Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Industry, Heroism, Invention, Technology, Manufactories, Patronage, Commerce

    A response to the erection in Bolton of a statue of Samuel Crompton, the person whose 'spinning-mule' 'made Bolton'. A brief biographical overview of Crompton's career emphasises his struggles and the fact that just as charity has funded the stone symbolising 'the massive mind of the man', so charity had to relieve him from the impoverishment of his 'latter days'. Complains how Crompton was cheated by Bolton master manufacturers and that 'nobody can say that Bolton has been too quick to pay even this much debt' to Crompton. Notes that Crompton's legacy consists of 'the memory of his wrongs and struggles' and an impoverished family, and deplores the fact that Crompton's living descendants are still in straitened circumstances and were not invited to the inauguration of the statue of their ancestor. However, acknowledges the possibility that the 'Committee' involved in the construction of the statue was ignorant of such descendants, and would have helped the descendants had their existence been known. Expects that Bolton will prove Punch's conclusions to be correct, and that there will soon be established a 'Crompton Fund' for caring for the inventor's descendants. Stresses that 'All Cottonia owes its pounds and its mites to the same cause' and the sight of Crompton's monument looking down on one of his impoverished descendants a 'monument' of the shame of 'cotton counties' rather than Crompton's 'inventive power'.