THE BLACK COUNTRY AND THE POTTERIES
A remarkable instance of the localisation of special industries, and of a city begirt with good-sized towns, is to be found in the South Staffordshire Black Country, its central sun being the city of Birmingham. While in the Potteries are a number of small towns almost touching one another—star clusters, destined maybe eventually to coalesce into a single planet of the first magnitude. Here humanity swarms.
Alighting from a train at any wayside station in the South or West of England, if one walks along the main road, and avoids the villages, one may go for miles without meeting a soul. The Londoner, whose nerves have been unstrung and jarred by incessant contact and friction with his fellow-citizens for months at a stretch, has only to journey a few miles, say to Chertsey, Ewell, Epsom, or anywhere in Herts or Surrey, and in a few moments he finds a peaceful solitude not likely to be disturbed save by passing cycles or motor-cars. But in the Midlands, and for that matter anywhere in the North, it is different. There the bulk of Britain’s population is concentrated. One cannot go for a stroll without coming across individuals of all ages, who, although accustomed to see many people, stare at every stranger after a fashion unknown in the home counties, as if he or she were a wanderer from another planet. And should it be a child whose curiosity is thus aroused, he will probably follow the stranger for miles, gaping at nothing!
In the past, the manners and customs of the Black Country folk were decidedly rough, based on the principle of a blow first and an explanation afterwards. But this little trait has, under the modern influence of inter-communication with the outer world, been considerably modified. They work hard and “play” hard, and are given to week-end excursions and an annual “outing” to Blackpool, Southport, Lytham, or other favourite seaside resort. They earn good wages and, if steady, quickly save money and live in comfortable houses of their own; but if otherwise, their “good pay” only accelerates the wretchedness of their surroundings. Lavish with their cash, they are hospitable in the extreme; great consumers of plain beef and mutton, sweets and kickshaws they relegate to the women and children; but they no longer—as was affirmed of puddlers and miners during the boom of many years ago—drink champagne and feed their bull-pups on loin-chops and rump-steak. They are keen on dogs, pigeons, and singing-birds. Dog-fights are a thing of the past, of course, but it is whispered that suspiciously high-bred gamecocks are still to be seen sub-rosa throughout the district!
Altogether they are not half as black as they are painted; neither is the aspect of their country, though except in the neighbourhood of Birmingham it can hardly be called picturesque. They represent the sturdy old Midland English, independent and brusque, whose confidence once gained will not be betrayed.
Here, then, in the country called “Black,” is a concentration of industrial centres, each possessing great natural wealth of coal and iron, and turning out in enormous quantities cutlery, anvils, bolts, buttons, ironwork of all kinds, guns, hinges, locomotives, nails, pens, pins, rails, rifles, screws, tin and zinc-lined goods, tools, tubes, etc.
In its eighty-square-mile area, between Wolverhampton and the headquarters of “Chamberlainism” on the one side, and Stourbridge and Walsall on the other, dwell over a million people, distributed among some twenty-one towns ranging in size and population from Quarry Bank (8,000 inhabitants) to Wolverhampton (94,000), and including such familiar places as Handsworth (38,000), Stourbridge (17,000), Tipton (33,000), Wednesbury (29,000), and West Bromwich (68,000), all busily engaged in the industries before mentioned.
Such in a few words is the Black Country district, which the adjoining Potteries closely resembles. A more promising field for tramway enterprise could hardly exist. No wonder that George Francis Train in 1860 selected North Staffordshire for one of his earliest, though unsuccessful, ventures—a two-mile tramway from Hartley to Burslem, in the very heart of the Potteries.
THE NEW ORDER OF RURAL TRAMWAYS
Subsequently tramway companies came on the scene, with horses and steam traction, and—in one instance—with electricity. There were five distinct enterprises: the South Staffordshire Tramways Company, the Birmingham and Midland Tramways Company, the Dudley and Wolverhampton Tramways Company, the Wolverhampton Tramways Company, and the Dudley, Stourbridge, and District Electric Traction Company (a short line of about four miles).