Part 5

The interior of a great cotton factory, when at work, presents a spectacle altogether unimaginable. The vast area of the rooms, or "flats," filled in every part with machinery, admits of no comparison with anything else in England, being found in the factory alone. A thousand great iron frames, exquisitely composite, and kept fastidiously clean, some by self-acting dusters, are in simultaneous movement, the arms of some rising and falling, while parts of others march in and out, and to and fro, giving perfect illustrations of order, reciprocal adaptation, and interdependence, and seeming not only alive, but conscious. Nothing is more striking, perhaps, than to watch the shuttles as they dart alternately right and left, every movement meaning an added thread to the beautiful offspring. The poets are supposed by some to concern themselves only with fiction. Men and women who write verses are poets only when they deal with truth, though presented in the garb of fable; and assuredly, for a poet's theme, there is nothing to excel a skilfully conducted human manufacture. Erasmus Darwin, it will be remembered, describes the whole series of processes in connection with cotton as observed by him in Arkwright's original factory upon the Derwent.

A common practice is to have the looms in a "shed" upon the surface of the ground. To be as near the earth as possible is a desire no less with the spinner, who, like the weaver, finds the lower atmospheric conditions much more favourable to his work than the upper. In any case, where the power-looms are, long lines of slender pillars support the roof, presenting an unbroken and almost endless perspective; and between the machinery and the ceiling, connected with the horizontal shafts which revolve just below it, are innumerable strong brown leather straps that quiver as they run their courses. According to the department we may be in, either threads or coils of cotton whiter than pearl, and of infinite number, give occupation to those thousand obedient and tireless slaves--not of the ring or the lamp, but of the mighty engine that invisibly is governing the whole; and in attendance are men and women, boys and girls, again beyond the counting. Their occupations are in no degree laborious: all the heavy work is done by the steam-engine; muscular power is not wanted so much as delicacy and readiness of hand and finger. Hence in the factory and the cotton-mill there is opportunity for those who are too weak for other vocations. Machinery in all cases has the merit of at once increasing the workman's wages and lessening his fatigue. The precision in the working of the machinery enforces upon those who attend to it a corresponding regularity of action. There is no re-twisting or re-weaving; everything, if done at all, must be done properly and at the proper moment. Apart from its being a place wherein to earn creditably the daily bread, if there be anything in the world which conduces pre-eminently to the acquisition of habits such as lie at the foundation of good morals,--order, care, cleanliness, punctuality, industry, early rising,--assuredly it is the wholesome discipline of the well-ordered cotton factory. Whatever may befall _outside_, there is nothing deleterious _inside_; the personal intercourse of the people employed is itself reduced to a minimum; if they corrupt one another, it is as people _not_ in factories do. In the rooms and "sheds" devoted to weaving, the rattle of the machinery forbids even conversation, except when the voice is adjusted to it. In the quieter parts the girls show their contentedness not infrequently by singing--

"The joyful token of a happy mind."

"How often," says the type of the true Lancashire poet, most genial of his race,--the late Edwin Waugh,--"how often have I heard some fine psalm-tune streaming in chorus from female voices when passing cotton-mills at work, and mingling with the spoom of thousands of spindles." That the girls in particular are not unhappy is shown by their preference of the cotton-mill to domestic service. Their health is as good as that of any other class of operatives; and though they have to keep upon their feet, it is not for so long a time as young women in city shops. Of course there is a shadowy side to life identified with the factory. The hands do not live in Elysium, any more than the agricultural labourer does in Arcadia. The masters, as everywhere else, are both good and bad: in the aggregate they are no worse than their fellows in other places, and to expect them to be better would be premature. In case of grievance or abuse there is an "inspector" to apply to for remedy. The wages are as good as those earned by any other large class of English work-people; and if the towns in which so many abide are unlovely, the Lancashire cotton-operatives at all events know little or nothing of the vice and filth of metropolitan St. Giles'.

IV

MANCHESTER

The writer of the entertaining article in the _Cornhill_ for February 1880 upon "The Origin of London" shows that had the choice of the best site for a capital to be made _now_, and for the first time, the selection would naturally fall upon south-east Lancashire, and on the particular spot covered by modern Manchester. Geographically, as the author points out, it is the centre of the three kingdoms; and its advantageousness in regard to commerce, all things considered, is paramount. These facts alone suffice to give interest to the locality; and that the town itself should have acquired the importance now possessed, in some respects almost metropolitan, looks not so much like accident or good fortune as the fulfilment of a law of Nature. The locality in question is by no means picturesque. The ground, as said before, is, on the Cheshire side, and westwards, nearly level, the country being here bordered by the Mersey, a river, as Pennant long ago remarked, utterly devoid along its course of the charms usually identified with fairly broad and winding streams. At Northen there are some pleasant shaded pathways, with willows and poplars like those upon which _OEnone_ was carved; but the bank, if much above the level, is artificial, the original having been raised with a view to protecting the adjacent fields from inundation in time of floods, such as occur not infrequently--the Mersey being formed in the beginning by the confluence of several minor streams, which gather their waters from the moors and the Derbyshire hills, and are apt to be well filled and of rapid movement.

At a few miles' distance in other directions, or receding from the Mersey, the ground becomes slightly elevated, and in parts agreeably broken, as at Prestwich, and near Heywood, where there are numberless little dells and ravines, ferny and full of trees. These are a pleasant change after the flatness on the Cheshire side, but are too far away to be called Manchester. To the Mersey Manchester makes no claim: three other rivers are distinctly its own--the Irwell, which divides the town from Salford, with its tributaries, the Medlock, and the Irk; and of these, though the colour is inexpressible, unless we go to mythology for a term, it is proud, since no three rivers in the world do harder work. All three pass their earlier life in valleys which in the bygones must have been delightful, and in some parts romantic. Traditions exist to this day of the times when in their upper reaches they were "silver-eddied." For a long distance before entering, and all the way while passing through, they have now for many years been converted into scavengers; the trout, once so plentiful, are extinct; there are water-rats instead. This, perhaps, is inevitable in a district which, though once green and tranquil, has been transformed into an empire of workshops.

The Manchester rivers do not stand alone in their illustration of what can be accomplished by the defiling energy of "works." In the strictly manufacturing parts of South Lancashire it would be difficult to find a single watercourse of steady volume that any longer "makes music with the enamelled stones." The heroine of Verona[18] would to-day be impelled less to poetical similes than to epitaphs; no sylvan glade, however hidden, if there be water in it, has escaped the visitation of the tormentors. Are we then to murmur?--to feel as if robbed? By no means. Nothing can be regretful that is inseparable from the conditions of the industry and the prosperity of a great nation. The holidays will be here by and by. A couple of hours' railway journey enables any one to listen to the "liquid lapse" of streams clear and bright as Cherith. Everything lovely has its place of safety somewhere. However doleful the destiny of the South Lancashire streams, a thousand others that can never be sullied await us at a little distance.

[18] _Two Gentlemen_, ii. 7.

Little can be said in praise of the Manchester climate, and that little, it must be confessed, however reluctantly, is only negative. The physicians are not more prosperous than elsewhere, and the work of the Registrar-general is no heavier. On the other hand, the peach and the apricot cannot ripen, and there is an almost total absence of the Christmas evergreens one is accustomed to see in the southern counties--the ilex to wit, the bay, the arbutus, and the laurustinus. In the flourishing of these consists the true test of geniality of climate; rhododendrons and gay flower-gardens, both of which Manchester possesses in plenty, certify nothing. Not that the climate is positively cold, though as a rule damp and rainy. Snow is often seen in the Midlands when in Manchester there is none. The special feature, again negative, is deficiency of bright, warm, encouraging sunshine. Brilliant days come at times, and sultry ones; but often for weeks together, even in summer, so misty is the atmosphere that where the sun should be in view, except for an hour or two, there is only a luminous patch.

The history of Manchester dates, the authorities tell us, from the time of the "ancient Britons." There is no need to go so far back. The genuine beginnings of our English cities and large towns coincide with the establishment of the Roman power. They may have been preceded in many instances by entrenched and perhaps rudely ramparted clusters of huts, but it is only upon civilisation that a "town" arises. Laying claim, quite legitimately, to be one of the eight primitive Lancashire towns founded by Agricola, A.D. 79, its veritable age, to be exact, is 1812 years, or nearly the same as that of Warrington, where the invaders, who came from Chester, found the river fordable, as declared in the existing name of the Cheshire suburb, and where they fixed their original Lancashire stronghold. What is thought to have happened in Manchester during their stay may be read in Whitaker. The only traces remaining of their ancient presence are some fragments of the "road" which led northwards over the present Kersal Moor, and which are commemorated in the names of certain houses at Higher Broughton. The fact in the local history which connects the living present with the past is that the De Traffords of Trafford Hall possess lands held by their ancestor in the time of Canute. How it came to pass that the family was not displaced by some Norman baron, an ingenious novelist may be able perhaps to tell. Private policy, secret betrothals, doubtless lay in the heart of as many adjustments of the eleventh century as behind many enigmas of the nineteenth. The Traffords reside close to "Throstlenest," a name occurring frequently in Lancashire, where the spirit of poetry has always been vigorous, and never more marked than in appellations having reference to the simple beauty of unmolested nature. At Moston there is also Throstle-glen, one of the haunts, half a century ago, of Samuel Bamford. At the time spoken of the county was divided into "tithe-shires." The "Hundred of Salford" was called "Salford-shire," and in this last was included Manchester; so that whatever dignity may accrue therefrom belongs properly to the town across the river, which was the first, moreover, to be constituted a free borough, receiving its charter in the time of Henry III., who died in 1272, whereas the original Manchester charter was not granted till 1301. To all practical intents and purposes, the two places now constitute a social and commercial unity. Similar occupations are pursued in both, and the intercourse is as constant as that of the people who dwell on the opposite sides of the Thames.

The really important date in the history of Manchester is that of the arrival of the Flemish weavers in the reign of Edward III. Though referable in the first instance, as above mentioned, to the action of the king and the far-seeing Philippa, their coming to Manchester seems to have been specially promoted by the feudal ruler of the time--De la Warre, heir of the De Grelleys, and predecessor of De Lacy--men all of great distinction in old Manchester records. Leading his retainers to the field of battle, De la Warre literally, when all was over, turned the spear into the pruning-hook, bringing home with him some of these industrious people, and with their help converting soldiers into useful artisans. A wooden church had been erected at a very early period upon the sandstone cliff by the river, where the outlook was pleasant over the meadows and the arriving Irk. By 1422, so much had the town increased, it sufficed no longer, and then was built the noble and beautiful "old church," the "cathedral" of to-day, the body of which is thus now nearly 470 years old.[19]

[19] The original tower remained till 1864, when, being considered insecure, it was taken down, and the existing _facsimile_ erected in its place.

Up till 1656 the windows of this fine church, in conformity with the first principles of all high-class Plantagenet and Tudor ecclesiastical architecture, were coloured and pictorial; the design being that they should represent to the congregation assembled inside some grand or touching Scripture incident, making palpable to the eye what the ear might be slow to apprehend. In the year mentioned they were broken to pieces by the Republicans, one of the reasons, perhaps, why the statue of Cromwell--the gloomy figure in the street close by--has been so placed as for the ill-used building to be behind it. While the church was in its full beauty the town was visited by Leland, who on his way through Cheshire passed Rostherne Mere, evidently, from his language, as lovely then as it is to-day:

"States fall, arts fade, but Nature doth not die!"

"Manchestre," he tells us, was at that period (temp. Henry VIII.) "the fairest, best-builded, quikkest, and most populous Tounne of Lancastreshire" (v. 78). Whatever the precise comparative meaning of "fairest and best-builded," there can be no doubt that in Leland's time, and for a long subsequent period, Manchester was rich in houses of the Elizabethan type, including many occupied by families of note. The greater number of these would be "magpie," or wood and plaster fronted, in black and white, the patterns, though simple, often very ingenious, as indicated in relics which have only lately disappeared, and in the old country halls of the same period still perfect, which we shall come to by and by. The style of the inferior kind is shown in an old tavern, the "Seven Stars," in Withy-grove.

At the commencement of the Civil Wars Manchester was important enough to be a scene of heavy contest. The sympathies of the town, as a whole, were with the Parliament; not in antagonism to royalty, but because of the suspicion that Charles secretly befriended Popery. It was the same belief which estranged Bolton--a place never in heart disloyal, so long as the ruler does his own part in faithfulness and honour. Standing in the Cathedral graveyard, it is hard to imagine that the original of the bridge now called the "Victoria" was once the scene of a deadly struggle, troops filling the graveyard itself. Here, however, it was that the severest assault was made by the Royalists, unsuccessfully, as were all the other attacks, though Manchester never possessed a castle, nor even regularly constructed fortifications.

The town was then "a mile in length," and the streets were "open and clean." Words change their meaning with lapse of time, and the visitor who in 1650 thus describes them may have been given a little to overpraise; but if Manchester deserved such epithets, alas for the condition of the streets elsewhere! As the town increased in size, the complexion may also very possibly have deteriorated. The fact remains, that after the lapse of another 150 years, say in 1800, it was inexpressibly mean and common, continuing so in a very considerable degree up to a period quite recent. People who know Manchester only as it looks to-day can form no conception of the beggarly appearance of most of the central part no further back than during the reign of George IV. Several years after he came to the throne, where Market Street now is, there was only a miserable one-horse lane, with a footpath of less than twenty-four inches. Narrow "entries" led to adjacent "courts." Railed steps led down to cellars, which were used for front parlours. The shops were dark and lowbrowed; of ornament there was not a scrap. Mosley Street, King Street, and one or two others comparatively modern, presented, no doubt a very decided contrast. Still it was without the slightest injustice that so late as in or about 1845 Mr. Cobden described Manchester as the shabbiest city in Europe for its wealth. That the town needed some improvement is indicated rather suggestively by the fact, that between 1832 and 1861 the authorities paved, drained, and flagged the footways of no fewer than 1578 streets, measuring upwards of sixty miles in length. Many of them, certainly, were new, but the great mass of the gracious work was retrospective. These matters are worth recalling, since it is only by comparison with the past that modern Manchester can be appreciated.

Shortly after the Restoration there was a considerable influx, as into Liverpool, from the surrounding country; and by 1710 again had the population so much increased that a second church became necessary, and St. Anne's was erected, cornfields giving place to the "Square." St. Anne's being the "new" church, the existing one was thenceforwards distinguished as the "old."[20] Commerce shortly afterwards received important stimulus by the Irwell being made navigable to its point of confluence with the Mersey, and by the erection of the original Manchester Exchange. In 1757 Warrington, the first town in Lancashire to publish a newspaper, was imitated in the famous old _Manchester Mercury_. Then came the grand inventions above described, upon which quickly arose the modern cotton manufacture. In 1771 a Bank and Insurance Office were found necessary, and in less than a year afterwards the renowned "Jones Loyds" had its beginning. Social and intellectual movements were accelerated by the now fast developing Manchester trade. Liverpool had founded a Subscription Library in 1758: Manchester followed suit in 1765. In 1781 a Literary and Philosophical Society was set on foot, and in 1792 Assembly Rooms were built.

[20] St. Anne's was so named in compliment to the queen then on the throne. "St. Ann's," like "Market-_street_ Lane," came of carelessness or something worse. The thoroughfare so called was properly Market-_stead_ Lane--_i.e._ the lane leading to the Market-place.

New streets were now laid out,--to-day, so vast has been the subsequent growth, embedded in the heart of the town,--the names often taken from those of the metropolis, as Cannon Street, Pall Mall, Cheapside, and Spring Gardens, and at a little later period Bond Street and Piccadilly. Factories sprang up in not a few of the principal thoroughfares: perhaps it would be more correct to say that the building of factories often led to the formation of new streets. The kind of variety they conferred on the frontages is declared to the present day in Oxford Road. Similar buildings, though not so large, existed till very lately where now not a vestige of them remains. The "Manchester and Salford Bank" occupies the site of a once important silk-mill. Gathering round them the inferior class of the population,--the class unable to move into more select neighbourhoods when the town is relished no longer,--it is easy to understand how, in most parts of Manchester that are fifty years old, splendour and poverty are never far asunder. In London, Bath, Leicester, it is possible to escape from the sight of rags and squalor: in Manchester they are within a bow-shot of everything upon which the town most prides itself. The circumstance referred to may be accounted for perhaps in part by the extreme density of the population, which exceeds that of all other English manufacturing towns, and is surpassed only in Liverpool.[21] Manchester, it may be added, has no "court-end." When the rich took flight they dispersed themselves in all directions. They might well depart. The reputation of Manchester in respect of "smuts," that, like the rain in Shelley, are "falling for ever," is only too well deserved; and, despite of legal enactments, it is to be feared is inalienable.

[21] The population per statute acre of the towns referred to, and of one or two others, which may be usefully put in contrast, is as follows:

Liverpool 106 Manchester 85 Plymouth 54 London 49 Bristol 49 Birmingham 48 Salford 38 Oldham 26 Nottingham 18 Sheffield 16 Leeds 15 Norwich 12