Manchester
As we roll into Manchester, and mark by what successive invasions the city has been half-surrounded by railways, it is amusing to remember the fears which landowners expressed in 1829, and really felt, lest the new flaming and smoking carriage-apparatus should damage the value of property which has been more than doubled in value by the new invention.
Manchester is the greatest manufactory in the world. The cradle and metropolis of a trade which employs a million and a half of souls, beside the sailors, the merchants, the planters and the slaves, who grow or carry or buy the raw material, it is the second city in the empire, and perhaps, considered in relation to the commercial influence of Great Britain, scarcely second. Blot out the capital, the credit, the living enterprise, the manufacturing power of Manchester, and we have lost a century of commercial progress. Manchester is essentially a place of work and action, carried on by men recruited from every district where a mental grenadier of the Manchester standard is to be found. Suffolk and Devonshire, Norfolk and Cornwall send their quota, as well as the neighbouring manufacturing schools of Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. Scotchmen in great numbers, and some Irishmen, chiefly from the north, are also at home there. We are speaking now not of operatives, but of those who rise to be manufacturers or merchants. The Americans are rather constant visitors than permanent residents; but the Germans are sufficiently numerous to be able to form a society of their own, the most agreeable in Manchester; and the commerce of Greece is represented by a great number of houses, which are increasing in number and importance.
Then Manchester, although only an inland canal port, trades largely and directly, through Liverpool chiefly, to the most parts of the world, consuming one-tenth of the whole imports of that town. The correspondence of a first-class house for one morning would alone be a lesson in geography.
Then again, the ceaseless enterprise and enormous powers of manufacture are supported by a constantly-improving mechanical ingenuity, which seems to those unaccustomed to such works nothing less than miraculous: as, for instance, some of the inventions of Mr. Whitworth and of Mr. Roberts.
But all this is hidden from the eye of a stranger; and Manchester is a dark and dingy ledger, closely clasped, unless he comes prepared to open a good account, or armed with letters of introduction of a more than ordinarily pressing nature. The gentleman who was all smiles while accepting your civilities, and energetically amusing himself on a tour of pleasure, has scarcely time to look up from his desk to greet you when enthroned in his counting-house. The fact is, that these Manchester men rise early, work hard, dine at one o’clock, work again, and go home, some distance out of town, to work or to sleep,—so they have no time for unprofitable hospitality or civility.
We do not say this by way of idle reproach to the people of Manchester, who follow their vocation, and do work of which we as Englishmen have reason to be proud, but partly by way of warning to travellers who, armed with the sort of letters that have proved passports to everything best worth seeing throughout the rest of Europe, may expect to pass an agreeable day or two in the cotton metropolis; and partly by way of hint to politicians who, very fond of inveighing against the cold shade of aristocracy, would find something worth imitating in the almost universal courtesy of modern nobility, which is quite consistent with the extremest liberality of abstract opinions.
Dr. Dalton, the celebrated natural philosopher, for many years a resident in Manchester, has proved that Manchester is not so damp and rainy a place as is generally imagined; that the mean annual fall of rain is less than that of Lancaster, Kendal, and Dumfries. Nevertheless, it is better to expect rain, for although the day at Liverpool, Halifax, or Sheffield may have been brilliantly fine, the probability is that you will find the train, as it approaches the city, gradually slipping into a heavy shower or a Scotch mist.
The walk from any of the stations is very disheartening; tall warehouses, dingy brick houses, a ceaseless roar of carts and waggons in the main streets, and a population of which all the better dressed march at double quick time, with care-brent brows, and if pausing, only to exchange gruff monosyllables and short words.
At one o’clock the factory hands are dismissed, and the masters proceed to dinner on horseback and in all sorts of vehicles at a thundering pace. The working-class population will be found less unhealthy and better looking than would be expected. The costume of the women, a cap and a short sleeved jacket fitting the waist, called a Lancashire bedgown, is decidedly picturesque. For a quarter of an hour some streets are almost impassable, and the movement gives the idea of a population deserting a city. An hour’s silence follows, after which the tide flows again: the footpaths are filled with the “hands;” and the “heads,” with very red faces, furiously drive their hundred guinea nags back to business. Now this is one of the sights of Manchester.
Again, Tuesday is the business day at the Exchange, in St. Ann’s Square. The room is one of the finest in the kingdom; the faces and the scene generally afford much curious matter for the study of the artist and physiognomist. Compare it with the groups of well dressed dawdlers at Leamington, Cheltenham, Bath, with the very different style of acute intellect displayed at a meeting of the Institute of Civil Engineers, or with the merchants of Liverpool, part of whom also attend Manchester.
The personal appearance of the Manchester manufacturers and their customers, as seen on ’Change, fully justifies the old saw, “Liverpool gentlemen, Manchester men, Rochdale fellows (fellies), and Wigan chaps.”
In Liverpool all are equal,—merchant deals with merchant; in Manchester the millowner is an autocrat, restrained by customs of the trade and occasional strikes, and he carries his rough ways into private life.
But facts show that, with all its plate and varnish, Liverpool is as inferior to Manchester in an intellectual, as it is superior in an external point of view.
In politics Manchester leads, and Liverpool and Lancashire unwillingly follow,—in the education of the operative and middle classes,—in literary, scientific, and musical associations,—in sanitary measures,—in the formation of public parks and pleasure grounds, Manchester displays an incontestable superiority; being more rapid, more energetic, and more liberal than her more fashionable neighbours.
A list of a few of the institutions and public establishments will show this.
The Royal Institution in Mosley Street occupies a large building, established for the encouragement of the Fine Arts by exhibitions of paintings and sculptures, and the delivery of lectures.
The Philosophical Society was established in 1781, and has numbered among its members Dr. Dalton, Dr. Henry, and Dr. Percival, and has had its Transactions translated into French and German.
The Natural History Society has filled a museum in Peter Street with objects of natural history, and opens it during holiday seasons to the public at a nominal charge, when thousands of visitors, chiefly operatives, attend.
The Mechanics’ Institution, founded in 1824, after surviving many difficulties, has become one of the most flourishing and useful institutions of the kind in the kingdom. Its chief activity is displayed in the education of the operative members in the class-rooms. The library is large, well selected, and in constant requisition. In one department the School of Design is carried on, and could not be conducted in a more appropriate building.
This School of Design, supported by the Government for the purpose of promoting design as applied to the staple manufactures, and diffusing a general feeling for art amongst the manufacturing community, was formerly accommodated within the walls of the Royal Institution as a tenant, paying a rent, strangely enough, for the use of a building which had ostensibly been erected for promoting art and science!
It was not until 1836, that, on the recommendation of a Committee of the House of Commons, active steps were taken to establish in England that class of artistic instruction applied to manufactures which had been cultivated in France ever since the time that the great Colbert was the minister of Louis XIV.
At Manchester, some of the leading men connected with the calico-printing trade and looms of art, established a School of Design within the Royal Institution, where two rooms were lent rent-free; but, as soon as Government apportioned a part of a special grant to the Manchester School, the Committee, who were also as nearly as possible the Council of the Royal Institution, with that appetite for public money which seems incident to men of all nations, all classes, and all politics, voted £100 out of the £250 per annum for rent. This school did nothing of a practical nature, and consequently did not progress in public estimation. The master was a clever artist, but not up, perhaps he would have said not down, to his work. A School of Design at Manchester is meant, not to breed artists in high art, but to have art applied to the trades of the city. The master was changed, and, at the request of the local committee, the Council of the School of Design at Somerset House sent down, in 1845, Mr. George Wallis, who had shown his qualifications as an assistant at Somerset House and as master of the Spitalfields school. At that time the Manchester school had been in existence five years, and had done nothing toward its original object. In two years from the time of Mr. Wallis taking the charge, the funds of the school were flourishing; the interest taken in it by the public was great, and nearly half the Institution was occupied by the pupils, while the applications for admission were more numerous than could be accommodated. Under this management the public, who care little for abstract art, were taught the close connexion between the instruction of the School of Design and their private pursuits.
This is what is wanted in all our towns. It is not enough to teach boys and girls,—the manufacturers and purchasers need to be taught by the eye, if not by the hand.
According to part of Mr. Wallis’s plan, an exhibition was held of the drawings executed by the pupils for the annual prizes, which had a great influence in laying the foundation for the efforts made by Manchester at the Great Exhibition of Industry in Hyde Park.
While matters were proceeding so satisfactorily, the Somerset House authorities (who have since been tried and condemned by a Committee of the House of Commons), proceeded to earn their salaries by giving instructions which could not be carried out without destroying all the good that had been done. The Manchester Committee and Mr. Wallis protested against this red tapish interference. It was persisted in; Mr. Wallis 172 resigned, to the great regret of his pupils and manufacturing friends in the managing council.
The result was that the undertaking dwindled away rapidly to less than its original insignificance,—the students fell off, and a deficit of debt replaced the previously flourishing funds. Out of evil comes good. The case of Manchester enabled Mr. Milner Gibson, M.P. for Manchester, to get his Committee and overhaul the Schools of Design throughout the kingdom.
Certain changes were effected. The school, no longer able to pay the high rent required by the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the advantages they are enjoying.
The Manchester Mechanics’ Institution was one of the pioneers in the movement which led to the Great Exhibition. In 1831, was held its first Polytechnic Exhibition for the purpose of showing the connexion between natural productions, science, and manufactures. Subsequent Exhibitions were carried out with great effect as a means of instruction and education, and with such success as to pay off a heavy debt which had previously cramped the usefulness of the Institution.
There are also several other institutions of the same class, amongst others Salford, Ancoats, and Miles Platting Auxiliary Mechanics’ Institutes.
The Athenæum constitutes a kind of literary club for the middle classes, who are provided with a good library and reading-room in a very handsome building.
The Manchester Library contains 10,000 volumes, the Manchester Subscription Library, established 1765, has the most extensive collection of books in the city.
A Concert Hall in Peter Street, exclusively used for the purposes indicated by its name, is supported by 600 subscribers at five guineas each.
The Chetham Society has been founded for the purpose of publishing ancient MSS. and scarce works connected with the history of Lancashire.
The Exchange has upwards of two thousand subscribers.
By way of helping the body as well as the mind, in 1846 the inhabitants of Manchester formed by subscription three public parks, called Queen’s Park, Peel’s Park, and Philip’s Park, in three different parts of the suburbs.
The free grammar school was founded by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It was originally founded for the purpose of furnishing simple and elementary instruction to the poor. This design is sufficiently proved by the language of the foundation deed, which describes those sought to be benefited as persons who had been long in ignorance “on account of the poverty of their parents.” The present income of the school is upwards of £5000 a-year, leaving a considerable income over its expenditure, notwithstanding that the operations of the school have been extended by a decree of the Court of Chancery. In the year 1833 the Court authorised the erection of a new building to include a residence for the master. There are two schools, called the Higher and Lower. The instructions given embrace the Greek and Latin, and the French, German, and other modern languages; English literature, mathematics, the modern arts and sciences, etc. A library is attached to the school for the use of the pupils. There are twelve exhibitions, of the annual value of £60 each, for four years, in the gift of the Warden and High Master, who, however, respect the recommendations of the Examiners. These gentlemen are three in number, being Masters of Arts and Bachelors of Law of two years’ standing, two of them appointed by the Professor, and one by the High Master. They each receive £20 for their services. In addition to the twelve exhibitions mentioned above, there are fifteen others connected with the school, the bequest of a merchant named Hulme. These are appropriated to under-graduates of Brasenose College, Oxford. Their value is to be fixed by the patrons, but cannot exceed the sum of £220 a year. They are to be held for four years from the thirteenth term after matriculation. There are sixteen scholarships to the same College; and sixteen to St. John’s, Cambridge, varying in value from £l8 to £26, stand in rotation with the pupils of Marlborough and Hereford Schools, and six scholarships of £24 to Magdalen College, Oxford, Manchester pupils having the preference. The Examiners have also the power of making awards of books or mathematical instruments, to the value of £25, in any cases of great merit.
The High Master’s salary is fixed not to exceed £600, with house-rent and taxes free. He is also allowed to take twenty boarders. He has the assistance of an Usher (salary £300, with house and fifteen boarders); an Assistant (salary £200, with house and twelve boarders); an Usher’s Assistant (salary £150, with house and ten boarders). There are, in addition, a Master of the Lower School, a Writing, and a Mathematical Master, a teacher of English literature, and another of foreign languages; all, with the exception of the last, having houses, and their aggregate salaries amounting to £800.
Four hundred scholars attended in 1850.
MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE is an institution belonging to the Unitarian body, on the plan of King’s College, London, and was opened for the reception of students on the 5th October, 1840. The curriculum of instruction embraces every department of learning and polite literature.
THE LANCASHIRE INDEPENDENT COLLEGE is one of the affiliated Colleges of the London University, and was established for the education of candidates for the Christian Ministry amongst Congregational dissenters. There are three resident Professors, the principal being the Rev. Dr. Vaughan, formerly Professor of History in the University of London.
OWEN’S COLLEGE has recently been opened on the testamentary endowment of a Mr. Owen, for affording an education on the plan of University College, London.
CHETHAM’S HOSPITAL, or, as it is more properly termed, “College,” was founded by Charter in the year 1665, by Humphrey Chetham, a Manchester citizen and tradesman, who had, during his lifetime, brought up, fed, and educated fourteen boys of Manchester and Salford. He paid a heavy fine to Charles I. for persisting in his refusal of a baronetcy, and in 1634 was appointed Sheriff of his county. By his will Chetham directed that the number of boys he had previously provided for should be augmented by the addition of one from Droylsden, two from Crumpsall, four from Turton, and ten from Bolton; and left the sum of £7000 to be devoted to their instruction and maintenance, from six to fourteen years of age, and for their apprenticeship afterwards to some trade. The funds having since increased, 80 boys are now received, in the following proportions, from the several places mentioned in the founder’s will, viz.:—Manchester, 28; Salford, 12; Droylsden, 6; Crumpsall, 4; Bolton, 20; Turton, 10. They are clothed, fed, boarded, lodged, and instructed in reading, writing, grammar, and arithmetic. The boys are selected by the Feoffees in annual meeting at Easter, within six days before the Monday in which week an application must be sent in to the Governor, accompanied by a printed note of recommendation, signed by the overseers and churchwardens of the place in which the candidate resides.
THE COLLEGE LIBRARY is situated in the same old building in which accommodation is found for the College, and is a fine collection of upwards of 25,000 volumes. The germ of this library consisted of the books bequeathed by Humphrey Chetham, many of them of great scarcity and value. The collection contains comparatively few volumes of modern date. The library is open to the use of the public without charge or restriction, and a small, but convenient, reading-room is provided for their accommodation. Books are not allowed to be removed from the premises, and every reader is obliged to make an entry of each volume he wishes to obtain. Notwithstanding the immense population of Manchester and Salford, this valuable institution is comparatively little used, the number of readers averaging less than twenty per day.
SWINTON SCHOOL.—In connexion with the Workhouse an Industrial House and School has been erected at Swinton, five miles from the City, which affords so admirable an example for imitation by all manufacturing or crowded communities, that we are glad to be able to extract the main facts concerning it from a graphic description in the first volume of Dickens’s Household Words:—
“Swinton School cost sixty thousand pounds, and is a handsome building in the Tudor style of architecture, with a frontage of 450 feet, containing more than 100 windows. Pleasure grounds and play grounds surround it, and it resembles more a nobleman’s palace than the Home of Pauper Children. The inmates consist of 630 children, of whom 305 are orphans, and 124 deserted by their parents, under charge of a Chaplain, a Head Master, a Medical Officer, a Roman Catholic Priest, a Governor, a Matron, six Schoolmasters, and four School-mistresses, with a numerous staff of officials, Nurses, and Teachers of Trades, receiving salaries and wages amounting to £1,800 a-year, besides board. Some in the institution are as young as one year and a half.
All are educated, and those who are old enough are taught trades and domestic employments. When they leave they are furnished with two suits of clothes. The character of the Institution stands so high, that the public are eager for the girls as domestic servants. If it has not already been done, we hope that the cultivation of land on the system of market gardens will be added to the trades, as affording a more certain, and, in some respects, more generally useful employment. Educated agricultural labourers are rare, much prized, and soon promoted to be overseers and bailiffs.
The education at Swinton is conducted on the modern plan, which prevails in the best schools under Government inspection. The children are taught to love and look upon their masters and mistresses as friends, to be consulted and applied to as they would to kind parents.
For instance take this bit, familiar to visitors of Infant Schools, but still new to many:—
The children under six years of age, summoned by the sound of a whistle from the play ground, trooped in glad groups to an anteroom, and girls and boys intermixed, at a signal from the Master marched into the schoolroom singing a tune.
Then followed such vivâ voce instruction as too many better endowed children do not get for want of competent teachers. Indeed a better education is now given in Workhouses than can be obtained for children under twelve years of age at any paid school that we know of. For instance:—
“What day is this?”
“Monday.”
“What sort of a day is it?”
“Very fine.”
“Why is it fine?”
“Because the sun shines, and it does not rain.”
“Is rain a bad thing, then?”
“No.”
“What is it useful for?”
“To make the flowers and the fruit grow.”
“Who sends rain and sunshine?”
“God.”
“What ought we to do in return for his goodness?”
“Praise him.”
“Let us praise him, then,” added the Master.
And the children altogether repeated, and then sang, a part of the 149th psalm.”
Now all this is very fine, and a wonderful improvement on the old dog-eared Redinmadeasy, but better follows. After a time the children grew tired and sleepy, one fell asleep. Did the Master slap them all round and pull the ears of the poor little fat somnus? No. He marched them all out singing and beating time to play for a quarter of an hour.
We commend Swinton to the consideration of the credulous disciples of the firebrand school of economists, who believe that Manchester men devour little children daily, without stint or mercy for their poor little bodies or souls.
Manchester obtained a municipal corporation under the provisions of the general act for that purpose, passed in the reign of his late Majesty William IV. Gas works, established in 1817, are the property of the town, and produce a surplus income amounting to between three and four thousand pounds a year, which are devoted to public improvements. The corporation have recently obtained power to establish water works, and to purchase up the plant of an existing company.
The guardians of the workhouses of Manchester have a most difficult task to perform, especially in times of commercial depression, as thousands are thrown upon their hands at once. Among the most troublesome customers are the Irish, who flock to Manchester through Liverpool in search of work, and form a population herding together, very ignorant, very poor, and very uncleanly.
Manchester Manufactures
It is quite impossible to give the same sort of sketch of the manufactures of this city as we gave of Birmingham, because they are on so much larger and more complicated a scale. One may understand how a gun-barrel or a steel-pen is made at one inspection; but in a visit to a textile mill, a sight of whizzing machinery, under the charge of some hundred men, women, boys, and girls, only produces an indefinable feeling of confusion to a person who has not previously made himself acquainted with the elements of the subject. To attempt to explain how a piece of calico is made without the aid of woodcuts, would be very unsatisfactory. Premising, then, that the cotton in various forms is the staple manufacture of Manchester, and that silk, mixed fabrics of cotton and silk, cotton and wool, etc., are also made extensively, we advise the traveller to prepare himself by reading the work of Dr. Ure or the articles on Textiles in the Penny Cyclopædia.
A visit to the workshops of the celebrated machinists Messrs. Sharpe, Roberts, & Co. would probably afford a view of some parts of the most improved textile machinery in a state of rest, as well as a very excellent idea of the rapid progress of mechanical arts. Improvements in manufacturing machines are so constant and rapid, that it is almost a proverb—“that before a foreigner can get the most improved machinery which he has purchased in England home and at work, something better will be invented.”
A Manchester manufacturer, on the approach of a busy season, will sometimes stop his factories to put in new machines, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds.
Of equal interest with Messrs. Sharpe, Roberts, & Co., are the works of Messrs. Whitworth, the manufacturers of exquisite tools, more powerful than any elephant, more delicately-fitted than any watch for executing the metalwork of steam-engines, of philosophical instruments, and everything requiring either great power or mathematical nicety. Some of these tools for planing, boring, rivetting, welding, cutting iron and other metals, are to be found in great iron manufactories. Indeed, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Whitworth are of a class of men who have proved that the execution of almost all imitations of natural mechanics are merely a question of comparative expense. If you choose to pay for it, you may have the moving fingers of a man, or the prehensile trunk of an elephant, perfectly executed.
From the manufacture of machines, the next step lies naturally to some branch of cotton manufactures.
COTTON.—The rise of this manufacture has been wonderfully rapid. In the time of Henry VIII., the spinning wheel came into use in England, superseding the spindle and distaff, which may still be seen in the south of France and Italy, and in India, where no other tools are used. In the same reign Manchester became distinguished for its manufactures.
In the seventeenth century, Humphrey Chetham, whose name has already been mentioned as the founder of a splendid charity, was among the eminent tradesmen.
The barbarities of the Duke of Alva on the Protestants of the Netherlands, and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by which the persecutions of the French Protestants was renewed, supplied all our manufacturing districts with skilful Artisans and mechanics in silk and woollen.
In 1786, the importation of raw cotton only amounted to nineteen million pounds weight, obtained from the West Indies, the French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies, and from Turkey and Smyrna. Two years previously an American ship which imported eight bags was seized, on the ground that so much cotton could not be the produce of the United States!
So early as 1738, one Charles Wyatt, of Birmingham, took out a patent for spinning yarn by machinery, which he tried at Northampton, but reaped no profits from the invention, which was discontinued and forgotten. In 1767, James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver residing near Church, in Lancashire, who seven years previously had invented a carding machine, much like that in use at the present day, invented the spinning jenny,—by which eighty spindles were set to work instead of the one of the spinning wheel. Hargreaves derived no benefit from his invention; twice a mob of spinners on the old principle rose and destroyed all the machinery made on his plan, and chased him away. In 1769, Richard Arkwright took out his first patent (having Mr. Need of Nottingham and Mr. Strutt of Derby as partners,) for spinning with rollers.
Arkwright was born in the humblest class of life at Preston in Lancashire. At “Proud Preston” he first followed the business of a barber, then became a dealer in hair, travelling the country to collect it, and selling it prepared to the wigmakers. Having accumulated a little money, he set about endeavouring to invent perpetual motion, and, in the search, invented, or sufficiently adapted and improved, a cotton spinning apparatus to induce two practical men like the Messrs. Need and Strutt to join him. His claim to original invention has been disputed. That he was not the first inventor is clear, and it is equally clear that he must have been a man of very considerable and original mechanical genius.
With Arkwright’s patent, the rise of the cotton trade began.
In 1786, Mr. Samuel Crompton’s invention came into use, called the mule jenny, because partaking of the movements of both Hargreaves’ and Arkwright’s inventions, by which, for the first time, yarn fine enough for muslins could be spun. Crompton did not, probably could not, afford to take out a patent, but worked his mule jenny with his own hands in an attic at Bolton, where he carried on a small spinning and weaving business. Already, in 1812, there were between four and five million spindles on this principle, but the inventor continued poor and almost unknown. Mr. Kennedy (author of a brief memoir of Crompton), and Mr. Lee, raised £500 for him by subscription, and he afterwards received a grant of £8000 from Parliament, which his sons lost in business. Mr. Kennedy again exerted himself and raised an annuity of £63, which the unfortunate inventor only lived two years to enjoy.
The spinning machines threatened to out-travel the weaving powers of the country, when, in 1785, Dr. Cartwright, a clergyman of Kent, with no previous knowledge of weaving, after an expenditure of £40,000, invented the power-loom, for which he afterwards received a grant of £10,000 from Parliament. To supply our cotton manufactures, there were imported in 1849 1,900,000 bales of 330lbs. each. Of this quantity, 1,400,000 bales came from the United States.
The Manchester manufacturers have lately raised a small fund by subscription, and sent out Mr. Mackay, a barrister, author of The Western World, to examine and report on the prospects of obtaining cotton from India; and the son of the late Mr. John Fielden, a great manufacturer, has embarked a considerable sum at Natal in the cultivation of cotton. The dependence on the United States for such a staple has begun to render our Manchester men uncomfortable. They have not, however, displayed the spirit and energy that might have been expected either from their usual political vigour or from the tone of their advice to the farmers in distress.
The successive improvements in weaving by machinery we shall not attempt to trace. To use the phrase of a Nottingham mechanic, “there are machines now that will weave anything, from a piece of sacking to a spider’s web.” But fine muslins and fancy goods are chiefly woven by hand.
The power-loom has recently been adapted, under Bright’s patent, to weaving carpets, which are afterwards printed.
With respect to spinning; fine yarns which cost twenty guineas a pound have been reduced to four shillings by improved machinery, and in the Great Exhibition of Industry Messrs. Houldsworth exhibited as a curiosity, a pound of cotton spun 2,000 miles in length.
Arkwright, among the early improvers, was the only one who realized a large fortune, which his patience, his energy, his skill, his judgment, his perseverance well deserved, whether he was an original inventor or not.
The large supplies of cheap coals by canal soon made Lancashire the principal seat of the manufacture.
Among the many who realized great wealth by the new manufacture, was the first Sir Robert Peel, who began life near Bolton as a labouring man, by frugality accumulated enough money to commence first with a donkey a small coal trade, and then to enter on a cotton mill, which eventually placed him in a position to become a Member of Parliament and a baronet, and to give his son that starting place in education and society of which he availed himself so wisely and so patriotically, to his own honour and the permanent benefit of his country.
There are several mills and factories in Manchester in which the most perfect productions of mechanical skill may be seen in operation; but it is a trade which will be seen under much more favourable circumstances in some of those valleys near Manchester, where the masters of the mill provide the cottages of their “hands,” or where the cottages are held in freehold by the more frugal workmen themselves, with little gardens attached, in pure air in open situations.
There are many cotton lords, and the number is increasing, who take the warmest interest in the condition of the people in their employ, and who do all they can to promote their health, their education, and their amusements. A visit to one of these establishments, will convince those who have taken their ideas of a manufacturing population from the rabid novelettes and yet more rabid railings of the Ferrand school, that there is nothing in the factory system itself, properly conducted, opposed to the permanent welfare of the working classes. On the contrary, in average times, the wages are sufficient to enable the operatives to live in great comfort, and to lay by more than in other trades; while between the comfort of their position and that of the agricultural labourer there is no comparison, so infinitely are the advantages on the side of the factory hand. There have also been a series of legislative and other changes during the last twenty years, all tending to raise the condition of this class. At the same time, it is impossible not to observe that, quite irrespective of political opinions, there is a wide gulf between the great mass of the employers and the employed. There is dislike—there is undefined distrust. Those who doubt this will do well to investigate working-class opinions for themselves, not at election time, and in such a familiar manner as to get at the truth without compliments. Probably in times of prosperity this feeling is not increasing—we are strongly inclined to think it is diminishing; but it is a question not to be neglected. Manchester men, of the class who run at the aristocracy, the army, and the navy just as a bull runs at a red rag, will perhaps be very angry at our saying this; but we speak as we have found mobs at fires, and chatty fustian jackets in third class trains on the Lancashire and Yorkshire line; and, although a friend protests against the opinion, we still think that the ordinary Manchester millhand looks on his employer with about the same feelings that Mr. John Bright regards a colonel in the guards. We hope we may live to see them all more amiable, and better friends.
Manchester during the last seventy years, has been peopled more rapidly than the “Black Country” which we have described, with a crowd of immigrants of the most ignorant class, from the agricultural counties of England, from Ireland, and from Scotland. These people have been crowded together under very demoralising circumstances.
But we do not dwell or enter further into this important part of the condition of Manchester, because, unlike Birmingham, the Corn Law discussions have, to the enormous advantage of the city, drawn hundreds of jealous eyes upon the domestic life of the poor; and because men of all parties, Church and Dissent, Radicals and Conservatives, are trying hard and as cordially as their mutual prejudices will allow them, to work out a plan of education for raising the moral condition of a class, who, if neglected in their dirt and ignorance, will become, in the strongest sense of the French term, Dangereuse!
But to return to the Manchester of to-day; it has become rather the mercantile than the manufacturing centre of the cotton manufacture. There are firms in Manchester which hold an interest in woollen, silk, and linen manufactures in all parts of the kingdom and even of the continent.
From a pamphlet published last year by the Rev. Mr. Baker, it appears that there are five hundred and fifty cotton manufactories of one kind or other in the cotton district of Lancashire and Cheshire. Of these, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Dukinfield, and Mosley, there are fifty-three mills, Blackburn fifty-seven, Bolton forty-two, Burnley twenty-five spinning manufactories, at Heywood twenty-eight mills, Oldham one hundred and fifty-eight, Preston thirty-eight, Staley Bridge twenty, Stockport forty-seven mills, Warrington only four, Manchester seventy-eight.
The following is a brief outline of the stages of cotton manufacture which may be useful to those who consider the question for the first time.
When cotton has reached Manchester from the United States, which supplies 75 per cent. of the raw material; from Egypt, which supplies a good article in limited quantity; from India, which sends us an inferior, uncertain, but increasing, quantity, but which with railroads will send us an improved increasing quantity; or from any of the other miscellaneous countries which contribute a trifling quota—it is stowed in warehouses, arranged according to the countries from which it has come. It is then “passed through the willow, the scuthing machine, and the spreading machine, in order to be opened, cleaned, and evenly spread. By the carding engine the fibres are combed out, and laid parallel to each other, and the fleece is compressed into sliver. The sliver is repeatedly drawn and doubled in the drawing frame, more perfectly to strengthen the fibres and to equalize the grist. The roving frame, by rollers and spindles, produces a coarse loose thread, which the mule or throstle spins into yarn. To make the warp, the twist is transferred from cops to bobbins by the winding machine, and from the bobbins at the warping machine to a cylindrical beam. This being taken to the dressing machine, the warp is sized, dressed, and wound upon the weaving beam. The weaving beam is then placed in the power loom, by which machine, the shuttle being provided with cops with weft, the cloth is woven.”
Sometimes the yarn only is exported, in other cases the cloth is bleached, or dyed, or printed, all of which operations can be carried on in Manchester or the surrounding auxiliary towns.
The best mode of obtaining a general idea of the trade carried on in Manchester will be to visit two or three of the leading warehouses in which buyers from all parts of the world supply their respective wants. For instance, Messrs. J. N. Phillips and Co., of Church Street; Messrs. Bannermans and Sons, York Street; Messrs. J. and J. Watts and Co., of Spring Gardens; and Messrs. Wood and Westhead, of Piccadilly. Next, to go over one of the leading Cotton Mills, say Briley’s or Houldsworth’s; then Messrs. Lockett’s establishment for engraving the plates used in calico-printing, and Messrs. Thomas Hoyle and Son’s print works. This work completed, the traveller will have some idea of Manchester, not without.
SILK.—The silk trade of Manchester and of Macclesfield, which for that purpose is a suburb of Manchester, arose in the restrictions imposed upon Spitalfields, at the request of the weavers, by successive acts of Parliament, for the purpose of regulating employment in that district. In 1830 there were not 100 Jacquard looms in Manchester and its neighbourhood, whilst at the present time there are probably 12,000 employed either on silk or some branch of figure weaving. The most convenient silk manufactory for the visit of the stranger is that of Messrs. James Houldsworth of Portland Street, near the Royal Infirmary. This firm was established by a German gentleman, the late Mr. Louis Schwabe, an intelligent German, who introduced the higher class of silk manufacture with such success as to enable him to compete with even the very first class of Lyons silks for furniture damasks.
In addition to the extensive application of the Jacquard loom, Mr. Schwabe introduced, and Mr. Henry Houldsworth improved and perfected, the embroidering machines invented by Mr. Heilmann of Mulhausen. The improvements are so great that the original inventor cannot compete with them. Rows of needles elaborate the most tasteful designs with a degree of accuracy to which hand labour cannot approach.
Messrs. Winkworth and Proctor are also producers of high class silks for ladies’ dresses and gentlemen’s waistcoats.
Manchester is particularly celebrated for plain silk goods of a superior quality at a moderate price. There are also manufactories of small wares, which include parasols and umbrellas. A parasol begins at 4½d. wholesale.
In Manchester the tastes and costumes of every country are consulted and suited. The brown cloak of the Spaniard, the poncho of the Chilean, the bright red or yellow robe of the Chinese, the green turban of the pilgrim from Mecca, the black blanket of the Caffre, and the red blanket of the American Indian may all be found in bales in one Manchester warehouse.
In passing through the streets, the sign “Fents” is to be seen on shops in cellars. These are the odd pieces, of a yard or two in length, cut off the goods in the manufactories to make up a certain even quantity; and considerable trade is driven in them. Selections are sometimes bought up as small ventures by sea captains and emigrants.
Paper-making is carried on extensively in the neighbourhood of Manchester from cotton waste. This was formerly thrown away; scavengers were even paid to cart it away. After a time, as its value became quietly known among paper-makers, parties were found willing to take on themselves the expense of removing it. By degrees the waste became a regular article of sale; and now, wherever possible, a paper-mill in this part of the country is placed near, or worked in conjunction with, a cotton-mill. The introduction of cotton waste has materially reduced the price of paper. No doubt, when the excise is abolished, many other articles will be employed for the same purpose.
To describe the railroads, which are every hour departing for every point of the compass, would take up too much space. But the railway stations, several of which have been united by works as costly, and almost as extensive, as the Pyramids of Egypt, are not among the least interesting sights. At these stations barrels of flour will be found, literally filling acres of warehouse room, and cucumbers arrive in season by the ton.
The canals must be mentioned, and remind us that at Worsley, near Manchester, the Duke of Bridgwater, “the Father of Inland Navigation,” aided by the genius of Brindley (another of the great men, who, like Arkwright and Stephenson, rose from the ranks of labour, and directly contributed to the rise of this city) commenced the first navigable canal constructed for commercial purposes in Great Britain.
At the present day the construction of a canal is a very commonplace affair, but it is impossible to doubt the high qualities of the mind of the Duke of Bridgwater, when we consider the education and prejudices of a man of his rank at that period, and observe the boldness with which he accepted, the tenacity with which he adhered to, the energy and self-sacrifice with which he prosecuted the plans of an obscure man like Brindley.
A disappointment in love is said to have first driven the Duke into retirement, and rendered him shy and eccentric, with an especial objection to the society of ladies, although he had once been a gay, if not dissipated, young gentleman, fond of the turf. He rode a race at Trentham Hall, the seat of his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Stafford.
When he retired from the pleasures of the fashionable world, his attention was directed to a rich bed of coal on his estate at Worsley, the value of which was almost nominal in consequence of the expense of carriage. He determined to have a canal, and, if possible, a perfect canal, and who to carry out this object he selected Brindley, who had been born in the station of an agricultural labourer, and was entirely self-educated. To the last he conducted those engineering calculations, which are usually worked out on paper and by rule, by a sort of mental arithmetic. Brindley must have been about forty years of age when he joined the Duke. He died at fifty-six, having laid the foundation of that admirable system of internal commerce which is better described in Baron Charles Dupin’s Force Commerciale de la Grande Bretagne than in any English work.
One often-told anecdote well illustrates the characters of the nobleman and his engineer, if we remember that no such works had ever been erected in England at that time. “When Brindley proposed to carry the canal over the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, by an aqueduct 39 feet above the surface of the water, he desired, for the satisfaction of his employer, to have another engineer consulted. That individual, on being taken to the place where the intended aqueduct was to be constructed, said, that ‘he had often heard of castles in the air, but never was shown before where any of them were to be erected.’” But the Duke had faith in Brindley, persevered and triumphed, although, before the completion of all his undertakings, he was more than once reduced to great pecuniary difficulties.
The canal property of the Duke of Bridgwater, with the Lancashire estates, are now vested in the Earl of Ellesmere, a nobleman who well knows, and conscientiously works out, the axiom, “that property has its duties as well as its rights.” A visit to Worsley will prove what an enlightened and benevolent landowner can do for a population of colliers and bargemen.
The educational and other arrangements of a far-sighted character show that there are advantages in even such large accumulations of property as have fallen to the share of the present representative of the Duke of Bridgwater.
Those who desire to pursue closely the state of the operative population in Manchester, will find ample materials in the annual reports of factory inspectors, and school inspectors, under the Committee of the Council of Education, and of the municipal officers of health.
FIRES.—Dreadful fires occur occasionally in Manchester. If such a catastrophe should take place during the stay of a visitor, he should immediately pull on an overcoat, even although it be midnight, and join in the crowd. An excellent police of 300 officers and men renders the streets quite safe at all hours; and a fire of an old cotton factory, where the floors are saturated with oil and grease, is indeed a fearfully imposing sight. It also affords an opportunity of some familiar conversation with the factory hands.
In taking leave of Manchester, which is indeed the great heart of our manufacturing system, we may truly say that it is a city to be visited with the deepest interest, and quitted without the slightest regret. On our political railroad we are under deepest obligations to the Manchester stokers; but Heaven forbid that we should be compelled to make them our sole engineers.