was
those that got him on in life. For you see, although the Cromptons were
what Ma would call 'gentle people', they were not rich. They were
comfortably off, though, and if the father had not died when the
children were small they might have been very well off indeed. As it
was, Mrs. Crompton had to help out the finances by carding, spinning,
and weaving cloth at home when her other work was done. Ever so many
other women did it, so it was considered an all right thing to do.
Since Kay's flying shuttle had made it possible to spin more stuff the
weavers, as I told you, were scouring the country for all the warp and
weft they could lay hands on, so everybody who could spin thread was
sure of a market. The prices offered, and the difficulties the weavers
were having to get material enough, were common talk at every English
cottage fireside. So of course it wasn't strange that Mrs. Crompton,
along with the rest of her neighbors, heard this gossip and also heard
about Hargreaves's spinning jenny. Now Samuel helped his mother to spin
evenings when he wasn't playing at the village theater and she decided
it would be nice to get one of these spinning jennies for him to use.
So she did, and it wasn't long before he could not only use it, but
could turn out weft enough for cloth to clothe the whole Crompton
family."

"Then I don't see but the Cromptons were nicely taken care of," Mary
announced.

"That wasn't the point, smartie!" her brother objected. "Of course they
were well enough off themselves, but the village of Bolton where they
lived was strong on its muslins and quilt materials and what the people
wanted was to be able to spin fine muslins such as were imported into
England from India and China. If such goods could be made by uneducated
Orientals why should not people as clever and ingenious as the English
make them?"

"Why, indeed?"

"They couldn't do it; I don't know why," answered Carl. "They just
could not contrive to draw fine enough thread. Of course Samuel
Crompton had always seen the Bolton goods since he was a little boy and
so knew as well as did everybody else in the town what a wonderful
thing it would be if finer thread could be made. So after his mother
got her spinning jenny for him he began to fuss round with it simply to
find out whether he could make it any better or not. He experimented
five years and at the end of that time he had made a 'muslin wheel'
that was something like Arkwright's wate