Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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According to Susan, the mills themselves were pleasant places, the rooms
being "high, very light, kept nicely whitewashed, and extremely neat,
with many plants in the window-seats, and white cotton curtains to the
windows."

"Then," says Susan, "the girls dress so neatly, and are so pretty. The
mill girls are the prettiest in the city. You wonder how they can keep
so neat. Why not? There are no restrictions as to the number of pieces
to be washed in the boarding-houses. You say you do not see how we can
have so many conveniences and comforts at the price we pay for board.
You must remember that the boarding-houses belong to the company, and
are let to the tenants far below the usual city rents."

Much has changed in Lowell since that day, and it is probable that few
mill girls would now describe their life as favorably as Susan did in
1844. Nevertheless, the present generation of operatives derive much
good from the thoughtful and patriotic care of the founders. More
requires to be done. A large public park should be laid out in each of
those great centres of industry. The abodes of the operatives in many
instances are greatly in need of improvement. There is need of half-day
schools for children who are obliged to assist their parents. Wherever
it is possible, there should be attached to every house a piece of
ground for a garden. The saying of the old philosopher is as true now as
it was in the simple old times when it was uttered: "The way to have
good servants is to be a good master."

ROBERT OWEN,

COTTON-MANUFACTURER.

The agitation of labor questions recalls attention to Robert Owen, who
spent a great fortune and a long life in endeavoring to show workingmen
how to improve their condition by cooeperation. A more benevolent spirit
never animated a human form than his; his very failures were more
creditable than some of the successes which history vaunts.

At the age of ten years, Robert Owen, the son of a Welsh saddler,
arrived in London, consigned to the care of an elder brother, to push
his fortune. His school-days were over, and there was nothing for him
but hard work in some lowly occupation. At the end of six weeks he found
a situation as shop-boy in a dry-goods store at Stamford, in the east of
England; wages, for the first year, his board and lodging; for the
second year, eight pounds in addition; and a gradual increase
thereafter. In this employment he remained four years, and then,
although very happily situated, he made up his mind to return to London
to push his fortune more rapidly.

Being large and forward for his age, a handsome, prompt, active,
engaging youth, he soon obtained a situation in a dry-goods store on old
London Bridge, at a salary of twenty-five pounds a year and his board.
But he had to work unreasonably hard, often being obliged to sit up half
the night putting away the goods, and sometimes going to bed so tired
that he could hardly crawl up stairs. All the clerks had to be in the
store ready for business at eight in the morning. This was about the
year 1786, when men were accustomed to have their hair elaborately
arranged.

"Boy as I was," he once wrote, "I had to wait my turn for the
hair-dresser to powder and pomatum and curl my hair--two large curls on
each side and a stiff pigtail. And until this was all nicely done no one
thought of presenting himself behind the counter."

The lad endured this painful servitude for six months, at the end of
which he found a better situation in Manchester, the seat of the rising
cotton trade, and there he remained until he was nearly nineteen. He
appeared to have had no "wild oats" to sow, being at all times highly
valued by his employers, and acquiring in their service habits of
careful industry, punctuality, and orderliness. He must have been a
young man both of extraordinary virtues and more extraordinary
abilities; for when he was but nineteen, one of his masters offered to
take him as an equal partner, to furnish all the capital, and leave him
the whole business in a few years. There was also an agreeable niece in
the family, whose affections he had gained without knowing it.

"If I had accepted," he says, "I should most likely have married the
niece, and lived and died a rich Stamford linen-draper."

I doubt it. I do not believe that the best shop in Christendom could
have held him long. When he declined this offer he was already in
business for himself manufacturing cotton machinery. This business was a
failure, his partner proving incompetent; and he abandoned the
enterprise in a few months, taking, as his share of the stock, three
cotton-spinning machines. With these he began business for himself as a
cotton spinner, hiring three men to work his machines, while he
superintended the establishment. He made about thirty dollars a week
profit, and was going along at this rate, not ill satisfied with his
lot, when he read one morning in the paper an advertisement for a
factory manager. He applied for the place in person.

"You are too young," said the advertiser.

"They used to object to me on that score four or five years ago," was
his reply, "but I did not expect to have it brought up now."

"Why, what age are you?"

"I shall be twenty in May next."

"How often do you get drunk in the week?"

"I never," said Owen, blushing, "was drunk in my life."

"What salary do you ask?"

"Three hundred (pounds) a year."

"Three hundred a year! Why, I have had I don't know how many after the
place here this morning, and all their askings together would not come
up to what you want."

"Whatever others may ask, I cannot take less. I am making three hundred
a year by my own business."

He got the place. A few days after, this lad of twenty, who had never so
much as entered a large factory in his life, was installed manager of an
establishment which employed five hundred people. He conducted himself
with consummate prudence and skill. For the first six weeks he went
about the building grave, silent, and watchful, using his eyes much and
his tongue little, answering questions very briefly, and giving no
positive directions. When evening came, and the hands were dismissed, he
studied the machinery, the product, and all the secrets of the business.
In six weeks he was a competent master, and every one felt that he was a
competent master. Of large frame, noble countenance, and sympathizing
disposition, he won affection, as well as confidence and respect. In six
months there was not a better-managed mill in Manchester.

Now began his connection with America, a country to which, by and by,
he was to give three valuable sons. While managing this mill he bought
the first two bales of American Sea Island cotton ever imported into
England, and he advanced one hundred and seventy pounds to Robert
Fulton, his fellow-boarder, to help him with his inventions. I cannot
relate all the steps by which he made his way, while still a very young
man, to the ownership of a village of cotton mills in Scotland, and to a
union with the daughter of David Dale, a famous Scotch manufacturer and
philanthropist of that day. He was but twenty-nine years of age when he
found himself at the head of a great community of cotton spinners at New
Lanark in Scotland.

Here he set on foot the most liberal and far-reaching plans for the
benefit of the working people and their children. He built commodious
and beautiful school-rooms, in which the children were taught better, in
some respects, than the sons of the nobility were taught at Eton or
Harrow. Besides the usual branches, he had the little sons and daughters
of the people drilled regularly in singing, dancing, military exercises,
and polite demeanor. He made one great mistake, due rather to the
ignorance of the age than his own: he over-taught the children--the
commonest and fatalest of errors to new-born zeal. But his efforts
generally for the improvement of the people were wonderfully successful.

"For twenty-nine years," as he once wrote to Lord Brougham, "we did
without the necessity for magistrates or lawyers; without a single
legal punishment; without any known poors' rates; without intemperance
or religious animosities. We reduced the hours of labor, well educated
all the children from infancy, greatly improved the condition of the
adults, and cleared upward of three hundred thousand pounds profit."

Having won this great success, he fell into an error to which strong,
self-educated men are peculiarly liable,--_he judged other people by
himself_. He thought that men in general, if they would only try, could
do as well for themselves and others as he had. He thought there could
be a New Lanark without a Robert Owen. Accustomed all his life to easy
success, he was not aware how exceptional a person he was, and he did
not perceive that the happiness of the people who worked for him was due
as much to his authority as a master as to his benevolence as a man. The
consequence was that he devoted the rest of his life to going about the
world telling people how much better they would be off if they would
stop competing with one another, and act together for their common good.
Why have one hundred kitchens, one hundred ovens, and one hundred cooks,
when the work done in them could be better done in one kitchen, with one
oven, by five cooks? This was one question that he asked.

Here is the steam engine, he would say, doing as much work in Great
Britain as the labor power of two worlds as populous as ours could do
without it. Yet the mass of the people find life more difficult than it
was centuries ago. How is this? Such questions Robert Owen pondered day
and night, and the results he reached were three in number:--

1. The steam engine necessitates radical changes in the structure of
society.

2. Cooeperation should take the place of competition.

3. Civilized people should no longer live in cities and separate homes,
but in communities of fifteen hundred or two thousand persons each, who
should own houses and lands in common, and labor for the benefit of the
whole.

In spreading abroad these opinions he spent forty of the best years of
his life, and the greater part of a princely income. At first, and for a
considerable time, such was the magnetism of his presence, and the
contagion of his zeal, that his efforts commanded the sympathy, and even
the approval, of the ruling classes of England,--the nobility and
clergy. But in the full tide of his career as a reformer he deliberately
placed himself in opposition to religion. At a public meeting in London
he declared in his bland, impressive way, without the least heat or
ill-nature, that all the religions of the world, whether ancient or
modern, Christian or pagan, were erroneous and hurtful.

Need I say that from that moment the influential classes, almost to a
man, dropped him? One of the few who did not was the Duke of Kent, the
father of Queen Victoria. He remained a steadfast friend to Owen as long
as he lived. Mr. Owen founded a community on his own system. Its failure
was speedy and complete, as all experiments must be which are undertaken
ages too soon. He came to America and repeated the experiment. That also
failed in a remarkably short period. Associated with him in this
undertaking was his son, Robert Dale Owen, who has since spent a long
and honorable life among us.

Returning to England, Mr. Owen continued to labor in the dissemination
of his ideas until the year 1858, when he died at the age of
eighty-seven.

Mr. Holyoake, author of "The History of Cooperation in England,"
attributes to the teaching of Robert Owen the general establishment in
Great Britain of cooeperative stores, which have been successful. As time
goes on it is probable that other parts of his system, may become
available; and, perhaps, in the course of time, it may become possible
for men to live an associated life in communities such as he suggested.
But they will never do it until they can get Robert Owens at their head,
and learn to submit loyally and proudly to the just discipline essential
to success where a large number of persons work together.

JOHN SMEDLEY,

STOCKING-MANUFACTURER.

I wonder men in a factory town should ever have the courage to strike;
it brings such woe and desolation upon them all. The first few days, the
cessation from labor may be a relief and a pleasure to a large number--a
holiday, although a dull and tedious holiday, like a Sunday without any
of the alleviations of Sunday--Sunday without Sunday clothes, Sunday
bells, Sunday church, Sunday walks and visits. A painful silence reigns
in the town. People discover that the factory bell calling them to work,
though often unwelcome, was not a hundredth part as disagreeable as the
silence that now prevails. The huge mills stand gaunt and dead; there is
no noise of machinery, no puff of steam, no faces at the windows.

By the end of the first week the novelty has passed, and the money of
some of the improvident families is running low. All are upon short
allowance, the problem being to prolong life at the minimum of expense.
The man goes without his meat, the mother without her tea, the children
without the trifling, inexpensive luxuries with which parental fondness
usually treated them. Before the end of the second week a good many are
hungry, and the workers begin to pine for employment. Their muscles are
as hungry for exercise as their stomachs are for food. The provision
dealers are more and more cautious about giving credit. The bank
accounts, representing months or years of self-denying economy, begin to
lessen rapidly, and careful fathers see that the bulwarks which they
have painfully thrown up to defend their children against the wolf are
crumbling away a hundred times faster than they were constructed. If the
strike lasts a month, one half the population suffers every hour, and
suffers more in mind than in body. Anxiety gnaws the soul. Men go about
pale, gloomy, and despairing; women sit at home suffering even more
acutely; until at last the situation becomes absolutely intolerable; and
the strikers are fortunate indeed if they secure a small portion of the
advance which they claimed.

Terrible as all this is, I am afraid we must admit that to just such
miseries, sometimes rashly encountered, often heroically endured, the
workingman owes a great part of the improvement in his condition which
has taken place during the last seventy-five years. A strike is like
war. It should be the last resort. It should never be undertaken except
after long deliberation, and when every possible effort has been made to
secure justice by other means. In many instances it is better to submit
to a certain degree of injustice than resort to a means of redress which
brings most suffering upon the least guilty.

Does the reader know how the industrial classes were treated in former
times? Mr. George Adcroft, president of an important cooeperative
organization in England, began life as a coal miner. He has recently
given to Mr. Holyoake, author of the "History of Cooeperation," some
information about the habits and treatment of English miners only forty
years ago:--

"They worked absolutely naked, and their daughters worked by their side.
He and others were commonly compelled to work sixteen hours a day; and,
from week's end to week's end, they never washed either hands or face.
One Saturday night (he was then a lad of fifteen) he and others had
worked till midnight, when there were still wagons at the pit's mouth.
They had at last refused to work any later. The foreman told the
employer, who waited till they were drawn up to the mouth, and beat them
with a stout whip as they came to the surface."

So reports Mr. Holyoake, who could produce, if necessary, from the
records of parliamentary investigations, many a ream of similar
testimony. In truth, workingmen were scarcely regarded--nay, they were
_not_ regarded--as members of the human family. We find proof of this in
the ancient laws of every country in Europe. In the reign of Edward VI.
there was a law against idle workmen which shows how they were regarded.
Any laboring man or servant loitering or living idly for the space of
three days could be branded on the breast with the latter V (vagabond)
and sentenced to be the slave of the person who arrested him for two
years; and that person could "give him bread, water, or small drink, and
refuse him meat, and cause him to work by beating, chaining, or
otherwise." If he should run away from this treatment, he could be
branded on the face with a hot iron with the letter S, and was to be the
slave of his master for life.

Nor does there appear to have been any radical improvement in the
condition of the workingman until within the memory of men now alive.
When Robert Owen made his celebrated journey in 1815 among the factory
towns of Great Britain, for the purpose of collecting evidence about the
employment of children in factories, he gathered facts which his son,
who traveled with him, speaks of as being too terrible for belief.

"As a rule," says that son (Robert Dale Owen), "we found children of ten
years old worked regularly fourteen hours a day, with but half an hour's
interval for dinner, which was eaten in the factory.... Some mills were
run fifteen, and in exceptional cases sixteen hours a day, with a single
set of hands; and they did not scruple to employ children of both sexes
from the age of eight.... Most of the overseers carried stout leather
thongs, and we frequently saw even the youngest children severely
beaten."

This as recently as 1815! Mr. Holyoake himself remarks that, in his
youth, he never heard one word which indicated a kindly or respectful
feeling between employers and employed; and he speaks of the workshops
and factories of those days as "charnel-houses of industry." If there
has been great improvement, it is due to these causes: The resistance of
the operative class; their growth in self-respect, intelligence, and
sobriety; and the humanity and wisdom of some employers of labor.

The reader has perhaps seen an article lately printed in several
newspapers entitled: "Strikes and How to Prevent Them," by John Smedley,
a stocking manufacturer of Manchester, who employs about eleven hundred
persons. He is at the head of an establishment founded about the time of
the American Revolution by his grandfather; and during all this long
period there has never been any strike, nor even any disagreement
between the proprietors and the work-people.

"My ancestors' idea was," says Mr. Smedley, "that those who ride inside
the coach should make those as comfortable as possible who are
compelled, from the mere accident of birth, to ride outside."

That is the secret of it. Mr. Smedley mentions some of their modes of
proceeding, one of which is so excellent that I feel confident it will
one day be generally adopted in large factories. A cotton or woolen
mill usually begins work in this country at half-past six, and
frequently the operatives live half an hour's walk or ride from it. This
obliges many of the operatives, especially family men and women, to be
up soon after four in the morning, in order to get breakfast, and be at
the mill in time. It is the breakfast which makes the difficulty here.
The meal will usually be prepared in haste and eaten in haste; late
risers will devour it with one eye on the clock; and of course it cannot
be the happy, pleasant thing a breakfast ought to be. But in Mr.
Smedley's mill the people go to work at six without having had their
breakfast. At eight the machinery stops, and all hands, after washing in
a comfortable wash-room, assemble in what they call the dinner-house,
built, furnished, and run by the proprietors. Here they find good coffee
and tea for sale at two cents a pint, oatmeal porridge with syrup or
milk at about ten cents a week; good bread and butter at cost.

In addition to these articles, the people bring whatever food they wish
from home. The meal is enjoyed at clean, well-ordered tables. The
employers keep in their service a male cook and female assistants, who
will cook anything the people choose to bring. After breakfast, for
fifteen minutes, the people knit, sew, converse, stroll out of doors, or
amuse themselves in any way they choose. At half-past eight, the manager
takes his stand at a desk in the great dinner-room, gives out a hymn,
which the factory choir sings. Then he reads a passage from a suitable
book,--sometimes from the Bible, sometimes from some other book. Then
there is another hymn by the choir; after which all hands go to work,
the machinery starting up again at nine.

There is similar accommodation for dinner, and at six work is over for
the day. On Saturdays the mill is closed at half-past twelve, and the
people have the whole afternoon for recreation. All the other rules and
arrangements are in harmony with this exquisite breakfast scheme.

"We pay full wages," adds Mr. Smedley, "the hands are smart and
effective. No man ever loses a day from drunkenness, and rarely can a
hand be tempted to leave us. We keep a supply of dry stockings for those
women to put on who come from a distance and get their feet wet; and
every overlooker has a stock of waterproof petticoats to lend the women
going a distance on a wet night."

I would like to cross the sea once more for the purpose of seeing John
Smedley, and placing wreaths upon the tombs of his grandfather and
father. He need not have told us that whenever he goes through the shops
all the people recognize him, and that it is a pleasure to him to be so
recognized.

"I wish," he says, "I could make their lot easier, for, with all we can
do, factory life is a hard one."

RICHARD COBDEN,

CALICO PRINTER.

An American citizen presented to the English town of Bradford a marble
statue of Richard Cobden. It was formally uncovered by Mr. John Bright,
in the presence of the mayor and town council, and a large assembly of
spectators. The figure is seven feet in height, and it rests upon a
pedestal of Scotch granite polished, which bears the name of COBDEN
encircled by an inscription, which summarizes the aims of his public
life:--

"FREE TRADE, PEACE AND GOOD WILL AMONG NATIONS."

The giver of this costly and beautiful work was Mr. G. H. Booth, an
American partner in a noted Bradford firm. Unhappily Mr. Booth did not
live to behold his own gift and share in the happiness of this
interesting occasion.

We ought not to be surprised that an American should have paid this
homage to the memory of an English statesman. There are plenty of good
Americans in this world who were not born in America, and Richard Cobden
was one of them. Wherever there is a human being who can intelligently
adopt, not as a holiday sentiment merely, but as a sacred principle to
be striven for, the inscription borne upon the Cobden statue: "Free
trade, peace, and good will among nations," _there_ is an American. And
this I say although we have not yet adopted, as we shall soon adopt, the
principle of Free Trade.

Cobden was one of the best exemplifications which our times afford of
that high quality of a free citizen which we name public spirit. The
force of this motive drew him away from a business which yielded a
profit of a hundred thousand dollars a year, to spend time, talent,
fortune, and life itself, for the promotion of measures which he deemed
essential to the welfare of his countrymen.

He did this because he could not help doing it. It was his nature so to
do. Circumstances made him a calico printer, but by the constitution of
his mind he was a servant of the State.

His father was an English yeoman; that is, a farmer who owned the farm
he tilled. During the last century such farmers have become in England
fewer and fewer, until now there are scarcely any left; for there is
such a keen ambition among rich people in England to own land that a
small proprietor cannot hold out against them. A nobleman has been known
to give four or five times its value for a farm bordering upon his
estate, because in an old country nothing gives a man so much social
importance as the ownership of the soil. Cobden's father, it appears,
lost his property, and died leaving nine children with scarcely any
provision for their maintenance; so that Richard's first employment was
to watch the sheep for a neighboring farmer, and this humble employment
he followed on the land and near the residence of the Duke of Richmond,
one of the chiefs of that protectionist party which Cobden destroyed.
With regard to his education, he was almost entirely self-taught, or, as
Mr. Bright observed, in his most cautious manner:--

"He had no opportunity of attending ancient universities, and availing
himself of the advantages, and, I am afraid I must say, in some degree,
of suffering from some of the disadvantages, from which some of those
universities are not free."

This sly satire of the eloquent Quaker was received by the men of
Bradford with cheers; and, indeed, it is true that college education
sometimes weakens more than it refines, and many of the masters of our
generation have been so lucky as to escape the debilitating process.

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