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.
UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON AND CHILWORTH.