Bessbrook and its Linen Mills

BESSBROOK AND ITS LINEN MILLS

That the times in which we live are out of joint is a truism too obvious to require comment. As much now as in old days the cry is, “Who will show us any good?” We hear much of modern progress; but there are many who, like Mr. Froude, intimate that what we call progress is in reality merely change, and that change is not necessarily always for the better. When such men as Mr. Ruskin leave the domain of the beautiful fiercely to arraign what in our wisdom, or want of it, we term Political Economy and its pitiless laws, we may be sure that all the social problems of the age have not been satisfactorily solved. If it be true that our rich men are becoming richer every day, it is equally true that our poor are becoming poorer. Might has taken from the peasant his strip of land, and has driven him into the towns, where he dies of bad air, bad water, bad food, bad lodging, bad pay; where his sons learn crime, and his daughters how much better rewarded is vice than virtue. Underneath the whited sepulchres of our boasted civilisation there lie rottenness and dead men’s bones. Of talk we have somewhat more than enough, as must necessarily be the case now that woman claims to appear on the platform on an equality with man. Associations of all kinds exist partly for the bettering and partly for the bewildering of the public. Money is freely subscribed for them; for Dives has a dim idea that he owes much to Lazarus, and would at all times rather discharge the debt by letting a few crumbs fall from the table, than by personally clothing his naked form and binding up his loathsome sores. It is not clear that we have improved on that very much. It is clear that for lack of it we have a great deal – especially in our crowded manufacturing districts – of social anarchy – of progress the wrong way – of licence which means licentiousness, of teaching and talking downward rather than upward. The need of silent divine action, as Thomas Carlyle writes, is very great at this time.

In Ireland, in one spot in particular, this silent divine action has now been in progress some twenty years, and the result is worth noting. I write of Mr. Richardson’s Flax-spinning Mills at Bessbrook, a model town near Newry, and not far from the headquarters of Ireland’s principal source of wealth, the linen trade.

A few words as to this trade may not be out of place here. The art of weaving is of great antiquity. In Ireland for many years attention has been paid to this branch of industry. Its linen manufacture has existed from the earliest period. In the reign of Charles I. the Earl of Strafford caused flax seed to be brought from Holland, and induced manufacturers from France and Holland to settle in the country. After the Restoration the trade was firmly established. From 1711 to 1832 it was placed under Government patronage. In former times the weaver was superior in social status to most other workpeople, and he enjoyed special privileges. He was exempt, for instance, from serving on juries, and, except under peculiar circumstances, could not be forced to join the army. Many of the old Irish squires as well as the sons of landed chiefs were taught to weave, and even as late as the last century there were numbers of such weavers in Ulster. Indeed in that district everything was done that could be done to develop this important industry. During the long period of Lord Moira’s residence at Montalto, he gave all possible encouragement to his tenants in stimulating the growth of flax. He had a dinner prepared every Thursday for the cloth buyers who attended Ballynahinch Market, and on these occasions we are told that his lordship sat at the head of the table and listened to the trade gossip about yard-wides and seven-eights, with all the zest of one who had become personally interested in the rise or fall of goods. In a similar spirit the Earl of Hillsborough, at that time a leading statesman, readily exercised his senatorial influence as well as his baronial power. Lord Hertford was also very friendly in every way where his aid could be of advantage. In 1765, when he held the office of Irish Viceroy, he obtained from the Linen Board many concessions in favour of the Northern merchants, and his influence at Court was successfully used to obtain royal patronage for the Lisburn Damask works. A large lot of goods was specially got up for the royal table, the fame of this damask rapidly rose after the accomplishment of the royal order, and not only the leading peers of Great Britain, but several of the Continental potentates, sent to Lisburn for their goods. In many ways public-spirited men sought to improve their machinery in order that they might be able to produce a better class of goods. About the time when James Quinn was stirring up the latent taste for the fanciful in damask-weaving and giving the people of Lurgan new ideas as to what could be accomplished in working patterns with the shuttle, James Bradshaw, the son of an independent landowner, who resided near Newtownards, was paying great attention to the diaper trade, then carried on in that town with considerable spirit, though at that time the Irish looms were beaten by those of Holland and the Continent. Mr. Bradshaw was determined to find out the secret of that superiority. As an amateur weaver, he had taken much interest in the improvement of weaving machinery, and seen its defects. One morning in 1728 he left his home in Ulster, and for two years afterwards no one of his family or friends knew anything of his whereabouts. Immediately after leaving home, he assumed the style of dress usually worn by weavers, and set out for Holland, but at the end of several weeks’ travel by sea and land, he found himself, instead, in Hamburg, where he engaged with a diaper manufacturer, and at once commenced work. While so employed he paid the most diligent attention to all he saw, both as to the style of weaving, the fittings of looms, and the peculiar description of yarns chosen for certain classes of goods. All the time young Bradshaw remained in Hamburg he was obliged to keep up the garb and character of an ordinary workman, as such was the jealousy of the trade there, that had it been known that he had merely come among them for the purpose of finding out the secret of the manufacture, his life might have fallen a sacrifice. At length, having mastered the details and gained ample experience of the practical department of diaper-making, he thought of returning home, which he did, by the aid of friends. In 1730, he arrived safely at Newtownards, a town which has since become famous as the Paisley of Ulster. Soon after his return, Mr. Bradshaw had looms constructed on the improved principle. He personally inspected the mode of fitting them up, and had all the gearing made on the plan so popular in Hamburg. The effect of all this was, we are told, to introduce a superior system of production, and to give life to the diaper trade, not only in Newtownards, but throughout other parts of Downshire.

Thus the linen trade flourished and became more important every year; of this importance Belfast may be considered as the outward and visible sign; every one knows that, in consequence of its being the seat of the linen trade, it has become the most prosperous town in Ireland. Its mills, factories, and docks, combine the commercial and mercantile features both of Liverpool and Manchester. Its situation is most picturesque – its streets are broad and uniform. Some of the linen-warehouses are palaces, and nowhere in the world are there finer buildings, more attractive shops, and greater symptoms of prosperity and wealth. It is not merely the seat of shipping, of commerce, of manufacture, but its intellectual claims are of no common character. It calls itself the Irish Athens, and its colleges, and libraries, and newspapers, and general intelligence, bear out in some degree that claim. The linen trade of Ulster now represents a capital of several millions, and employs men, women, and children.

What has developed it to its enormous extent has been the application of steam. No longer the weaver sits in his isolated cottage. He is a hand in a mill, and weaving is a complex affair, requiring, to make it pay, gigantic operations and many hands. The factory system has many disadvantages, which tend to the mental, moral, and physical deterioration of the hands engaged in it. I write of one of the most successful efforts that has yet been made to free the factory of them, and to carry it on in a way advantageous, not only to the employer, but the employed. For these purposes it is necessary that the factory be an isolated one; that it should be a community by itself, an imperium in imperio, governed by its own laws, with its own special educational, religious, and philanthropic establishments; and that, above all things, it should be conducted on the principle, or rather practice, of total abstinence from all intoxicating drinks. I heard the Rev. Kegan Paul say at a temperance meeting, held in Exeter Hall this year, that in some parts of Dorsetshire, the county in which he resided, there were parishes with no public-houses in them, that in these parishes there were no paupers, that no cases came from them to the Petty-Sessions, and that the answer given by policeman, when asked by the magistrates whether he had ever taken a teetotaller into custody, was “No.” From many other districts in England, Scotland, and Ireland, a similar testimony reaches us. From all the judges of the land, from all our clergy, from all our prisons and penitentiaries – affirmation, mournful in its monotony, reminds us that drink is the bane of the working-man. This is confessed by all, whether they be temperance reformers or not. In many cases it is found that the higher the wages earned by the operative, the more drunken and dissipated are his habits. No fact has been more conclusively established. Where you shut up the public-house, the gin-palace and the beer-shop, you have less pauperism and crime, more honest, decent, sober living, than you have where these places are open. If this be true in England, where the people are more phlegmatic and less wild on politics and religion, it is trebly true of Ireland, where the people are supposed to be at all times too passionate and ready to take offence; where ages of political and religious partisanship have given to those passions an unnatural ferocity; and where the drop o’ drink seems to be especially potent in its working. I have travelled in most parts of England, Scotland, and Europe, but I never felt in the slightest peril from the character of my travelling companions. I have been very little in Ireland, but the most disagreeable journeys I ever made were on Irish railways. In each case the disagreeableness arose entirely from the extent to which my fellow-passengers had indulged in the national drink. Perhaps we get it adulterated in England. If so, we have reason to be thankful. Its effects on the Irish are, for the time, truly demoniacal. I have never seen people so maddened with drink as those of the sister isle. The temperate character of Bessbrook strikes you at once. There the difficult problem of carrying out a factory with the minimum of inevitable evil seems to have been satisfactorily solved.

Where is Bessbrook? The answer is, you pass it as you travel by rail from Belfast to Dublin, a little more than fifty miles from the latter, a little more than thirty from the former place – close to the Newry station on the main line. By day and night it is visible, and testifies afar-off the industry of which it is the source and centre. About half a mile to your right you can just discern its lofty chimneys and gigantic works. By night the place looks like a palace of glass, as the cheerful light, eloquent of labour and capital and intelligence, shines out of its thousand windows. We get out of the train, and ascend the road on our right. If it be daytime we shall have a pleasant walk. Behind us is Newry, or rather the valley in which it is seated, where its merchants and tradesmen sell and buy and get gain; and the river with its ships, which trade to Liverpool and all parts of our English coast. On our left and right are mountains and hills, well planted with white cottages and farmers’ houses, which look smilingly at us in the morning sun. The interiors, we admit, may be capable of improvement. Many of them are of the rudest kind, with the bare earth for the floor, with stone walls, whose sides internally are black with the smoke of the peat fire, which is painfully manifested to the unaccustomed and curious stranger who inquires within. The inhabitants are all small farmers. They grow flax and potatoes, keep a cow or a goat, and poultry and pigs, the sale of which is their living. As for themselves, they never touch such delicacies, and live chiefly on potatoes and Indian meal. They are very dirty. Muck of all kinds surrounds their dwellings, and yet they seem to thrive, and the shoeless, unwashed, ragged boys and girls you meet up there, have faces and figures you often seek in vain amongst more civilised people and in more comfortable homes. They have a hard time of it. In their dreary cabins wretchedness seems to reign supreme. At the outside, a couple of rooms comprise the whole extent of the building devoted to the human biped, and he is but little better lodged than his cow or pig – that is all. Nevertheless, you can’t get the tenant to abandon his holding, for which he pays to take possession a great deal more than you would think it really worth, the rent of which is often high, and is generally scraped together with much difficulty and after considerable delay. To be behindhand with the rent is no uncommon thing in these parts, and a stranger up yon hills is viewed with considerable suspicion. It can be no good that takes him up there – such is the firm belief of the natives. No power on earth is able to get them to give up their mountain freedom and frugal fare for better living elsewhere. Here, at least, the Irishman is too contented.

As we wend our way, a fine breeze meets us from the distant downs. You can fancy the sportsman may find on the distant heather something that may repay his toil, or the artist something he may love to transfer to his canvas; but you would never guess that in so romantic a spot there was so unpoetic a thing as a flax-spinning mill. On our right runs a little stream, which, ere it reaches its destination in Newry, sets more mills going, considering the distance, than any other in the country.

A turn in the road, and we are at Bessbrook Mills. As we descend we see the works in all their extent, and the rising slope beyond, on which is planted the town in which the workmen live. “What an admirable situation!” you exclaim; and truly you are right. No poisonous exhalations load the air; all seems cheerful and healthy. Here you see a picture of factory life without factory abominations. No policeman is required to keep order, for you see no public-house to create disorder. The head of the place is a teetotaller. Most of the leading men in the concern are the same. There is no law to compel the workpeople to be such, but most of them are so, and great is the comfort of the wives and families in consequence, as most people are fully aware of the fact that the worst thing a working-man can do with his money is to spend it in the gin-palace or the public-house.

What immediately strikes the stranger is the substantial and comfortable appearance of the mill and its surroundings. At Bessbrook each house consists of from three to five rooms, according to the size of the family occupying it. Every arrangement necessary to promote cleanliness and health is resorted to. As you pass up, some of the first buildings you come to are the schoolrooms, which are for girls and boys, and for lads in the evening who are engaged during the day. The infant-school attached is the most interesting feature; but you will be pleased with the clean appearance of the boys and girls – with their intelligence and readiness to learn. The staff of masters and mistresses employed is evidently superior. This school is on the Irish national system, that is, it is undenominational, and people need but examine the results of these schools to prove the real value of unsectarian education bringing all classes together, and trusting to the Sabbath schools for religious instruction. Every householder has to send his children there, or whether he sends them or not he is charged a penny for the schooling of each child. £100 is subscribed annually, I believe, by the mills, and there is, besides, a Government grant. The playground attached to the school is an extensive one, and the view from it very fine.

A few doors further on, and we come to the Dispensary. There are ills to which all flesh is heir, and to remove which the services of a medical man are required. In Ireland the county is divided into districts, and the services of a medical man are given gratuitously; but this is pauperism, and the hands at Bessbrook are not paupers. All here are expected to subscribe to a medical club, and the Firm supplement the subscription with a handsome one of their own.

Thus a doctor is secured, who comes to his Dispensary on certain days of the week, and who also, of course, visits the serious cases in their own homes.

Further on, we come to a building which we ascertain to be the Temperance Hotel. This is the club and newsroom of the place. In the winter-time it is highly popular. Many Irish papers and a few English ones are taken in, and, I may add, most diligently perused. Here also are Punch and Zozimus, or the Dublin Punch. There also chess and draughts are played, and smoking is permitted. Boys are here indulging in games, while the advanced politician has his favourite organ – Conservative or Liberal; and those who care for neither, discuss matters connected with the neighbourhood, and the state of affairs at home. I may add, close to the mill itself is a large hall in which refreshments are provided at a cheap rate for those who come from a distance.

A little further on, and we come to a square, around which are workmen’s houses, some of them really most eligible habitations, with a few shops at the end nearest us. One of them is a co-operative store; another is a milliner’s shop, in which the latest fashions are as much sought after as in London; and then there is a butcher’s shop, a baker’s, a general shop, and a post-office. At right angles to the right of the principal street are two or three more streets, which also contain a shop or two; so that the good people at work here, if they have money to spare, can find little difficulty in parting with it. A farm of 300 acres, belonging to the Firm, must also be noted, by means of which that real luxury, pure milk – a thing unknown in our great metropolis – is placed within the reach of all. There are allotments in which the householders work on a summer’s evening, and at one end of the town are some better classes of houses, in which the gentlemen connected with the works or the estate – which belongs to the same proprietor – reside; just below these spreads out a picturesque sheet of water, which feeds the mill, and is here useful as well as ornamental. From thence the ground rises, and you get a good view of the surrounding hills. On one elevation, just before you enter the town, there is the Friends’ Meeting-house, and a comfortable villa in which Mr. Richardson resides when he visits the place. Indeed, though he lives some fourteen miles off, he is not long absent from Bessbrook. He and his wife are perfectly cognisant of its wants, material and spiritual, and are ready to relieve them. They feel that it is a serious thing to have such a community under their care, they realise all the solemn responsibility of such a charge. Mr. Richardson, jun., who lives near the works, entertains similar ideas, and conducts the Sabbath-school – a very flourishing one, held in the schoolroom on a Sunday afternoon. A little way out of the town you may see, near one another, three very substantial-looking buildings – one is a Roman Catholic, one is a Presbyterian, and another is an Episcopalian place of worship. Let me add, that all these seem well attended, and that in Bessbrook there is peace and harmony; the rival sects rarely interfere with each other, because the demon of strong drink inflames no root of bitterness, and fans no religious animosities into a fever heat.

I think I have now given an account of all the institutions of the place, with one exception – that of the Methodists, who meet in a temporary little hall, originally a photographic establishment. They are an infant cause as yet, but Mr. Richardson has recently granted a site for a place of worship for their accommodation. Such, then, are the institutions of Bessbrook. Let me repeat what they are – the school, the church, the dispensary, the shop, the reading-room, the mill. Let me add what they are not – the pawnbroker’s, the leaving-shop, the ragged-school, the petty lodging-house to which tramps resort in all our large towns, the public-house, and consequent police-station. Does it now dawn on you, intelligent reader, why, in the opinion of many, Bessbrook is deemed worthy to be called a model town?

Let me now speak of its origin. The concern has been in active operation about a quarter of a century. An estate of six thousand acres belonging to an Irish nobleman was in the market, and it was purchased by Mr. John G. Richardson, a wealthy, intelligent, and public-spirited member of the Society of Friends, partly with a view, of course, to the productive use of his capital, and partly to give the operative class a chance of living and working under conditions favourable, and not, as is too generally the case, opposed, to their physical and moral welfare. On the estate, on a site admirably adapted for the purpose, Bessbrook is situated. There is a beautiful blue granite found in one part of the estate, equal if not superior to that of Aberdeen as regards appearance and quality, which is gradually being introduced into England, where it needs but to be seen to be appreciated. It is now being used in the Manchester new Town Hall, and as it is better known we may expect to find it more largely in demand there. As at the mill, the same law holds good, that no public-house is to be tolerated. As a natural consequence, as I have already intimated, the police are unknown. All over the rest of Ireland you see them – wonderfully fine fellows, equal to any Prussians – the flower of the country – fully armed and ever active, as they may well be, for in Ireland there is little sympathy between the rulers and the ruled; even on the hills around Bessbrook the peasants illuminated when they heard of French successes, as if France was to come and fight on their behalf. There are public-houses around, and they bring with them the usual curses incident to such institutions among a people so excitable and passionate as the Irish. In Bessbrook, and in one or two other districts, the public-house is forbidden, and consequently the step of the policeman is never there heard. In its peaceful streets his martial figure is unknown. The operative has no fines to pay for being drunk and disorderly, and has no occasion to pawn his Sunday clothes to procure a meal for his starving family. Teetotallers flourish. There is a Band of Hope with nearly nine hundred members, a Temperance Society, and a flourishing society of Good Templars as well; and occasionally lecturers come there from the head-quarters in Dublin; but the place itself teaches a lesson better than any of them, inasmuch as Thomas Carlyle writes, “Silent divine action is better than any amount of speech or song,” and in this point of view the example of Bessbrook cannot be too much dwelt upon or too widely proclaimed. As long as the workman drinks it is in vain that you try to elevate him. I am not speaking of drinking to excess. As wages are, the workman who is but a moderate drinker wastes money and time which, if better employed, would enable him to do better for his family and himself. At Bessbrook this is clearly felt; the men and women who come there have no desire to leave it – the mild despotism of a paternal government suits them. From the villages all round, even from as far as Newry, people come to work at the mills. Tuesday is the day when fresh hands are taken on, and great is the joy when an application receives an affirmative reply. The crowd round the door is the best possible test of the popularity of the place: you get a better idea of its magnitude when I tell you that it employs upwards of 4,000 hands, and that it pays away in wages as much as £50,000 a year. I have said there is little of that troublesome discontent which seems chronic in Ireland in and around Bessbrook. I might say more – I might testify to the existence and skill of the Volunteer Brass Band, which performs on public occasions, and whose services are in request even beyond Bessbrook itself. One great characteristic of the place is the sober and moral air of the people. In dense communities outside, you hear of scandals which are rare at Bessbrook; the superior education given, the absence of intoxicating liquor, have of course much to do with this. But other agencies are at work. I refer in the first place to the family system initiated, or at any rate carried out here; the rule is to take on a whole family at a time. Here you have no young girls and lads at the most dangerous periods of their lives freed from parental control, and thrown uncared-for on the world. Where they are, we know too well what follows. Our great towns by night testify to the evils, moral and social, resulting from such a state of things. At Bessbrook the family is placed in one or other of the houses built for the operatives, and work is found for all. If the father cannot work in the mill, he is set to mend the roads, to work on the farm or at the quarries, to be a waggoner, or to make himself generally useful: and the services of such people are in request, as all the repairs of the mill-gear are done by workmen on the spot. There is no occasion to go out of the settlement for artificers of any kind. All the machinery of the place is set in motion by six engines consuming annually 10,000 tons of coal, which has all to be brought from Newry, and a water-turbine representing in all many hundred horse-power. It is clear, then, that paterfamilias will find plenty to do, and it is equally clear that the family living on temperance principles will be more decent, orderly, and comfortable than if the head of it frequented the public-house. I must say that as regards personal appearance, the Bessbrook mill-hand may challenge a comparison with any other mill-hands of a similar class. Some of the work I should fancy is not of the healthiest, at any rate there was a heat in some of the rooms, and a dusty condition of the atmosphere in others, not very desirable, but the hands looked well nevertheless; and on a Sunday it is scarcely necessary to observe that they are got up in a style regardless of expense.