Bessbrook and its Linen Mills

Another cause of the good condition of the place may be found in the reward given under certain conditions to the deserving and to the saving – habits induced by the establishment of a bank, depositors in which receive interest at the rate of five per cent. That the men appreciate the advantage of such an institution is clear, when I state that some of them are depositors to the extent of £300 or £400.

After all, that which mainly distinguishes Bessbrook from other places of the same kind, are the religious agencies constantly brought to bear. Mr. Richardson himself is, as is well known, a member of the Society of Friends, and he and his lady – who possess, I may be allowed to state, many admirable qualifications for such work – devote much of their time to the promotion amongst all of the Christian life: but all are free to worship as conscience dictates; Quakerism has no monopoly of the place; Roman Catholics and Protestants abound, and the result is, every operative, with his family, makes a point of attending some place of worship, and on a Sunday all the churches and chapels in the district are well filled. You don’t see at Bessbrook what you may often see elsewhere – the intelligent and independent operative lounging about on a Sunday morning, ragged, unshaven, unwashed, a short pipe in his mouth, the penny radical newspaper in his pocket, an untaxed and ill-bred cur at his heels, waiting for the public to open and supply him with his beloved and pernicious beer. Sunday is a busy day at Bessbrook. At an early hour the Roman Catholics may be seen going to mass, and then, as the day wears on, the general public are visible marching to one place of worship or another. Few, very few, stop away. All the boys and the men are at a place of worship – if the mothers, and the infirm and the sick, have to stop at home. I don’t imagine they have got the millennium at Bessbrook, but I feel justified in saying that there people live in charity with each other, who, in other parts of Ireland, would be at work cracking each others’ skulls. How is this? I reply, the secret is to be found in the temperance character of the place. People discuss without the stimulating influence of the national drink, and the result is they never come to blows. The nearest public-house, outside the estate, is called Sebastopol, on account of the fighting of which it is too often the centre.

There are many week-evening services in Bessbrook, including mothers’ meetings and such-like gatherings; Mr. Richardson, with his wife, as I have already intimated, frequently leaves his beautiful seat at Moyallen personally to inspect the state, not merely of the mill as a commercial undertaking, but as an assemblage of men and women, and young persons and children, who have bodies to be cared for, and immortal souls to be saved. To help the backslider, to preserve the unfallen; to reclaim those who have; to relieve the sick and destitute; to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, is one part of a Christian man’s duty, faithfully remembered at Bessbrook. The aim and efforts of the principal are carried out by a devoted band of ladies and gentlemen connected with the place, and with the happiest results. I am told that in five years only three cases of misconduct have occurred. The discipline of the Roman Catholic Church of course prevents a great deal of mischief. If the priests do not marry themselves, they are great promoters of matrimony in other people. But, after all, they are not all Roman Catholics in Bessbrook – indeed, there, the followers of the old religion are rather in a minority.

Commercially, Bessbrook may be said to be of the first importance in the linen trade. The produce of its looms enjoys a world-wide reputation. Such confidence have buyers in them that, as a London gentleman remarked, “You may purchase them in the dark.” There is nothing inferior in the quality of the Bessbrook linen. It may be pronounced unsurpassed. What is manufactured there is sold to the trade, who put their own name to it, and export it to all parts of the world. The Spanish are customers, and so are the Americans. The warehouses of London and Belfast and Manchester are full of linen manufactured at Bessbrook. The public do not know the name, but the merchants and shippers do.

Bessbrook is placed in the centre of the flax-growing district of Ireland, and this is why the linen trade flourishes in that district. In 1829 the first flax mill was erected at Belfast, at an expense of nearly £30,000, which, however, in the course of a few years, was more than repaid. In 1855 it was calculated that no less than 500,000 spindles were at work, of which more than two-thirds belong to Belfast, affording occupation to no less than 250,000 hands in the province. In addition to the flax grown all round, and bought in the country markets, it is imported from Belgium, France, or the Baltic, as different qualities are required.

The flax goes through many processes ere it becomes the snowy damask which adorns your dining-table, or the delicate fabric which, under the name of linen, ornaments your person. Even a towel – as you will see at Bessbrook – like Rome, was not made in a day; hence I may say the interior of the mill is more remarkable that its exterior, imposing and stately as that is. Outside you see the mere walls, the windows, the lofty chimney, and, at certain times, streams of men, women, and children, emerging from it, known in manufacturing districts as “hands.” Inside, you feel, directly you have passed the threshold, that you are in a magic scene of industry, with its long, long rooms, filled with wonderful machinery harmoniously working, requiring, in many cases, only the attendance of a child. By gaslight the scene is exhilarating. Far, far away is the power which sets all this machinery in motion, and on it works untiring and as if for ever. The flax, however, is not fit for spinning and weaving as it comes to Bessbrook. Even though it comes there in the scutched state, a great deal has to be done to sort it and purify it. It is no joke going into a scutching mill. The dust and noise are hideous. It is bad enough to see the men and boys hackling it at Bessbrook. This hackling consists of three processes – (1) roughing, performed by roughers, in which the flax is passed over a course hackle, merely to take out dirt and tow, and leave the fibres straight; (2) machine hackling, performed by machinery, attended to by boys of from thirteen to sixteen, in which the flax is further hackled or combed out; (3) sorting, performed by men, who are called sorters or hacklers, whose business it is to hackle the flax as it comes from the machine, and to sort it in the different qualities. It is now ready for spinning, and is placed in a store until required.

The next process is spinning the flax into yarn, which process consists of two parts: (1) preparing, which is done by girls, technically termed preparers, back-minders, and rovers; and (2) spinning, which is done by female spinners. The yarn, when spun, is sent up to the reeling room to be reeled into hanks. This work is performed by reelers, also girls. The yarn is now ready for the market, with the exception of drying and bunching, which are carried on elsewhere.

We now ascend to the more important processes. For this purpose we enter a room where the atmosphere is uncomfortably warm, and the smell not the most agreeable. Here, men are at work, steeping the yarn in a mixture which is supposed to strengthen it, and the secret of which is generally pretty well kept. Men also are required for other purposes: the yarn is to be scoured or bleached, as the case may be, and then dried, and all this work is done by lads or men. As it is not all light and cheerful employment, most of the work is downstairs. Joyfully we ascend the big stone staircases and reach the upper air, where again we admire the beautiful order and the exquisite machinery; and the neat appearance of the women and girls employed in this, which is the weaving factory – large, airy, and well lighted – excite our admiration. I must add, the place is not a little noisy, with the clack and click, and whirr and whizz, of no end of looms. Here the first thing done is to wind the yarn on spools for warp, and pirns for weft. As soon as this is done, the latter is ready for the shuttle; but the warp has yet to be wound by girls off the spools, and attached to the warpers’ beams. When this is done, it is taken into the dressing-room, and consigned to the care of men. Four warpers’ beams are then and there twisted into one thread, and that is the one which goes into the looms and which forms the basis, as it were, of the manufactured article. But the beam has to submit to another process ere it reach this consummation. It is again passed into female hands, who attach to it heddles, or healds, by which the warp is raised. Now nothing remains but to take it to the weaving shed, and attach it to the looms, where the yarn is transmogrified into plain linen, hollands, sheeting, damask, and towels. The manufacture of damask is exceedingly interesting. Patterns of great beauty are procured at much expense. In one part of the mill you come to a large room, in which the designers, male and female, are at work drawing designs, and adapting them to the requisite scale. The patterns are cut out in cardboard. At the top of the loom there is a wonderful apparatus of little hooks, which as the cardboard pattern slowly revolves, pull out the requisite needles which do the bidding of the designer. You almost fancy fairy fingers must have worked these delicate designs. It is nothing of the kind. Machinery does it all. All that human intelligence has to do with the operation is, after the patterns have been secured in their proper places and machinery set at work, to see that the threads do not break, and that the uniform action of all be maintained. What leaves, and flowers, and garlands, are thus woven into the cloth! They are very proud of their damask at Bessbrook. No wonder at it. It is very beautiful, and has no superior in the trade.

In another part of the premises we find men at work at hand-looms, some of the beams of which are of immense breadth, and to move which requires the brawnier hands and firmer muscles of men. You, perhaps, wonder at this. Naturally the stranger expects the power-loom to have superseded the hand-loom. That it has done so, to a great extent, is evident from the most cursory inspection of Bessbrook, or any other weaving mill. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the very finest descriptions of linen are made with hand-looms. Why is this? you ask. Well, the answer is – and it is soon given – that the finest yarns would be quite unable to withstand the wear and tear of power-looms urged on by the resistless impetus of the water-turbine or the steam-engine. Ah, that machinery! – so delicate, so clean, so bright – can be very cruel! Be a little careless, a little wild, a little frolicsome, and an accident will occur in the twinkling of an eye. A mill is a good schoolmaster. With its unerring action, with its inevitable laws, with its results, good or bad, immediately following on action, it is an epitome of the universe. Mill-hands ought to be a thinking, sober-minded people. At any rate, such they seemed to me at Bessbrook.

The success of Bessbrook implies something more than a fair interest for money invested. It means the advancement of the employed morally and socially. Bessbrook is not, as I have already said, a mere pecuniary speculation. It is a grand experiment, intended to show that not merely can the workman do without his drink, but that he is better without it; that factory life may be carried on under circumstances favourable to the training of the children, to the development of the young, to the comfort and happiness of the advanced in life. At Bessbrook this experiment is carried out on the largest scale – how large, the following facts will abundantly demonstrate.

It is calculated that the refuse of the place brings in an income of £1,200 a year. Of course in a flax mill there is waste. After the flax is hackled and sorted, a good deal of fluffy flax is rejected. It falls down on the floor; it flies about in the air. Well, this is all swept up and sold for what I have stated. Then, again, it must be remembered that Bessbrook is the name of the head concern, but that it gives a great deal of employment in the country around. For instance, a lovely walk under shady trees and by the side of a bustling little river, under the fine viaduct of the railway, which takes you, as the case may be, to Dublin or Belfast, and over one of the hills which glorify this part of the world, and you come to a place called Craigmore. Well, there is a mill there, and the same process is carried on as at Bessbrook, only on a smaller scale. At Bessbrook there are 22,000 spindles at work, 500 power-looms, 60 hand. At Craigmore there are 100 power-looms, that is all. I have said this is the flax-growing country. Before the flax is fully ripe it is pulled up by the farmer, and left to dry in the field. After a day or two it is steeped in ponds, and then, when dried and scutched, taken to the market. All about the country there are scutch mills always at work. Nor is this all; the country is full of weavers, who work away all day at their hand-looms, lamenting probably the good old times before steam had altered the mode of linen manufacture – when the article in question was scarce – when wages were high, and linen only the luxury of the very rich. The old hand-looms remain, and people still get their living by working at them. As I have said already, under certain conditions it is necessary that they should remain. In the country round here there are 900 of such weavers who are employed in connection with the Bessbrook Mill.

Again, the size of the concern may be illustrated in another way. It employs altogether nearly 4,000 hands, including weavers, of which three-fourths are girls; girls, many of them would otherwise have to walk the streets in rags, or be thrown wild upon the towns, and add to their ever-increasing pauperism and degradation. About £200,000 worth of “raw material” is worked up at Bessbrook every year, and above £50,000 per annum paid away in wages. Few get any large portion; it passes away in small quantities to boys and girls. At Bessbrook the old proverb is still true: “Happy is the man who hath his quiver full of children.”

The question is often asked, how are capital and labour to be reconciled? Bessbrook shows. In that mill there is no feeling of antagonistic interests. I believe once there was a difficulty, but that was political, and not industrial. The wild frenzy of Fenianism in its desolating course extended to Bessbrook, but it was only a passing visitation, and it left no trace behind. A year or two ago the writer was standing on the steam-boat pier at Seraing, where the Messrs. Cockerell have their grand works for the manufacture of rail-iron and steam-engines. One of the heads of departments was with me. “Had you been here last week,” said he, “you would have seen the soldiers here.” “Why?” said I. “Why,” was the answer, “we had a strike, and were obliged to call in the military.” Assuredly it is not pleasant for masters and men when the military are called in to keep peace between them. At Bessbrook not even the presence of a policeman can be detected; and as to soldiers, they are as rare as angels. In a land where discord runs high, where party passions are strong, where intemperance adds fuel to the flame of lawlessness, is not this saying a great deal? If some of our manufacturers and employers of labour would visit Bessbrook, I fancy they would not find their time thrown away. I commend it to the notice of our social reformers. Plans on paper are one thing, and in actual life another. It is well to evolve a good idea from one’s inner consciousness; it is better to see it, as at Bessbrook, successfully carried out. A poet enthusiast would write glowingly of the place; I merely tell a plain unvarnished tale, and testify of what I seen and heard.

Since writing the above, I learn that in another part of Ireland the plan which Mr. Richardson has pursued has been carried out, and with great success. In the county of Tyrone there is a district upon which the liquor traffic is entirely prohibited. This district embraces an area of nine or ten miles, covering three great public roads, inhabited by a busy population of nearly 10,000. In that district it is conclusively established that there is a complete immunity from crime, and a poor-rate very much lower than that levied in surrounding districts. In Ireland, at any rate, these facts are being realised, and Irish M.P.’s in large numbers, especially in Ulster, help to swell the growing minority which demand that the people of a district may be freed, if they wish it, from the contamination of the beer-shop or the public-house.