document_title: Cotton mill

question_text: where did early textile mills have to be built

question_tokens: where did early textile mills have to be built

root

text: Cotton mill

text: History[edit]

text: In the mid-16th century Manchester was an important manufacturing centre for woollens and linen and market for textiles made elsewhere.[7] The fustian district of Lancashire, from Blackburn to Bolton, west to Wigan and Leigh and south towards Manchester, used flax and raw cotton imported along the Mersey and Irwell Navigation.

tag: p

text: Key inventions[edit]

text: During the Industrial Revolution cotton manufacture changed from a domestic to a mechanised industry, made possible by inventions and advances in technology. The weaving process was the first to be mechanised by the invention of John Kay's flying shuttle in 1733. The manually-operated spinning jenny was developed by James Hargreaves in about 1764 speeded up the spinning process.[8] The roller spinning principle of Paul and Bourne became the basis of Richard Arkwright's spinning frame and water frame, patented in 1769.[9] The principles of the spinning jenny and water frame were combined by Samuel Crompton in his spinning mule of 1779, but water power was not applied to it until 1792.[10] Many mills were built after Arkwright's patent expired in 1783 and by 1788, there were about 210 mills in Great Britain.[11] The development of cotton mills was linked to the development of the machinery they contained. By 1774, 30,000 people in Manchester were employed using the domestic system in cotton manufacture. Handloom weaving lingered into the mid-19th century but cotton spinning in mills relying on water power and subsequently steam power using fuel from the Lancashire Coalfield began to develop before 1800.[12]

text: First mills (1740–1815)[edit]

text: The Paul-Wyatt mills[edit]

text: The first cotton mills were established in the 1740s to house roller spinning machinery invented by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt.[14][15][16][17] The machines were the first to spin cotton mechanically "without the intervention of human fingers".[18] They were driven by a single non-human power source which allowed the use of larger machinery and made it possible to concentrate production into organised factories.[19] Four mills were set up to house Paul and Wyatt's machinery in the decade following its patent in 1738: the short-lived, animal-powered Upper Priory Cotton Mill in Birmingham in 1741;[20] Marvel's Mill in Northampton operated from 1742 until 1764 and was the first to be powered by a water wheel;[21] Pinsley Mill in Leominster probably opened in 1744 and operated until it burned down in 1754;[22] and a second mill in Birmingham set up by Samuel Touchet in 1744, about which little is known, but which was sufficiently successful for Touchet later to seek the lease on the mill in Northampton.[23] The Paul-Wyatt mills spun cotton for several decades but were not very profitable,[24][25] becoming the ancestors of the cotton mills that followed.[15][26]

text: Arkwright-type mills[edit]

text: Richard Arkwright obtained a patent for his water frame spinning machinery in 1769.[27] Although its technology was similar to that of Lewis Paul, John Wyatt, James Hargreaves and Thomas Highs, Arkwright's powers of organisation, business acumen and ambition established the cotton mill as a successful business model and revolutionary example of the factory system.[28][27][29] Arkwright's first mill – powered by horses in Nottingham in 1768 – was similar to Paul and Wyatt's first Birmingham mill although by 1772 it had expanded to four storeys and employed 300 workers.[28][27] In 1771, while the Nottingham mill was at an experimental stage, Arkwright and his partners started work on Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, which "was to prove a major turning point in the history of the factory system".[30] It resembled the Paul-Wyatt water-powered mill at Northampton in many respects,[31] but was built on a different scale, influenced by John Lombe's Old Silk Mill in Derby[32] and Matthew Boulton's Soho Manufactory in Birmingham.[33] Constructed as a five-storey masonry box; high, long and narrow, with ranges of windows along each side and large relatively unbroken internal spaces, it provided the basic architectural prototype that was followed by cotton mills and English industrial architecture through to the end of the 19th century.[34]

text: Arkwright recruited large, highly disciplined workforces for his mills, managed credit and supplies and cultivated mass consumer markets for his products.[35] By 1782 his annual profits exceeded £40,000,[36] and by 1784 he had opened 10 more mills.[37] He licensed his technology to other entrepreneurs[38] and in 1782 boasted that his machinery was being used by "numbers of adventurers residing in the different counties of Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Worcester, Stafford, York, Hertford and Lancashire"[39] and by 1788 there were 143 Arkwright-type mills nationwide.[40] The early mills were of light construction, narrow – about 9 feet (2.7 m) wide – and low in height, with ceiling heights of only 6–8 ft.[41] The mills were powered by water wheels and lit by daylight. Mills were made by millwrights, builders and iron founders.[42] By the end of the 18th century there were about 900 cotton mills in Britain, of which approximately 300 were large Arkwright-type factories employing 300 to 400 workers, the rest, smaller mills using jennies or mules, were hand- or horse-driven and employed as few as 10 workers.[43]

text: Early steam mills[edit]

text: Before 1780, only water power was available to drive large mills,[44] but they were dependent on a constant flow of water and built in rural locations, causing problems of labour supply, transportation of materials and access to urban merchants for large mill-owners.[45] Steam engines had been used to pump water since the invention of the atmospheric engine by Thomas Newcomen in 1712[46] and, starting with the engine installed at Arkwright's Haarlem Mill in Wirksworth, Derbyshire in 1780, were used to supplement the supply of water to the water wheels of cotton mills.[47]

text: In 1781 James Watt registered a patent for the first rotative steam engine designed to "give motion to the wheels of mills or other machines".[48] Concerns remained over the smoothness of the power supplied by a steam engine to cotton mills, where the regularity of the yarn produced was dependent on the regularity of the power supply,[49] and it was not until 1785 at Papplewick, in Robinson's Mill near Nottingham that a steam engine was successfully used to drive a cotton mill directly.[50] Boulton and Watt's engines enabled mills to be built in urban contexts and transformed the economy of Manchester, whose importance had previously been as a centre of pre-industrial spinning and weaving[51] based on the domestic system.[4] Manchester had no cotton mills until the opening of Arkwright's Shudehill Mill in 1783 and in 1789 Peter Drinkwater opened the Piccadilly Mill – the town's first mill to be directly powered by steam – and by 1800 Manchester had 42 mills, having eclipsed all rival textile centres to become the heart of the cotton manufacturing trade.[52]

text: Water continued to be used to drive rural mills but mills, driven by steam, were built in towns alongside streams or canals to provide water for the engine. Murrays' Mills alongside the Rochdale Canal, in Ancoats were powered by 40 hp Boulton and Watt beam engines.[53]b Some were built as room and power mills, which let space to entrepreneurs. The mills, often 'L' or U-shaped, were narrow and multi-storeyed. The engine house, warehousing and the office were inside the mill, although stair towers were external. Windows were square and smaller than in later mills. The walls were of unadorned rough brick. Construction was sometimes to fireproof designs. The mills are distinguished from warehouses in that warehouses had taking-in doors on each storey with an external hoist beam.[54] Only the larger mills have survived.

text: Mills of this period were from 25 to 68 m long and 11.5 m to 14 m wide. They could be eight storeys high and had basements and attics. Floor height varied from 3.3 to 2.75 m on the upper storeys.

text: Boilers were of the wagon type; chimneys were square or rectangular, attached to the mill, and in some cases part of the stair column. The steam engines were typically low-pressure single-cylinder condensing beam engines.[55] The average power in 1835 was 48 hp.[56] Power was transmitted by a main vertical shaft with bevel gears to the horizontal shafts. The later mills had gas lighting using gas produced on site.[57] The mules with 250–350 spindles were placed transversely to get as much light as possible.

text: Early weaving mills[edit]

text: The development of mills to mechanise the weaving process was more gradual partly because of the success of John Kay's 1733 invention of the flying shuttle, which increased the productivity of domestic hand loom weavers.[58] Kay took out a patent for the application of water power to a Dutch loom in 1745 and opened a weaving factory in Keighley in 1750, but nothing is known of its success.[58] A further attempt to mechanise the weaving process took place at Garrett Hall in Manchester in 1750 but was unsuccessful in enabling one worker to operate more than a single loom.[58] The first feasible power loom was patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, although it was initially a primitive device it established the basic principle that would be used in powered weaving until the 20th century.[59] In 1788 Cartwright opened Revolution Mill in Doncaster which was powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine and had 108 power looms on three floors as well as spinning machinery, but it was not a commercial success and closed in 1790.[60] A second mill using Cartwright's machinery, opened in Manchester in 1790 but was burned to the ground by hand loom weavers within two years.[61] By 1803 there were only 2,400 power looms operating in Britain.[62]

text: Early American mills[edit]

text: In the United States, the early horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory was designed by Thomas Somers, who started construction and testing of the facility in 1787, finishing the factory's equipment in 1788. Experience from this factory led Moses Brown of Providence to request the assistance of a person skilled in water-powered spinning. Samuel Slater, an immigrant and trained textile worker from England, accepted Brown's proposal, and assisted with the design and construction of Slater Mill, built in 1790 on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Slater evaded restrictions on emigration put in place to allow England to maintain its monopoly on cotton mills. Slater Mill resembled the Beverly Cotton Manufactory and a mill in Derbyshire in which he had worked.[63][64]

text: Remodelling and expansion (1815–1855)[edit]

text: United Kingdom[edit]

text: From 1825 the steam engine was able to power larger machines constructed from iron using improved machine tools. Mills from 1825 to 1865 were generally constructed with wooden beamed floors and lath and plaster ceilings. William Fairbairn experimented with cast iron beams and concrete floors. Mills were of red brick or sometimes local stone with a greater attention to decoration and the main gate was often highlighted with stone decoration. The stair columns were exterior to the main floors.[65] During this period the mules got wider and the width of the bays increased. Specialised mill architects appeared.

text: Mills of this period were tall, narrow, and wide. They were commonly built with one or two wings to form an 'L' or 'U' shape. Brunswick Mill was a 28-bay mill, 6 storeys of 16 m by 92 m. Each self-acting spinning mule had 500 spindles.[65] Single-storey north light weaving sheds were sometimes added to the mills. The looms caused vibrations that damaged the structure of multi-storey buildings,[66] and specialised weaving mills became common. They were single-storey sheds with an engine house and offices, and preparation and warehousing in a two-storey ancillary building.[citation needed]

text: Large mills remained the exception during this period. In 1833 the largest mill was that of McConnel and Company in Ancoats, Manchester with 1,545 workers, but in 1841 there were still only 25 mills in Lancashire with 1,000 workers or more, and the number of workers in the average mill was 193.[67]

text: The Lancashire boiler was patented in 1844, and the economiser in 1845. This can be seen as a square brick structure between the boiler house and the chimney. The engines were double compound upright beam engines of the type patented by McNaught in 1845. Each room in the mill would have line shafts suitable for the type of frame, connected by belt drives or gearing.[68]

text: In 1860, there were 2650 cotton mills in the Lancashire region, employing 440,000 people. The workers, 90 per cent of whom were adults and 56 per cent females, were paid a total of ₤11.5 million per annum. The mills used 300,000 hp of power, of which 18,500 was generated by waterpower. The mills had 30,387,467 spindles and 350,000 power looms. The industry imported 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton a year. It exported 2,776,218,427 yards of cotton cloth and 197,343,655 pounds (89,513,576 kg) of twist and yarn. The total value of its exports was ₤32,012,380.

text: 1860 saw the end of this period of rapid growth. The Cotton Famine of 1861–1865 was a period when American long staple cotton became unavailable due to an American Civil War. After the war, the economics of the industry had changed, and a new larger mill was required.

text: United States[edit]

text: In 1814 the Boston Manufacturing Company of New England established a "fully integrated" mill on the Charles River at Waltham, Massachusetts. Despite the ban on exporting technology from the UK, one of its proprietors, Francis Cabot Lowell, had travelled to Manchester to study the mill system and memorised some of its details. In the same year, Paul Moody built the first successful power loom in the US. Moody used a system of overhead pulleys and leather belting, rather than bevel gearing, to power his machines.[69] The group devised the Waltham System of working, which was duplicated at Lowell, Massachusetts and several other new cities throughout the state. Mill girls, some as young as ten, were paid less than men, but received a fixed wage for their 73-hour week. They lived in company-owned boarding houses, and attended churches supported by the companies.[70][71]

text: In the 1840s George Henry Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island improved the reliability of stationary steam engines. He replaced slide valves with valves that used cams. These Corliss valves were more efficient and more reliable than their predecessors. Initially, steam engines pumped water into a nearby reservoir that powered the water wheel, but were later used as the mill's primary power source. The Corliss valve was adopted in the UK, where in 1868 more than 60 mill engines were fitted with them.[72]

text: India[edit]

text: The large steam-powered Bowreath Cotton Mills opened at Fort Gloster near Calcutta by British interests in the 1820s, using British women to impart machine-spinning skills to the local workforce.[73] They closed down in 1837 but reopened with Dwarkanath Tagore as a major shareholder, and by 1840 lay at the centre of a major industrial complex powered by five steam engines, that included a twist mill, foundry and a rum distillery.[73]

text: Golden Age (1855–1898)[edit]

text: United Kingdom[edit]

text: Just before 1870, a mill was built by a joint-stock spinning company and this financial structure led to a new wave of mill construction. The phrase Oldham Limiteds describes these companies. Family-run firms continued to build, but grouped into associations such as the Fine Spinners' and Doublers' Association. Joseph Stott of Oldham perfected a method of fireproof floor construction using steel beams supporting brick vaults that in turn supported concrete floors that would support heavier equipment. Ring frames replaced mule frames; they were heavier and larger and were placed transversely, the floors became larger (up to 130 feet (40 m) wide) and higher to provide light. The bay size in a mill was defined by the positioning of machines. In an 1870 mill the bay was typically 10 feet 6 inches (3.20 m), and the brick vaults 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) though there were variations.[74]

text: Engines were run at higher pressures and from 1875, powered horizontal shafts on each floor by means of ropes. This was a prominent change as a rope race had to be built running the height of the mill. The engine needed more space and the engine house, boiler house and economiser were external to the main mill.[75] Mills continued to get bigger, and were sometimes paired; two mills being driven by one engine. Another change was the trend of having carding on one floor. To achieve this, the ground floor was extended outwards behind the mill often a full mill width.[76] In a single mill, the crosswall divided the blowing room from the rest, as it was here that there was greatest risk of fire.

text: Mills became wider, Houldsworth Mill, Reddish (1865) was 35 m wide and accommodated 1200 spindle mules. It was of four storeys and had sixteen bays on each side of a central engine house; a double mill. The central block provided offices and warehousing. A mill had a range of ancillary buildings.[76] Stair columns often extending above the mill and housed a water tank for the sprinkler system. The floors were higher allowing for taller windows. Accrington brick was used from 1890, decorated with yellow sandstone with moulded brick and terracotta features. Etched and stained glass was used in the offices. Mills were designed by specialist architects and architectural quality became a major consideration.[77]

text: The power needed and provided to drive these mills was increasing. Beam engines were installed until the 1870s when horizontal engines took over. Abbey Mill Oldham (1876) needed 700 hp, Nile Mill (1896) needed 2500 hp. By the 1890, boilers produced 160 psi, and the triple expansion horizontals became standard. Chimneys were octagonal.[78]

text: United States[edit]

text: Following the American Civil War, mills grew larger. They were built in the southern states of South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi where cheap labour and plentiful water power made operations profitable. Cotton could be processed into fabric where it grew, saving transportation costs. The mills were usually combination mills, (spinning and weaving) that were water powered and used a slow burn design technique. They used a belt and pulley drive system, and heavier ring frames rather than mules. At this point they only spun and wove coarse counts. The mills were mainly in open country and mill towns were formed to support them. New England mills found it increasingly difficult to compete, and as in Lancashire, went into gradual decline until bankrupted during the Great Depression. Cotton mills and their owners dominated the economy and politics of the Piedmont well into the 20th century.

text: Asia[edit]

text: The modern Indian mechanised textile industry was born in 1854, when a steam-powered mill was opened in Bombay by Cowasjee N. Davar.[79] More followed: there were 10 by 1865 and 47 by 1875.[79] By 1880 there were 58 mills in India employing 40,000 workers, with over 80% of them in the cities of Bombay and Ahmedabad.[80] From the 1870s India's own markets for finished yarn and cloth ceased to be dominated by imports from Lancashire, and during the 1870s and 1880s the Bombay cotton industry began to replace exports of yarn from Britain to China.[81]

text: Edwardian mills (1898–1914)[edit]

text: The cotton industry was subject to cycles of boom and slump, which caused waves of mill building. There was an optimism that dictated that slumps had to be endured and then there would be a period of even greater prosperity. The limited companies took control of spinning, while the room and power system was the norm for the weaving sheds. One point of view in the 1880s was that vertically integrating the weaving sheds into new mills would reduce costs and lead to greater profits. This route had been followed in New England, where it was successful, but not in Lancashire. The industry peaked in 1907. There was a severe slump in 1908, which endured until 1918, but the years 1919 and 1920 were more profitable than the peak year of 1907 had been.[82]

text: United Kingdom[edit]

text: Production peaked in 1912. The war of 1914–1918 put the Lancashire industry into reverse. The British government, starved of raw cotton, established mills in south Asia exporting the spinning technology - which was copied, and became a low-labour cost competitor. In Germany, Flanders and Brazil, mills were built to the designs of the Oldham architects. The only new mills were very large to benefit from the economies of scale. Older mills were re-equipped with rings, and machines were powered by individual electric motors.

text: Mills of this period were large, their decoration was lavish reflecting Edwardian taste and prosperity.[83] Most mills were built for mules. Kent Mill Chadderton (1908) was a five storey, 11 bay mill, 84.6m x 43.9m. It had 90,000 spindles. Ring frames were smaller and heavier than mules so the mills were narrower with fewer storeys. Pear Mill Bredbury (1912) was planned to be a 210,000 spindle double mill.[84] Only the first mill was completed, it had 137,000 spindles. They had more stair columns than earlier mills, it had dust flues often built into the rope race. There were two or three windows per bay. Decoration was often in terracotta and the mill name displayed in white brick on the stair tower or chimney.[85] Stott and Sons employed Byzantine styling in Broadstone Mill, Reddish. Specialist architects built new mills and then created extensions. The last steam-powered mill, Elk Mill, was built by Arthur Turner

text: Mules were built with 1300 spindles, but were gradually replaced by rings.

text: The increasingly powerful engines required more boilers with economisers and superheaters.[86] Mills needed reservoirs to supply the boilers and condense the steam. The chimneys were round and taller. Three types of engines were used: triple expansion horizontal cross compound engines, Inverted marine type compounds which were more compact, and Manhattans with vertical and horizontal cylinders such as the 3500 hp engine at New Pear Mill. Rope drives were used exclusively. Electricity was gradually introduced firstly on group drives driving a shaft (Little Mill, 1908), and then later on individual machines.[87]

text: United States[edit]

text: Mills constructed in South Carolina increased in size. At Rutledge Ford the Saluda River was dammed and a power plant constructed. It was completed in 1904 before the construction of a state-of-the-art textile mill in 1906. That power plant provided for 4,800 horse power. The mill contained 30,000 spindles. By 1916 a new mill was constructed, containing 70,200 spindles and 1,300 looms. The town was named Ware Shoals. Between 1904 and 1916, the population of Ware Shoals grew from 2 men employed to maintain the newly constructed power plant, to 2,000. By the 1960s the mill employed 5,000 people. It closed in 1985.

text: Consolidation (1918–50)[edit]

text: Though business revived in 1919, a shortage of building materials restricted the building of new mills, and activity was financial with the mills seeking recapitalisation. There is no clear concession on the reason for the final decline. Some say that the cotton men concentrated on making easy money ignoring the possibility of foreign competition best countered by larger mills by re-equipping the mills with more modern ring frames. Daniels and Jewkes argued the fundamental cause of the depression was a change in demand for cotton goods. J. M. Keynes suggested that there was over capacity, and the industry should be reorganised into larger units that would scrap the excess capacity.[88]

text: The Lancashire Cotton Corporation was a company set up by the Bank of England in 1929, to rescue the Lancashire spinning industry by means of consolidation. In merged 105 companies, ending up in 1950 with 53 operating mills. These were the later larger mills. It was bought up by Courtaulds in August 1964.

text: The later mills were on the fringe of the spinning area in Wigan and Stockport, Availability of labour was cited as a reason.The last mills were completed in 1926, these were Holden Mill (Astley Bridge Mill)[89] and Elk Mill.[90]

text: In 1929, for the first time there were more spindles in the USA than in the UK. In 1972, India had greater spindleage than the USA, and it was in turn surpassed by China in 1977.[91]

text: Cotton mills in the late 20th century (1950–2000)[edit]

text: Decline of spinning in England[edit]

text: Though there was a slight revival after 1945, mills closed. The most efficient mills had abandoned their steam engines, and were working the frames with individual electric motors. Broadstone Mills Stockport, was built as a double mill with 265,000 mule spindles, but by 1959 it was running 37,500 mule spindles and 70,000 ring spindles. It closed in 1959 taking advantage of the Cotton Industry Act 1959 and was then used by the John Myers mail order company. One mill was later demolished leaving the other to be used as a Shopping Outlet Centre and Craft Village. The reduction of capacity led to a legacy of redundant mills, which were readily reused for other industrial purposes.

text: Ring spinning technology had successfully replaced the spinning mule, with mills having been converted mules to rings. However in the 1970s, the depleted industry was challenged by a new technology open-end or break spinning. In 1978 Carrington Viyella opened a factory to do open-end spinning in Atherton. This was the first new textile production facility in Lancashire since 1929. Immediately Pear Mill, Stockport and Alder Mill, Leigh were closed. These were both Edwardian mills designed by Stott and Sons.[90] The mill built in 1978 was built on the Howe Bridge mills site and was named Unit One. It was not an open end mill but a combed cotton ring mill.

text: Modern cotton mills[edit]

text: Modern spinning mills are mainly built around open end spinning techniques using rotors or ring spinning techniques using spindles. In 2009 there were 202,979,000 ring spinning spindles installed worldwide, with 82% of these being in Asia or Oceania and 44% being within China. In the same year there were 7,975,000 open end spinning rotors installed, with 44% of these being within Asia or Oceania and 29% within Eastern Europe.[92] The average age of installed rotors is much lower than that of spindles and as rotors are between 7 and 10 times more productive they are responsible for 20% of the cotton spun worldwide.[92]

text: Modern cotton mills are increasingly automated. One large mill in Virginia in the United States employs 140 workers in 2013 to produce an output that would have required more than 2,000 workers in 1980.[93]

text: Locations[edit]

text: Cotton mills were not confined to Lancashire but were built in northeast Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Bristol, Durham and the west of Scotland.[12] The availability of streams or rivers to provide power determined the location of the early mills some of which were in isolated areas. In Lancashire they were built on the rivers and streams descending from the Pennines and Rossendale moorland. In some places quite small streams powered a string of small mills such as in the Cheesden Valley between Ramsbottom and Heywood.[94] where 14 mills and their associated leats and ponds were concentrated along a four-mile stretch of the brook. Mills were built around Rochdale and Littleborough. North of Bury, ten mills occupied a mile long stretch of a stream in the Shuttleworth Valley.[95] Other mills were built north of the River Ribble and a cluster of five mills in Caton near the port at Lancaster, one of which belonged to Samuel Greg who built Quarry Bank Mill at Styal in Cheshire. Not all water-powered mills were in rural areas, after 1780 mills were built in Blackburn and Burnley.[96]

text: In Scotland, four cotton mills were built in Rothsay on the Isle of Bute using labour that had experience of the linen industry.[97] By 1800 there were two water-powered mills at Gatehouse of Fleet employing 200 children and 100 adults.[98] Robert Owen who had worked for Peter Drinkwater in Manchester, developed the mills at New Lanark built by his father-in-law, David Dale under licence from Arkwright.[99]

text:
Cotton Mills in 1860[100]

Lancashire
Cheshire
Derbyshire

Mills
1920
200
25

Workers
310000
38000
12000

tag: table

text: Architecture[edit]

text: Fireproof construction[edit]

text: Cotton mills were huge fire risks, cotton fibres in the air could form an explosive mixture in their gas-lit interiors. The first mills using fireproof construction were built in Shropshire and Derbyshire in the 1790s and Philips & Lee's mill built in Salford in 1801-2. Fireproofing took the form of cast iron columns and beams from which sprang jack arches that were infilled with ash or sand and covered with stone flags or floorboards. In some mills timber was also eliminated from the roof structure which was supported by cast or wrought iron trusses.[101] Until the properties of cast iron were properly understood some mills constructed using the early technology collapsed. In Manchester extensive testing of cast iron as a structural material was carried out by Eaton Hodgkinson and William Fairbairn in the early 1820s.[102] Fireproof construction was expensive and timber, sometimes clad in plaster or metal continued to be used throughout the 19th century. Rolled steel beams and reinforced concrete flooring was introduced in a limited way in the 1880s but not widely adopted in Lancashire mills until the 20th century.[101]

text: Other factors[edit]

text: Cotton is sensitive to temperature and humidity. Heating systems used wrought iron pipes suspended at a height of 7 feet (2.1 m) to carry steam under pressure. In summer the system was barely used but in winter the boilers would be fired up two hours before the shift started to warm up the mill. As heat was applied the humidity dropped and system of humidifiers, either atomisers which played an air jet against a jet of water or ones that injected a stream/air mixture into the room.[103]

text: Early fire fighting systems used sprinklers supplied by water captured on flat roofs in shallow tanks. Later mills had a water tank at the top of the stair tower. Water for the sprinklers had to be protected from freezing and evaporation. Water pressure needed to be above 7 psi, and the header tank at least 15 feet (4.6 m) above the highest sprinkler.[104] The provision of light, water tanks and heating system defined the structure and shape of the mill.

text: Machinery[edit]

text: Power[edit]

text: The earliest cotton mills were driven by water, so needed to be situated on fast flowing streams. From about 1820, the stationary steam engine became the normal form of power for a cotton mill, water was still needed to produce the steam and to condense it, to maintain the humidity, for many of the finishing processes and for firefighting. Water was extracted from rivers and canals, then later mills requiring ever more water, built and maintained their own reservoirs.

text: In 1781 James Watt marketed a rotary-motion steam engine that could be adapted to drive all sorts of machinery, Richard Arkwright pioneered its use in his cotton mills. Possibly the first steam engine to be used in a cotton mill was a Newcomen engine which was used at Shudehill Mill in 1783 to raise water between storage ponds so it could drive a water wheel. By 1795 most similar engines around Manchester had been replaced by Boulton and Watt or Bateman and Sherratt engines.[105]

text: Electricity was introduced in 1877. Steam engine drove generators to provide electric lighting. By the 1890s this was common.[106] Electricity was used to drive the mills machinery by 1906. It was generated in the engine house, and one group-drive electric motor was placed on each floor to drive the shafts. Generators were placed exterior to the mill as it was thought that they were a fire risk. Mains driven mills started about 1907. Later mills used individual electric motors to power the machinery.

text: Transmission[edit]

text: The early mills had a vertical shaft to take the power from the flywheel. On each floor horizontal shafts engaged with the main shaft using bevel gearing. American mills used thick leather bands instead of shafts. A new approach was to use thick cotton ropes. A rope drum was attached to the flywheel with a channel cut for each rope. The profile was such to give maximum adherence.[107]

text: Spinning[edit]

text: A spinning mill opened raw cotton bales and cleaned the cotton in the blowing room. The cotton staples are carded into lap and straightened and drawn into roving which is spun using either a mule or ring frame. The yarn can be doubled and processed into thread, or prepared for weaving.

text: Minerva Mill, Ashton-under-Lyne was designed by P. S. Stott and equipped by John Hetherington and Son, it produced 40's twists and 65 wefts. It was typical of a mill of the 1890s.

text:
Number
Machines
Ratio

2
Vertical Openers and scutchers
1 : 43,434

4
Intermediate Scutchers
1 :21,717

93
Carding Engines
1 :934

63
finishing deliveries of drawing
1 :1,380

792
Slubbing spindles
1 :109.7

1716
Intermediate spindles
1 :50.6

6680
Roving spindles
1 :13

86,868
Mule spindles
1 :1

text: Self acting mule frame (Roberts 1830) was an improvement on Crompton's Mule (1779) which derived from earlier inventions.[110] Mules were used in the 19th century mills for the finest counts, these needed skilled workers to operate them.

text: Ring frame (1929) developed out of the Throstle frame (19th century) an improvement on the Arkwright's Water frame. Originally rings were only suitable for coarse counts, they were lower and heavier than mules so needed stronger floors but lower rooms. Over time, rings became suitable for finer counts and because of cheaper labour costs they replaced mules. By 1950 all mills had converted to the Ring frame. The Hawk mill in Shaw near Oldham was still operating cotton mule frames in 1964/65. [111]

text: Weaving[edit]

text: A weaving mill needed yarn suitable for the warp and the weft. The warp had to delivered on the beam, or was wound on the beam from cheeses by a beamer. To obtain the extra strength needed, the yarn was sized on a sizer. The weft was wound onto the pirns for the shuttle on a pirner. These preparatory processes completed the yarn was woven on a loom. One weaver would operate 4 or six looms. A self-acting loom would stop when any thread broke, and the thread had to be retied or pieced. The process required greater levels of light than spinning, and weaving sheds would often be single storey, with overhead north facing lights. Placing a loom onto the ground also reduced the problems caused by the vibrations of operation.

text: The Cartwright's powerloom (1785) was made reliable by Robert's cast iron power loom (1822) and became perfected by the Kenworthy and Bullough Lancashire Loom (1854). The Northrop or Draper Loom (1895) replaced these older designs.[66]

text:
Number of power looms in Britain 1803–57, and 1926[112]

Year
1803
1820
1829
1833
1857
-
1926

No. of Power Looms in UK
2,400
14,650
55,500
100,000
250,000

767,500

text:
Comparison of output of 24 yard shirtings 1823–33[112]

Year
1823
1823
1826
1833

good hand loom weaver
power weaver
power weaver
power weaver

Aged 25
Aged 15
Aged 15
Aged 15 with 12yr old helper

Looms
1
2
2
4

Pieces woven per week
2
7
12
18

text: Labour conditions[edit]

text: The mills were notable in employing women, giving them an independent income. In Lancashire and Piedmont, South Carolina child labour is well documented.

text: Child labour in the United Kingdom[edit]

text: The Lancashire and Derbyshire mills needed a pool of cheap labour. Pauper children were boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 21, who were dependent on the Poor Law Guardians. Mill owners made contracts with the guardians in London and the southern counties to supply them paupers, in batches of 50 or more, to be apprenticed. Living condition were poor in 'Prentice Houses', and the children who were paid 2d a day worked 15-hour shifts, hot bedding with children on the other shift.[citation needed]

text: Robert Owen was a millowner in New Lanark. He never employed children under the age of ten, and opposed physical punishment in schools and factories. He lobbied for parliamentary action, resulting in The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802.

text:
Hours of work limited to twelve a day
Boys and girls to sleep in separate dormitories with no more than two to each bed
Compulsory education to be provided in the arts of reading writing and arithmetic
Each apprentice to be provided with two suits of clothes
On Sunday children to be instructed in Christian worship
Sanitation to be improved

tag: ul

text: Regulation was ineffective until the mills were subject to inspection in 1833 with the establishment of a factory inspectorate consisting of four factory inspectors who had the power of magistrates.[113]:41–42 [114] This did not reduce the number of children, half-timers worked mornings in the mill and spend the afternoon in the school room. While the number of children working in spinning as tenters did decline, more were employed in weaving because weavers were expected to tenter extra looms.

text:
Percentage of children below 13 in cotton factories 1835–78 [115]

Year
1835
1838
1847
1850
1856
1862
1867
1870
1874
1878

amount
13.2
4.7
5.8
4.6
6.5
8.8
10.4
9.6
14.0
12.8

text: From the Factory Act of 1844, until 1878 records do not distinguish between full-time and half-times. In 1851 a sizeable number of children were working the mills. For Example, In Glossop, there were 931 children (out of 3562) between 5 and thirteen working in cotton mills. In one mill in 1859, 50.2% of the workforce were women, 24.2% were girls, 19% were men and 6.6% were boys.[116]

text: Child labor (sic) in the United States[edit]

text: The Carolinas mills developed from 1880, and would employ children in preference to adults. At Newton Mill, North Carolina, in 1909, twenty of the 150 workers observed, appeared to be twelve years old or less. As well as the usual report of hands and fingers getting severed by the machinery, and insufferable heat- the dust inhaled caused a fatal condition known as brown lung.[117] Laws were rarely enforced, and the presence of small children in the factory was explained away to the inspectors saying they were visiting the mill to bring meals to their parents (meal totters), or helping but not on the payroll (helpers).[118] Wages were good for the workers who could earn $2 a day in the mill against $0.75 on a farm. In the segregated south, 'Blacks' were not allowed to work inside a mill; had they been the need for child labour would have been eliminated.[119] Child labour stopped here not only because of new laws but the change in the type of machinery caused by the Great Depression, which required greater height and skill.[120]

text: Women[edit]

text: In 1926 when it was at its peak, the Lancashire cotton industry worked 57.3 million spindles and 767,500 looms. It imported 3.3 million bales and exported 80% of its production. 61% of the 575,000 cotton operatives in Lancashire were women, of which 61% were unionised in 167 different unions[121]

text: Unions[edit]

text: The 18th-century woollen industry of small producers in southern England was far different from the Yorkshire-based worsted industry where the clothier imported and owned the raw material and sold the cloth. He put out work to small weavers, in effect, employing them. Worsted was more capital intensive. The small weavers banded together to form self-help guilds. When Lancashire adopted cotton, the same process occurred. But in Lancashire cotton mills, spinning became a male occupation, and the tradition of unions passed into the factory. As spinners were 'assisted' by several 'piecers' there was a pool of trained labour to replace any spinner the owner cared to dismiss. The well paid mule spinners were the 'barefoot aristocrats' of labour and became organised in the 19th century. They paid union dues, and were well placed to finance themselves should a strike be needed. The Yorkshire worsted industry, adopted the ring frame which required less skill. Worsted spinning was an occupation for young girls. Unionism did not develop in Yorkshire until 1914. In, 1913 figures show 50% of cotton operatives were unionised while only 10% of wool and worsted workers.

text: In Lancashire there were:

text:
Occupation
Union members

Weavers
182,000

Cardroom Operatives
55,000

Spinners
23,000

Piecers
25,000

text: The spinners union, the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners had a federal structure with strong central leadership where control was in the hands of a small group of paid officials. Their dues were high, so the fighting fund was large and the officials were skilled in defending the complex wage structures.[122]

text: Health of the workers[edit]

text: A cotton mill was not a healthy place to work. The air in the mill had to be hot and humid to prevent the thread from breaking: 18 °C to 26 °C and 85% humidity was normal. The air in the mill was thick with cotton dust, which could lead to byssinosis – a lung disease.

text: Protective masks were introduced after the war, but few workers wore them as they made them uncomfortable in the stifling conditions. The same applied to ear protectors. The air led to skin infections, eye infections, bronchitus and tuberculosis. The noise levels in a weaving shop, where the shuttles in 500 plus looms were being thumped 200 times a minute led to levels of deafness in all who worked there. The lubrication was carcinogenic and led to cancers of the mouth and cancer of the scrotum; known as mule-spinners cancer.[123]

text: A mill worker could expect to work a thirteen-hour day, six days a week with two weeks off for the wakes week holidays in summer. Unsurprisingly, a series of Factory Acts were passed to attempt to ameliorate these conditions.

text: In the early days when the cotton towns were expanding rapidly, living conditions for the workers were poor. Badly planned housing was seriously overcrowded. Open sewers and shared privies led to diseases such as cholera; Manchester was hit by an epidemic in 1831 that claimed hundreds of lives.[123]

text: Art and literature[edit]

text:
William Blake Jerusalem – dark satanic mills.
Mrs Gaskell : Mary Barton(1848), North and South (1855)
L. S. Lowry
Charles Sheeler


document_title: Lincoln–Douglas debates

question_text: who won the illinois senate race of 1858

text: Lincoln–Douglas debates

text: Background[edit]

text: Stephen Douglas was first elected to the United States Senate in 1846.  In 1858, he was seeking re-election for a third term.  During his time in the Senate, the issue of slavery was raised several times, particularly with respect to the Compromise of 1850.  As chairman of the committee on territories, Douglas argued for an approach to slavery termed popular sovereignty; electorates at a local level would vote whether to adopt or reject a state constitution which prohibited slavery. Decisions about whether slavery was permitted or prohibited within certain states and territories had been made previously at a federal level. Douglas was successful with passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854.  Abraham Lincoln, like Douglas, had also been elected to Congress in 1846.  He served one two-year term in the House of Representatives.  During his time in the House, Lincoln disagreed with Douglas and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in new territory.  Lincoln returned to politics in the 1850s to oppose the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and help develop the new Republican party.

text: Before the debates, Lincoln said that Douglas was encouraging his fears of amalgamation of the races with enough success to drive thousands of people away from the Republican Party.[4] Douglas tried to convince, especially the Democrats, that Lincoln was an abolitionist for saying that the American Declaration of Independence did apply to blacks as well as whites. Lincoln called a self-evident truth "the electric cord ... that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together" of different ethnic backgrounds.[5]

text: Lincoln argued in his House Divided Speech that Douglas was part of a conspiracy to nationalize slavery. Lincoln said that ending the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in Kansas and Nebraska was the first step in this direction, and that the Dred Scott decision was another step in the direction of spreading slavery into Northern territories. Lincoln expressed the fear that the next Dred Scott decision would make Illinois a slave state.[6]

text: Both Lincoln and Douglas had opposition. Although Lincoln was a former Whig, the prominent former Whig Judge Theophilus Lyle Dickey said that Lincoln was too closely tied to the abolitionists, and supported Douglas. But Democratic President James Buchanan opposed Douglas for defeating the Lecompton Constitution, which would have made Kansas a slave state, and set up a rival National Democratic party that drew votes away from him.[7]

text: The debates[edit]

text: The main theme of the Lincoln–Douglas debates was slavery, particularly the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. It was Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery.[8] Douglas argued that both Whigs and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty and that the Compromise of 1850 was an example of this.[9] Lincoln said that the national policy was to limit the spread of slavery, and mentioned (both at Jonesboro[10] and later in his Cooper Union Address) the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of the modern-day Midwest, as an example of this policy.[11]

text: The Compromise of 1850 allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide for or against slavery, but it also allowed the admission of California as a free state, reduced the size of the slave state of Texas by adjusting the boundary, and ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. In return, the South got a stronger Fugitive Slave Law than the version mentioned in the Constitution.[12] Whereas Douglas said that the Compromise of 1850 replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north and west of the state of Missouri, Lincoln said that this was false,[13] and that Popular Sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision were a departure from the policies of the past that would nationalize slavery.[14][15]

text: There were partisan remarks, such as Douglas' accusations that members of the "Black Republican" party,[16] such as Lincoln, were abolitionists.[17] Douglas cited as proof Lincoln's House Divided Speech[18] in which he said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free." As Douglas said (audience response in parentheses):

text: Uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible or desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. ...

text: I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? ("No, no.") Do you desire to strike out of our State Constitution that clause which keeps slaves and free negroes out of the State, and allow the free negroes to flow in, ("never,") and cover your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, ("no, no,") in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves? ("Never," "no.") If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. ("Never, never.") For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. (Cheers.) I believe this Government was made on the white basis. ("Good.") I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races. ("Good for you." "Douglas forever.")

text: Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators, who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence, that all men were created equal, and then asks, how can you deprive a negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards to him? ... Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that Kentucky has the same right to continue and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it. I hold that New York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases upon this question of slavery, and upon all its domestic institutions. ... And why can we not adhere to the great principle of self-government, upon which our institutions were originally based. ("We can.") I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall.[19]

text: Douglas also charged Lincoln with opposing the Dred Scott decision because "it deprives the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship." Lincoln responded that "the next Dred Scott decision" could allow slavery to spread into free states.[20] Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to overthrow state laws that excluded blacks from states such as Illinois, which were popular with the northern Democrats. Lincoln did not argue for complete social equality. However, he did say Douglas ignored the basic humanity of blacks, and that slaves did have an equal right to liberty. As Lincoln said:

text: I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.[21]

text: As Lincoln said:

text: This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.[21]

text: Lincoln said he himself did not know how emancipation should happen. He believed in colonization, but admitted that this was impractical. Without colonization he said that it would be wrong for emancipated slaves to be treated as "underlings," but that there was a large opposition to social and political equality, and that "a universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded."[21] Lincoln said that Douglas' public indifference to slavery would result in the expansion of slavery because it would mold public sentiment to accept slavery. As Lincoln said:

text: Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.[21]

text: Lincoln said Douglas "cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up,"[21] and that, in the words of Henry Clay, he would "blow out the moral lights around us" and eradicate the love of liberty.

text: At the debate at Freeport[22] Lincoln forced Douglas to choose between two options, either of which would damage Douglas' popularity and chances of getting reelected. Lincoln asked Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision. Douglas responded that the people of a territory could keep slavery out even though the Supreme Court said that the federal government had no authority to exclude slavery, simply by refusing to pass a slave code and other legislation needed to protect slavery.[23] Douglas alienated Southerners with this Freeport Doctrine, which damaged his chances of winning the Presidency in 1860. As a result, Southern politicians would use their demand for a slave code for territories such as Kansas to drive a wedge between the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party.[24] In splitting what was the majority political party in 1858 (the Democratic Party), Southerners guaranteed the election of Lincoln, the nominee of the newly formed Republican Party, in 1860.

text: Douglas' efforts to gain support in all sections of the country through popular sovereignty failed. By allowing slavery where the majority wanted it, he lost the support of Republicans led by Lincoln who thought Douglas was unprincipled. By defeating a pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution and advocating a Freeport Doctrine to stop slavery in Kansas where the majority were anti-slavery, he lost the support of the South.

text: Before the debate at Charleston, Democrats held up a banner that read "Negro equality" with a picture of a white man, a negro woman and a mulatto child.[25] At this debate Lincoln went further than before in denying the charge that he was an abolitionist, saying that:

text: I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.[26]

text: While denying abolitionist tendencies was effective politics, the African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass remarked on Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race."[27] In spite of Lincoln's denial of abolitionist tendencies, Stephen Douglas charged Lincoln with having an ally in Frederick Douglass in preaching "abolition doctrines." Stephen Douglas said that "the negro" Frederick Douglass told "all the friends of negro equality and negro citizenship to rally as one man around Abraham Lincoln." Stephen Douglas also charged Lincoln with a lack of consistency when speaking on the issue of racial equality,[28] and cited Lincoln's previous statements that the declaration that all men are created equal applies to blacks as well as whites.

text: Lincoln said that slavery expansion endangered the Union, and mentioned the controversies caused by it in Missouri in 1820, in the territories conquered from Mexico that led to the Compromise of 1850, and again with the Bleeding Kansas controversy over slavery.[29] Lincoln said that the crisis would be reached and passed when slavery was put "in the course of ultimate extinction."

text: At Galesburg,[30] Douglas sought again to prove that Lincoln was an abolitionist with the following quotations from Lincoln:

text: I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why may not another man say it does not mean another man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get this statute book in which we find it and tear it out.

text: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.

text: At Alton, Lincoln tried to reconcile his statements on equality. He said that the authors of the Declaration of Independence:

text: intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ... They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where.[31]

text: Lincoln contrasted his support for the Declaration with opposing statements made by the Southern politician John C. Calhoun and Senator John Pettit of Indiana, who called the Declaration "a self-evident lie." Lincoln said that Chief Justice Roger Taney (in his Dred Scott decision) and Stephen Douglas were opposing Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truth, dehumanizing blacks and preparing the public mind to think of them as only property. Lincoln thought slavery had to be treated as a wrong, and kept from growing. As Lincoln said:

text: That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.[31]

text: Lincoln used a number of colorful phrases in the debates, such as when he said that one argument by Douglas made a horse chestnut into a chestnut horse, and compared an evasion by Douglas to the sepia cloud from a cuttlefish. Lincoln said that Douglas' Freeport Doctrine was a do-nothing sovereignty that was "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."[32]

text: Results[edit]

text: The October surprise of the election was the endorsement of the Democrat Douglas by former Whig John J. Crittenden. Non-Republican former Whigs comprised the biggest block of swing voters, and Crittenden's endorsement of Douglas rather than Lincoln, also a former Whig, reduced Lincoln's chances of winning.[33]

text: On election day, as the districts were drawn to favor Douglas' party, the Democrats won 40 seats in the state house of Representatives, and the Republicans won 35. In the state senate, Republicans held 11 seats, and Democrats held 14. Stephen A. Douglas was reelected by the legislature, 54-46, even though Lincoln's Republicans won the popular vote with a percentage of 50.6%, or by 3,402 votes.[34] However, the widespread media coverage of the debates greatly raised Lincoln's national profile, making him a viable candidate for nomination as the Republican candidate in the upcoming 1860 presidential election. He would go on to secure both the nomination and the presidency, beating Douglas (as the Northern Democratic candidate), among others, in the process.

text: Lincoln also went on to be in contact with editors looking to publish the debate texts. George Parsons, the Ohio Republican committee chairman, got Lincoln in touch with Ohio's main political publisher, Follett and Foster, of Columbus. They published copies of the text, and titled the book, Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois. Four printings were made, and the fourth sold 16,000 copies.[35]

text: The Lincoln–Douglas debate format that is used in high school and college competition today is named after this series of debates. Modern presidential debates trace their roots to the Lincoln–Douglas Debates, though the format today is remarkably different from the original.

text: Commemoration[edit]

text: In 1994, C-SPAN aired a series of reenactments of the debates, filmed on location.[36]  The locations for the debates in Illinois have established memorials featuring plaques and statuary of Douglas and Lincoln.[37]

text: Notes[edit]

text:
Jump up ^ Nevins, Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852, page 163 — "As the fifties wore on, an exhaustive, exacerbating and essentially futile conflict over slavery raged to the exclusion of nearly all other topics."

Jump up ^ Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Conn., March 6, 1860 — "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present."

Jump up ^ Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 3.

Jump up ^ Abraham Lincoln, Notes for Speech at Chicago, February 28, 1857

Jump up ^ Speech in Reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (July 10, 1858).

Jump up ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 206–210

Jump up ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 212–213

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Abraham Lincoln said, "when the Judge re have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it-restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by the abrogation of the slave-trade thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. [Cries of "Yes,yes yes,no"] But lately, I think—and in this I charge nothing on the Judge's motives—lately, I think, that he, and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis, which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. [Loud cheers.] And while it is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Stephen Douglas said, "During the session of Congress of 1853–54, I introduced into the Senate of the United States a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the compromise measures of 1850, approved by the Whig party and the Democratic party in Illinois in 1851, and endorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in national convention in 1852. In order that there might be no misunderstanding in relation to the principle involved in the Kansas and Nebraska bill, I put forth the true intent and meaning of the act in these words: "It is the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the federal constitution."

Jump up ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 – Lincoln mentioned that Douglas' fellow Democrats had said that the policy of the framers of the Constitution was to prevent the expansion of slavery beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Lincoln used the following to prove the point:
"So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional Convention assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R. S. Molony for Congress, and unanimously adopted the following resolution:

'Resolved, that we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground of interference with the interests of the States where it exists, yet we moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of Congress to oppose its extension into Territory now free, by all means compatible with the obligations of the Constitution, and with good faith to our sister States; that these principles were recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which received the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to be the great oracle and expounder of our faith.'"

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Abraham Lincoln advocated returning to the policy of preventing the expansion of slavery, putting it in "the position in which our fathers originally placed it—restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone." Lincoln expanded on this point especially in hisCooper Union Address, in which he argued that most of the framers of the Constitution voted to prevent slavery expansion by means of the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise.

Jump up ^ Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny 1847–1852, pages 219–345

Jump up ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 – Lincoln said, "When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as large as the present territory of the United States, north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by act of Congress. This compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect or propose to repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and I find no fault with him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to bring in a bill for the organization of a Territorial Government—first of one, then of two Territories north of that line. When he did so it ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the Missouri Compromise. That was because the Compromise of 1850 had not repealed it. And now I ask why he could not have let that compromise alone?"

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Lincoln said, "Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it."

Jump up ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 – Lincoln said, "I say when this Government was first established, it was the policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon a new basis by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have asked or desired any where is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of our Government originally placed it upon. I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but readopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered—restricting it from the new Territories." Lincoln added that Douglas "has himself been chiefly instrumental in changing the policy of the fathers."

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Stephen Douglas read articles from one Republican Party group that opposed slavery expansion and the fugitive slave law and said, "Now, gentlemen, your Black Republicans have cheered every one of those propositions, ("good and cheers") and yet I venture to say that you cannot get Mr. Lincoln to come out and say that he is now in favor of each one of them. (Laughter and applause. "Hit him again.)"

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Stephen Douglas said, "Lincoln went to work to abolitionize the Old Whig party all over the State, pretending that he was then as good a Whig as ever; (laughter) and Trumbull went to work in his part of the State preaching Abolitionism in its milder and lighter form, and trying to abolitionize the Democratic party, and bring old Democrats handcuffed and bound hand and foot into the Abolition camp. ("Good," "hurrah for Douglas," and cheers.) In pursuance of the arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform. Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp the old line Whigs, and transfer them over to Giddings, Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy, who were ready to receive them and christen them in their new faith. (Laughter and cheers.) They laid down on that occasion a platform for their new Republican party, which was to be thus constructed."

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Stephen Douglas said the following about Lincoln's House Divided Speech – Lincoln now takes his stand and proclaims his Abolition doctrines. Let me read a part of them. In his speech at Springfield to the Convention, which nominated him for the Senate, he said:

"In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half Slave and half Free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction: or its advocates will push it forward till it shall became alike lawful in all the States—old as well as new, North as well as South."

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, Douglas quote, August 21, 1858

Jump up ^ First Debate: Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 – Abraham Lincoln said, "Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done."

^ Jump up to: a b c d e Debate at Ottawa, Illinois, Lincoln quote, August 21, 1858

Jump up ^ Debate at Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858

Jump up ^ Second Debate: Freeport, Illinois, August 27, 1858 – Douglas' stated his Freeport Doctrine as follows – "It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. (Right, right.) Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill."

Jump up ^ James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 195

Jump up ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, pages 220

Jump up ^ Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858

Jump up ^ David Herbert Donald, Lincoln, page 221

Jump up ^ Charleston debate — Douglas said, "Their principles in the north are jet-black, in the center they are in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they are almost white. Why, I admired many of the white sentiments contained in Lincoln's speech at Jonesboro, and could not help but contrast them with the speeches of the same distinguished orator made in the northern part of the State."

Jump up ^ Third Debate: Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 – Lincoln said, "It is worth while to observe that we have generally had comparative peace upon the slavery question, and that there has been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been limited to its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it, there has been peace. All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date of the Missouri Compromise. It was so again with the annexation of Texas; so with the territory acquired by the Mexican war, and it is so now. Whenever there has been an effort to spread it there has been agitation and resistance. Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that the agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend to reproduce agitation are actively at work? Will not the same cause that produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed—that which produced the agitation upon the annexation of Texas, and at other times—work out the same results always?"

Jump up ^ Debate at Galesburg, Illinois, October 7, 1858 — These quotes were originally from a speech made by Lincoln at Chicago, July 10, 1858

^ Jump up to: a b Debate at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858

Jump up ^ Debate at Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 1858

Jump up ^ Guelzo, Allen C. (2008). Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. Pages 273–277, 282.

Jump up ^ Guelzo, Allen C. (2008). Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. pp. 284–285.

Jump up ^ Guelzo, Allen C. (2008). Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. pp. 305–306.

Jump up ^ "C-Span, Illinois re-enact Lincoln-Douglas debates History in the Re-making". tribunedigital-baltimoresun. Retrieved 2018-02-28.

Jump up ^ "The Lincoln-Douglas Debates". www.lookingforlincoln.com. Retrieved 2018-02-28.

tag: ol

text: Further reading[edit]

text:
On January 1, 2009, BBC Audiobooks America, published the first complete recording of the Lincoln–Douglas Debates, starring actors David Strathairn as Abraham Lincoln and Richard Dreyfuss as Stephen Douglas with an introduction by Allen C. Guelzo, Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College. The text of the recording was provided courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association as presented in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
Jaffa, Harry V. (2009). Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln–Douglas Debates, 50th Anniversary Edition. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-39118-2.
Good, Timothy S. (2007). The Lincoln–Douglas Debates and the Making of a President,. McFarland Press. ISBN 978-0-7864-3065-9.