_HOPE PARK._
The premises on the Castle Hill became ere long too limited for the
rapidly-growing business. William Nelson had been joined in the
enterprise by his younger brother, Thomas; and with their combined
energy many novel features were developed and advances made in fresh
avenues of trade. The publications of the establishment were attracting
attention by their improved typography and tasteful embellishment.
Ampler room and greater subdivision of labour had become indispensable.
So, looking around for some more suitable locality, their attention was
directed to a group of antiquated dwellings at the east end of the
Meadows, the remains of one of the suburban villages swallowed up when
Old Edinburgh burst its mural barriers and extended over the surrounding
heights.
In an address given by William Nelson to those in his employment, at one
of his social entertainments, when a building was in progress at Hope
Park which he then assumed was to be the final addition to the works,
he traced the rise of the firm, interspersing the graver narrative with
humorous incidents, and with kindly notices of some whom he referred to
as faithful fellow-workers, from the time when he first gathered them
around him in the new workrooms on the Castle Hill. One of the
reminiscences of their entertainer’s narrative is thus recalled:--When
Hope Park grounds were about to be built upon, Mr. Nelson, being curious
to explore the place, made a visit to what he described as a wilderness
of cabbage gardens, with no end of pig-sties. One grumphy (Anglice, a
sow) he noticed in a corner where the joiner’s workshop afterwards
stood, which, as he humorously described it, “kept its carriage!” The
body of a four-wheeled coach, still in good condition, had been
consigned to this novel use. The contrast was striking when, in later
years, the smooth grass lawn, with its tasteful array of shrubs and
flower-plots, filled the area enclosed on three sides by the Hope Park
works.
But the full development of the establishment was the result of years of
patient and steady progress, until it grew to proportions adequate for
the varied departments embraced in the comprehensive scheme, with all
its ingenious improvements in machinery for economizing labour. Its tall
chimney showed from afar the scale on which its operations were carried
on; though at a later date William Nelson realized very strongly the
injury to the amenities of the city, and the obstruction to the
magnificent views of the surrounding landscape, occasioned by such
adjuncts to its manufactories, and laboured by precept and example to
get rid of them. In the later Parkside Works gas-engines are the sole
motive power, and their general introduction was advocated by him as a
substitute for the unsightly chimney with its obscuring volumes of
smoke.
With the numerous workmen that were ultimately engaged in all the varied
branches of skilled labour, the Hope Park establishment came to be
recognized as one of the most important centres of economic industry in
the city; and, so far as printing, publishing, and binding are
concerned, is spoken of by Mr. Bremner, in his “Industries of Scotland,”
as the most extensive house in Scotland. The new buildings, when
completed, formed a stately range of offices enclosing three sides of a
square, where, under a well-organized division of labour, with the aid
of machinery adapted to its varied operations, the entire work, from the
setting of the types to the issue of the bound and illustrated volumes,
was done on the premises. Compositors, draughtsmen, photographers,
lithographers, steel, copper, and wood engravers, electrotypers,
stereotypers, folders, stitchers, and binders, plied their industrious
skill. The work-men and women employed on the establishment latterly
numbered nearly six hundred; and few centres of industry have been
characterized by more harmonious relations between the representatives
of capital and labour.
The printing of books has constituted an important branch of Scottish
industry from the days of Chepman and Miller, on through Bassendyne,
Hart, and Symson, to our own time. The names of Fowlis, Constable,
Ballantyne, Cadell, Blackwood, Oliver and Boyd, Chambers, Blackie,
Collins, Neill, Black, and Nelson, are all familiarly associated with
the literary history of the century; and, with only three exceptions,
they belong to Edinburgh. It was fitting, indeed, that Edinburgh should
take the lead in developing the typographer’s art, where, in 1507,
Walter Chepman set up the first printing-press in Scotland; and where,
in the memorable year when “the flowers o’ the forest were a’ wede away”
on Flodden Hill, he built the beautiful Chepman Aisle which still adorns
the collegiate church of St. Giles, and endowed there a chaplainry at
the altar of St. John the Evangelist. Edinburgh, in the days of the
Scottish Caxton, was even more noteworthy for its authors than its
typographers. Dunbar, Gawain Douglas, and the makers of that brilliant
age, were followed by Montgomery, Drummond, Allan Ramsay, and Fergusson;
and along with this array of poets, reaching to him whom Burns owned as
his master, Hume, Robertson, Mackenzie, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and
Walter Scott, combined to transform their old romantic town into the
Modern Athens of later years. Their genius was not without its influence
on the special aspect of Edinburgh’s industries, including some of the
novel forms of periodical literature which have so largely contributed
to the culture of the masses.
The social entertainments and lectures provided by William Nelson at an
early stage for his employés have already been noticed; but in the
spring of 1868 he extended his generous sympathy over an ampler field,
and organized a _fête_ for the whole journeymen printers and
stereotypers of Edinburgh. The invitation met with a cordial response,
and the appearance presented by the assembled guests in the galleries of
the Museum of Science and Art was the theme of admiring comment. They
were summoned to this novel social gathering by one who justly claimed
recognition as an employer “who set a high value upon whatever is
calculated to foster kindly feelings between man and man.” The
invitation said: “For one evening let us lay aside care or irksome duty,
and come out with those we love best, and let us look each other fairly
in the face. In the matter of head we do not much differ; at heart we
are agreed. We need to have the bow unstrung occasionally. Let us do so
in company for once, and see if we can help each other to a happy
evening.” The answer to this was the assembly of upwards of a thousand
workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, in the Industrial Museum, to
listen to a lecture by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, on the noble art in
the service of which they were enlisted; and to enjoy the humour and
pathos of some of Scotland’s choicest national songs, including Burns’s
proud protest, which could there be appreciated without any thought of
social wrong--“A man’s a man for a’ that!” The _Scottish Typographical
Circular_, in its comments on this unique gathering, remarked: “Here
were a thousand men, nearly all in superfine black coats and spotless
shirt-fronts; a thousand women in tasteful dresses and bonnets of the
latest mode, setting off the comely features of the printers’ wives, or
the fresh, pretty faces of their sweethearts; and in all this great mass
of the ‘lower orders’ not a word out of joint; not a gesture of
impatience; no crowding, jostling, or selfish preferring of one’s own
enjoyment; nothing but courtesy and that perfect good breeding which
prompts men to give their neighbour’s comfort the precedence of their
own convenience.” It was a gathering that Scotland might be proud of,
whether we assign to the host or the guests the chief prominence. The
matter of dress, to which the critic so specially directed attention,
was not unworthy of note as an evidence of provident thrift, and of the
self-respect which is nowhere more fitting than in the skilled artisan.
The spirit manifested in gatherings such as this is the best antidote
for those conflicts between labour and capital which have proved so
detrimental to both. Yet, as will be seen by a letter addressed less
than four years later to his former traveller, Mr. James Campbell, he
had evidence that a perfect solution of this great social problem has
yet to be devised. The letter is dated from Dunkeld, where he had been
spending a holiday with his family. In 1851 he had married Miss
Catherine Inglis of Kirkmay, Crail; and at the date of the letter he was
surrounded by a happy family, consisting of his son Frederick and four
daughters, to whom he thus alludes: “The children have enjoyed their
stay immensely, and none more than Master Fred, who got capital
trout-fishing in the Braan, a tributary of the Tay, and in the
Butterstone, a stream about six miles distant.” His greatest happiness
was in his own family circle, and surrounded by the friends whom he
welcomed to his hospitable home. But the cares inseparable from his
extensive commercial transactions could not always be so exorcised; and
now a succession of inclement seasons and bad harvests was clouding the
prospects of all. “We have had,” he writes, “a most miserable time of it
for many months past, as far as weather is concerned. I don’t remember
of such a long continuance of wet weather as there has been this year.
It has lasted, I may almost say, all summer, up to within the last few
days; and the result is that the crops have suffered terribly. As to the
potatoes, the disease is everywhere, and potato starch-mills will have
full employment this winter. It is a time calling for sympathy and
forbearance on all hands. But, in addition, strikes for shorter hours
and increase of wages are the order of the day; and it looks as if the
words of the song, ‘Hard times come again no more,’ were ere long, as a
general rule, not to be suitable for this country, as such times cannot
be far distant for both masters and men, if there be not a cessation
soon to this war between capital and labour. Things are all quiet at
present in the trades of printing and bookbinding, but it is rumoured
that heavy demands for both shorter hours and higher wages will be made
by the men next month; and it is known that they have been preparing for
a struggle by subscribing largely to a strike-fund ever since the
beginning of the year, so that there is no doubt coming events are
casting their shadows before.
“Things must be in a strange way in New York just now with operative
printers. We know this from two of our men, who went out there some
months ago in the hope of bettering their condition; but they were glad
to come back to us, and they are both at work again, each at the machine
at which he worked before he left. The history of the experiences of one
of the men was as follows:--He got to New York, but he had no sooner
begun to look out for work than he was set upon by a committee of
operative printers, who were at the time on strike, and he was offered
eleven dollars a week if he would not ask for work. The offer was too
good a one for him to refuse, and he went about for several weeks with
his hands in his pockets. By-and-by he was asked if he would not like to
go back to Scotland. He said he had no objections, and it was arranged
that his passage back should be paid. When the day came for his leaving,
some of the New York men came down to the steamer to see him off, and
they gave him five dollars for pocket-money during the voyage, and a sum
of ten dollars to give to his wife, whom he had left behind in
Edinburgh. And so he left the shores of America. The story of the other
man is still more strange. He took work in an office in which there was
a strike; but after being there for a week, he found his position so
uncomfortable from annoyance from the men who had left, that he went and
told his master he would have to leave on account of this. But what was
his surprise when his master told him that he need not allow this state
of matters to continue, as he had just to put a ball through one of the
fellows, and there would be an end of it; and that the utmost that would
be done to him in the way of punishment would be a day or two’s
confinement in the police office or jail. He then handed him a revolver
and said, ‘Take this and make good use of it, and you’ll have a quiet
life for the future.’ This pistol I have now in my possession, and it is
worth having as a curiosity.”
At an earlier date the mischievous effects of a strike extended to the
Hope Park works, ending in the places of some of the strikers being
supplied by other applicants. But the victims learned by experience that
they never appealed in vain to the sympathy of William Nelson, even when
their share in the revolt had been characterized by ingratitude or
breach of faith. It was sufficient that they were impoverished. “Poor
fellow!” he would say, “he brought it on himself; but what of that?” And
the liberal aid was given only too readily; for the plea was discovered
to be one to which he most promptly responded, and was resorted to
frequently by impostors who preyed on his kindly sympathy. What, indeed,
the Rev. Dr. Alison remarked of him after his death, when he said: “He
simply could not turn from distress of any sort without doing something
to relieve it,” was no more than an echo of the sentiment which
experience had rendered familiar to many.