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 class 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 class 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 accumulated 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 quantity, 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 canal soon made Lancashire the principal
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 accumulated 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 circumstances 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 amusements.
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 classes. 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 class. At the same time, it is
impossible not to observe that, quite irrespective of political opinions,
there is a wide gulf between the great mass of the employers and the
employed. There is dislike--there is undefined distrust. Those who doubt
this will do well to investigate working-class 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 class 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 class 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 class, from the agricultural counties of England, from
Ireland, and from Scotland. These people have been crowded together under
very demoralising circumstances.
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 class, who, if neglected in their dirt and
ignorance, will become, in the strongest sense of the French term,
Dangereuse!
But to return to the Manchester of to-day; it has become rather the
mercantile than the manufacturing centre of the cotton manufacture. There
are firms in Manchester which hold an interest in woollen, silk, and linen
manufactures in all parts of the kingdom and even of the continent.
From a pamphlet published last year by the Rev. Mr. Baker, it appears that
there are five hundred and fifty cotton manufactories of one kind or other in
the cotton district of Lancashire and Cheshire. Of these, in Ashton-under-
Lyne, Dukinfield, and Mosley, there are fifty-three mills, Blackburn fifty-
seven, Bolton forty-two, Burnley twenty-five spinning manufactories, at
Heywood twenty-eight mills, Oldham one hundred and fifty-eight, Preston
thirty-eight, Staley Bridge twenty, Stockport forty-seven mills, Warrington
only four, Manchester seventy-eight.
The following is a brief outline of the stages of cotton manufacture which
may be useful to those who consider the question for the first time.
When cotton has reached Manchester from the United States, which supplies 75
per cent. of the raw material; from Egypt, which supplies a good article in
limited quantity; from India, which sends us an inferior, uncertain, but
increasing, quantity, but which with railroads will send us an improved
increasing quantity; or from any of the other miscellaneous countries which
contribute a trifling quota--it is stowed in warehouses, arranged according to
the countries from which it has come. It is then "passed through the willow,
the scuthing machine, and the spreading machine, in order to be opened,
cleaned, and evenly spread. By the carding engine the fibres are combed out,
and laid parallel to each other, and the fleece is compressed into sliver.
The sliver is repeatedly drawn and doubled in the drawing frame, more
perfectly to strengthen the fibres and to equalize the grist. The roving
frame, by rollers and spindles, produces a coarse loose thread, which the
mule or throstle spins into yarn. To make the warp, the twist is transferred
from cops to bobbins by the winding machine, and from the bobbins at the
warping machine to a cylindrical beam. This being taken to the dressing
machine, the warp is sized, dressed, and wound upon the weaving beam. The
weaving beam is then placed in the power loom, by which machine, the shuttle
being provided with cops with weft, the cloth is woven."
Sometimes the yarn only is exported, in other cases the cloth is bleached, or
dyed, or printed, all of which operations can be carried on in Manchester or
the surrounding auxiliary towns.
The best mode of obtaining a general idea of the trade carried on in
Manchester will be to visit two or three of the leading warehouses in which
buyers from all parts of the world supply their respective wants. For
instance, Messrs. J. N. Phillips and Co., of Church Street; Messrs.
Bannermans and Sons, York Street; Messrs. J. and J. Watts and Co., of Spring
Gardens; and Messrs. Wood and Westhead, of Piccadilly. Next, to go over one
of the leading Cotton Mills, say Briley's or Houldsworth's; then Messrs.
Lockett's establishment for engraving the plates used in calico-printing, and
Messrs. Thomas Hoyle and Son's print works. This work completed, the
traveller will have some idea of Manchester, not without.
* * * * *
SILK.--The silk trade of Manchester and of Macclesfield, which for that
purpose is a suburb of Manchester, arose in the restrictions imposed upon
Spitalfields, at the request of the weavers, by successive acts of
Parliament, for the purpose of regulating employment in that district. In
1830 there were not 100 Jacquard looms in Manchester and its neighbourhood,
whilst at the present time there are probably 12,000 employed either on silk
or some branch of figure weaving. The most convenient silk manufactory for
the visit of the stranger is that of Messrs. James Houldsworth of Portland
Street, near the Royal Infirmary. This firm was established by a German
gentleman, the late Mr. Louis Schwabe, an intelligent German, who introduced
the higher class of silk manufacture with such success as to enable him to
compete with even the very first class of Lyons silks for furniture damasks.
In addition to the extensive application of the Jacquard loom, Mr. Schwabe
introduced, and Mr. Henry Houldsworth improved and perfected, the
embroidering machines invented by Mr. Heilmann of Mulhausen. The
improvements are so great that the original inventor cannot compete with
them. Rows of needles elaborate the most tasteful designs with a degree of
accuracy to which hand labour cannot approach.
Messrs. Winkworth and Proctor are also producers of high class silks for
ladies' dresses and gentlemen's waistcoats.
Manchester is particularly celebrated for plain silk goods of a superior
quality at a moderate price. There are also manufactories of small wares,
which include parasols and umbrellas. A parasol begins at 4.5d. wholesale.
In Manchester the tastes and costumes of every country are consulted and
suited. The brown cloak of the Spaniard, the poncho of the Chilean, the
bright red or yellow robe of the Chinese, the green turban of the pilgrim
from Mecca, the black blanket of the Caffre, and the red blanket of the
American Indian may all be found in bales in one Manchester warehouse.
In passing through the streets, the sign "Fents" is to be seen on shops in
cellars. These are the odd pieces, of a yard or two in length, cut off the
goods in the manufactories to make up a certain even quantity; and
considerable trade is driven in them. Selections are sometimes bought up as
small ventures by sea captains and emigrants.
Paper-making is carried on extensively in the neighbourhood of Manchester
from cotton waste. This was formerly thrown away; scavengers were even paid
to cart it away. After a time, as its value became quietly known among
paper-makers, parties were found willing to take on themselves the expense of
removing it. By degrees the waste became a regular article of sale; and now,
wherever possible, a paper-mill in this part of the country is placed near,
or worked in conjunction with, a cotton-mill. The introduction of cotton
waste has materially reduced the price of paper. No doubt, when the excise
is abolished, many other articles will be employed for the same purpose.
To describe the railroads, which are every hour departing for every point of
the compass, would take up too much space. But the railway stations, several
of which have been united by works as costly, and almost as extensive, as the
Pyramids of Egypt, are not among the least interesting sights. At these
stations barrels of flour will be found, literally filling acres of warehouse
room, and cucumbers arrive in season by the ton.
* * * * *
THE CANALS must be mentioned, and remind us that at Worsley, near Manchester,
the Duke of Bridgwater, "the Father of Inland Navigation," aided by the
genius of Brindley (another of the great men, who, like Arkwright and
Stephenson, rose from the ranks of labour, and directly contributed to the
rise of this city) commenced the first navigable canal constructed for
commercial purposes in Great Britain.
At the present day the construction of a canal is a very commonplace affair,
but it is impossible to doubt the high qualities of the mind of the Duke of
Bridgwater, when we consider the education and prejudices of a man of his
rank at that period, and observe the boldness with which he accepted, the
tenacity with which he adhered to, the energy and self-sacrifice with which
he prosecuted the plans of an obscure man like Brindley.
A disappointment in love is said to have first driven the Duke into
retirement, and rendered him shy and eccentric, with an especial objection to
the society of ladies, although he had once been a gay, if not dissipated,
young gentleman, fond of the turf. He rode a race at Trentham Hall, the seat
of his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Stafford.
When he retired from the pleasures of the fashionable world, his attention
was directed to a rich bed of coal on his estate at Worsley, the value of
which was almost nominal in consequence of the expense of carriage. He
determined to have a canal, and, if possible, a perfect canal, and who to
carry out this object he selected Brindley, who had been born in the station
of an agricultural labourer, and was entirely self-educated. To the last he
conducted those engineering calculations, which are usually worked out on
paper and by rule, by a sort of mental arithmetic. Brindley must have been
about forty years of age when he joined the Duke. He died at fifty-six,
having laid the foundation of that admirable system of internal commerce
which is better described in Baron Charles Dupin's Force Commerciale de la
Grande Bretagne than in any English work.
One often-told anecdote well illustrates the characters of the nobleman and
his engineer, if we remember that no such works had ever been erected in
England at that time. "When Brindley proposed to carry the canal over the
Mersey and Irwell Navigation, by an aqueduct 39 feet above the surface of the
water, he desired, for the satisfaction of his employer, to have another
engineer consulted. That individual, on being taken to the place where the
intended aqueduct was to be constructed, said, that 'he had often heard of
castles in the air, but never was shown before where any of them were to be
erected.'" But the Duke had faith in Brindley, persevered and triumphed,
although, before the completion of all his undertakings, he was more than
once reduced to great pecuniary difficulties.
The canal property of the Duke of Bridgwater, with the Lancashire estates,
are now vested in the Earl of Ellesmere, a nobleman who well knows, and
conscientiously works out, the axiom, "that property has its duties as well
as its rights." A visit to Worsley will prove what an enlightened and
benevolent landowner can do for a population of colliers and bargemen.
The educational and other arrangements of a far-sighted character show that
there are advantages in even such large accumulations of property as have
fallen to the share of the present representative of the Duke of Bridgwater.
Those who desire to pursue closely the state of the operative population in
Manchester, will find ample materials in the annual reports of factory
inspectors, and school inspectors, under the Committee of the Council of
Education, and of the municipal officers of health.
* * * * *
FIRES.--Dreadful fires occur occasionally in Manchester. If such a
catastrophe should take place during the stay of a visitor, he should
immediately pull on an overcoat, even although it be midnight, and join in
the crowd. An excellent police of 300 officers and men renders the streets
quite safe at all hours; and a fire of an old cotton factory, where the
floors are saturated with oil and grease, is indeed a fearfully imposing
sight. It also affords an opportunity of some familiar conversation with the
factory hands.
* * * * *
In taking leave of Manchester, which is indeed the great heart of our
manufacturing system, we may truly say that it is a city to be visited with
the deepest interest, and quitted without the slightest regret. On our
political railroad we are under deepest obligations to the Manchester
stokers; but Heaven forbid that we should be compelled to make them our sole
engineers.