ogether
without any process of drawing being applied to the cotton.

When Crompton applied the principle of drawing rollers, his ingenious
mind saw that it would be best to let the rollers, roller beam, and
roving creel be in a fixed framework on account of their combined weight
and size, making it very difficult to move them about.

Crompton's great idea seems to have been to produce a better thread by
his machine than could be given by other machines, and in this he
admirably succeeded.

The mule being set in motion, the rollers first attenuated and then
delivered the cotton to the spindle carriage. The latter, by the action
of the hand and knee, was made to recede from the rollers just about as
fast as the cotton was delivered to the spindles, or possibly at a
rather quicker rate. Then, while the thread was still in a soft state,
the rollers could be stopped and the threads pulled still finer by the
continued recession of the spindle carriage from the rollers.
Afterwards, when that length of thread was fully made, it wound on the
spindles, and the carriage at the same time returned to the roller beam.

Thus each portion of thread was first subjected to the action of drawing
rollers, as in Arkwright's machine, and then drawn still finer by the
withdrawal of the travelling carriage, as in Hargreaves' Jenny.

Shortly after Crompton's invention was given to the public, it began to
be improved in various ways. Henry Stones, a mechanic of Horwich, near
Bolton, substituted metal drawing rollers for Crompton's crude wooden
rollers, doubtless copying the idea from Arkwright's water frame.

All the mules employed at first were necessarily short; by that is meant
they contained but few spindles, often 40 or 50 spindles. The biggest
mule in Bolton in 1786 was said to contain 100 spindles. The preparation
of the rovings for the mule about this time occupied the attention of
Crompton, and he invented a Carding Engine which, however, did not
attain very much success. Indeed it is said that one day so incensed was
Crompton at the way he had been treated on account of his mule, that he
took an axe and smashed his engine to pieces.

In 1791 Crompton established a small manufactory in King Street, off
Deansgate, in Bolton.

In 1800 a subscription, promoted mainly by Manchester gentlemen,
resulted in L500 being handed over to Crompton, one of the contributors
for thirty guineas being the son of Sir R. Arkwright. With this money