On Experiencing History II: Web of biographies and human imaginations

This is an Introduction to Cultural Psychology Part 5. click here to go to part_1, part_2, part_3, part_4

In part 4 of our introduction to cultural psychology we discussed about human situatedness at a small village of Halifax in pre-industrial England in early 18th century. In such stage of history what kind of biographies and human imaginations were possible? 

In pre-industrial England the craftsmen and their family in Halifax lived happy and productive life. A young man of a dyer family most likely would become dyer himself or at least would get involved in cloth production activity for his living. In those days skills among craftsmen were transferred to younger generations through apprenticeships in families or neighbors. Grammar schools were for the sons of nobility and gentry only. Main challenges for such young men were to increase their own exchange value by improving the quality of hands and mastery of weaving or dyeing tools. 

Typical imaginations of young men from working class families were to become a craftsman or artisan who had his own enterprise and family with many kids to help support his production activities. The paradise for young women in this segment was to marry successful artisan and doing domestic jobs like raising kids or helping their men to manage the workshops. Craftsmen and artisans who have their own workshops were at that time the nobility of the working class. They were the ones who were leading in woollen cloth producer guild to protect the industry and the people who earned their living from it.

Halifax as homeland for the people was a peaceful place with productive culture. People seldom went outside the area. Transportations to faraway places like the seaport of Liverpool were still expensive that ordinary workmen would not be able to afford. Often times it was dangerous as well. The fastest mode of transportation in this time was the same as in Roman Britain 2000 years before: a man on a galloping horse; or for larger number of passenger there were coaches with several horses. These coaches were the favorite prey of highwaymen who robbed and killed the passengers. It took two days of traveling 50 miles from London to Cambridge. Only people with money or in contrast people who have nothing to lose to find fortunes would travel outside their homeland.

Literacy rate was still low. Although Gutenberg more than two centuries before had revolutionized printing technology to allow cheaper printed media, its consumption was still limited to nobility and gentry who lived in bigger towns like London. Although newspaper business has existed and began circulating routine news since early 16^th century, there was no news paper or gazette to reach typical working class families in Halifax. 

In such situations where mode of transportation and communications were still primitive the imaginations of the Halifax working class were limited to what could be seen at their hometown. Again, only people who have money or in contrast people who had been expelled from peaceful community, to whom life had been cruel, and had nothing to lose would have imaginations beyond their homeland.

Richard Arkwright and His Imaginations

One such personality was Richard Arkwright. He was born on December 23, 1732 in Preston Lancashire, a county neighboring to Yorkshire, as the youngest of thirteen children of a poor family. Thomas Arkwright his father was a tailor who though poor was aware of the importance of reading and writing for the future of his children. Thomas sent Richard to be taught by his cousin Ellen Arkwright. At an early age he was apprenticed to Mr. Nicholson as a barber. He then moved to Bolton in 1750 to work with Mrs Pollitt, a barber and wig maker. Like all the young of poor craftsmen family his wild imagination was to have his own business. In 1755 after the death of his first wife he setup his own barbershop and invented the first water-proof wig dye.

After his second marriage with Margaret Biggins in 1761 he gave up his barbershop and focused himself more on wig making. For his business he traveled widely in Great Britain to collect discarded women hair for his wig. The shift in fashion trend had caused decline in wig usage and affected the exchange value of his wig business. Accordingly his fortune declined. It was said even in 1768, just three years before he founded his Cromford cotton mill, he was so poor that when he returned to his hometown he needed to be furnished with a suit of clothes before he could appear to vote at an election as a burgess of Preston. He could see clearly that his wig making business was not promising and looking for other opportunities. 

During his business travels in Great Britain he observed a lot, meeting various kinds of people including spinners and weavers. In around 1764 he met John Kay, a clock maker of Warrington Lancashire who has worked with Thomas Highs, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny. Since then textile business had become his wild imaginations, his subjunctive reality.

How Arkwright's Imaginations Changed World's History

Since early 17^th century textile market had been a battle field between Britain’s wool producers and East India Company (EIC). In 1620 EIC imported over 50,000 pieces of Calico from India. Calico is a fabric designed from unbleached cotton, using a plain weave and a low thread count. Compared to hot and itchy woolen, cotton cloth is cooler and smoother. Soon Calico became fashionable. This comfort and style were also cheap. Clothes made of Indian Calico were a sixth the price of wool. 

At this time, calico printed with bright colorful Indian motifs was particularly popular amongst particularly middle lower women, who were known as "Calico Madams." By 1690 EIC had brought 265,000 pieces of Calico in a year from Madras alone. It was just one of EIC’s three main producing areas in India. EIC imported cotton cloths also from China and Persia. In the decades at end of 17^th century it practically had flooded Great Britain with imported cottons.

In the spirit of mercantilism of that day British Parliament took various measures to protect the Britain wool industry. Initial measures in 1690 were in the form of import duties, but these were too low to make much impact on the huge labor cost difference between Britain and India. In 1701 Calico Acts passed by British Parliament prohibited printed calicos and other types of cotton cloths imported from India into Great Britain. 

The 1701 Calico Act still allowed the importation of white cottons from India for printing within Britain. These measures however could not tame the demand for cotton clothes among the new emerging and growing lower class fashion consumers. They were the so-called Calico Madams, those women who typically worked as domestic servants which could not afford wool clothes. In this period Calico printing business to make copycat of the Indian motifs was booming. 

In 1720 twenty years after the first Calico act the volume of imported cottons into Britain was back to its 1701 level. In 1721 the British Parliament passed the second Calico Act which was much more restrictive prohibiting not only the import but also all the use and wear of imported cotton cloth.

Richard Arkwright clearly saw the opportunity in fulfilling the demand of cotton cloths in lower class market especially among the Calico madams. Cotton production in Britain before the industrial revolution was not growing since the cotton cloths in domestic market is of lower price while its labor cost with hand-made production mode in Britain would be much higher than the imported ones. 

Arkwright's imaginations, his subjunctive reality before 1771 while he was in reality still poor were to make his fortune by producing cotton cloths in larger volume and with cheaper price. Figure 3 pictures his imagination in the form of activity system network.

Arkwright was not alone to have such imaginations. Since the first half of the eighteenth century many people had made efforts to invent tools to make cotton production more efficient and productive. Flying shuttle which was invented in 1733 by John Kay of Walmersley (not John Kay the clock maker of Warrington) was the first of the inventions to disrupt traditional hand weaving practices. He was a poor hand-loom reed maker who was just trying to make a better living by inventing better tools for weavers. The invention of flying shuttle had caused social unrest among weavers in the parish of Bury. He was expelled from the parish, and later exiled to France. His invention however was like opening the Pandora box. 

The effects could not be undone. The use of his invention had increased more than tenfold the productivity of traditional weaving process. It had also caused sharp increase of demand and consequently the price of yarn and threads. The situation the flying shuttle had created had caused social unrest not only among weavers but also among the spinners as well. Despite his success as inventor however he lived in obscurity and did not get the wealth that his invention could have created. He patented his invention but in practice he did not get the royalty he deserved until he died in 1780.

By the time Arkwright started his wild imaginations of cotton business the weaving process had greatly been automated though it was still hand-powered. In contrast spinning process still relied on traditional hand spinning wheel. The productivity of cotton yarns and threads production in Britain could not keep up with the domestic demands. They were still largely imported either with quite high tariffs or through smuggling. The race in this time was about improving spinning productivity. 

In 1764 Thomas Highs of Leigh, another talented reed maker from Lancashire like John Kay of Walmersley, invented Spinning Jenny. John Kay the clock maker was his neighbor in Warrington and assisting him to construct the metal version of the spinning Jenny. This is the year when Arkwright on his wig business travel first met John Kay, heard about Highs’ invention and got interested in cotton business. 

Spinning Jenny was able to improve production of weft yarns, but it still had limitations for producing stronger yarns needed for warp. Realizing this limitation Highs abandoned Spinning Jenny and gave it away to James Hargreaves, a weaver and carpenter who was later credited as the inventor of Spinning Jenny. With the help of John Kay of Warrington, Hargreaves produced Spinning Jenny in his hometown Blackburn.

Meanwhile Thomas Highs was working on a more promising project: the Spinning Frame that would be able to produce stronger yarn needed for warp. The idea behind spinning frame was similar to Lewis Paul’s Drafting Rollers which was patented in 1738. There had been several unsuccessful business efforts to make profits using Drafting Rollers. Edward Cave and Samuel Couchet had built their Marvells Mill in 1742 using Lewis Paul’s invention on the River Nene at Northampton. It made no profit and went bankrupt in 1755. 

Thomas Highs might have had his inspirations of Spinning Frame and made improvement from Lewis Paul’s Drafting Rollers. By 1768 he seemed to have found the solution for spinning frame design and asked John Kay the clock maker of Warrington to make its metal model.

In the same year 1768 Arkwright met John Kay in his hometown Warrington. Arkwright seemed to have given up his wig business and tried to persuade John Kay to work with him. Although poor, Arkwright was able to employ John Kay as his assistant to build the prototype of the spinning frame. In 1769 they moved to Preston, Arkwright’s hometown to do their work in a rented house. The house was secluded which allowed them to work in secrecy and keep so much to themselves. Strange humming noises emanated from Arkwright’s house. Neighbors accused them of sorcery and they were expelled from Preston, fleeing to Nottingham. The result of their work however was worth it. Their spinning frame produced far stronger thread and was able to spin 128 threads at one time. One important feature of their spinning frame was that it required no skilled operator to run it.

Arkwright’s spinning frame still had one important pitfall however, that its size made human powered operation impossible. In Nottingham they worked using horse power. As a cunning businessman Arkwright could see that working with horse power would not be profitable. Despite that he considered their spinning frame as a concept worked very well. In 1769 he patented the spinning frame without mentioning John Kay as his partner. Kay learned about this patent from James Hargreaves who at the time lived in Nottingham, fleeing from Blackburn where his spinning jenny had caused social unrest among the spinners. Furious, John Kay accused Arkwright of stealing his work tool. Arkwright counter charged Kay of leaking spinning frame design to Hargreaves. At the end Kay left Nottingham and permanently dissolving his partnership with Arkwright.

In search of funds to expand his business with spinning frame prototype Arkwright then met Ichabod Wright, a Nottingham banker in 1769. Wright then introduced him to Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need, both were successful businessmen who had built their silk hosiery Mill in Derby and Nottingham. Upon seeing how the spinning frame prototype worked they got excited and readily agreed to make partnership with Arkwright. The three became partners who in 1771 then built the Cromford Mill in Derbyshire. The spinning frame at Cromford was powered by water streaming from the Derwent River. Since then it was called the water frame which Arkwright was largely attributed as the inventor.

There had been disputes on who was the original inventor of spinning/ water frame. In 1785 Arkwright's patent on water frame was overturned by the British court since many people witnessed against him. Beyond these disputes however nobody would argue against the fact that Arkwright was the first to make the invention worked to produce large volume of cotton yarns and made huge profit. His genius as inventor might be disputed but his business management savvy was beyond doubt. He invented many of management practices of factory systems which are still in use until today.

Cromford before Arkwright founded the mill was a very small village with scattered houses of lead miners. Within ten years after the mill was established it had more than five thousands inhabitants, majority of which were employed in the factory. He recruited weavers with big families to live there. Typical families of artisans in the 18th century England in average had ten children. Since water frame did not require hands with skills he employed the children and the mother. He built cottages and almost all the facilities for the livelihood of the weaver families such as schools, Church and market. While the children went to work in the factory the father stayed at home weaving the yarns produced at the factory. The factory ran all day and night in two thirteen-hour shifts except Sundays. The workers were allowed a full week holiday in a year.

The success of his Cromford mill drove him to establish more mills all over Lancashire, Staffordshire and Scotland. In areas where he could not find water for powering his engine the brand-new steam engines invented by James Watt and Matthew Boulton were deployed. Factory management practices similar to those applied in Cromford were applied at the other mills as well. The success of Arkwright's mills attracted other businessmen to copy his practices. It was said that they asked the mill workers to describe the working of the mills in exchange of money. They even sent spies to know more detail about the mills operations. Arkwright's employees worked from six in the morning to seven at night. Two-thirds of Arkwright's 1,900 workers were children. His policy was to wait until the children reached the age of six and he was unwilling to employ people over the age of forty. Most factory owners after Cromford mill was established imitated these management practices.

This success came not without debates, critics and, for sure, social unrests similar to what John Kay's flying shuttle had caused, but with much larger scale and impacts. The Derby Mercury reported on 22nd October 1779 that Arkwright feared that people made unemployed by his new methods might destroy his factory: "There is some fear of the mob coming to destroy the works at Cromford, but they are well prepared to receive them should they come here. All the gentlemen in this neighborhood being determined to defend the works, which have been of such utility to this country. 5,000 or 6,000 men can be at any time assembled in less than an hour by signals agreed upon, who are determined to defend to the very last extremity, the works, by which many hundreds of their wives and children get a decent and comfortable livelihood."

Critics accusing Arkwright as responsible for the misery of many mothers and children had emerged as well. In 1780 Ralph Mather published An Impartial Representation of the Case of the Poor Cotton Spinners in Lancashire. His book included details of Arkwright's operation: "Arkwright's machines require so few hands, and those only children, with the assistance of an overlooker. A child can produce as much as would, and did upon an average, employ ten grown up persons. Jennies for spinning with one hundred or two hundred spindles, or more, going all at once, and requiring but one person to manage them. Within the space of ten years, from being a poor man worth £5, Richard Arkwright has purchased an estate of £20,000; while thousands of women, when they can get work, must make a long day to card, spin, and reel 5040 yards of cotton, and for this they have four-pence or five-pence and no more."

In 1774 the Calico Act was repealed. Undoubtedly Arkwright had some influence to make this happen through his lobby in the British parliament. Regardless of his influence however with the increased productivity and competitiveness of cotton textile made in England the mercantilists had lost its arguments to support the import ban of cotton raw materials. Instead, consistent with the mercantilist arguments of the day the policy should support more import of raw cotton materials and encouraged the export of cotton clothes. The emergence of cotton mills in Lancashire had put Britain in more competitive position to sell cotton clothes to India and other countries. This was widely attributed to his achievements in building successful factories. In 1786 he was knighted by King George the third and the year after he served as high sheriff of Derbyshire. He died at Rock House, Cromford, on 3 August 1792, aged 59, leaving a fortune of £500,000.

Decades after Arkwright died the social unrest caused by the cotton mills still occurred. Like John Kay of Walmersley with his flying shuttle, Arkwright with his Cromford mill had opened a pandora box with much larger and more enduring effects that could not be undone or prevented. The changes from home spinning and weaving to industrialized caused groups of 'Luddites' to attack the factories. Boom and bust, wars and shortages of cotton caused large fluctuations in wages, strikes, lock-outs, riots and shootings. Luddites were groups of workers who broke and burnt the cotton factories.

The British government's responses to the Luddites were harsh. Despite a passionate speech by Lord Byron in the House of Lords, in February 1812 the British parliaments passed the Frame-breaking acts which carried death penalty and ordered 12,000 troops to the areas where the Luddites operated. In the summer of 1812 eight men in Lancashire were sentenced to death and thirteen transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills. Another fifteen were executed at York. This was followed by further sporadic outbreaks of violence. The Luddites movement however declined along with the improvement of wages. When working in factories had become regular life the workers lost interest in the movement. By 1817 the Luddite movement had ceased to be active in Britain.

In this rather long exposition of Richard Arkwright biography we can see how commodifications of technological knowledge had overdriven social change and disrupted traditions that had lasted for many centuries before. These commodifications however were allowed to emerge and made lasting impacts only after commodifications in several other aspects of life such as human labor, trade and finance were mature enough. Furthermore the inventions alone would not be able to make the change happen. Only when there are good chemistry with capital, business management savvy, political freedom and stability, and the availability of infrastructure, labor and market would the inventions be able to produce disruptions and induce social change. 

In the language of Engeström's activity system what Richard Arkwright had done was to construct a new more advance form of activity system, new practices that disrupted the old by utilizing available technological knowledge and innovative tools, funds available in capital market and the already available neighboring activity systems such as unskilled labor, the market and the mercantilist policy making of British parliament. Had Richard Arkwright been born one century earlier he would not be the one who drove the accelerations of industrial revolutions. His imaginations would not even be possible fifty years earlier when the British Parliament passed the second Calico act. The socio-geographical landscape of 18^th century Britain had allowed personalities like Richard Arkwright to do great things that had lasting impacts throughout future generations living under capitalist system.

These lessons learn can be found in many books on economic or business history. Here my focus is more on the personalities, their imaginations and the socio-geographical landscape that allow them to occur. Richard Arkwright’s fabula may have been that of the warrior with rags-to-riches type of sjuzet. Very early in his life as a young boy he had been driven out of his homeland paradise to deal with the sad reality of living in poverty. For sure he was not the only boy living in poverty but Thomas his father knew that reading and writing were important for the son’s future and sent Richard to live with his cousin to learn something that Thomas did not have. This may have driven Richard to have experience and imaginations beyond his fellow homeland boy at his age. As consequence he may have fully realized what he had been deprived of, something that got him quite focused on what he would like to achieve in his life.

Among all the inventors who participated in the race of inventing tools for more productive spinning he was the only one which did not grow up in spinning-weaving environments. Both John Kay of Walmersley who invented flying shuttle and Thomas Highs who might be the original inventor of spinning frame were the reed makers who knew a lot of details on the working of spinning and weaving. James Hargreaves was a weaver, and John Kay of Warrington was a clock maker who helped Thomas high to make metal versions of the spinning jenny and spinning frame. The fabula of these men may have been that of the creators with from-zero-to-hero sjuzet. Compared to these men Richard Arkwright was nothing. He might not have the adequate technical skills to invent the spinning frame. However he must have been a very good observer that was able to learn fast from other people he had met. The fact that he was nobody in spinning-weaving industry allowed him to learn more not only about spinning and weaving but more important on the business management, potential market opportunities, and the possibilities that those inventions may have brought about.

I should end this blog article here before it’s getting longer. In my next articles on cultural psychology I wish to delve deeper into the lives of the Calico madams. They were the ones who actually became the first driver that made industrial revolution possible in the 18^th century. However this will depend on the availability of the materials on the subject. My intention is to illustrate ways how we can spot business opportunities through understanding the imaginations that people may have.