History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain: with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe ... and a view of the present state of the manufacture / By Edward Baines, jun.

  • Baines, Edward, Sir, 1800-1890.
Date:
[1835]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain: with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe ... and a view of the present state of the manufacture / By Edward Baines, jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that have seen Mr. Arkwright in a state of opulence, have shaken their heads, and thought of these poor men, Highs and Kay, and have thought too that they were entitled to some participation of the profits.” The fact that the clockmaker, who had made wheels for Highs, was taken by Arkwright to Nottingham, and kept there for some years, affords considerable confirmation to the story. Nor can any motive be conceived why Kay should falsely set up a claim for a poor man like Highs, unable to bribe him. It is also stated by those who per- sonally knew Highs, that he was a conscientious and religious man, very unlikely to perjure himself. His mechanical ingenuity is proved by his having exchanged his original trade of a reed-maker for that of a maker of spinning machines; and also by two facts stated by Mr. Guest, namely, that he received a present of two hundred guineas from the manufacturers of Manchester, in 1772, for a very ingenious invention of a double jenny, which was publicly exhibited in the Exchange; and that he afterwards went to construct spinning machines at Nottingham, Kidderminster, and in Ire- land.* It must be admitted, however, that there are circum- stances of great weight to oppose to the claim of Highs. He not only took out no patent, (which his circumstances prevented,) but he never completed any machine, so as to set it on work, till long after Arkwright had obtained * Guest’s Reply, pp. 203, 205, 206. Dr. Aikin also says—“ The roller upon which Mr. Heys’s (Highs’s) spindle-strings ran was immediately adopted after his public exhibition of it; his contrivance also of slipping his handle from a square to a round, which checked the operation of spinning, and pushing on to an interior contrivance to wind up the spun thread, is adopted in the machines for spinning of twist.’*—Hist, of Manchester, p. 171.