Why The F*** Is Jenny Spinning?

August 17, 2018 Trung T. Phan Blog Comments Off on Why The F*** Is Jenny Spinning?

The Spinning Jenny & other oddities from the Industrial Revolution

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One of the most famous quotes attributed to Karl Marx is that “history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce.”

In full:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.

No doubt, the quote is hella catchy. But what does it actually mean?

At least one source of Marx’s quote is an essay titled The Eighteenth Brumaire Of Louis Napoleon, concerning the French Coup of 1851, which lead to the establishment of dictatorial powers in France by Louis Napoleon “The III” Bonaparte (The ACTUAL Napoleon’s Donald Trump Jr.-esque bumbling nephew).

Donald Trump Jr. Looks Like A Douche In Any Century

By pairing off names (eg. “Louis Blanc for Robespierre” and “nephew for the uncle”), Marx was (and don’t quote me) probably looking to:

  1. Reference German philosopher Friedrich Hegel’s idea that history has some internal goal-driven (“teleological”) force that moves toward a finality or end.
  2. Highlight that the French Coup of 1851 was run by a bunch of rank amateurs as compared to the more competent and memorable cast of characters (albeit maybe too competent and too memorable) involved in the French Revolution that kicked off in 1789.

In modern-day vernacular, Marx was saying something along the lines of “sequels always suck”. 1

What’s interesting is that there was one sequel exactly during Marx’s time (which Marx spared no ink writing about) that very much did not suck – The Second Industrial Revolution.

The Second Industrial Revolution – taken here as the period from 1850 to 1910 – gave us the fruits that most layfolk probably associate with the idea of the more generalized (and un-numbered) “Industrial Revolution” such as the electric lightbulb, telephone and Ford T-model car among other indispensable inventions.

These inventions have long overshadowed those of the First Industrial Revolution (taken as 1760 to 1850-ish), many of which were primarily concerned with the textiles industry.

Here is an easily consumable list of inventions across these two Revolutions.

First Industrial Revolution (1760-1850): Spinning Jenny (1764), Arkwright Water Frame (1767), Watt Steam Engine (1769), Crompton Spinning Mule (1779), Cotton Gin (1794), Steam-powered Railway (1804), McCormick Reaper (1831), Sewing Machine (1846).

Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1910): Bessemer Steel Process (1855), Washing Machine (1858), Elevator (1861), Telephone (1876), Phonograph (1877), Electric Light Bulb (1879), Camera (1881), Daimler Automobile (1886), Motion Picture (1895), Radio (1896), Vacuum Cleaner (1899), Airplane (1903), Ford Model-T Car (1908).

At first glance, the Second Industrial Revolution is like the 1992 US Men’s Basketball Dream Team 2 of inventions while the First Industrial Revolution is like me and the four Chinese wanna-be-ballers I found outside of the Y sharing a pack of Marlboro. 3

Spinning Jenny? Arkwright Water Frame? Crompton Spinning Mule?

Seriously? Who the f*** is Jenny? And why the f*** is she spinning?

Surely, these relics of years past held some importance, right?

They certainly do, and that is the purpose of this post. To give these earlier inventions some just due. 

As we’ll discover, when it comes to the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, there are few “farces”.

Let’s dive into it by answering the question titling this post…

Why The F*** Is Jenny Spinning?

Answer: Because people like to look swaggy in new threads.

To be more historically accurate, textiles and clothes were the leading catalyst for the First Industrial Revolution (1760-1850).

The Spinning Jenny – which increased the efficiency of cloth making – was a key technological breakthrough during this period.

Wait, For Real? You Mean Like Textiles As In Clothes?

Yes, for real.

As previously noted, the inventions of the First Industrial Revolution do not have the same sex appeal as the inventions of its sequel. 

Would you rather have a Spinning Jenny or – I don’t know – a car?

This sexy deficit has certainly played a part in why textiles-related inventions have been overlooked when it comes to studying the history of the technological advances across the entire Industrial Revolution period. 

Per Aeon magazine:

“…textiles are technology, more ancient than bronze and as contemporary as nanowires. We hairless apes co-evolved with our apparel. But, to reverse Arthur C Clarke’s adage, any sufficiently familiar technology is indistinguishable from nature. It seems intuitive, obvious – so woven into the fabric of our lives that we take it for granted…When we imagine economic progress, we no longer think about cloth, or even the machines that make it.

This cultural amnesia has multiple causes. The rise of computers and software as the very definition of ‘high technology’ eclipsed other industries. Intense global competition drove down prices of fibres and fabric, making textiles and apparel a less noticeable part of household budgets, and turning textile makers into unglamorous, commodity businesses.”

It is a bit strange that textiles-related inventions are not “sexy” in the technological sense even though the clothes / fashion industry is literally in the business of “sexy”.

A quick stroll through the Forbes Richest Person In The World List is a present-day reminder that the textiles game is no joke.

Ask people on the street as to who’s battling for the “Richest Person” crown and you’ll likely get a mix of older mainstays (Buffett, Gates) and newer tech bros (Bezos, Zuck).

Not to be slept on, though, Euro tech fashion bros Bernard Arnault (Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Dior etc.) and Amancio Ortega (Zara) currently swoop up the #4 and #6 “Richest Person” slots, respectively.

With this in mind, one man who definitely doesn’t sleep on the fashion game is Professor Niels Blokker of Lieden University; Blokker writes that the “the Industrial Revolution was mainly the revolution of cotton in Britain” with “cotton” effectively a stand-in for “textiles”. 

Can You Elaborate On The “Revolution Of Cotton”?

Well, obviously, textiles have to be made of “something”. Prior to the First Industrial Revolution, wool was the fabric of choice in Britain.

ThoughtCo drops some knowledge:

The British textile industry involved several fabrics, and before the industrial revolution, the dominant one was wool. However, cotton was a more versatile fabric, and during the revolution cotton rose dramatically in importance, leading some historians to argue that the developments spurred by this burgeoning industry – technology, trade, transport – stimulated the whole revolution. Deane has argued that cotton grew from insignificance to a position of major importance in a single generation, and was one of the first industries to introduce mechanical / labor saving devices and factories. By 1750, wool was one of Britain’s oldest industries and the major source of wealth for the nation. This was produced by the ‘domestic system’, a vast network of local people working from their homes when they were not otherwise engaged in the agricultural sector. Wool would remain the main British textile until around 1800, but there were challenges to it in the first part of the eighteenth century.

For much of the 18th century, British law protected the wool trade but that eventually changed:

As cotton began to come into the country, the British government passed a law in 1721 banning the wearing of printed fabrics, designed to restrict the growth of cotton and protect the wool industry. This was repealed in 1774, and demand for cotton fabric soon boomed. This steady demand caused people to invest in ways to improve production, and a series of technological advances throughout the late eighteenth century led to huge changes in the methods of production – including machines and factories – and stimulating other sectors.

Below is a sampling of some mass-produced smocks (!) that resulted from this First Industrial Revolution textile boom. 

Fig 1, 2, 3 – Early 19th Century Ready-Made Garments (The Development Of The Clothing Industry)

OK Seriously, Why The F*** Is Jenny Spinning?

So, a quick summary of where we’re at:

  1. Textiles / clothes have been with us for ages
  2. Prior to the First Industrial Revolution, clothes was primarily created in homes (a “cottage industry”) 
  3. One of the reasons textiles stayed in small-scale production was the difficulty of mass-producing fabrics that were  soft, not uniform and difficult to manipulate
  4. Difficulty in working with the fabric (not to mention prepping the raw input) meant that the labor cost of textiles production was high
  5. High costs = clothes quite expensive
  6. As a result, most people had only a few items of clothing
  7. The transition from wool to the more versatile cotton created new opportunities for technological innovation to mitigate labor costs and meet rising clothes demand 

Enter the Spinning Jenny:

The Spinning Jenny…a multi-spindle spinning frame…was invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves in Stanhill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England. The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce cloth, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology advanced.

Ok, those randomly arranged words are nice but we’re going to need a visual on how this innovation actually worked.

In all honesty, I had never seen a Spinning Jenny prior to writing this post. 

I was hoping my Google search for “Spinning Jenny” would spit out some mashup between a spinning car rim and this classic verse from Birdman’s ineffable banger Get Your Shine On: 

“I’m dippin dippin them 22s / and they spinnin’ / they spinnin’ spinnin’ / them Sprewells / them Sprewells / we making mail.” 

Oy! Since the mashup didn’t exist, I just made it myself!

Nothing like a shot of “spinnin'” mixed with a shot of “making mail” (aka $$$$). 4

Anyways, here is a video of someone who probably doesn’t have great luck with the ladies operating (spinnin’?) an actual Spinning Jenny.

And a related photo of Joseph Stalin some random guy working a Spinning Jenny back in the day before there was Snapchat.

As for the name “Spinning Jenny”….while we’ve clearly established the “Spinning”, how did the “Jenny” come about? 

The most common story told about the invention of the device and the origin of the Jenny in the machine’s name is that a daughter (or his wife) named Jenny knocked over one of their own spinning wheels. The device kept working as normal, with the spindle now pointed upright. Hargreaves realized there was no particular reason the spindles had to be horizontal, as they always had been, and he could place them vertically in a row.

A less apocryphal explanation:

The name is variously said to derive from this tale. The Registers of Church Kirk show that Hargreaves had several daughters, but none named Jenny (neither was his wife). A more likely explanation of the name is that ‘Jenny’ was an abbreviation of ‘engine’.

So there you have it, Jenny definitely f***ing spins and she does so to make late-18th century textile workers more efficient.

Cool. What’s This Arkwright Water Frame All About?

While the Spinning Jenny improved cloth-making productivity, it wasn’t the stepchange that fully brought textile manufacturing out of the home (aka “cottage industry”) and into mass production.

That achievement would land on the efforts of one Richard Arkwright. The Arkwright Water Frame (below) was also a spinning machine and came about a few years after the Spinning Jenny.

Harnessing the power of water, it bested its predecessor in ease of use and in the strength / durability of its yarn output.

If you notice in this Dickensian picture, though, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. The reason was that Arkwright’s water frame invention was just one part of a larger (and very exploitive) “factory system”:

“[Arkwright’s] main contribution was not so much the inventions as the highly disciplined and profitable factory system he set up at Cromford, which was widely emulated. There were two 13-hour shifts per day including an overlap. Bells rang at 5 am and 5 pm and the gates were shut precisely at 6 am and 6 pm. Anyone who was late not only could not work that day but lost an extra day’s pay.”

Early Incarnation Of The “Factory System”: Arkwright’s Cromford Mill (Est. 1771)

You can pretty much draw a direct line between Arkwright’s “factory system” (minus the child labour) to your awesome 5pm afternoon brainstorm meeting next Friday.

And just to solidify his management bonafides, Arkwright implemented an unusual HR policy:

…against the threat from machine breakers…Arkwright kept a cannon loaded with grapeshot just inside the main factory gate…

Fortunately, the cannon was never used.

I imagine this is what a “you’re fired” email from Arkwright would look like in 2018.

Either way, Arkwright heeded Birdman’s aformentioned advice to “make mail”, dying in 1792 as a Euro fashion bro one of England’s richest men. 5

Grapeshots! Cool! Last Thing, What’s The Crompton Spinning Mule?

Invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779, the Spinning Mule was another technological breakthrough in the textiles space, following in the footsteps of the the Spinning Jenny (1764) and the Arkwright Water Frame (1767).

The name is actually kind of genius:

Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright’s water frame and James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny in the same way that mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey (a female donkey is called a jenny). 

In the non-crossbreeding pantheon of combining two previous ideas, the Crompton Spinning Mule ranks up there with the Cool Ranch Dorito Taco and Air Jordan XI Levis Edition. 

As a textile invention, the Spinning Mule was an unquestioned success:

The mule was the most common spinning machine from 1790 until about 1900 and was still used for fine yarns until the early 1980s….Modern versions are still in niche production and are used to spin woollen yarns from noble fibres such as cashmere, ultra-fine merino and alpaca for the knitware market.

Unlike Arkwright, though, Crompton was too poor to patent the mule and was unable to spin 6 his invention into financial success.

He died having made very little “mail”.

The photoshopped picture below is one attempt to right this historical wrong.

Honestly, it’s the least we can do.