Men of Invention and Industry Part 19

It was a saying of honest William Dargan, that "when a thing is put anyway right at all, it takes a vast deal of mismanagement to make it go wrong." He had another curious saying about "the calf eating the cow's belly," which, he said, was not right, "at all, at all." Belfast ill.u.s.trated his proverbial remarks. That the cutting of the Victoria Channel was doing the "right thing" for Belfast, was clear, from the constantly increasing traffic of the port. In course of time, several extensive docks and tidal basins were added; while provision was made, in laying out the reclaimed land at the entrance of the estuary, for their future extension and enlargement. The town of Belfast was by these means gradually placed in immediate connection by sea with the princ.i.p.al western ports of England and Scotland,--steamships of large burden now leaving it daily for Liverpool, Glasgow, Fleetwood, Barrow, and Ardrossan. The ships entering the port of Belfast in 1883 were 7508, of 1,526,535 tonnage; they had been more than doubled in fifteen years. The town has risen from nothing, to exhibit a Customs revenue, in 1883, of 608,781L., infinitely greater than that of Leith, the port of Edinburgh, or of Hull, the chief port of Yorkshire. The population has also largely increased. When I visited Belfast in 1840, the town contained 75,000 inhabitants. They are now over 225,006, or more than trebled,--Belfast being the tenth town, in point of population, in the United Kingdom.

The spirit and enterprise of the people are ill.u.s.trated by the variety of their occupations. They do not confine themselves to one branch of business; but their energies overflow into nearly every department of industry. Their linen manufacture is of world-wide fame; but much less known are their more recent enterprises. The production of aerated waters, for instance, is something extraordinary. In 1882 the manufacturers shipped off 53,163 packages, and 24,263 cwts. of aerated waters to England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. While Ireland produces no wrought iron, though it contains plenty of iron-stone,--and Belfast has to import all the iron which it consumes,--yet one engineering firm alone, that of Combe, Barbour, and Combe, employs 1500 highly-paid mechanics, and ships off its iron machinery to all parts of the world. The printing establishment of Marcus Ward and Co. employs over 1000 highly skilled and ingenious persons, and extends the influence of learning and literature into all civilised countries. We might add the various manufactures of roofing felt (of which there are five), of ropes, of stoves, of stable fittings, of nails, of starch, of machinery; all of which have earned a world-wide reputation.

We prefer, however, to give an account of the last new industry of Belfast--that of shipping and shipbuilding. Although, as we have said, Belfast imports from Scotland and England all its iron and all its coal,[21] it nevertheless, by the skill and strength of its men, sends out some of the finest and largest steamships which navigate the Atlantic and Pacific. It all comes from the power of individuality, and furnishes a splendid example for Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, each of which is provided by nature with magnificent harbours, with fewer of those difficulties of access which Belfast has triumphed over; and each of which might be the centre of some great industrial enterprise, provided only there were patriotic men willing to embark their capital, perfect protection for the property invested, and men willing to work rather than to strike.

It was not until the year 1853 that the Queen's Island--raked out of the mud of the slob-land--was first used for shipbuilding purposes.

Robert Hickson and Co. then commenced operations by laying down the Mary Stenhouse, a wooden sailing-ship of 1289 tons register; and the vessel was launched in the following year.

The operations of the firm were continued until the year 1859, when the shipbuilding establishments on Queen's Island were acquired by Mr. E.

J. Harland (afterwards Harland and Wolff), since which time the development of this great branch of industry in Belfast has been rapid and complete.

From the history of this firm, it will be found that energy is the most profitable of all merchandise; and that the fruit of active work is the sweetest of all fruits. Harland and Wolff are the true Watt and Boulton of Belfast. At the beginning of their great enterprise, their works occupied about four acres of land; they now occupy over thirty-six acres. The firm has imported not less than two hundred thousand tons of iron; which have been converted by skill and labour into 168 ships of 253,000 total tonnage. These ships, if laid close together, would measure nearly eight miles in length.

The advantage to the wage-earning cla.s.s can only be shortly stated.

Not less than 34 per cent. is paid in labour on the cost of the ships turned out. The number of persons employed in the works is 3920; and the weekly wages paid to them is 4000L., or over 200,000L. annually.

Since the commencement of the undertaking, about two millions sterling have been paid in wages.

All this goes towards the support of the various industries of the place. That the working cla.s.ses of Belfast are thrifty and frugal may be inferred from the fact that at the end of 1882 they held deposits in the Savings Bank to the amount of 230,289L., besides 158,064L. in the Post Office Savings Banks.[22] Nearly all the better cla.s.s working people of the town live in separate dwellings, either rented or their own property. There are ten Building Societies in Belfast, in which industrious people may store their earnings, and in course of time either buy or build their own houses.

The example of energetic, active men always spreads. Belfast contains two other shipbuilding yards, both the outcome of Harland and Wolff's enterprise; those of Messrs. Macilwaine and Lewis, employing about four hundred men, and of Messrs. Workman and Clarke, employing about a thousand. The heads of both these firms were trained in the parent shipbuilding works of Belfast. There is do feeling of rivalry between the firms, but all work together for the good of the town.

In Plutarch's Lives, we are told that Themistocles said on one occasion, "'Tis true that I have never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute, but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness." So might it be said of Harland and Wolff. They have given Belfast not only a potency for good, but a world-wide reputation. Their energies overflow. Mr. Harland is the active and ever-prudent Chairman of the most important of the local boards, the Harbour Trust of Belfast, and exerts himself to promote the extension of the harbour facilities of the port as if the benefits were to be exclusively his own; while Mr. Wolff is the Chairman of one of the latest born industries of the place, the Belfast Rope-work Company, which already gives employment to over 600 persons.

This last-mentioned industry is only about six years old. The works occupy over seven acres of ground, more than six acres of which are under roofing. Although the whole of the raw material is imported from abroad from Russia, the Philippine Islands, New Zealand, and Central America--it is exported again in a manufactured state to all parts of the world.

Such is the contagion of example, and such the ever-branching industries with which men of enterprise and industry can enrich and bless their country. The following brief memoir of the career of Mr.

Harland has been furnished at my solicitation; and I think that it will be found full of interest as well as instruction.

Footnotes for Chapter X.

[1] Report in the Cork Examiner, 5th July, 1883.

[2] In 1883, as compared with 1882, there was a decrease of 58,022 acres in the land devoted to the growth of wheat; there was a total decrease of 114,871 acres in the land under tillage.--Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, 1883. Parliamentary Return, c. 3768.

[3] Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, 1883.

[4] The particulars are these: deposits in Irish Post Office Savings Banks, 31st December, 1882, 1,925,440; to the credit of depositors and Government stock, 125,000L.; together, 2,050,440L.

The increase of deposits over those made in the preceding year, were: in Dublin, 31,321L.; in Antrim, 23,328L.; in Tyrone, 21,315L.; in Cork, 17,034L.; and in Down, 10,382L.

[5] The only thriving manufacture now in Dublin is that of intoxicating drinks--beer, porter, stout, and whisky. Brewing and distilling do not require skilled labour, so that strikes do not affect them.

[6] Times, 11th June, 1883.

[7] The valuation of the county of Aberdeen (exclusive of the city) was recently 866,816L., whereas the value of the herrings (748,726 barrels) caught round the coast (at 25s. the barrel) was 935,907L., thereby exceeding the estimated annual rental of the county by 69,091L. The Scotch fishermen catch over a million barrels of herrings annually, representing a value of about a million and a-half sterling.

[8] A recent number of Land and Water supplies the following information as to the fishing at Kinsale:--"The takes of fish have been so enormous and unprecedented that buyers can scarcely be found, even when, as now, mackerel are selling at one shilling per six score.

Piles of magnificent fish lie rotting in the sun. The sides of Kinsale Harbour are strewn with them, and frequently, when they have become a little 'touched,' whole boat-loads are thrown overboard into the water.

This great waste is to be attributed to scarcity of hands to salt the fish and want of packing-boxes. Some of the boats are said to have made as much as 500L. this season. The local fishing company are making active preparations for the approaching herring fishery, and it is antic.i.p.ated that Kinsale may become one of the centres of this description of fishing."

[9] Statistical Journal for March 1848. Paper by Richard Valpy on "The Resources of the Irish Sea Fisheries," pp. 55-72.

[10] HALL, Retrospect of a Long Life, ii. 324.

[11] The Commissioners of Irish Fisheries, in one of their reports, observe:--"Notwithstanding the diminished population, the fish captured round the coast is so inadequate to the wants of the population that fully 150,000L. worth of ling, cod, and herring are annually imported from Norway, Newfoundland, and Scotland, the vessels bearing these cargoes, as they approach the sh.o.r.es of Ireland, frequently sailing through large shoals of fish of the same description as they are freighted with!"

[12] The following examination of Mr. J. Ennis, chairman of the Midland and Great Western Railway, took place before the "Royal Commission on Railways," as long ago as the year 1846:--

Chairman--"Is the fish traffic of any importance to your railway?"

Mr. Ennis--"of course it is, and we give it all the facilities that we can.... But the Galway fisheries, where one would expect to find plenty of fish, are totally neglected."

Sir Rowland Hill--"What is the reason of that?"

Mr. Ennis--"I will endeavour to explain. I had occasion a few nights ago to speak to a gentleman in the House of Commons with regard to an application to the Fishery Board for 2000L. to restore the pier at Buffin, in Clew Bay, and I said, 'Will you join me in the application?

I am told it is a place that swarms with fish, and if we had a pier there the fishermen will have some security, and they will go out.' The only answer I received was, 'They will not go out; they pay no attention whatever to the fisheries; they allow the fish to come and go without making any effort to catch them....'"

Mr. Ayrton--"Do you think that if English fishermen went to the west coast of Ireland they would be able to get on in harmony with the native fishermen?"

Mr. Ennis--"We know the fact to be, that some years ago, a company was established for the purpose of trawling in Galway Bay, and what was the consequence? The Irish fishermen, who inhabit a region in the neighbourhood of Galway, called Claddagh, turned out against them, and would not allow them to trawl, and the Englishmen very properly went away with their lives."

Sir Rowland Hill--"Then they will neither fish themselves nor allow any one else to fish!"

Mr. Ennis--"It seems to be so."--Minutes of Evidence, 175-6.

[13] The Derry Journal.

[14] Report of Inspectors of Irish Fisheries for 1882.

[15] The Report of the Inspectors of Irish Fisheries on the Sea and Inland Fisheries of Ireland for 1882, gives a large amount of information as to the fish which swarm round the Irish coast. Mr. Brady reports on the abundance of herring and other fish all round the coast.

Shoals of herrings "remained off nearly the entire coast of Ireland from August till December." "Large shoals of pilchards" were observed on the south and south-west coasts. Off Dingle, it is remarked, "the supply of all kinds of fish is practically inexhaustible."

"Immense shoals of herrings off Liscannor and Loop Head;" "the mackerel is always on this coast, and can be captured at any time of the year, weather permitting." At Belmullet, "the shoals of fish off the coast, particularly herring and mackerel, are sometimes enormous."

The fishermen, though poor, are all very orderly and well conducted.

They only want energy and industry.

[16] The Harleian Miscellany, iii. 378-91.

[17] The Harleian Miscellany, iii. 392.

[18] See The Huguenots in England and Ireland. A Board of Traders, for the encouragement and promotion of the hemp and flax manufacture in Ireland, was appointed by an Act of Parliament at the beginning of last century (6th October, 1711), and the year after the appointment of the Board the following notice was placed on the records of the inst.i.tution:--"Louis Crommelin and the Huguenot colony have been greatly instrumental in improving and propagating the flaxen manufacture in the north of this Kingdom, and the perfection to which the same is brought in that part of the country has been greatly owing to the skill and industry of the said Crommelin." In a history of the linen trade, published at Belfast, it is said that "the dignity which that enterprising man imparted to labour, and the halo which his example cast around physical exertion, had the best effect in raising the tone of popular feeling, as well among the patricians as among the peasants of the north of Ireland. This love of industry did much to break down the national prejudice in favour of idleness, and cast doubts on the social orthodoxy of the idea then so popular with the squirearchy, that those alone who were able to live without employment had any rightful claim to the distinctive t.i.tle of gentleman.... A patrician by birth and a merchant by profession, Crommelin proved, by his own life, his example, and his enterprise, that an energetic manufacturer may, at the same time, take a high place in the conventional world."

[19] Benn's History of Belfast, p. 78.

[20] From the Irish Manufacturers' Almanack for 1883 I learn that nearly one-third of the spindles used in Europe in the linen trade, and more than one-fourth of the power-looms, belong to Ireland, that "the Irish linen and a.s.sociated trades at present give employment to 176,303 persons; and it is estimated that the capital sunk in spinning and weaving factories, and the business incidental thereto, is about 100,000,000L., and of that sum 37,000,000L. is credited to Belfast alone."

[21] The importation of coal in 1883 amounted to over 700,000 tons.