Radcliffe came from a modest family which made the transition from farming to weaving. His father taught William about carding and spinning. In 1785, the younger Radcliffe purchased several spinning machines that had been developed by James Hargreaves. (Hargreaves machines, called the spinning jenny, were the first wholly successful improvement on the age-old spinning wheel. Its advantage was to multiply many times the amount of yarn that could be spun by a single operator. This development and others such as weavers being able to rely on uninterrupted supplies of yarn led to spinning being concentrated in factories.)
In 1789, Radcliffe opened a large cotton weaving factory at Mellor, in Lancashire, England.Radcliffe further streamlined the process by inventing a machine to improve the quality of cloth. In 1804 he also invented a ratchet (device) wheel that moved the cloth forward automatically. Radcliffe also contributed to the debate amongst entrepreneurs on what constituted profits in a capitalist system. In a May 1, 1804 letter which was never sent but later published in an 1811 book called Letters on the Evils of the Exportation of Cotton Yarns, Radcliffe said he regarded profit as being made up of two parts: interest on money and a sort of entrepreneurial wage.”
In 1828, he wrote the essay Origin of the New System of Manufacture, Commonly Called Power loom Weaving, later reprinted in J. F. C. Harrison's Society and Politics in England, 1780-1960 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
References
^ David J. Jeremy, ‘Radcliffe, William (1761?–1842)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 9 July 2008
Capital and the Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution, by Seymour Shapiro, 1967, Cornell University, printed in the U.S. by Kingsport Press.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain: Triumph or Disaster? By Philip A.M. Taylor, 1958, in the U.S. by D.C. Heath and Company.
The First Industrial Revolution, edited by Peter Mathias and John A. Davis, 1989, in Great Britain by Basil Blackwell Ltd.
The First Industrial Revolution, by Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 1965 in Great Britain, by the Cambridge University Press.
The Industrial Revolution by Arnold Toynbee,, 1956, in the U.S. by The Beacon Press
British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution by N.F.R. Crafts, 1985, in Great Britain by Oxford University Press.
