Rides on Railways Part 21

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 inst.i.tution 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 d.i.c.kens'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 n.o.bleman'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 pounds a-year, besides board. Some in the inst.i.tution 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 Inst.i.tution 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 viva 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?"

"G.o.d."

"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 munic.i.p.al corporation under the provisions of the general act for that purpose, pa.s.sed 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 Cyclopaedia.

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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulated 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 pounds for him by subscription, and he afterwards received a grant of 8000 pounds from Parliament, which his sons lost in business. Mr. Kennedy again exerted himself and raised an annuity of 63 pounds, 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 pounds, invented the power-loom, for which he afterwards received a grant of 10,000 pounds from Parliament. To supply our cotton manufactures, there were imported in 1849 1,900,000 bales of 330lbs. each. Of this quant.i.ty, 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 ca.n.a.l soon made Lancashire the princ.i.p.al 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 acc.u.mulated 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 circ.u.mstances 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 amus.e.m.e.nts.

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 cla.s.ses. 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 cla.s.s. At the same time, it is impossible not to observe that, quite irrespective of political opinions, there is a wide gulf between the great ma.s.s of the employers and the employed. There is dislike--there is undefined distrust. Those who doubt this will do well to investigate working-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, from the agricultural counties of England, from Ireland, and from Scotland. These people have been crowded together under very demoralising circ.u.mstances.

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 cla.s.s, who, if neglected in their dirt and ignorance, will become, in the strongest sense of the French term, Dangereuse!