Part 21

The City Hall of Belfast is an imposing building, which cost a million and a half of dollars, and is very ornate for its purpose. It stands in the center of a large square, admirably located so that its fine proportions may be admired from all sides. The interior is very ornamental, the walls and stairways being of Carrara marble elaborately carved. On either side are handsome monuments. The building is 300 feet long and 240 feet deep; the façade is of the same design on each of the four sides, and there is a dome 175 feet high. There is a great hall for official ceremonies and public assemblies that will seat a thousand people, and several other state apartments handsomely decorated.

In front of the City Hall is a recent statue of Queen Victoria in marble, and a very good one it is. On another side the late Lord Dufferin is represented in bronze wearing the robes of a Knight of St. Patrick, while Sir Edward J. Harland, founder of the great shipyards at Belfast, is honored in a similar manner. Not far away is the Albert Memorial, a clock tower, 143 feet high, of Gothic design, which was erected to the memory of the Prince Consort in 1870. There are several other statues of local dignitaries in different parts of the city and a soul-stirring memorial to the members of the Royal Irish Rifles who died in the Boer war.

The business architecture of Belfast is unusually fine and in striking contrast to the rest of Ireland, where there has been very little building for a century. Belfast, however, is a distinctively modern city and up-to-date. There are no skyscrapers, and the limit of height seems to be six stories, but there is considerable architectural display; and the shopping streets are entirely modern, with large and attractive show windows.

You hear a great deal about the weather of Ireland, and I have already quoted an old and common joke that it never rains on the 31st of February. People never go out without an umbrella or a mackintosh, because it is always safer to carry them. It rains in the most unexpected way. The clouds gather very suddenly and the predictions of the weather bureau cannot be taken seriously. But the natives don't seem to mind it. They are so used to getting soaked that it is a matter of no consequence, and over in the shipyards and elsewhere we saw men working on through a pouring rain without taking the slightest notice of it. Women who are compelled to weather the storms frequently line their skirts with rubber cloth or leather so as to keep their underclothing dry, and every man carries his mackintosh over his arm when he leaves home in the morning.

The official reports show that in the year 1907 rain fell on 232 out of the 365 days, and in 1906 there were 237 rainy days. In October, 1907, there were twenty-nine rainy days; in December, twenty-seven; in May, twenty-two; but in September there were only nine rainy days, which might be called a drought. In 1906 January had twenty-nine rainy days, August twenty-four, April twenty-three, and November and December twenty-two each. The average annual rainfall for the last forty years has been 33,523 inches.

The highest temperature in 1907 was 79.8 degrees in the shade, and lowest, on the 30th of December, was 19 above zero.

Belfast is a very healthy city, however, the death rate averaging about twenty per one thousand. It has been very much reduced during the last fifteen or twenty years by the improvement of the water supply and sewerage. The birth rate is very high and has sometimes run up to thirty-seven per one thousand of population. Last year it was thirty-one per one thousand.

On Saturday and Sunday nights we saw a good many drunken men upon the streets. But I am told that there is a great improvement in this respect in recent years. The Orange associations of Protestants and the Hibernian and other friendly societies of Roman Catholics are both taking an active part in temperance work, from economical as well as moral motives, because they realize how much misfortune, poverty, sickness, and death--all of which increase their assessments--are due to drink.

I have not been able to find out how much money is spent for whisky in the Protestant counties. There is no way to ascertain or estimate it accurately, but the sum must be very large. But everybody agrees that it is diminishing. There is a less number of saloons by twenty-five or thirty per cent than there was ten years ago, and a corresponding decrease in the amount of drunkenness. The number of arrests for drunkenness and disorder have fallen off noticeably during the last few years. This has given a great deal of encouragement to the temperance advocates.

There is a much higher degree of intelligence and mechanical skill among the working people in Belfast than in any other part of Ireland, and the ratio of illiteracy is much lower in County Down and County Antrim than in any other part of the island. The highest degree of skilled labor is required in the machine shops and shipyards and commands the best wages that are paid to any artisans in Ireland. The women work in linen mills and shirt and collar factories.

A technical school for the specialized training of boys for mechanics was established here in 1902, evening instruction in the applied sciences, drawing, sketching, and the other arts, and in mathematics, mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering, having been given for several years in classes maintained by voluntary subscriptions from citizens. Five such institutions were in existence at that time, having between seven and eight hundred students on their rolls. An act of parliament passed in 1899 authorized the consolidation of these schools, and a beautiful building in the very center of the city, admirably adapted to the purpose, was erected and equipped at the expense of $750,000. The school now has a stated income of $96,000 from regular taxation. In 1902 classes were opened with the total of 3,381 students. At present this number has been increased to 5,064 men, women, and children between fifteen and sixty-five years of age, representing all classes and castes, who are studying everything in the way of useful arts and trades. Thirty teachers are exclusively employed, with one hundred and thirty experts from different factories and machine shops, who give evening instruction or have special classes on certain days. Nothing is free. Everybody who enjoys the benefits of the institution is required to pay a fee ranging from one dollar a term upward to sixty dollars, according to the amount of attention required. The largest classes are in engineering, drawing, electricity, and the commercial occupations, but nearly every trade is taught in connection with the ordinary rudiments of English, mathematics, and geography in the evening classes to those whose early education was neglected.

The municipality owns the building and supports the school. Sir James Henderson, editor of the _Daily News-Letter_, who was lord mayor of Belfast at the time that the school was established, is the chairman of the committee in charge, and is to be congratulated upon a great success. The attitude of the labor unions, which at first regarded the enterprise with distrust, is becoming more friendly, and they permit their members to avail themselves of the facilities provided by the school. The education of apprentices to trades without limitations is still a question of controversy. The attitude of the employers is more favorable, because nearly all of them recognized increased efficiency among their journeymen who have attended the school, and many of them are paying a part or the whole of the fees of all their workmen who will attend regularly the classes in their respective trades. The investment is, therefore, a good one for the city of Belfast. The technical school will certainly result in the improvement of the efficiency of the mechanics of the city.

Belfast has quite a number of municipal utilities. The city owns the gas works, the electric lighting plant, and all the street car lines, as well as the water supply. The gas works have proven to be a very profitable undertaking, and gas is furnished for sixty-seven cents a cubic foot, with a fair profit to the city. A municipal electric plant lights the streets and furnishes power for the street railway lines and also pays a profit. The street railway line, however, is not a profitable investment and is running behind under municipal management for several reasons.

The municipality also owns a large hall that will seat 2,097 persons, and a smaller hall that will seat 330. Each of these halls is rented for concerts, lectures, assemblies, exhibitions, conventions, balls, and for other purposes at a rate of twenty dollars per night for the smaller one and sixty dollars for the larger one, including light, heat, and attendance, and there is a good income from both. It also has a series of organ recitals in the large hall every winter, which are attended by audiences varying from six hundred to two thousand, who pay a nominal price for admission--from six to twelve cents, according to the seat--and thus the entertainments support themselves. The city also owns a number of private bathing houses, situated in different parts of the town, for which tickets can be bought for two cents and four cents, according to the accommodations. These are largely patronized by the working people, and are self-supporting. Altogether the municipal management of Belfast is admirable and affords examples which other cities may study with profit.

The advantages of Belfast for the manufacture of linen goods, the very damp climate which softens the thread so that it does not snap in the spindles or the looms and enables the fabric to be woven closer and softer, and the purity of the water for bleaching, were recognized long ago; and, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, when six hundred thousand Protestants fled from France, a party of Huguenot refugees under Louis Crommelin were invited to come over and introduce that industry. Crommelin belonged to a family that had woven linen for four hundred years. He was a man of great business ability, common sense, energy, and perseverance, and they called him "Crommelin the Great." Belfast certainly owes him a heavy debt, and it has not been paid. Although the Irish parliament passed a resolution thanking him for his services in 1707, his grave in the little churchyard at Lisburn, a suburban village, is marked only by an ordinary slab of stone. There is no monument to remind the people of the north of Ireland what they owe to his ability and devotion.

The business grew rapidly for the first century and a half, and as early as 1833 Belfast had eighty mills and was producing $25,000,000 worth of linen fabrics annually. In 1840 there were 250,000 spindles buzzing about this town, but the trade reached its maximum in the '70s, and has not increased much since. There are in all of Ireland about 35,000 looms and 900,000 spindles, all of them in this immediate vicinity, except two factories at Dublin, one at Cork, and one at Drogheda.

These are divided among about two hundred factories with about one hundred and twenty thousand operatives, of whom two-thirds are women. Their wages range from three to four dollars a week, and for men from six to seven dollars a week, the week's work under normal circumstances being fifty-five hours the year around, beginning at six o'clock in the morning, with an hour off for breakfast from eight to nine; another hour from one to two for lunch, and then they remain at work until six o'clock. An act of parliament does not permit operatives in textile factories to remain in the buildings where they work during the breakfast and lunch hours for any purpose whatever. If they bring their meals with them, they must eat them outside of the factory, for the purpose is to give them a change of air and require them to take a certain amount of exercise. Many of the companies here feed their hands in dining-halls connected with, but apart from, the workrooms.

Even these small wages have been increased from ten to twenty per cent within the last five years, and it is remarkable how people can live and support families upon such limited incomes. The wages are paid on Saturday noon--when a half-holiday is allowed, and the money is given to the hands in tin boxes. Each operative has his own number. As they pass the paymaster's window they call out their number, receive their box, take out the change, and throw the empty tin into a bin that is placed near the door for that purpose.

There are not less than 78,000 persons employed in the linen trade and its allied industries in the city of Belfast, and not less than 130,000 people are dependent directly or indirectly upon that industry for support. The situation is quite different there from many cities, because the fathers and husbands can find work in the shipyards and foundries, and thus the whole family is able to get employment. The law does not allow children under fourteen years of age to work in the factories, but a large number of boys and girls between fourteen and seventeen are engaged at wages from one dollar to two dollars a week, and much is done in the way of embroidery, hemstitching, and other forms of finishing in the households. The patterns are stamped on the cloth and the pieces are given out to women and girls to finish in their homes.

The employers exercise personal interest and have a paternal policy for the treatment of their employees, which does not occur often in the United States and other countries. This is largely due to the fact that generations have worked in the same mills for the same companies. Our manufacturing industries are not old enough for such an experience. Labor is not migratory as it is in the United States. It is customary for sons to follow the trades of their fathers, and when the daughters are old enough to go into the mill, the mothers leave it. The workmen there are satisfied with small wages; their standard of living is so much lower than in the United States that they can get along very well, as their fathers and ancestors have done for generations, upon their scanty earnings. Very few of them save any part of their wages. Not five per cent of the wage-earners of Belfast patronize the savings banks. They live from hand to mouth, and, knowing this fact, their employers are compelled to look after them in hard times. If they did not, the operatives who are out of employment would scatter and when work was resumed it would be difficult to fill their places.

The work of the operatives in linen factories is very trying on the health, because the atmosphere of the rooms is kept as damp as possible in order to soften the threads and make them more pliable. Few of the operatives live past middle life unless they have unusually strong constitutions.

More than half of the flax used in Belfast comes from Russia. Only about twelve thousand tons is raised in Ireland, and that entirely in Ulster Province, where fifty-five thousand acres are devoted to its cultivation. An average of forty thousand tons a year is imported from Holland, Belgium, and other countries, as well as Russia. S.S. Knabenshue of Toledo, the American consul, attempted to induce farmers in the Northwest of the United States, who grow flax for the seed, to ship over here the straw they throw away, but he has not succeeded in arousing any interest, although they might find a permanent and profitable market.

Until recently the spinning of the flax into thread was done by separate companies and the thread was sold to the weavers, but several years ago a combine was organized and many of the spinning plants went into a trust, which has enabled them to command better prices and be more independent. The linen manufacturers, however, are practically dependent upon the United States. We take more than half the products of Irish linen. The average for the last forty years has been 51.1 per cent sold to the United States, 19.3 to the British possessions, and 29.6 per cent to other foreign countries.

In 1907 the value of the linen shipped to the United States was $14,970,051 out of a total export of $26,895,014. In 1906 our purchases were about $1,000,000 less, but the proportion remains about the same, and American buyers may be always found at the Belfast hotels, although most of the big manufacturers have their agencies in New York.

Belfast has the largest ropewalk in the world, which employs three thousand hands, and for years was under the management of the late W.H. Smiles, a son of Samuel Smiles, author of "Self-Help" and other well-known books. It is a model institution, and among other features the firm maintains a large cookhouse and dining-room, where the employees and their families can obtain wholesome meals much cheaper than they could be supplied at their own homes. Such a benevolence would serve to decrease the drunkenness of Ireland and Scotland more than any other measures that could be adopted. Medical authorities agree that the principal cause of alcoholism is insufficient nourishment and ill-cooked food, which creates a craving for stimulants, and argue that if the working people could have better food they would spend less money for drink.

Belfast is the greatest producer of ginger ale, bottled soda, lemonade, and other aërated waters in the world, and ships them to every corner of the globe. There are sixteen factories engaged in that business. It is asserted there that soda water was invented in Belfast. Although there is no positive evidence to that effect, there is no doubt that ginger ale was first made by a druggist named Grattan in 1822, who started a factory here that is still running and has had many imitators. The great advantage found there is in the quality of the water, which is especially adapted to aëration, just as that at Burton-on-Trent is adapted to the manufacture of ale.

Belfast has two celebrated shipyards which launched 137,369 tons of steamers in 1907 and 150,428 tons in 1906. The firm of Harland & Wolff launched 74,115 tons, and Workman, Clark & Co., 63,254. Harland & Wolff ranked fourth in the order of British shipyards and Workman, Clark & Co. stand ninth in the list.

The latter firm built the first ocean turbine steamers and Harland & Wolff the first ocean greyhound, the _Oceanic_, in 1870, which was the pioneer of fast sailing on the Atlantic and a notable advance in the science of navigation. She was an epoch-making vessel from the point of view of naval architects, because of her general design and construction, being of much greater length in proportion to her beam than any that had ever been built up to that time, and she represented the first attempt to insure the maximum of comfort and luxury in ocean travel by sacrificing freight space to passenger accommodations and locating the saloons and cabins amidship. Since then all of the steamship companies have adopted the same plan, and the comfort and conveniences that are now found upon vessels have no doubt enormously increased the passenger traffic.

XVII

THE QUAINT OLD TOWN OF DERRY

Londonderry, usually called Derry, is an ancient burgh, in which much history has been enacted, and is unique in several respects among all the cities of the earth. It does not look like an Irish city at all. It resembles Plymouth, England. If you were dropped down from a balloon you might easily imagine yourself in that driving seaport, which is perfectly natural because everything in Derry is English and there is no sympathy with the rest of Ireland, or relationship either in race, religion, commerce, or customs. And the town is the property of the city of London, which accounts for the name.

It was called Derry in ancient times until King James I., in 1612, for money advanced him by the guilds of the city of London when he was hard up, gave them an area of two hundred thousand acres, confiscated from the O'Dohertys and the O'Neills for disloyalty. The grant includes every inch of land upon which Londonderry stands, "and the liberties thereof," which means jurisdiction over everything within a radius of two miles around. The aldermen of the city of London, that small but wealthy community which surrounds the Bank of England and the Mansion House in the world's metropolis, formed what is known as the Honorable Irish Society, composed of representatives of the different guilds, to hold the charter, and they hold it still. The aldermen of the city of London elect the governor of the society, who is now Sir Robert Newton, lord mayor of London, and the deputy governor, who is now a Mr. Gardiner, a resident of Londonderry, as is customary. The lord mayor's functions are nominal. The deputy governor exercises full authority, assisted by a council of twenty-four members, selected from among the most prominent residents. The municipal expenses are paid by the ordinary forms of taxation and the government is conducted like that of any other city in Ireland, but the Honorable Irish Society collects ground rent from every house within a radius of two miles. It also owns the fisheries in the River Foyle. The money is not devoted to the payment of ordinary municipal expenses, but goes into the treasury of the society in London, and a portion of it is devoted to public objects here. Magee College, the Presbyterian institution, receives a generous grant. Foyle College, a nonconformist institution, and the Roman Catholic college, each gets something, and liberal subscriptions are made for the benefit of hospitals and other charities and the churches of the city. The Irish Society was purely Protestant at the time of its organization, and is Protestant still, but it is impartial in its contributions to the different religious sects. There are two cathedrals, two bishops, one Roman Catholic, and one Church of Ireland, and the latter holds the ancient cathedral which, with an abbey, was founded by St. Columba in the year 546 and still is called by his name. In the pedestal of a group of statuary, known as "the Calvary," at St. Columba's Roman Catholic Church, is a famous relic known as St. Columba's stone, although his name is a misnomer. It is a massive block of gneiss, about six feet square, made with the prints of two feet, left and right, each about ten inches long.

This stone has been improperly associated in some way with St. Columba by the common people, but it has an equally interesting history, having been the crowning stone of the O'Neill clan for centuries. At his installation the newly chosen king was placed upon this stone, his bare feet in the footmarks, a willow wand was put into his hands as an emblem of the pure and gentle sway he should exercise over his people, an oath was administered to him by the chief ecclesiastic that he would preserve inviolable the ancient customs of the clan; that he would administer justice impartially among them, that he would sustain the right and punish the wrong, and that he would deliver the authority to his successor without resistance at the command of the tribe. Having taken this oath, "The O'Neill" turned his face to the four corners of Ireland to signify that he was ready to meet all foes from whatever quarter they might come; kissed his sword and his spear to signify that he was ready to use them wherever necessary, and then descended from the stone and was hailed with wild acclamations as the chief of the O'Neills, while his knights knelt before him pledging their loyalty and devotion.

At the time of Ireland's conversion to Christianity by St. Patrick that holy man visited Londonderry, where Owen O'Neill, the King of Ulster, was converted from paganism to the new faith and baptized. And, at the same time, St. Patrick consecrated this stone and blessed it for ever.