemptible; at the time of his dcafh, seventy-four years In for, it was a hive of prosperity—very largely ol his own direct making. There is not an aspect of tho modern cotton industry, or of industrial Lancashire, but a review ol it can bo made justly to load back to Crompton and Ids mule. _ Spinning by mule, is still tho predominant method in Croat Britain, where there are now 46,000,000 mule spindles _ at work, against 10,000,000 ring spindles; and if ring spinning is making headway, as it is abroad, mule spinning is still necessary for the liner and better kinds of yarn, so far Horn played out is Crompton's device.