|
|
Without the work provided by the local mine, young Stephen would not have been able to care for his siblings after his father's death.
Even Stephen Fern, who would a thousand times rather work out on the free hill-side than in the dark passages underground, does not think it a pity that the Botfield pit has been discovered at the foot of the mountains.
There seemed enough work for him to do in the field and garden alone, without his twelve hours' toil in the coal-pit; but his weekly wages would now be more necessary than ever. He must get up early, and go to bed late, and labour without a moment's rest, doing his utmost from one day to another, with no one to help him, or stand for a little while in his place. For a few minutes his brave spirit sank within him, and all the landscape swam before his eyes; while Snip took advantage of his master's inattention to put his nose into the basin, and help himself to the largest share of the potatoes.
The importance of trade and commerce to the economy was recognised by royalty and was rewarded.
It is impossible to describe the magnificence of the coronation feasts, tournaments, and public rejoicings, and the King commenced his future policy of encouraging trade and commerce by making four of the London tradesmen and citizens "Knights of the Bath," which excited much sneering and discontent among the Lords, who called them "Knights of the Tub."
Work engendered a feeling of worth.
Now, mind, I am not going to undervalue the young men in drapers' shops, or, indeed, in any shops where a lawful calling is followed. I believe, heart and soul, in the dignity of honest labour; and the young man behind the counter, measuring out his yards of ribbon or merino, or weighing his pounds of sugar and tea, or showing off the merits of iron-ware, or hollow-ware, or earthen or china-ware, or any ware in the world, while he faithfully serves his employer to the best of his ability, is as much to be respected--ay, and far more to be respected than the idle young collegian, or the juvenile aristocrat, who persecutes milliners' girls, and gets into debt, and professes to be "bored" with everything beneath the sun, and lives on God's good earth a useless, unprofitable, mischievous cumberer of the ground. Merit makes the man, and the want of it the snob.
It was discovered by many a 'gentleman' that, when the money dried up, lack of training in a trade meant that poverty was lurking around the corner.
"Is it likely I should, sir?" said Philip, proudly. "Nor do I now; I am very thankful for all the efforts which I believe you have made on my behalf but I begin to think there is no occupation to be had,--at least, none that I can do. The misfortune lies in my being brought up that very useless thing--a gentleman." And Philip laughed bitterly. "However, I can remedy this; I will leave London, change my name, and get work as a farmer's labourer. A mechanic's place is above me, unfortunately, as I had not even the blessing of learning a trade. But work I must have, or I shall go mad."
Even in the 19th century convicts were given an opportunity to prepare for returning to the outside world by learning a trade.
The first glimmer of hope came to him when he was set to learn shoemaking. This was a trade by which he could earn a living--not the trade he would have chosen; his ambition was to be a carpenter like his unknown father--but still honest real work. He received his first lesson in a handicraft with ardour, and sat with an old boot on his knee, picking it to pieces with unwearying industry. If he could only learn as much as to mend his mother's shoes before his term was out! The tears started to his dull, bloodshot eyes, and his lips quivered at the thought of it. He would do his best at any rate to learn this lesson.
Many children were fortunate in that the father's trade was passed on to them.
It was once,
(Far within my remembrance,) the abode
Of a kind aged couple, who, when years
Had made the man unfit to earn his bread
At that mechanic craft which he had learnt
And practised, as a builder, all his life,
From business and its cares at length withdrew,
Surrendering to a son-in-law their trade
And daily occupation.
William Hutton himself and his forebears displayed a spirit of entrepreneurship in setting up businesses in whip-making, bookbinding, paper milling (which was unsuccessful) and paper selling.
Her youngest brother, Samuel, alone now remained to be provided for. He who had relished a soldier's life while a bachelor, grew weary of it when encumbered with a wife and two children. In 1763 she bought his discharge, bore his expenses out of Scotland, supported his family, and set him up in his trade of whip-making. Thus did this extraordinary woman throw the golden ball into the lap of each of her three brothers.
Every soul who knew me, scoffed at the idea of my turning bookbinder, except my sister, who encouraged and aided me; otherwise I must have sunk under it. I considered that I was naturally of a frugal temper; that I could watch every penny; live upon a little; that I hated stocking-making, but not bookbinding; that, if I continued at the frame, I was certain to be poor; and if I ventured to leave it, I could but be so.
Few men can bear prosperity. It requires a considerable share of knowledge to know when we are well; for it often happens that he who is well, in attempting to be better, becomes worse. It requires resolution to keep well. If there was a profit to the seller of paper, I concluded there must be one to the maker. I wished to have both. Upon this erroneous principle I longed for a paper-mill. I procured all the intelligence I could relative to the fabrication of paper; engaged an artist to make me a model of a mill; attended to business; and nursed my children; while the year ran round.
Robert Bage, an old and intimate friend, and a paper-maker, took me to his inn, where we spent the evening. He proposed that I should sell paper for him, which I might either buy on my own account, or sell on his by commission. As I could spare one or two hundred pounds, I chose to purchase; therefore appropriated a room for the reception of goods, and hung out a sign: THE PAPER WAREHOUSE. From this small hint I followed the stroke forty years, and acquired an ample fortune.
Showing enterprise by investing in the unknown is always a risky business and few investments fulfil their promise.
Hoare persuaded me (and I wanted little persuading) to get my money home from New Zealand and put it into his companies. These [were] a patent steam-engine company, a patent gas meter company, a company for pressing jute in India, and one for making an extract from hemlock bark in Canada, which was to pay at least sixty per cent, and revolutionize the leather trade. Pauli, a barrister, and Jason Smith, a barrister, were infatuated with this last as much as I was, and Pauli borrowed what little money he could on a reversion due to him on the death of his father and mother. This reversion was already pledged to myself, indeed I had advanced him more than its whole amount, but so confident were we all that I released his reversion that he might borrow a thousand pounds and invest it in the Canada Tanning Extract Co. Ltd. of which Hoare made both Pauli and myself directors. I can plead no excuse for any of us but the confidence that Hoare's bank would not countenance any such schemes without having had the best advice concerning them. We did not know that Hoare had been plunging for some time, and we did not know that old family bankers ought to be and generally are the very last people in the world who should be able to advise on commercial undertakings. They and we were all fools together; no one was morally very guilty, and it is so long ago that I would not say anything about it unless it were necessary in explanation of some letters that will follow. [S.B., August 8th, 1901.]
In the 1700's William Hutton felt the frustration of being unemployed despite having training and experience.
The stocking-frame being my own, and trade being dead, the hosiers would not employ me. They could scarcely employ their own frames. I was advised to try Leicester, and took with me half a dozen pair of stockings to sell. I visited several warehouses; but, alas! all proved blank. They would neither employ me, nor give for my goods anything near prime cost. As I stood like a culprit before a gentleman of the name of Bennet, I was so affected that I burst into tears, to think that I should have served seven years to a trade at which I could not get bread.
Unemployment has always been with us. Read this description of an old 'Job Centre'.
The long row of young folks, and some not so young, who were there to be hired, began near our stall. Each one carried the sign of his trade or hers. A cook had a big wooden spoon, and if the young fellows were too gallus she'd smack them over the head with the flat of it. Men that went with the teams had whips, hedgers a brummock, gardeners a spade. Cowmen carried a bright tin milk pail, thatchers a bundle of straw. A blacksmith wore a horseshoe in his hat, and there were a tuthree of them, for a few big farms would club together and hire a blacksmith by the year. Shepherds had a crook and bailiffs a lanthorn to show how late they'd be out and about after robbers.
Having a trade did not necessarily make things that much easier.
It happened at this period, that, one fine summer evening, old Smith with his family, in the way of their trade, as sellers of pots and pans and other Staffordshire ware, arrived with their asses at a place called the Broad Heath, . . . . . . . . Here, because there was no convenient place near for spending the night under cover, they were obliged to lie in the open air; for this purpose they took the panniers from their asses, and ranged then on the ground in a kind of circle, within which the children were to sleep. They then set the asses free to feed on the common, and the children began to busy themselves to gather wood to make a fire, for the mother said she would have a hot supper, and for this purpose prepared to boil some potatoes, with a fowl which she brought out of one of the panniers, ready killed and plucked. Whence this fowl came no one made it their business to ask; but as there was no fear of God in this family, we are left to suppose that the woman did not come by it in a very honest way.
Until the 20th century children were employed from a young age to make ends meet.
From the time that Mary had reached her ninth year, her mother had employed her during part of the day in working at the gloves with herself; but she did not think the trade was a good one for a very young girl, inasmuch as the gains were small, and the confinement very great, the widow considered that if she could get her an easy service it would be much more for her advantage, though it went to her heart to part with one who had been the solace of her life through many a long year of widowhood. Nevertheless, this excellent mother thought of nothing so much as the good of her child; and setting self on one side, when Mary was fifteen, she resolved to enquire for such a service as she trusted would suit her. But the Widow Fairfield had no acquaintance among the great folks, and, on this occasion, she knew not what better to do than to speak to Dame Crawford, who was said to be an influential body with some of the best families in Worcester. Accordingly, seeing Dame Crawford's door open one afternoon, and the good woman ironing before the window, she ventured to step in with her work in her hand, not having observed than Grace Brown was sitting behind the door.
Moral and family tales by Mary Martha Sherwood. Waste not, want not.
Communities established themselves around opportunities such as exploitable land, availability of water and, in the following extract, a mineable coal seam:
Looking steadily up this pleasant valley from the threshold of the cottage, we can just see a fine, light film of white smoke against the blue sky. Two miles away, right down off the mountains, there is a small coal-field and a quarry of limestone. In a distant part of the country there are large tracts of land where coal and iron pits are sunk on every side, and their desolate and barren pit-banks extend for miles round, while a heavy cloud of smoke hangs always in the air. But here, just at the foot of these mountains, there is one little seam of coal, as if placed for the express use of these people, living so far away from the larger coal-fields. The Botfield lime and coal works cover only a few acres of the surface; but underground there are long passages bored beneath the pleasant pastures and the yellow cornfields. From the mountains, Botfield looks rather like a great blot upon the fair landscape, with its blackened engine-house and banks of coal-dust, its long range of limekilns, sultry and quivering in the summer sunshine, and its heavy, groaning water-wheel, which pumps up the water from the pits below. But the colliers do not think it so, nor their wives in the scattered village beyond; they do not consider the lime and coal works a blot, for their living depends upon them, and they may rightly say, 'As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire.'
However, a mine often brings with it a disaster which affects the whole community:
The streets were all alive with gaslight, and the people were pushing by him to the theatre, when a dirty little fellow, fluttering a sheaf of news sheets, came dancing by, piping, 'Awful mining disaster. A hundred miners imprisoned.'. . . . . . . .
Messengers who had waited at railway stations for the expected hose, came with it lumbering in waggons in the dead of night. Crowds of men harnessed to great ropes dragged at manual engines in the dead of night along the lumpy lane, and hauled them to the pit's mouth. Deft mechanics, despatched from the great capital of ingenious industry close by, set up their electric machine, uncoiled their wire, and fixed their insulators. The vast crowd (ten thousand people gathered there, and lingering an hour after midnight to watch if this new hope availed anything) pressed round in close serried phalanx till all was ready.
In Helstonleigh, the management of the glove factories had decided to allow the married woman to work from home so that she could look after her children while generating income:
Helstonleigh abounded with glove manufactories. It is a trade that may be said to be a blessing to the localities where it is carried on, since it is one of the very few employments that furnish to the poor female population easy, clean, and profitable work at their own homes. The evils arising to women who go out to work in factories have been rehearsed over and over again; and the chief evil--we will put others out of sight--is, that it takes the married woman from her home and her family. Her young children drag themselves up in her absence, for worse or for better; alone they must do it, for she has to be away, toiling for daily bread. There is no borne privacy, no home comfort, no home happiness; the factory is their life, and other interests give way to it. But with glove-making the case is different. While the husbands are abroad at the manufactories pursuing their day's work, the wives and elder daughters are earning money easily and pleasantly at home. The work is clean and profitable; all that is necessary for its accomplishment being common skill as a seamstress.
Tradesmen and manufacturers became part of the community local government.
And down the long littered tables stretched the authority and the wealth of the town--aldermen, councillors, members of the school board, guardians of the poor, magistrates, solid tradesmen, and solid manufacturers, together with higher officials of the borough and some members of the learned professions. Here was the oligarchy which, behind the appearances of democratic government, effectively managed, directed, and controlled the town. Here was the handful of people who settled between them whether rates should go up or down, and to whom it did not seriously matter whether rates went up or down, provided that the interests of the common people were not too sharply set in antagonism to their own interests. Here were the privileged, who did what they liked on the condition of not offending each other. Here the populace was honestly and cynically and openly regarded as a restless child, to be humoured and to be flattered, but also to be ruled firmly, to be kept in its place, to be ignored when advisable, and to be made to pay.
Nowadays there is a common perception that tradesmen are often exploitative of those who hire them. Read William Hutton's account of tradesmen in the 1700s.
We now enter another year of misfortunes. The carpenter, while erecting my house, would never favour me with his account, but drew money occasionally, and managed matters in such a dextrous manner that it was impossible to keep a check against him. The man, who means fairly, will never hide his accounts. Thinking I had disbursed enough, I withheld payment. When his bill was delivered in, I considered myself overcharged. We agreed to leave it to reference. The referees appeared warm in his favour, for, being all of a trade, they might, like the lawyers, serve each other. I was awarded to pay, without being consulted, £200 in one month. I remonstrated, and proved that they had charged, in many instances, fifteen per cent. more than was agreed upon. All was in vain, I was obliged, to submit.
I had erected a house at Mill-pool hill. The brick-maker who had supplied me, and his man, quarrelling, the man informed me "that he had, in every load, sent a deficient number of bricks by order of his master." "Will you prove this, when you come face to face?" "I will." When the master came for payment, I remonstrated in gentle terms; was ignorant of the matter; wished to pay what was right; and begged he would wait till I could bring the man. He made no reply, but instantly served me with a writ; and, as I wished to avoid a suit, I paid the demand and expence.
Here is a deceptive argument on how slavery, war and disaster could be justified and used to the advantage of business.
It has been made a plea (half jest, half earnest) for the horrors of war, that they promote trade and manufactures. It has been said, as a set-off for the atrocities practised upon the negro slaves in the West Indies, that without their blood and sweat, so many millions of people could not have sugar to sweeten their tea. Fires and murders have been argued to be beneficial, as they serve to fill the newspapers, and for a subject to talk of--this is a sort of sophistry that it might be difficult to disprove on the bare scheme of contingent utility; but on the ground that we have stated, it must pass for mere irony. What the proportion between the good and the evil will really be found in any of the supposed cases, may be a question to the understanding; but to the imagination and the heart, that is, to the natural feelings of mankind, it admits of none!
This policy statement, written by Sabine Baring-Gould, regards the relationship between society, business and the worker.
"It seems to me, Hector, that a new and grinding tyranny has to be fought; it is no longer royal despotism, nor feudalism, but it is the pressure of modern civilisation. That which the public demands is cheap fabrics and cheap ware of every kind; and cheap fabrication means the oppression of the worker. I presume that one of the most deadly of all pursuits is that of the rubber collector in the swamps of South America. No man engaged in that lives six years, and his life as a collector is one of solitude, famine, and torture from mosquitoes. Who drive them into those malarial marshes? Who use up lives at such a rate? The general public, that will have its india-rubber cycle tyres. At home, what is perhaps the most dreadful and destructive to life of all trades is the making of bleaching-powder; yet the wife and daughter of the man who sacrifices his life in the manufacture would scorn to use calico that had not been dressed with this destructive powder. What disease is more horrible than that produced by the manufacture of lucifer matches? yet the mother of the girl whose jaw is corroded will squander a box of matches with total disregard. . . . . . . Now what the workers need are men who can see both sides of every question, who can stand high enough to command the entire horizon, and who can use their cultivated energies and their skilled abilities to defend the workers against the tyranny of modern civilisation, and to force home on the mind of the general public the necessity for considering the artisan who ministers to its well-being. The public is tender-hearted and is easily roused, but it is nevertheless selfish and exacting, and it is easily lulled back into indifference. We want the men to search and find out what are the hardships, and then to seek the remedies, which will not be worse than the ills they cure. Then we want them to insist on reforms that are sound and justifiable, insist in season and out of season, and insist that the artisan shall not be brutalised by the trade he practises to satisfy the hunger of the general public for the cheap and nasty."
We are thankful that tradesmen are available when we require them. . . . . .
Not even London,' said Gillian, 'could be better than this.'
'Oh, London! Well, I've never been there myself. Silverton's good enough for me. Where there's a church, and a doctor, and a butcher's, and the other shops for the necessary, and a good wool shop, and reasonable coal, it seems to me there's no need of London.'
And she was thankful to Providence, to her landlady, to her employer, who sweated his workers, to the baker for bringing her loaf, to the milkman for leaving her half a pint of milk on Sundays, to the landlady's cat for refraining from drinking it.
. . . . . . but we are indignant when they ask for their accounts to be settled!
"I am sure I have no objection," replied Fanny, languidly. " I wish we could all marry well, for pa's grumbling, and the tradespeople's grumbling, and Jenny's and Kitty s grumbling because they cannot do as they wish, is almost more than I can bear. I am sure the expenses are enormous--tradesmen are so extortionate, and servants are such cheats -- but then, what can I do?"
"Still, I have managed. I have contrived and contrived many a time, and said nothing about it; I can tell you I have had my housekeeping purse empty for days, and papa in ever such a temper if I only hinted at the subject of supplies. If people only knew what I have gone through with him--getting money from him in driblets! and what I've gone through with those impudent servants, and the tradespeople clamouring about their 'little bills'! they would not be surprised at my marrying Colonel Peacock."
It was a strangely unchristian view held in a mostly Christian society that being involved in a trade was below the dignity of a gentleman or lady.
"Not at all. Our dear father had some old-fashioned English prejudices which he retained in the New World. Although he himself was compelled by circumstances to be in business, yet he never took to it with zest, and he was firmly resolved that Hector should not--as he termed it--soil his hands with trade. So he sent him to Eton, provided him with money, and brought him up to be, what he is, a light-hearted, gracious young man, of blameless life, and living for his pleasures."
"She wasn't the least angry. There was nothing to be offended at. And she said her aunt in Paris sent it her, who was a milliner."
"How like her to say that--to volunteer it!" said Mr. Black, aware that his sister was watching how he took the news of Annette's connection with trade. "But we must be careful how we repeat it. In this amazing little world of Riff it might be against her to have a milliner for an aunt."
The penultimate descendant of the time-honoured Lynedon race had sought to redeem his fortunes by trade. Paul's father had been a cotton-manufacturer. The moderate fortune which now enabled the son to take his stand in that sphere to which his birth entitled him, had sprung from the red-brick mill, with its black windows, its ever-dinning wheels. This grim phantom had been the horror of Paul Lynedon's youth: it haunted him even yet.
Mrs. North effected changes. Almost the very day she was taken home to Whitborough, she let it be known that she should rule with an imperious will. Her husband became a very reed in her hands; yielding passively to her sway, as though all the spirit he had ever owned had gone out of him. Mrs. North professed to hate the very name of trade; declaring that any one with whom she was so nearly connected should be in business brought her a sense of degradation.
Mrs. Hemson did receive me, with a warm embrace. She saw to my luggage, and then put me in a fly to proceed to her house. A thorough gentlewoman was she in all ways; a lady in appearance, mind, and manners. But it seemed to me a great puzzle how she could be so; or, being so, that she could have married a retail tradesman.
Mr. Hemson was a silk-mercer and linendraper. It appeared to me a large, handsome shop, containing many shopmen and customers.
Don. My great, great, great-grandfather, I say, was--
Mons. Well, a pinmaker in--
Don. But he was a gentleman for all that, fop, for he was a sergeant to a company of the trainbands; and my great-great-grandfather was--
Mons. Was his son, what then? won't you let me clear this gentleman?
Don. He was, he was--
Mons. He was a felt-maker, his son a wine-cooper, your father a vintner, and so you came to be a Canary merchant.
Don. But we were still gentlemen, for our coat was, as the heralds say--was--
Trade Unions were a rising force for good, but often seen by others as evil. Here is an extract in which the author portrays trade unionism as exploitation of 'the masses' by a seditious few whose aims were not the good of the worker.
There was trouble amongst the Dallory workpeople. It had been looming in the distance for some time before it came. No works throughout the kingdom had been more successfully carried on than the North Works. The men were well paid; peace and good-will had always reigned between them and their employers. But when certain delegates, or emissaries, or whatever they may please to call themselves, arrived stealthily at Dallory from the Trade Unions, and took up stealthy abode in the place, and whispered sedition into the ears of the men, peace was at an end.
. . . . . . . First there had been doubt, and misgiving, and wavering; then agitation; then dissatisfaction; then parleying with their master, Richard North; then demands for more wages and less work. In vain Richard, with his strong sense, argued and reasoned: showing them, in all kindness, the mistaken course they were entering on, and what must come of it. They listened attentively, . . . . . . . But it came to nothing. . . . . . . .. They were like so many tame sheep blindly following their leader.
Mrs Henry Wood portrays a view that strikes were not the only solution to a dispute:
"We have never tried a strike in Helstonleigh," answered Fisher, holding to his own opinion.
"And I trust we never shall," returned the intelligent foreman. "Other trades may have their strikes if they choose, and it's not our business to find fault with them for it; but the glove trade has hitherto kept itself aloof from strikes, and it's to be hoped it always will. You cannot understand how a strike works, Joe Fisher, or you'd not let your head be running on it."
This section contains a number of extracts depicting various occupations, trades and industries that have been mentioned by West Midlands authors.
Now Bradfield, as everybody knows, is first and foremost in the land as a manufacturing town--that is, in all kinds of hardware. It is, moreover, the metropolis of the Midland Counties, and the men of Bradfield are proud of their birthplace, and hold their own among the magnates of cities still prouder than their own. . . . . . .
So, into busy, noisy, smoky, go-ahead Bradfield came young Constantine Walker and his widowed mother. The uncle who befriended them both was a free-handed, rough-spoken artisan, in a small way of business on his own account. He was a japanner, and his wife was in the split-ring and German silver-spoon trade;
Night after night the Kannerez-noz are busy; their work is never done, for the long line of the Dead ceases never. Sometimes in the haunted forest, oftener under the shadowy crags, they wash and wring. And the fisherman from his craft by night sees them as often as does the waggoner crossing the great moors with his loads of salt. Down here at Kromlaix--even here, where most men would die of old age were it not for the accursed conscription--they ply their trade.
Pottery:
'Come and see a plate made: that is one of the simplest things, and the batting-machine is worth looking at,' said Mynors, and they went into the nearest shop, a hot interior in the shape of four corridors round a solid square middle. Here men and women were working side by side, the women subordinate to the men. All were preoccupied, wrapped up in their respective operations, and there was the sound of irregular whirring movements from every part of the big room. The air was laden with whitish dust, and clay was omnipresent--on the floor, the walls, the benches, the windows, on clothes, hands and faces. It was in this shop, where both hollow-ware pressers and flat pressers were busy as only craftsmen on piecework can be busy, that more than anywhere else clay was to be seen 'in the hand of the potter.' . . . . . . Several men were producing plates, but their rapid labours seemed less astonishing than the preliminary feat of the batting-machine. All the ware as it was moulded disappeared into the vast cupboards occupying the centre of the shop, where Mynors showed Anna innumerable rows of shelves full of pots in process of steam-drying. . . . . . Everyone exerted himself as though the salvation of the world hung on the production of so much stuff by a certain hour; dust, heat, and the presence of a stranger were alike unheeded in the mad creative passion.
William Hutton's ancestors enjoyed multifarious occupations. . . . . . .
Something like the reverse has been the case of my family. My grandfather's grandfather made hats, but none of his descendants ever touched one, except to wear it. His son, my great grandfather, was a shearman, and the last who handled the shears. He afterwards kept a public-house, but none of his descendants cared to sell ale. His son, my grandfather, was famous for dressing flax, catching fish, keeping pigs, and writing down sermons. He was the last of the family that had any of these propensities. My father was a wool-comber, but with him the family bid an eternal farewell to the fleece. He placed his three sons (two brothers and myself) to a stocking-maker; they forsook the trade, and perhaps are the last that will ever have occasion to forsake it.
. . . . . . . and so too did his acquaintances!
The man who possesses any branch of useful knowledge, may have customers enough to partake of that knowledge, provided he distributes it gratis. A mercer in Birmingham, who had purchased the stock of a shopkeeper in Dudley, who had followed the various trades of bookseller, draper, haberdasher, and hosier, requested me to go over and value the stock. I consented, but did not receive even thanks.
The hotel industry:
Then he spoke very vaguely of the possibility of foreign interference in the destinies of the Company. He made no accusation. Oh no! He spoke of a mere possibility--but a possibility against which, if the shareholders in their wisdom agreed, it might be advisable to protect the Company. Were the shareholders prepared to allow the control of a British company to pass out of British hands? If so, well and good. If not, the Resolution was the surest safeguard, the only real safeguard, against such a contingency--a contingency which, he ventured to think, was of a most sinister nature. The shareholders, who were doubtless thoroughly acquainted with all the phenomena of industry and finance, had of course noticed in past months that foreign interests had been ousting British interests in various very important British undertakings. He would not assert that any scheme was definitely afoot for getting control of the Imperial Palace Hotel Company. He would be content to say that in the last couple of years, and especially in the last few months, blocks of shares had changed hands, and transfers had been registered, in a manner calculated to arouse the suspicions, but no more than the suspicions, of a watchful Board. The Board had desired the attendance of their good friend Mr. Levinsohn, who had acted with signal success for many years as solicitor to the Company. He, the speaker, could not pretend to Mr. Levinsohn's unique authority in Company affairs, and Mr. Levinsohn would give the shareholders his valuable views on the subject before them. Confessing that his own feelings as to the proper course to be followed for the welfare of the Company were both clear and deep, and then formally moving the Resolution, Evelyn sat down.
Postmistress:
The present post-mistress was a blooming young woman, the daughter of the parish clerk, who was also by trade painter, glazier, and paperhanger. It was time, he said, that Hetty should be doing something for herself, and he did not want her to be going away from home; so, when Mrs. Hancox died, he asked for the post office for himself, intending that Hetty should perform the necessary duties. He was a man much respected in the parish, and Mr. Aylmer at once interested himself in the matter, and procured for Oakley the desired appointment, without much loss of time. His own shop was not eligible, but the one adjoining it, large, comfortable, and nicely fitted up, was to let, and that Oakley took, and established in it his daughter Hetty as post-mistress and general superintendent of affairs.
The disguise of a merchant or tradesman was a useful device for obtaining or passing information during a conflict:
On my return to Gloucester I took Rosamond's jennet to the New Inn, and, remembering my character of woolstapler and trader, made myself acquainted with the method of conducting business, and the prices of fleeces. Master Ferley made no remark upon the transformation of my dress and appearance, and allowed me to go in and out without question. He appeared to hold Robin in high estimation, and to think that I must be some person of importance in disguise.
The Prince of Wales had been sent to Pendennis Castle, in loyal Cornwall, and the King, fearing to send a despatch even in cipher, commanded me to do my utmost to convey to the Prince, by word of mouth, his Majesty's intentions respecting the Scotch, and his determination to avoid the Irish Papists. After much consultation with some loyal Oxford residents, I decided to travel as an Oxford merchant connected with the fish trade, and thus secured a pass from General Fairfax.
Industry used as metaphor.
From the yard at the spar mine came weird, plaintive sounds, as the rock-crusher ground the body of the mountain to fragments. These sounds were so wild and eerie that they might have been the forlorn music of fairy players sitting, shadowy and huge, in the dim rock-foundations, fiddling madly of nameless terror, fluting of unreachable beauties and rocky immortalities, harping on their own heartstrings to the deaf ears of men. Deborah listened and thought of Stephen down there, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, his nostrils a little expanded with excitement in the giant work he controlled, his nod bringing a fresh trollyful of rock to be ground up.
Suddenly he seemed to her like the rock-crusher, but with no regulating hand. Hers must be the regulating hand--yet she felt only like the crushed rock. The music rose; Stephen was working like a demon to-day, and the men cursed as they sweated. The mountain, a thing beautiful with such majestic and static beauty as only a lover or genius can reach, lifted its voice in a passionless death-song.
The availability of work did not necessarily beget wisdom.
At the hours of going to and leaving work, the Helstonleigh streets were alive with glove operatives, some being in one branch of the trade, some in another. . . . . . . The wages varied according to the particular work, or the men's ability and industry, from fifteen shillings a week to twenty-five: but all could earn a good living. . . . . . . These wages, joined to what was earned by the women, were sufficient to maintain a comfortable home, and to bring up children decently. Unfortunately the same drawbacks prevailed in Helstonleigh that are but too common elsewhere: and they may be classed under one general head--improvidence. The men were given to idling away at the public-houses more time than was good for them: the women to scold and to quarrel. Some were slatterns; and a great many gave their husbands the welcome of a home of discomfort, ill-management, and dirt: which, of course, had the effect of sending them out all the more surely.
Visit the introductory page giving authors and further reading.
Page created 13 January 2003 and last
updated 24 January 2003
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
Please read the general terms and conditions and about accessibility on this site, including the use of the UK government accesskeys system. Further details on ICRA labelling, visitor counts and EnrichUK may be obtained by following these external links:-
|
|