possessors of that capital the initiative and direction of new industrial enterprise. Although for some years to come Salte remained Oldknow's chief patron and adviser, it was the influence of Arkwright that from this time onwards determined his career and gradually transformed him from an 'eminent manufacturer' into a 'captain of industry'. This is shown in a letter from Oldknow's brother Thomas, who had from the first been brought into his Stockport plans and had shared the interviews with Arkwright. 'You will naturally suppose', he writes to Samuel on 16 February 1784,
my thoughts have been considerably employed in thinking of this new employment, but whether a Bleacher or Spinner, I am as yet undecided. The profits Mr. Arkwright seemed to think equally advantageous, though Bleaching in all probability the most lasting. What Mr. Arkwright says with respect to the profits of Bleaching may be true, but cannot say my throat is sufficiently wide to swallow the information for fact. I dont know whether I told you what he said. At least you had not time to consider it properly. I shall therefore repeat it for your better consideration. … He said if I returned £1,200 per annum by Bleaching I should not have above £300 to pay out of it. He further said if you would manufacture 200 pieces per week the Bleaching and Dressing of them would be 2s. per piece that would amount to £20 per week and that I should clear £12 out of the £20. These are profits in my opinion too great for the returns, so great that every manufacturer would be his own Bleacher. However I shall be satisfied if the profits are half as much.
Stockport, when Oldknow set up his manufacture there, had already passed through one phase of the industrial revolution and was just entering on another. Silk-throwing had been carried on as a factory industry for over half a century.[1] A partnership formed in 1732 between three gentlemen of Stockport, two chapmen of Heaton Mersey, and a London merchant, had acquired and improved the water-power of the manorial corn-mill for this purpose. In 1744 a reservoir was constructed on a stream running into the Mersey, and by 1768 half a dozen silk-mills were at work in the town.[2] When, therefore, the new spinning inventions began to be widely adopted the whole framework of the factory system had been erected at Stockport and was waiting to be taken over. Not only water-power and
- ↑ In Defoe's Tour (edition of 1769), Stockport is described as 'inhabited by a great number of gentry and well filled with warehousemen who carry on the check, mohair, button and hat manufactures. Here the raw silk is chiefly thrown and prepared for the Spitalfields weavers by six engines the buildings of which are of prodigious bulk, one of them containing above 45,000 movements which fill the spacious room up to the fifth storey and are all put in motion by one wheel that goes by water. … At this place poverty is not much felt except by those who are idle, for all persons capable of tying knots may find work in the silk mills, which employ near 2,000 people and where children of six years old earn a shilling a week and more as they grow capable of deserving it.'
- ↑ Higinbotham, History of Stockport, ii. 317–18.
