Chapter 14

SPINNING YARNS

All good things, alas, come to an end and the McGregor's Christmas holidays were no exception to this immutable law. A day arrived when Carl, Mary and Tim were obliged to return to school, and following swift on the heels of this dire occasion came a yet more lamentable one when Uncle Frederick Dillingham was forced to go back to his ship and sail for China. The latter calamity entirely overshadowed the former and was a very real blow not only to Mulberry Court, where the captain had become an object of universal pride and affection, but also to the Harling family who had come to depend on his daily visits for cheer and sunshine.

"I don't see why somebody else can't sail your ship to China, Uncle Frederick, and let you stay here," wailed Mary.

"Somebody else sail my ship!" gasped the captain, every syllable of the phrase echoing consternation. "Why, my dear child, I would no more turn the command of the _Charlotte_ over to another person than you would exchange your mother for somebody else's. The _Charlotte_ kind of belongs to me, don't you see? She is my--well, I reckon I can't just explain what she is. All I can say is that where she goes I go--if I am alive."

"But--but the sea is so terrible," objected the timid Mary. "So dangerous."

For answer Captain Dillingham burst into a peal of laughter.

"Dangerous? Why, lassie, there isn't a quarter a part the danger on the water there is on land. I have come nearer to being killed right here in Baileyville than ever I have while cruising in mid-ocean. Folks take their lives in their hands every time they cross a city street. Then, too, aren't there high buildings to topple over; flagpoles to snap asunder, signs to blow down; chimneys to shower their bricks on your head; not to mention the death-dealing currents that come through telegraph and telephone wires? Add to this threatening collection trees and snow-slides and slippery pavements and you have quite a list of horrors. Danger! Why, the land is nothing but maelstrom of catastrophes compared with which the serenity of the open sea, with nothing but its moon and stars overhead, is an oasis of safety. Of course there are certain things you must be on your guard against while on the water--fogs, icebergs and gales. But where can you find a spot under God's heaven entirely free from the possibilities of mishap of some sort? I'd a hundred times rather take the risks the sea holds than run my chances on land. Besides, aren't we a city, same as you? Just because we are afloat and you can boast the solid ground under your feet is it a sign we are not citizens with laws and duties? with the wireless singing its messages to us wherever we go we certainly are not cut off from the rest of the world."

For a moment he paused to catch his breath.

"No, siree!" continued he. "We folks on shipboard simply belong to a floating republic, that's all. It's our country same as this is yours, and we love it quite as much as you do."

"I never thought of the ocean that way," Mary returned with a thoughtful smile. "It's always seemed to me a big, big place without any--any streets or----"

"But we have streets, lassie," cried her uncle, instantly catching her up. "Regular avenues they are. Travel 'em and you'll meet the passing same as you would were you to drive along a boulevard. They are the ocean highways, the latitudes and longitudes found to be the best paths between given countries. In some cases the way chosen is shorter; or maybe experience has proved it to be freer from fog or icebergs. Anyhow, it has become an accepted thoroughfare and is as familiar to seafaring men as if it had been smoothed down with a steam roller and had a signpost set to mark it. Never think, child, of the ocean as a lonely, uncharted waste of water. It is a nice quiet place with as much sociability on it as a man wants. You don't, to be sure, rub elbows with your neighbors as you do ashore; but on the other hand you don't have to put up with their racket. Pleasant as it is to be on land the hum of it gets on my nerves in time, and I am always thankful to be back aboard ship."

"We'll miss you dreadfully, Frederick," his sister remarked.

"But remember I'll be putting in at various ports off and on," returned the captain, "and be mailing you letters, postals and trinkets of one sort and another. Moreover, you're all going to write to me, I hope--even Martin. For if there's any one thing a sailor man looks forward to it's the mail that awaits him in a foreign port. I must own that with all the virtues the sea possesses the landlubber has the best of us on mail service. Rural free delivery is one blessing we can't boast. No blue-coated postmen come sauntering down our watery streets to drop letters and papers into our boxes. We have to call for these ourselves same as you might have to go to a post-office here ashore if the government wasn't as thoughtful and generous as it is. Our post-offices are sometimes pretty far apart, too, and I'm driven to confess we don't always get our mail as often as we'd like. That's one of the outs of seafaring. So when we do touch shore and go looking for letters it is disappointing not to find any. Don't forget that. After I'm gone you will get busy with your school, and your sewing, and your fun, and you will not think so often about Uncle Frederick." He put up a warning hand to stay the protest of his listeners. "You won't mean to," continued he kindly, "but you'll do it all the same. It's human nature."

This sinister prediction, however, did not prove true.

For days after Captain Dillingham said good-by to Baileyville, Mulberry Court, the Harlings and the McGregors were inconsolable.

"The house isn't the same with Uncle Frederick gone, is it, Mother?" commented Mary.

"No, it isn't. We miss him very much."

"I should say we did! Such a lot of things happen all the time that I want to tell him," Carl broke in. "Why, only this morning the teacher gave me a book to look up something and the first page I opened to had a lot about foreign trade. A month ago I wouldn't have cast my eye over it a second time but now, because of Uncle Frederick, that sort of thing interests me. So I read along down the left-hand column and what should it be about but the first spinning mills! I wished Uncle Frederick could have read it."

"You must write him about it," flashed Mary. "What did it say, Carl?"

"Oh, I don't know," her brother answered awkwardly. "I'm not sure that I can remember exactly. I wasn't learning it to recite."

"But you read it, didn't you?"

"Sure I did, Miss Schoolmarm!"

"Then you must remember some of it," Mary persisted.

"Oh, I remember scraps of it. It said at the outset that nobody really knew when people began to spin. Most likely they got the idea from pulling out fibers of cotton or wool long as they could make them with their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They would go walking round with a mass of material under one arm and this crude spindle with the thread on it under the other. The book said that even now in certain foreign countries there were peasants who did this. It was during the reign of Henry VII that spindles and distaffs first appeared in England. Afterward people improved on the idea and made spinning wheels. The people of India had had these long before, so you see they weren't really new; but they were new to England. To judge from the book they weren't any great shakes of spinning wheels; still they were better than nothing. Later on the English got finer ones such as were used in Savoy and these not only had a spindle but a flyer and bobbin. It was most likely these Saxony wheels that started inventors trying to make something that would be better yet."

Holding the plug he was whittling for his double-runner up to the light, Carl halted.

"I think you've done pretty well, son," remarked his mother over the top of her sewing.

"I think so too," Carl returned with unaffected candor. "I had no idea when I started that I could remember so much. I guess it was because I was interested in the story and wasn't trying to learn it. When you think you're learning things, you get to saying them over and over until by and by what little sense there is in 'em seems to evaporate. At least, that's the way it is with me. If I could just read and not keep thinking that I was trying to learn I'd get on twice as well. Even this page of stuff would have _looked_ different if I'd been going to learn it. You see, you never have the chance to learn what you want to at school; it's always what they pick out for you. Naturally you don't care as much about it as you would if it was what you'd chosen yourself."

Mrs. McGregor could not resist smiling in sympathy with this philosophy of education, novel as it was.

"Now what the teacher sent me to look up in that book," went on Carl, "was some old foreign treaty. Of course I read it over because she made me. But do I remember a line of it? Nix! I told her what the book said as fast as I could, so to get it off my soul before I forgot it. I don't see what she cared about it for anyway, for it didn't seem to hitch up to anything. But this spinning business hitched right up to Uncle Frederick, Hal Harling and what we've been talking about. I don't see why Miss Dewey couldn't have let me alone to learn about that."

"Probably she didn't dream you were interested in it," said Mary. "How should she, pray?"

"I know it. I suppose she didn't," answered Carl with fairness. "She certainly is no mind reader; and I didn't mention it."

"Then don't go blaming poor Miss Dewey," Mary retorted. "Besides, what kind of a school would she have if every child in it refused to learn anything but what he cared about. She would have fifty kids all going fifty different ways."

Carl sighed. Plainly the flaws of the educational system were too many for him. Nevertheless he attempted a modest defense of his theory.

"No, she wouldn't," contradicted he. "Some of 'em don't want to learn anything anyhow, and since they have to they are as well pleased to learn one thing as another. Billie Tarbox, for instance, hasn't any preferences; he just hates all highbrow stuff alike. And the Murphys and Jack Sullivan wouldn't care a hurrah what they learned. All Jack wants to do when he grows up is to run a steam roller and if he can do that he'll be perfectly satisfied."

"But he'll have to learn something before he can," observed Mrs. McGregor.

"No, he won't, Ma. Mike Finnerty who lives in his block runs one and he doesn't know a thing," Carl replied simply.

"On the contrary, I think you'll find Mr. Michael Finnerty knows much more than you give him credit for," retorted Mrs. McGregor. "He probably knows more than he himself realizes. He may not have learned about engines out of books; but if not he has learned about them from actual contact with them. All learning does not come from between book covers, sonny. Experience is a wonderful teacher. Books simply give us the same result without making us stumble along to learn everything ourselves. They are somebody else's experience done up in a little bundle and handed to us as a shorter cut. Mr. Michael Finnerty has had to take the long way round to get his education, that is all. For education is nothing but a training which enables us to live and be useful to others; and if when we're through we can't do that all the book learning in the world isn't going to be worth much to us."

"Why, Mother, I thought you were terribly keen on schools," ejaculated Mary, aghast.

"So I am, my dear. A fine mind thoroughly trained is a glorious tool; but far too often people forget that it is simply a tool. Just sharpening and polishing it and never turning it to account for other people isn't what it was made for. Learn all you can so you will be able to help the world along the better. But don't just soak up and soak up what books tell you and then store it away in your head like so much old lumber."

"But what can you do with what you read, Ma?" Carl questioned, laying down his whittling and facing his mother.

"Precisely what you have been doing this morning, for one thing," was the quiet answer. "Pass it on to somebody else who hasn't read it. Mary and I, for example, hadn't read about England and the early spinning wheels. We hadn't the time to; nor had we the book. You've managed to tell us quite a lot."

"Maybe I could tell you some more, if you wanted me to," said Carl, urged on by altruistic impulse.

"Of course we do," his mother replied.

Carl took a long breath and considered thoughtfully.

"Well, what knocked me was that at first the English government didn't want any cotton cloth made," began he.

"Why not? I should think they would have been delighted!" Mary put in.

"Oh, the English made a lot of woolen goods, and they had a hunch that cotton cloth might cut into the trade for wool and fustians. So Parliament passed a law placing a five-pound fine on any of the British who wore things made of colored calico. As the restriction also covered the use of painted, dyed or stenciled cottons it knocked out all these products for hangings, bedspreads, or coverings."

"How horrid of them!" said Mary indignantly.

"They were darned afraid of their trade being interfered with, you see," explained her brother. "I believe you could use an all blue calico and of course there was no objection to making cotton cloth into underclothes; also you were allowed to use a cloth woven of cotton and wool. But you mustn't wear any pretty figured cotton dresses. When the people heard that they kind of rose up, and when the government found out they wouldn't stand for such a law, in 1736, after amending it, they made another one letting folks wear any kind of decorated cloth they had a mind to, so long as its warp was entirely of linen yarn. This provided England with a market for her flax. But once the law was passed the delighted manufacturers began to turn out colored cloth by the bushelful, making any amount more than they could sell just because they were allowed to. This led to another difficulty--where were they going to get enough linen warp? The cottagers who worked at home with their little spinning wheels could not begin to turn out the supply that was needed, and weavers of cloth went traveling everywhere over England buying up all the linen thread people would sell and begging for more. And not only did they want linen warp but they wanted it stronger and coarser so they could weave heavier cloth. Now the spinning wheels only turned out single thread. What was to be done?"

"Well, what was to be done?" echoed Mary.

"It was trying to find an answer to all this weaving muddle that set John Kay to inventing his flying shuttle," replied Carl. "Until then it had taken two people to send the heavy shuttles with the warp on them across the looms. His new flying shuttle did the same work with only one person to operate it. You'd think that an improvement in weaving, wouldn't you; and you'd have the right, if you worked out the idea, to believe the weavers would be pleased?"

"Certainly," returned his mother.

"Well, instead of being pleased, the workmen were crazy," Carl announced.

"Why?"

"Because they were such blockheads they were afraid Kay's invention was going to put them out of their jobs. In fact, they got so soured on poor old Kay that his life was actually in danger and he had to get out of England. There's gratitude for you!" concluded the boy with a shrug.

"But later on they learned better, I suppose, and sent for him to come back," Mary suggested. "That's the way people always do."

"These people didn't," was Carl's grim retort. "Not on your tin-type! They never got Kay back again in spite of all he'd done for them. Instead, he died somewhere abroad without receiving much of anything for his invention. Wouldn't that make you hot? In the meantime, about 1738, a chap called Lewis Paul got out a double set of rollers that would draw out thread and twist it--a stunt previously done by hand. So it went. Here and there men all over England, knowing the need of better spinning devices, went to it to see what they could do. John Wyatt, who, like Paul, was a Birmingham native, tried spinning by means of rollers; and for ever so long it was a question whether it was he or Paul who should be credited with the invention of the roller and flyer machine. After twenty years I believe Paul was granted the patent. In point of fact, though, Arkwright thirty years before had tried to get a patent on spinning by rollers, and no doubt both Lewis Paul and John Wyatt got the suggestion from him. Anyhow, the idea spread like wildfire and immediately no end of people went to work fussing with rollers, flyers, and spindles. As a result, many small things were added to improve the spinning contrivances in use at the time. Then in 1764, or thereabouts, along came James Hargreaves, a Lancashire Englishman, with a machine that would spin eleven threads at once."

His listeners gave a little gasp.

"That was some stride ahead, wasn't it?" commented Carl, as proudly as if he himself had done the deed. "Yes, siree! Hargreaves's spinning jenny was a big step forward. And as usual it raised a row. When he got it all perfected five years later and went to take out a patent on it, his right to it was questioned and his life made miserable. But, anyhow, people couldn't say he built on Arkwright or Paul, for whether they liked it or not they had to admit his idea was quite new. His jenny only spun cloth rovings, however. The rovings had to be prepared first; that is, the cotton had to be carded and given its first twist. After that Hargreaves was ready for it and could lengthen, twist, and spin into yarn eleven threads of it."

"I hope the ungrateful workmen did not get after him as they did after John Kay," Mary murmured.

"They did! At least, although they did not drive him out of England they drove him out of Lancashire. So he went to Nottingham; and after arming himself with his patent he and a Mr. James built a spinning mill there, one of the first to be built in England."

"That must have made his fortune and repaid him for all his hard labor," remarked Mrs. McGregor, as she held up a violet cloud of spangled tulle and examined it critically.

"The book said he didn't make much money," Carl announced. "He wasn't as poor as John Kay and did not die in want; but he certainly never became rich."

"I suppose now that they had spinning factories England was satisfied," said Mary.

"Satisfied?" repeated Carl with scorn. "Satisfied because there was one little measly spinning factory? You bet your life people weren't satisfied! To be sure some of the hardest of the inventing was done. But don't for a minute imagine you are through with Richard Arkwright. He was still on the job."

"You told us about him before."

"Trying to get a patent on spinning by rollers? Yes, I did. Well, he was still alive and of course when everybody was talking about spinning he couldn't help hearing the gossip even if he did happen to be a barber. In fact while he traveled round buying and selling hair for wigs he must have met no end of people and talked with them, so I guess he heard more of the news of the day than did lots of other men. Barbers always seem to be sociable chaps. He was quite a mechanic, too, in his way; machinery had always interested him."

"In spite of his making wigs and toupees for ladies and gentlemen?" laughed Mrs. McGregor mischievously.

"Sure, Ma! He had been born in Lancashire just as Hargreaves had and so he probably was particularly interested in Hargreaves. When anybody from your own part of the world does anything smart you always are all ears about it, you know. So Arkwright found out all he could by gossiping about Hargreaves's spinning jenny, and no one was quicker to see what such an invention would mean to England than he. The idea was almost like a magnet to him. He hunted up Mr. Highs, who had experimented a lot with spinning machinery, and talked with him; he also met John Kay, who at one time had helped Highs. And because he was such an intelligent listener and seemed to understand machinery so well these men babbled to him about their hobby. Having heard all they had to say Arkwright went off by himself and set quietly to work to try out on a small scale certain notions of his own. These notions had to do with spinning cotton by drawing rollers, and they worked perfectly. That was enough for him. He announced his success, got his patent, was knighted by the crown, and became rich. How's that for a yarn? Isn't it like the story of Puss-In-Boots?"

"It is certainly magical," declared Mrs. McGregor, who had dropped her work in her absorption. "I am glad, too, to know there was one inventor who prospered."

"I am afraid he was the only one--at least of those interested in spinning," replied Carl gravely.

"All the others both before and after him lost out so far as money went."

"Who did come after Arkwright?" queried Mary.

"Crompton--Samuel Crompton," was the prompt reply. "He was a little boy when Arkwright was tooting round the country trading hair and wigs. The two men may even have happened to see one another somewhere. That wouldn't be impossible, you know. Anyway, during the time that Arkwright was fighting the right to his roller patent; going into partnership with rich men who could finance his schemes; and building his chain of mills at Nottingham, Cromford, and Matlock, Crompton was growing up. As some of these mills were worked by horse power and some by water power, the name of 'water frame' clung to Arkwright's invention. Crompton, like everybody else who lived at the time, saw the rivalry between Hargreaves's jenny and Arkwright's water frame. It was of course silly that there should have been rivalry, for the two machines did quite different sorts of work. Arkwright's water frame was better for making the warp and long threads of cloth; and Hargreaves's jenny turned out better weft, or the kind of thread that went from side to side. It was only a matter of the sort of thread you needed, understand."

"Then they certainly needn't have been jealous of one another," commented Mrs. McGregor.

"Fortunately in time they found that out and realized that each loom had its advantages; to-day both are used--one for one purpose, one for another. But no matter how many enemies Arkwright had everybody, whether they liked him or not, was compelled to admit that he gave the spinning industry a tremendous boost and did more toward starting our present factory idea than did any one else. Not only was he a tireless worker, but he was quick as a flash to see what was needed. Maybe he wasn't any too scrupulous whose property he took; but at least he took the things he seized more for the public good than his own, I really believe. For instance, there was Lewis Paul's carding engine; he introduced that into Lancashire and added to it a stripping comb, or doffer, that made it about fifty per cent. better than it ever had been before. That is what he did to everything he touched. He swooped down on any machine he saw and then proceeded to improve it. It didn't matter to him who it belonged to. Of course you can't do that, even if you are an inventor," grinned Carl. "Naturally it got Arkwright in wrong and he was given some pretty hard names. Still he did a lot of good for all that. And, anyway, whatever he was, I take my hat off to him because he began to study writing, spelling, and arithmetic when he was fifty years old. That gets me!"

"Poor soul! He probably had no chance for an education when he was younger," remarked Mrs. McGregor.

"No, he hadn't. But picture it! Jove! If I had gone that long without books, and had been able to invent all sorts of things into the bargain, darned if I wouldn't have stuck it out," Carl said.

"But you told us Arkwright became rich and was knighted," replied Mrs. McGregor. "No doubt this resulted in his meeting educated people, gentlemen and ladies, in whose company he felt ashamed, uncomfortable, and at a disadvantage."

"I'd feel that way, wouldn't you?" nodded Mary. "I do feel so even when I am with Uncle Frederick, and my teacher, and--and you, Mother."

"Don't include me, dear," protested her mother sadly. "Alas, I know little enough. But it does help you to understand how that poor, hard-working Richard Arkwright suffered. Often, I'll wager, he was angry at himself for his lack of education even though it was not his fault. I don't wonder, snubbed as he probably was at times, that he determined he would learn something."

"His hard-earned education did not do him much good, Mother, for he died when he was sixty," said Carl.

"Well, at least he lived long enough to see his success," Mary put in brightly.

"He was luckier than Crompton," replied her brother.

"Oh, tell us about Crompton. Do you remember anything about him?" Mary inquired.

"Crompton was one of the most important of the spinning inventors," continued Carl. "But he did not set out to be an inventor any more than Arkwright did. To be sure he wasn't a barber or anything as ordinary as that. He was a musician, a person of quite another sort, you see. His family were better bred and started him out with a good education--the very thing Arkwright lacked. Crompton might easily have mixed with the class Arkwright wanted to mix with but he wasn't as good a mixer. Instead of gossiping with everybody he met, as Arkwright had done, Crompton kept by himself and lived quietly at home with his mother."

"A sensible lad!" Mrs. McGregor whispered.

"Maybe," grinned her son. "Still, it made people call Crompton unsociable. I guess, though, most geniuses are that. They always seem to be so in books; and Crompton certainly was a genius. He hadn't an ounce of brain for business but he had no end of ideas; and it 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 water frame and something like Hargreaves's jenny and yet wasn't like either of those things. Therefore, as a joke, it was called a 'mule.'"

"Oh, I'm awfully glad he made it!" ejaculated the sympathetic Mary. "Five years was such a long time to work. Wasn't it splendid of him!"

"Other people, I'm sorry to say, were not of your opinion," Carl replied. "As I said before, the spinners and weavers were a crazy, jealous lot. You remember how they treated Kay and Hargreaves? Well, they hadn't improved any and were still just as mad at spinning inventions and spinning inventors as they were before. Everything that did away with hand labor was, they argued, an enemy and was going to put them out of business."

"But how could they expect they were going to stop the progress of the world?" asked Mrs. McGregor.

"They didn't think it was progress; they were just that stupid," returned Carl. "And I guess even if they had thought so it would have been the same. They were determined to use nothing that reduced the number of hand workers. So they set themselves to take out their vengeance on all spinning machinery, and in order to put an end to it mobs of workers went about smashing to atoms every spinning jenny they could find that had more than twenty spindles."

"How nasty!" breathed Mary.

"How stupid!" rejoined her mother.

"Now, of course, Samuel Crompton wasn't going to have his new 'muslin wheel' smashed to bits so he did not tell anybody what he had invented. He simply took the thing to pieces and hid the parts round his workroom. Some of them he put in the ceiling, some he tucked away under the floor."

"Bully for him!" Mary cried. "It was a regular kid trick."

"I know it," agreed Carl. "He wasn't really a kid, though, because he was twenty-seven years old at the time and was married and his wife had just come to live at the big Crompton homestead. Well, after a little while, things settled down and then Samuel Crompton dragged out the parts of his hidden muslin wheel, put them together, and he and the lady he had married went to work making the finest and strongest yarn they could. Such fine thread had never before been made in all England and you better believe when it began to appear it created a stir. Everybody in Bolton went round trying to find out where it came from and after the tidings spread about that the Cromptons were the people who were producing the mysterious yarn, the town swelled with pride. How was the thread made? That was the next question!"

"And the Cromptons didn't tell, of course."

"That's where you're wrong, Mary Ann! I wish they hadn't; but they did."

"That was a pity," interrupted Mrs. McGregor.

"You'd have thought they would have been wise enough not to, wouldn't you?" Carl observed. "But I told you Samuel Crompton had no great head for business. He was trusting and decent, just the way Eli Whitney was. He had no idea people would steal his invention. So when the mill owners and factory folks came surging to his house, he not only let them see the loom but even allowed some of them to try it when they wrote out a promise or pledged their word that they would pay him for the privilege."

Mrs. McGregor shook her head.

"I'm afraid," said she, "that was all he ever heard of the money."

"Of course it was, Ma! Evidently you know more about human nature than poor Crompton did. He was utterly amazed when they wouldn't pay up. And when there were others mean enough to hide in the room over his workshop, bore holes in the floor, and spy down at the magic machine, all was lost."

"He held no patent, then?"

"He hadn't one thing to protect him. The sharks just came down on him, grabbed his idea, and walked away with it unmolested," answered Carl.

"Oh, that was pitiful--pitiful!" exclaimed Mrs. McGregor, laying aside her work.

"It was a darn shame!" echoed her son.

"And the Cromptons never got any money at all?" asked Mary.

"Not then, anyhow."

"Well, at least Mr. Crompton had the joy of doing what he set out to do--nobody could take that satisfaction away from him," mused Mrs. McGregor.

"Yes, but would that have consoled you for finding that people were so low-down?" answered Carl with scorn. "I'll bet that one fact disappointed him more than the loss of the money. It would me."

"Greed, I regret to say, sonny, is at the bottom of most of the evils of the world," retorted his mother sadly. "What finally became of the Cromptons?"

"Oh, the whole thing got on Crompton's nerves and he moved to another town where he buried himself," Carl answered. "After a while, though, he came back to Bolton because he needed money and opened a little factory there. It ran along for almost ten years, doing business on a small scale. Imagine it! Then in 1800 some Manchester manufacturers (who had probably got rich on his invention and whose consciences troubled them most likely) collected a purse for him that his mill might be enlarged. By this time as a result of various improvements Crompton's idea had expanded until one of his looms had as many as three hundred and sixty spindles, and another had two hundred and twenty."

"And years before the spinners had destroyed those that boasted more than twenty," commented Mary thoughtfully.

"I know it! Ironic, wasn't it? Poor old Crompton! He just didn't seem to have any luck," asserted Carl.

"It wasn't want of luck, my dear, so much as want of wisdom--the wit to grasp opportunity when it came," contradicted his mother.

"You mean 'there is a tide in the affairs of men', Ma, and all that?" Carl grinned. "Who says I don't know Shakespeare when I meet him? Anyhow, I guess Bill was right; he certainly was in this case. Even the money the English government later collected and presented to Crompton got dribbled away and lost in various unfortunate enterprises. Crompton got poorer and poorer, and if it hadn't been that friends took care of him he might almost have starved."

"And did his star never rise again?" inquired Mrs. McGregor.

"Never! He just died in poverty and left other people to grow rich on what he had done."

"That is the world, I am afraid," was Mrs. McGregor's observation. "Still he had given humanity a hand up and done a great service to his generation. That knowledge was better than all the fortunes he could have possessed."

"But he might so easily have had both, Ma," returned the practical Carl. "I call the help to humanity slim comfort when you've been cheated out of what should have been yours. I shouldn't even have been grateful had I been Crompton for the fine monument they set up to his memory long after he was dead. What they ought to have done was to treat him square while he was alive to enjoy it."

"See that as you go through life you do not forget your own philosophy, my son," cautioned his mother.