Mind, Order reigns bloodless at Brompton.
This mood is, however, tempered by moments of self-criticism. The social millennium had not arrived when in 1862 a statue was erected in Bolton to its benefactor Crompton, the inventor of the spinning-mule, while his descendants were living in destitution:—
The spinning mule made Bolton. Samuel Crompton made the spinning mule.... He died in 1827, at the age of 74, and now Bolton, whose master-manufacturers cheated him living, honours him dead with a statue.... But Samuel Crompton left more behind him than the great invention and the memory of his wrongs and struggles. He begat sons and daughters as well as invented mules. He died a pauper, and they have fared as the children of those who die paupers are apt to do.... One of his sons is living dependent on charity, as his father died. Somebody bought him a suit of clothes that he might make a decent appearance at the inauguration of his father's statue. Besides this son, there are living some half a dozen grandchildren, some dozen great-grandchildren, of the inventor—all, with one exception, in poverty of the meanest, most pinching kind. Not one of them, son, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, was invited to the inauguration of Samuel Crompton's statue.
IN FORMA PAUPERIS
London Arab: "Please, sir, can't I have a shill'n's 'orth?]
A sum of £2,000 had been collected for the statue: a few weeks after its inauguration Lord Palmerston sent £50 to the surviving son. Assuredly there have been few more remarkable examples of asking for bread and being given a stone. And mill-owners were not the only masters whose methods exposed them to criticism. When in 1863 the engine-driver and fireman of a luggage train were fined 15s. each at the Oxford City Court for being found drunk and incapable on their engine, Punch admits the moderation of the punishment, but asks his readers to ponder the story told by the delinquents, and put the saddle on the right horse:—
They declared in the presence of the Company's Officers and without contradiction, that their day was fourteen hours, and that owing to extra pressure, they had only had seventeen hours sleep the whole of last week.... On whom should fall the blame and punishment? On the men, outworn, and driven to stimulants as a substitute for sleep or a support under exhaustion, or on the managers of the Company, who thus overwork, or, in other words, underpay their servants?
