SHIPPING ON THE MERSEY
Compared with the other two principal English seaports, London and Bristol, the superiority of position is incontestable. A town situated upon the edge of an estuary must needs have quite exceptional advantages. London is indebted for its wealth and grandeur more to its having been the metropolis for a thousand years than to the service directly rendered by the Thames; and as for Bristol, the wonder is that with a stream like the Avon it should still count with the trio, and retain its ancient title of Queen of the West. Away from the water-side, Liverpool loses. There are no green downs and "shadowy woods" reached in half-an-hour from the inmost of the city, such as give character to Clifton; nor, upon the whole, can the scenery of the neighbourhood be said to present any but the very mildest and simplest features. Only in the district which includes Mossley, Allerton, Toxteth, and Otterspool, is there any approach to the picturesque. Hereabouts we find meadows and rural lanes; and a few miles up the stream, the Cheshire hills begin to show plainly. Yet not far from the Prince's Park there is a little ravine that aforetime, when farther away from the borough boundaries, and when the name was given, would seem to have been another Kelvin Grove,—
Fairyland, tram-cars, and the hard facts of a great city, present few points of contact—Liverpool contrives to unite them in "Exchange to Dingle, 3d. inside." Among the dainty little poems left us by Roscoe, who was quick to recognise natural beauty, there is one upon the disappearance of the brooklet which, descending from springs now dried up, once babbled down this pretty dell with its tribute to the river.
To the stranger approaching Liverpool by railway, these inviting bits of the adjacent country are, unfortunately, not visible. But let him not murmur. When, after passing through the town, he steps upon the Landing-stage and looks out upon the heaving water, with its countless craft, endless in variety, and representing every nation that possesses ships, he is compensated. The whole world does not present anything in its way more abounding with life. A third of a mile in length, broad enough for the parade of troops, imperceptibly adjusting itself to every condition of the tide, the Liverpool Landing-stage, regarded simply as a work of constructive art, is a wonderful sight. It is the scene of the daily movement of many thousands of human beings, some departing, others just arrived; and, above all there is the many-hued outlook right and left.
AMERICAN WHEAT AT LIVERPOOL
Thoroughly to appreciate the nobleness, the capacities, and the use made of this magnificent river, a couple of little voyages should be undertaken: one towards the entrance, where the tall white shaft of the lighthouse comes in view; the other, ascending the stream as far as Rock Ferry. By this means the extent of the docks and the magnitude of the neighbouring warehouses may in some degree be estimated. Up the river and down, from the middle portion of the Landing-stage, without reckoning Birkenhead, the line of sea-wall measures more than six miles. The water area of the docks approaches 270 acres; the length of surrounding quay-margin is nearly twenty miles. The double voyage gives opportunity also for observation of the many majestic vessels which are either moving or at anchor in mid-channel. Merchantmen predominate, but in addition there are almost invariably two or three of the superb steamers which have their proper home upon the Atlantic, and in a few hours will be away. The great Companies whose names are so familiar—the Cunard, the Allan, the White Star, the Inman, and five or six others—despatch between them no fewer than ten of these splendid vessels every week, and fortnightly two extra, the same number arriving at similar intervals. Columbus's largest ship was about ninety tons; the steamers spoken of are mostly from 2000 to 5000 tons; a few are of 8000 or 9000 tons. Besides these, there are the South Americans, the steamers to the East and West Indies, China, Japan, and the West Coast of Africa, the weight varying from 1500 to 4000 tons, more than fifty of these mighty vessels going out every month, and as many coming in. The total number of ships and steamers actually in the docks, Birkenhead included, on the 6th of December 1880 was 438.
A fairly fine day, a sunshiny one if possible, should be selected for these little voyages, not merely because of its pleasantness, but in order to observe the astonishing distance to which the river-life extends. Like every other town in our island, Liverpool knows full well what is meant by fog and rain. "Some days must be dark and dreary." At times it is scarcely possible for the ferry-boats to find their way across, and not a sound is to be heard except to convey warning or alarm. But the gloomy hours, fortunately, do not come often. The local meteorologists acknowledge an excellent average of cheerful weather,—the prevailing kind along the whole extent of the lower Lancashire coast, the hills being too distant to arrest the passage of the clouds,—and the man who misses his boat two or three times running must indeed be unlucky. Happily, these uncertainties and vexations of the bygones, actual and possible, have now been neutralised, say since 20th January 1886, by the construction of the Cheshire Lines tunnel under the river.
RAN AWAY TO SEA
Nothing, on a fine day, can be more exhilarating than three or four hours upon the Mersey. Liverpool, go where we may, is, in the better parts, a place emphatically of exhilarations. The activity of the river-life is prefigured in the jauntiness of the movement in the streets; the display in the shop-windows, at all events where one has to make way for the current of well-dressed ladies which at noon adds in no slight measure to the various gaiety of the scene, is a constant stimulus to the fancy—felt so much the more if one's railway ticket for the day has been purchased in homely Stockport, or dull Bury, or unadorned Middleton, or even in thronged Manchester. Still it is upon the water that the impression is most animating. High up the river, generally near the Rock Ferry pier, a guardship is stationed—usually an ironclad. Beyond this we come upon four old men-of-war used as training-ships. The Conway, a naval school for young officers, accommodates 150, including many of good birth, who pay £50 a-year apiece. The Indefatigable gives gratuitous teaching to the sons of sailors, orphans, and other homeless boys. The Akbar and the Clarence are Reformatory schools, the first for misbehaving Protestant lads, the other for Catholics. The good work done by these Reformatories is immense. During the three years 1876 to 1878, the number passed out of the two vessels was 1890, and of these no fewer than 1420 had been converted into capital young seamen.[8]
Who will write us a book upon the immeasurable minor privileges of life, the things we are apt to pass by and take no note of, because "common"? Sailing upon this glorious river, how beautiful overhead the gleam, against the azure, of the sea-gulls! Liverpool is just near enough to the saltwater for them to come as daily visitants, just far enough for them to be never so many as to spoil the sweet charm of the unexpected: for the moment they make one forget even the ships. Man's most precious and enduring possessions are the loveliness and the significance of nature. Were all things valued as they deserve, perhaps these cheery sea-birds would have their due.
The Liverpool docks are more remarkable than those even of London. Some of the famed receptacles fed from the Thames are more capacious, and the number of vessels they contain when full is proportionately greater than is possible in the largest of the Liverpool. But in London there are not so many, nor is there so great a variety of cargo seen upon the quays, nor is the quantity of certain imports so vast. In the single month of October 1880 Liverpool imported from North America of apples alone no fewer than 167,400 barrels. Most of the docks are devoted to particular classes of ships or steamers, or to special branches of trade. The King's Dock is the chief scene of the reception of tobacco, the quantity of which brought into Liverpool is second only to the London import; while the Brunswick is chiefly devoted to the ships bringing timber. The magnificent Langton and Alexandra Docks, opened in September 1881, are reserved for the ocean steamers, which previously had to lie at anchor in the channel, considerably to the disadvantage of all concerned, but which now enjoy all the privileges of the smallest craft. At intervals along the quays there are huge cranes for lifting; and very interesting is it to note the care taken that their strength, though herculean, shall not be overtaxed, every crane being marked according to its power, "Not to lift more than two tons," or whatever other weight it is adapted to. Like old Bristol, Liverpool holds her docks in her arms. In London, as an entertaining German traveller told his countrymen some fifty years ago, a merchant, when he wants to despatch an order to his ship in the docks, "must often send his clerk down by the railroad; in Liverpool he may almost make himself heard in the docks out of his counting-house."[9] This comes mainly of the town and the docks having grown up together.
The "dockmen" are well worth notice. None of the loading and unloading of the ships is done by the sailors. As soon as the vessel is safely "berthed," the consignees contract with an intermediate operator called a stevedore,[10] who engages as many men as he requires, paying them 4s. 6d. per day, and for half-days and quarter-days in proportion. Nowhere do we see a better illustration than is supplied in Liverpool of the primitive Judean market-places, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" "Because no man hath hired us." Work enough for all there never is: a circumstance not surprising when we consider that the total number of day-labourers in Liverpool is estimated at 30,000. The non-employed, who are believed to be always about one-half, or 15,000, congregate near the water; a favourite place of assembly appears to be the pavement adjoining the Baths. The dockmen correspond to the male adults among the operatives in the cotton-mill districts, with the great distinction that they are employed and paid by time, and that they are not helped by the girls and women of their families, who in the factories are quite as useful and important as the rougher sex. They correspond also to the "pitmen" of collieries, and to journeymen labourers in general. Most of them are Irish—as many, it is said, as nine-tenths of the 30,000—and as usual with that race of people, they have their homes near together. These are chiefly in the district including Scotland Road, where a very different scene awaits the tourist. Faction-fights are the established recreation; the men engage in the streets, the women hurl missiles from the roofs of the houses. Liverpool has a profoundly mournful as well as a brilliant side: Canon Kingsley once said that the handsomest set of men he had ever beheld at one view was the group assembled within the quadrangle of the Liverpool Exchange: the Income-tax assessment of Liverpool amounts to nearly sixteen millions sterling: the people claim to be "Evangelical" beyond compare; and that they have intellectual power none will dispute:—behind the scenes the fact remains that nowhere in our island is there deeper destitution and profounder spiritual darkness.[11] When the famished and ignorant have to be dealt with, it is better to begin with supply of good food than with aëriform benedictions. Lady Hope (née Miss Elizabeth R. Cotton) has shown that among the genuine levers of civilisation there are none more substantial than good warm coffee and cocoa. Liverpool, fully understanding this, is giving to the philanthropic all over England a lesson which, if discreetly taken up, cannot fail to tell immensely on the morals, as well as the physical needs, of the poor and destitute. All along the line of the docks there are "cocoa-shops," some of them upon wheels, metallic tickets, called "cocoa-pennies," giving access.
Liverpool is a town of comparatively modern date, being far younger than Warrington, Preston, Lancaster, and many another which commercially it has superseded. The name does not occur in Domesday Book, compiled a.d. 1086, nor till the time of King John does even the river seem to have been much used. English commerce during the era of the Crusades did not extend beyond continental Europe, the communications with which were confined to London, Bristol, and a few inconsiderable places on the southern coasts. Passengers to Ireland went chiefly by way of the Dee, and upon the Mersey there were only a few fishing-boats. At the commencement of the thirteenth century came a change. The advantages of the Mersey as a harbour were perceived, and the fishing village upon the northern shore asked for a charter, which in 1207 was granted. Liverpool, as a borough, is thus now in its 685th year. That this great and opulent city should virtually have begun life just at the period indicated is a circumstance of no mean interest, since the reign of John, up till the time of the barons' gathering at Runnymede, was utterly bare of historical incident, and the condition of the country in general was poor and depressed. Cœur de Lion, the popular idol, though scarcely ever seen at home, was dead. John, the basest monarch who ever sat upon the throne of England, had himself extinguished every spark of loyal sentiment by his cruel murder of Prince Arthur. Art was nearly passive, and literature, except in the person of Layamon, had no existence. Such was the age, overcast and silent, in which the foundations of Liverpool were laid: contemplating the times, and all that has come of the event, one cannot but think of acorn-planting in winter, and recall the image in Faust,—
ST. NICHOLAS CHURCH, LIVERPOOL
The growth of the new borough was for a long period very slow. In 1272, the year of the accession of Edward I., Liverpool consisted of only 168 houses, occupied (computing on the usual basis) by about 840 people; and even a century later, when Edward III. appealed to the nation to support him in his attack upon France, though Bristol supplied twenty-four vessels and 800 men, Liverpool could furnish no more than one solitary barque with a crew of six. It was shortly after this date that the original church of "Our Lady and St. Nicholas" was erected. Were the building, as it existed for upwards of 400 years, still intact, or nearly so, Liverpool would possess no memorial of the past more attractive. But in the first place, in 1774, the body was taken down and rebuilt. Then, in 1815, the same was done with the tower, the architect wisely superseding the primitive spire with the beautiful lantern by which St. Nicholas's is now recognised even from the opposite side of the water. Of the original ecclesiastical establishment all that remains is the graveyard, once embellished with trees, and in particular with a "great Thorne," in summer white and fragrant, which the tasteless and ruthless old rector of the time was formally and most justly impeached for destroying "without leave or license." Wilful and needless slaying of ornamental trees, such as no money can buy or replace, and which have taken perhaps a century or more to grow, is always an act of ingratitude, if not of the nature of a crime, and never less excusable than when committed on consecrated ground. The dedication to St. Nicholas shows that the old Liverpool townsfolk were superstitious, if not pious. It is St. Nicholas who on the strength of the legend is found in Dibdin as "the sweet little cherub"—
Up to 1699 the building in question was only the "chappell of Leverpoole," the parish in which the town lay being Walton.
In 1533, or shortly afterwards, temp. Henry VIII., John Leland visited Liverpool, which he describes as being "a pavid Towne," with a castle, and a "Stone Howse," the residence of the "Erle of Derbe." He adds, that there was a small custom-house, at which the dues were paid upon linen-yarn brought from Dublin and Belfast for transmission to Manchester[12]. A fortunate circumstance it has always been for Ireland that she possesses so near and ready a customer for her various produce as wealthy Liverpool. Fifty years later, Camden describes the town as "neat and populous"—the former epithet needing translation; and by the time of Cromwell the amount of shipping had nearly doubled: the Mersey, it hardly needs saying, is the natural westward channel for the commerce of the whole of the active district which has Manchester for its centre, and the value of this was now fast becoming apparent. By the end of the sixteenth century south-east Lancashire was becoming distinguished for its productive power. A large and constantly increasing supply of manufactures adapted for export implied imports. The interests of Manchester and Liverpool soon declared themselves alike. Of no two places in the world can it be said with more truth, that they have "lived and loved together, through many changing years"; though it may be a question whether they have always "wept each other's tears." In addition to the impulse given to shippers by extended manufacturing, the captains who sailed upon the Irish Sea found in the Mersey their securest haven, the more so since the Dee was now silting up—a misfortune for once so favoured Chester which at last threw it commercially quite into the shade. The Lune was also destined to lose in favour: an event not without a certain kind of pathos, since cotton was imported into Lancaster long before it was brought to Liverpool. Conditions of all kinds being so happy, prosperity was assured. Liverpool had now only to be thankful, industrious, honest, and prudent.
Singular to say, in the year 1635 Liverpool was not thought worthy of a place in the map of England. In Selden's Mare Clausum, seu de Dominio Maris there is a map in which Preston, Wigan, Manchester, and Chester, are all set down, but, although the Mersey lies in readiness, there is no Liverpool!
The period of the Restoration was particularly eventful. The Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666 led to a large migration of Londoners into Lancashire, and especially to Liverpool, trade with the North American "Plantations," and with the sugar-producing islands of the Caribbean Sea, being now rapidly progressive. Contemporaneously there was a flocking thither of younger sons of country squires, who, anticipating the Duke of Argyll of to-day, saw that commerce is the best of tutors. From these descended some of the most eminent of the old Liverpool families. The increasing demand for sugar in England led, unfortunately, to sad self-contamination. Following the example of Bristol, Liverpool gave itself to the slave-trade, and for ninety-seven years, 1709 to 1806, the whole tone and tendency of the local sentiment were debased by it. The Roscoes, the Rathbones, and others among the high-minded, did their best to arouse their brother merchants to the iniquity of the traffic, and to counteract the moral damage to the community; but mischief of such a character sinks deep, and the lapse of generations is required to efface it entirely. Mr. W. W. Briggs considers that the shadow is still perceptible.[13] Politely called the "West India trade," no doubt legitimate commerce was bound up with the shocking misdeed, but the kernel was the same. It began with barter of the manufactures of Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham, for the negroes demanded, first, by the sugar-planters, and afterwards, in Virginia, for the tobacco-farms. Infamous fraud could not but follow; and a certain callousness, attributable in part to ignorance of the methods employed, was engendered even in those who had no interest in the results. When George III. was but newly crowned, slaves of both sexes were at times openly sold by advertisement in Liverpool! Money was made fast by the trade in human beings, and many men accumulated great fortunes, memorials of which it would not be hard to find. All this, we may be thankful, is now done with for ever. To recall the story is painful but unavoidable, since no sketch of the history of Liverpool can be complete without reference to it. There is no need, however, to dwell further upon it. Escape always from the thought of crime as soon as possible. Every one, at all events, must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the outcry by the interested that the total ruin of Liverpool, with downfall of Church and State, would ensue upon abolition, the town has done better without the slave-trade.
The period of most astonishing expansion has been that which, as in Manchester, may be termed the strictly modern one. The best of the public buildings have been erected within the memory of living men. Most of the docks have been constructed since 1812. The first steamboat upon the Mersey turned its paddles in 1815. The first steam voyage to New York commemorates 1838. In Liverpool, it should not be forgotten, originated directly afterwards the great scheme which gave rise to the "Peninsular and Oriental," upon which followed in turn the Suez Railway, and then the Suez Canal. The current era has also witnessed an immense influx into Liverpool of well-informed American, Canadian, and continental merchants, Germans particularly. These have brought (and every year sees new arrivals) the habits of thought, the special views, and the fruits of the widely diverse social and political training peculiar to the respective nationalities.
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, LIVERPOOL
A very considerable number of the native English Liverpool merchants have resided, sometimes for a lengthened period, in foreign countries. Maintaining correspondence with those countries, having connections one with another all over the world, they are kept alive to everything that has relation to commerce. They can tell us about the harvests in all parts of the world, the value of gold and silver, and the operation of legal enactments. Residence abroad supplies new and more liberal ideas, and enables men to judge more accurately. The result is that, although Liverpool, like other places, contains its full quota of the incurably ignorant and prejudiced, the spirit and the method of the mercantile community are in the aggregate thoughtful, inviting, and enjoyable. The occupations of the better class of merchants, and their constant consociation with one another, require and develop not only business powers, but the courtesies which distinguish gentlemen. A stamp is given quite different from that which comes of life spent habitually among "hands";[14] the impression upon the mind of the visitor is that, whatever may be the case elsewhere, in Liverpool ability and good manners are in partnership. And this not only in commercial transactions: the characteristics observable in office hours reappear in the privacy of home.
The description of business transacted in Liverpool is almost peculiar to the place. After the shipbuilders and the manufacturers of shipping adjuncts, chain-cables, etc., there are few men in the superior mercantile class who produce anything. Liverpool is a city of agents. Its function is not to make, but to transfer. Nearly every bale or box of merchandise that enters the town is purely en route. Hence it comes that Liverpool gathers up coin even when times are "bad." Whether the owner of the merchandise eventually loses or gains, Liverpool has to be paid the expenses of the passing through. Much of the raw material that comes from abroad changes hands several times before the final despatch, though not by any means through the ordinary old-fashioned processes of mere buying and selling. In the daily reports of the cotton-market a certain quantity is always distinguished as bought "upon speculation." The adventurous do not wait for the actual arrival of the particular article they devote their attention to. Like the Covent Garden wholesale fruitmen, who risk purchase of the produce of the Kentish cherry-orchards while the trees are only in bloom, the Liverpool cotton brokers deal in what they call "futures."
Another curious feature is the problematical character of every man's day. The owner of a cotton-mill or an iron-foundry proceeds, like a train upon the rails, according to a definite and preconcerted plan. A Liverpool foreign merchant, when leaving home in the morning, is seldom able to forecast what will happen before night. Telegrams from distant countries are prone to bring news that changes the whole complexion of affairs. The limitless foreign connections tend also to render his sympathies cosmopolitan rather than such as pertain to old-fashioned citizens pure and simple. Once a day at least his thoughts and desires are in some far-away part of the globe. Broadly speaking, the merchants, like their ships in the river, are only at anchor in Liverpool. The owner of a "works" must remain with his bricks and mortar; the Liverpool merchant, if he pleases, can weigh and depart. Though the day is marked by conjecture, it is natural to hope for good. Hence much of the sprightliness of the Liverpool character—the perennial uncertainty underlying the equally well-marked disposition to "eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," or, at all events, may die. This in turn seems to account for the high percentage of shops of the glittering class and that deal in luxuries. Making their money in the way they do, the Liverpool people care less to hoard it than to indulge in the spending. How open-handed they can be when called upon is declared by the sums raised for the Bishopric and the University College. In proportion, they have more money than other people, the inhabitants of London alone excepted. The income-tax assessment has already been mentioned as nearly sixteen millions. The actual sum for the year ending 5th April 1876 was £15,943,000, against Manchester, £13,907,000, Birmingham, £6,473,884, London, £50,808,000. The superiority in comparison with Manchester may come partly, perhaps, of certain firms in the last-named place returning from the country towns or villages where their "works" are situated. Liverpool is self-contained, Manchester is diffused.
ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LIVERPOOL
Liverpool may well be proud of her public buildings. Opinions differ in regard to the large block which includes the Custom-house, commonly called "Revenue Buildings"; but none dispute the claim of the sumptuous edifice known as St. George's Hall to represent the architecture of ancient Greece in the most successful degree yet attained in England. The eastern façade is more than 400 feet in length; at the southern extremity there is an octostyle Corinthian portico, the tympanum filled with ornament. Strange, considering the local wealth and the local claim of a character for thoroughness and taste, that this magnificent structure should be allowed to remain unfinished, still wanting, as it does, the sculptures which formed an integral part of Mr. Elmes' carefully considered whole. Closely adjacent are the Free Library and the new Art Gallery, and, in Dale Street, the Public Offices, the Townhall, and the Exchange, which is arcaded. Among other meritorious buildings, either classical or in the Italian palazzo style, we find the Philharmonic Hall and the Adelphi Hotel. The Free Library is one of the best-frequented places in Liverpool. The number of readers exceeded in 1880, in proportion to the population, that of every other large town in England where a Free Library exists. In Leeds, during the year ending at Michaelmas, the number was 648,589; in Birmingham, 658,000; in Manchester, 958,000; in Liverpool, 1,163,795. In the Reference Department the excess was similar, the issues therefrom having been in Liverpool one-half; in Leeds and Birmingham, two-fifths; in Manchester, one-fifth. The Liverpool people seem apt to take advantage of their opportunities of every kind. When the Naturalists' Field Club starts for the country, the number is three or four times greater in proportion to the whole number of members than in other places where, with similar objects, clubs have been founded. Many, of course, join in the trips for the sake of the social enjoyment; whether as much work is accomplished when out is undecided. They are warm supporters also of literary and scientific institutions, the number of which, as well as of societies devoted to music and the fine arts, is in Liverpool exceptionally high. At the last "Associated Soirée," the Presidents of no fewer than fifteen were present. Educational, charitable, and curative institutions exist in equal plenty. It was Liverpool that in 1791 led the way in the foundation of Asylums for the Blind. The finest ecclesiastical establishment belongs to the Catholics, who in Liverpool, as in Lancashire generally, have stood firm to the faith of their fathers ever since 1558, and were never so powerful a body as at present. The new Art Gallery seems to introduce an agreeable prophecy. Liverpool has for more than 140 years striven unsuccessfully to give effect to the honourable project of 1769, when it sought to tread in the steps of the Royal Academy, founded a few months previously. There are now fair indications of rejuvenescence, and, if we mistake not, there is a quickening appreciation of the intrinsically pure and worthy, coupled with indifference to the qualities which catch and content the vulgar—mere bigness and showiness. Slender as the appreciation may be, still how much more precious than the bestowal of patronage, in ostentation of pocket, beginning there and ending there, which all true and noble art disdains.
THE EXCHANGE, LIVERPOOL
Liverpool must not be quitted without a parting word upon a feature certainly by no means peculiar to the town, but which to the observant is profoundly interesting and suggestive. This consists in the through movement of the emigrants, and the arrangements made for their departure. Our views and vignettes give some idea of what may be seen upon the river and on board the ships. But it is impossible to render in full the interesting spectacle presented by the strangers who come in the first instance from northern Europe. These arrive, by way of Hull, chiefly from Sweden and Denmark, and, to a small extent, from Russia and Germany—German emigrants to America usually going from their own ports, and by way of the English Channel. Truly astonishing are the piles of luggage on view at the railway stations during the few hours or days which elapse before they go on board. While waiting, they saunter about the streets in parties of six or eight, full of wonder and curiosity, but still impressing every one with their honest countenances and inoffensive manners and behaviour. There are very few children among these foreigners, most of whom appear to be in the prime of life, an aged parent now and then accompanying son or daughter. In 1880 there left Liverpool as emigrants the prodigious number of 183,502. Analysis gave—English, 74,969; Scotch, 1811; Irish, 27,986; foreigners, 74,115.
First in the long list of Lancashire manufacturing towns, by reason of its magnitude and wealth, comes Manchester. By and by we shall speak of this great city in particular. For the present the name must be taken in the broader sense, equally its own, which carries with it the idea of an immense district. Lancashire, eastwards from Warrington, upwards as far as Preston, is dotted over with little Manchesters, and these in turn often possess satellites. The idea of Manchester as a place of cotton factories covers also a portion of Cheshire, and extends even into Derbyshire and Yorkshire—Stockport, Hyde, Stalybridge, Dukinfield, Saddleworth, Glossop, essentially belong to it. To all these towns and villages Manchester stands in the relation of a Royal Exchange. It is the reservoir, at the same time, into which they pour their various produce. Manchester acquired this distinguished position partly by accident, mainly through its very easy access to Liverpool. At one time it had powerful rivals in Blackburn and Bolton. Blackburn lost its chance through the frantic hostility of the lower orders towards machinery, inconsiderate men of property giving them countenance—excusably only under the law that mental delusions, like bodily ailments, are impartial in choice of victims. Bolton, on the other hand, though sensible, was too near to compete permanently, neither had it similar access to Liverpool. The old salerooms in Bolton, with their galleries and piazzas, now all gone, were ninety years ago a striking and singular feature of that busy hive of spinning and weaving bees.
Most of these little Manchesters are places of comparatively new growth. A century ago nearly all were insignificant villages or hamlets. Even the names of the greater portion were scarcely known beyond the boundaries of their respective parishes. How unimportant they were in earlier times is declared by the vast area of many of the latter, the parishes in Lancashire, as everywhere else, having been marked out according to the ability of the population to maintain a church and pastor. It is not in manufacturing Lancashire as in the old-fashioned rural counties,—Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and appled Somerset,—where on every side one is allured by some beautiful memorial of the lang syne. "Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain" is not here. Everything, where Cotton reigns, presents the newness of aspect of an Australian colony. The archæological scraps—such few as there may be—are usually submerged, even in the older towns, in the "full sea" of recent building. Even in the graveyards, the places of all others which in their tombstones and inscriptions unite past and present so tenderly, the imagination has usually to turn away unfed. In place of yew-trees old as York Minster, if there be anything in the way of green monument, it is a soiled and disconsolate shrub from the nearest nursery garden.
The situation of these towns is often pleasing enough: sometimes it is picturesque, and even romantic. Having begun in simple homesteads, pitched where comfort and safety seemed best assured, they are often found upon gentle eminences, the crests of which, as at Oldham, they now overlap; others, like Stalybridge, lie in deep hollows, or, like Blackburn, have gradually spread from the margin of a stream. Not a few of these primitive sites have the ancient character pleasingly commemorated in their names, as Haslingden, the "place of hazel-nuts." The eastern border of the county being characterised by lofty and rocky hills, the localities of the towns and villages are there often really favoured in regard to scenery. This also gives great interest to the approaches, as when, after leaving Todmorden, we move through the sinuous gorge that, bordered by Cliviger, "mother of rocks," leads on to Burnley. The higher grounds are bleak and sterile, but the warmth and fertility of the valleys make amends. In any case, there is never any lack of the beauty which comes of the impregnation of wild nature with the outcome of human intelligence. Manchester itself occupies part of a broad level, usually clay-floored, and with peat-mosses touching the frontiers. In the bygones nothing was sooner found than standing water: the world probably never contained a town that only thirty to a hundred years ago possessed so many ponds, many of them still in easy recollection, to say nothing of as many more within the compass of an afternoon's walk.
Rising under the influence of a builder so unambitious as the genius of factories and operatives' cottages, no wonder that a very few years ago the Lancashire cotton towns seemed to vie with one another which should best deserve the character of cold, hard, dreary, and utterly unprepossessing. The streets, excepting the principal artery (originally the road through the primitive village, as in the case of Newton Lane, Manchester), not being susceptible of material change, mostly remain as they were—narrow, irregular, and close-built. Happily, of late there has been improvement. Praiseworthy aspirations in regard to public buildings are not uncommon, and even in the meanest towns are at times undeniably successful. In the principal centres—Manchester, Bolton, Rochdale, and another or two—the old meagreness and unsightliness are daily becoming less marked, and a good deal that is really magnificent is in progress as well as completed. Unfortunately, the efforts of the architect fall only too soon under the relentless influence of the factory and the foundry. Manchester is in this respect an illustration of the whole group; the noblest and most elegant buildings sooner or later get smoke-begrimed. Sombre as the Lancashire towns become under that influence, if there be collieries in the neighbourhood, as in the case of well-named "coaly Wigan," the dismal hue is intensified, and in dull and rainy weather grows still worse. On sunshiny days one is reminded of a sullen countenance constrained to smile against the will.
WIGAN
A "Lancashire scene" has been said to resolve into "bare hills and chimneys"; and as regards the cotton districts the description is, upon the whole, not inaccurate. Chimneys predominate innumerably in the landscape, a dark pennon usually undulating from every summit—perhaps not pretty pictorially, but in any case a gladsome sight, since it means work, wages, food, for those below, and a fire upon the hearth at home. Though the sculptor may look with dismay upon his ornaments in marble once white as a lily, now under its visitation gray as November, never mind—the smoke denotes human happiness and content for thousands: when her chimneys are smokeless, operative Lancashire is hungry and sad.
In the towns most of the chimneys belong to the factories—buildings of remarkable appearance. The very large ones are many storeys high, their broad and lofty fronts presenting tier upon tier of monotonous square windows. Decoration seems to be studiously avoided, though there is often plenty of scope for inexpensive architectural effects that, to say the least, would be welcome. Seen by day, they seem deserted; after dark, when the innumerable windows are lighted up, the spectacle changes and becomes unique. Were it desired to illuminate in honour of a prince, to render a factory more brilliant from the interior would be scarcely possible. Like all other great masses of masonry, the very large ones, though somewhat suggestive of prisons, if not grand, are impressive. In semi-rural localities, where less tarnished by smoke, especially when tolerably new, and not obscured by the contact of inferior buildings, they are certainly very fine objects. The material, it is scarcely needful to say, is red brick.
All the towns belonging to the Manchester family-circle present more or less decidedly the features mentioned. They differ from one another not in style, or habits, or physiognomy; the difference is simply that one makes calico, another muslins, and that they cover a less or greater extent of ground. The social, moral, and intellectual qualities of the various places form quite another subject of consideration. For the present it must wait; except with the remark that a Lancashire manufacturing town, however humble, is seldom without a lyceum, or some similar institution; and if wealthy, is prone to emulate cities. Witness the beautiful Art Exhibition held not long ago at Darwen!
WARRINGTON
The industrial history of the important Lancashire cotton towns, although their modern development covers less than ninety years, dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century. As early as a.d. 1311, temp. Edward II., friezes were manufactured at Colne, but, as elsewhere in the country, they would seem to have been coarse and of little value. "The English at that time," says quaint old Fuller, "knew no more what to do with their wool than the sheep that weare it, as to any artificial curious drapery." The great bulk of the native produce of wool was transmitted to Flanders and the Rhenish provinces, where it was woven, England repurchasing the cloth. Edward III., allowing himself to be guided by the far-reaching sagacity of his wise queen, Philippa, resolved that the manufacture should be kept at home. Parties of the Flemish weavers were easily induced to come over, the more so because wretchedly treated in their own country. Manchester, Bolton, Rochdale, and Warrington, were tenanted almost immediately, and a new character was at once given to the textile productions both of the district and the island in general. Furness Abbey was then in its glory; its fertile pastures supplied the wants of these industrious people: they seem, however, not to have cared to push their establishments so far, keeping in the south and east of the county, over which they gradually spread, carrying, wherever they went, the "merry music of the loom." The same period witnessed the original use of coal—again, it is believed, through the advice of Philippa; the two great sources of Lancashire prosperity being thus in their rise contemporaneous. The numerous little rivers and waterfalls of East Lancashire contributed to the success of the new adventurers. Fulling-mills and dye-works were erected upon the margins: the particular spots are now only conjectural; mementoes of these ancient works are nevertheless preserved in the springing up occasionally, to the present day, on the lower Lancashire river-banks, of plants botanically alien to the neighbourhood. These are specially the fullers' teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, and the dyers' weed, Reseda luteola, both of which were regularly used, the refuse, with seeds, cast into the stream being carried many miles down and deposited where the plants now renew themselves. The retention of their vitality by seeds properly ripened, when buried too deep for the operation of the atmosphere, sunshine, and moisture, all at once, is well known to naturalists, as well as their germination when brought near enough to the surface of the ground. This ancient woollen manufacture endured for quite 300 years. Cotton then became a competitor, and gradually superseded it; Rochdale and a few other places alone vindicating the old traditions.
The Flemings also introduced the national sabots, from which have descended the wooden clogs heard in operative Lancashire wherever pavement allows of the clatter, only that while the sabots were wholly wooden, with a lining of lambskin, the Lancashire clogs have leathern tops.
In the writings of the period before us, and in others long afterwards, the Flemings' woollens are called "cottonnes," a circumstance which has led to much misapprehension as to the date of the original use in England of cotton ipsissima. In 1551-52, temp. Edward VI., an "Acte" passed for the making of "woollen clothe" prescribes the length and breadth of "all and everie cottonnes called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottonnes." Leland, in the following reign, mentions in similar phrase, that "divers villagers in the moores about Bolton do make cottons." Genuine cotton fabrics manufactured abroad were known in England, no doubt, though the raw material had not been seen. Chaucer habits his Knight in "fustian," a word which points to Spain as the probable source. The truth as regards the "cottonnes" would seem to be that certain woollens were made so as to resemble cotton, and called by the same name, just as to-day certain calicoes have the look of linen given to them, and are sold as "imitation Irish," and as gloves made of the skins of uncertain animals are passed off as "French kid"; unless, indeed, as conjectured by some, the word "cottonnes" was a corruption of "coatings."
The employment of cotton for manufacturing in England is mentioned first in 1641, when it was brought to London from Cyprus and Smyrna. The word "cotton" itself, we need hardly say, is of oriental origin, taking one back to India, the old-world birthplace of the plant. Used there as the clothing material from time immemorial, it is singular that the movement westward should have been so slow. The people who introduced it, practically, to Europe, were the Moors, who in the tenth century cultivated cotton in old Granada, simultaneously with rice, the sugar-cane, and the orange-tree, all brought by themselves from Asia. In those days Moslems and Christians declined to be friendly, and thus, although the looms were never still, the superabundance of the manufacture went exclusively to Africa and the Levant. The cotton-plant being indigenous also to Mexico and the West Indies, when commerce arose with the latter, Cyprus and Smyrna no longer had the monopoly. Precise dates, however, are wanting till the first years of the eighteenth century, when the United States and the Mersey of to-day had their prototype in Barbadoes and the Lune, already mentioned as having been a cotton port long anterior to Liverpool. Lancaster city itself is not accessible by ships. The cotton was usually landed on the curious lingula which juts into the Irish Sea where the estuary disappears, and hither the country people used to come to wonder at it.[15] The first advertisement of a sale of cotton in Liverpool appeared in November 1758, but thirty years after that Lancaster was still the principal Lancashire seat of import. One of the most distinguished of the "Lancashire worthies," old Mr. John Blackburne, of Orford Mount, near Warrington, an enthusiastic gardener, cultivated the cotton-plant so successfully that he was able to provide his wife with a muslin dress, worn by her on some state occasion in or about 1790, the material derived wholly from the greenhouse he loved so fondly. Strange that, except occasionally in an engine-room, we scarcely ever see the cotton-plant in the county it has filled with riches—the very place where one would expect to find it cherished. How well would it occupy a few inches of the space so generally devoted to the pomps and vanities of mere colour-worship! Apart from the associations, it is beautiful; the leaves resemble those of the grape-vine; the flowers are like single yellow roses. There never was a flood without its ark. One man a few years ago did his part with becoming zeal—the late Mr. R. H. Alcock, of Bury. Lancashire, it may be allowed here to remind the reader, is the only manufacturing district in England which depends entirely upon foreign countries for the supply of its raw material. One great distinction between England and other countries is that the latter send away the whole, or very much, of their natural produce, usually as gathered together, England importing it and working it up. How terribly the dependence in question was proved at the time of the Federal and Confederate war, all who were cognisant of the great Cotton-famine will remember. Next in order would come sugar and timber, a dearth of either of which would unquestionably be disastrous; but not like want of cotton in Lancashire—the stranding of a whole community.
The Lancashire cotton towns owe their existence essentially to the magic touch of modern mechanical art. During all the long procession of centuries that had elapsed since the time of the "white-armed" daughter of Alcinous, her maidens, and their spinning-wheels, and of the swarthy weavers of ancient Egypt, the primeval modes of manufacture had been followed almost implicitly. The work of the Flemings themselves was little in advance of that of the Hebrews under Solomon. In comparison with that long period, the time covered by the change induced by machinery was but a moment, and the growth of the weaving communities, compared with that of previous times, like a lightning-flash. The movement commenced about 1760. Up till long after the time of Elizabeth, the staple manufacture of Lancashire, as we have seen, was woollen. Flax, in the sixteenth century, began to be imported largely, both from Ireland and the Continent, and when cotton at last arrived the two materials were combined. Flax was used for the "warp" or longitudinal threads, which in weaving require to be stronger than the "woof," while cotton was employed only for the latter—technically the "weft."
Fabrics composed wholly of cotton do not appear to have been made in Lancashire before the time of George II., Bolton leading the way with cotton velvets about 1756. The cotton weft was spun by the people in their own cottages, chiefly by the women, literally the "spinsters" of the family, representative eighteen centuries afterwards, of the good housewife of the Æneid and of the still older one in the Book of Proverbs, though as the years rolled on so greatly did the demand increase that every child had work of one kind or another. Thus began "infant labour," afterwards so much abused. The employment of children over thirteen in the modern factory is quite a different thing. Placed under legal restrictions, it is a blessing alike to themselves and to their parents, since if not there, the children now earning their bread would be idling, and probably in mischief. Those, it has been well said, who have to live by labour should early be trained to labour. Diligent as they were, the spinsters could not produce weft fast enough for the weavers. Sitting at their looms, which were also in the cottages, thoughtful men pondered the possibilities of quicker methods. Presently the dream took shape, and from the successive inventions of Whyatt, Kay, Highs, and Hargreaves, emerged the famous "spinning-jenny,"[16] a machine which did as much work in the same time as a dozen pair of hands. Abreast of it came the warping-mill, the carding-engine, and the roving-frame: the latter particularly opportune, since the difficulty had always been to disentangle the fibres of the cotton prior to twisting, and to lay them exactly parallel. Arkwright now came on the scene. He himself never invented anything; but he had marvellous powers of combination, such as enabled him to assimilate all that was good in the ideas of other men, and to give them unity and new vitality. The result was machinery that gave exquisite evenness and attenuation to the "rovings," and a patent having been granted 15th July 1769, Arkwright is properly regarded as the founder of the modern modes of manufacture. Arkwright possessed, in addition, a thoroughly feminine capacity for good management and perseverance, with that most excellent adjunct, the art of obtaining ascendancy over capitalists. Among the immediate results were the disuse of linen warp, the new frames enabling cotton warp to be made strong enough; and the concentration of all the early processes, spinning included, in special buildings, with employment of horse or water-power. The weaving, however, long remained with the cottagers, and survives to a slight extent even to the present day. The Lancashire cotton manufacture, strictly so called, is thus very little more than a century old. No further back than in 1774, fabrics made wholly of cotton were declared by statute to have been "lately introduced," and a "lawful and laudable manufacture."