Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes

by Leo H. Grindon

The industrial occupations specially identified with the cotton trade are bleaching, dyeing, and calico-printing. Bleaching, the plainest and simplest, was effected originally by exposure of the cloth to the open air and solar light. Spread over the meadows and pastures, as long as summer lasted, the country, wherever a "whiter" or "whitster" pursued his calling, was more wintry-looking in July than often at Christmas. The process itself was tedious, requiring incessant attention, as well as being liable to serious hindrance, and involving much loss to the merchant through the usually long delay. Above all, it conduced to the moral damage of the community, since the bleaching crofts were of necessity accessible, and furnished to the ill-disposed an incentive to the crime which figures so lamentably in their history. That changes and events, both good and evil, are prone to come in clusters is a very ancient matter of observation. At the precise moment when the ingenious machinery produced by Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, was developing its powers, a complete revolution took place in regard to bleaching. Scheele discovered that vegetable colours gave way to chlorine. Berthollet and Dr. Henry (the latter residing in Manchester) extended and perfected the application. By 1774 the bleaching process had been shortened one-half; the meadows and pastures were released; the summer sunshine fell once more upon verdure,

"Diffugere nives, redeunt jam gramina campis";

and by about 1790 the art became what we have it to-day, one purely for indoors. The new method was first practised successfully in the neighbourhood of Bolton, which place has preserved its original reputation, though long since rivalled in every part of the cotton-manufacturing district, and often in more distant spots, a copious supply of clean water being indispensable, and outweighing in its value the advantages of proximity to town. Many successive steps have to be taken before perfect whiteness can be secured, these demanding the utmost care and the strictest order of procedure. Finally, unless destined for the dye-house or the print-works, the cloth is stiffened with starch made from wheaten flour, the consumption of which article is very large also in the factories, where it is employed to give tenacity to the yarn, reacting beneficially upon the agricultural interest; then, in order to give it the beautiful smoothness and gloss which remind one of the petals of the snowdrop, it is pressed between huge rollers which play against one another under the influence of powerful engines. On emerging from them it is said to have been "cylindered," or, corruptly, "calendered." Bleaching, it will appear from this, is a process which but slightly taxes human strength. Very interesting is it to note how, in the presence of chemistry and steam, the old word "manufacture" has in modern times changed its meaning. To-day the office of human fingers is less to "make" than to guide the forces of nature, all the harder work being delegated to inanimate wood and iron. The time ordinarily allowed for bleaching is one or two days, though, if needful, the entire process can be accelerated. The cost is about a halfpenny per yard.

Dyeing is carried on in Lancashire quite as extensively as bleaching. Here, again, the exactest chemical knowledge is wanted. The managers are usually men well versed in science. A visit to an important dye-works always awakens the liveliest sentiments of admiration, and were it not for the relentless fouling of the streams which receive the refuse, few scenes of industry would live longer in pleasant memory. For although dye-works exist in towns and their suburbs, they are more frequently established out in the country, where there are babbling brooks and "shallow falls," with a view to obtaining a plentiful and steady supply of clean water. Factories also are sometimes found amid the fields, occupying quite isolated positions, the object being similar—the command of some definite local advantage. When at the foot of a hill it is interesting to observe that the chimney is placed half-way up the slope, a preliminary underground passage inducing a more powerful draught.

It is in the neighbourhood of these rural establishments that the hurt done by manufacturing to the pristine beauty of the country becomes conspicuous. Near the towns the results are simply dirt, withered hedges, and a general withdrawal of meadow adornment. In the country we perceive how the picturesque becomes affected. Railways are not more cruel. Cotton, with all its kindliness, reverses the celestial process which makes the wilderness blossom as the rose. There are differences in degree—the upper portion of the Irwell valley, near Summerseat, is in a measure exceptional; but we must never expect to find a spot wholly devoid of illustrations of blight and mischief. Against the destruction of natural beauty, when works and factories assume the sway, of course must be set not only the employment of the industrious, but the enormous rise in the value of the land; since rise of such character is a sign of advancing civilisation, which in due time will more than compensate the damage. In the manufacturing parts of Lancashire land available for farming purposes commands ten times the rental of a century ago. Mr. Henry Ashworth's paper on the increase in the value of Lancashire property, published in 1841, showed that since 1692 the rise in Bolton had been six hundredfold.

The highest place in the trio of beautiful arts now before us is held undeniably by calico-printing, since it not only "paints" the woven fabric "with delight," but in its power to multiply and vary the cheerful pictures is practically inexhaustible; thus representing, and in the most charming manner, the outcome of the sweet facility of the seasons. Next to the diversities of living flowers assuredly come the devices of the pattern-designer who discreetly goes to nature for his inspiration. Much of his work must of necessity be conventionalised, and some of it cannot be other than arbitrary and artificial; but there is no reason why, in its steadiest practice, strictly natural forms and colours should not always be regarded as truest and best. The tendency is daily more and more in this direction, so that calico-printing may justly anticipate a future even more distinguished than its present and its past. The "past," if we press for the birthday, is an ancient one indeed. Not to mention the chintzes of India, in the days of Calidasa, Pliny shows us very plainly that printing by means of mordants was practised in Egypt in the first century of the Christian era. When introduced into Western Europe is not known; for our present sketch it is enough that in England it began about a.d. 1700, coming, like many other excellent things, of the short-sighted efforts of selfishness, which, fortunately for mankind, always invites the retaliations of generosity. In the year mentioned, 1700, with a view to favouring the manufacturers of woollen and silk, the importation of prints from India was forbidden. Experiments were at once made with a view to production of similar work at home. This was soon discovered to be practicable, and preparations were made for printing upon a large scale, and at a moderate cost, when a new hindrance arose—say rather that the old malignant one, jealous opposition, reappeared. For a time this was successful, but at last the privilege to print in England was conceded, burdened, however, with the condition that the metropolis and the immediate vicinity should alone possess the right—a circumstance which recalls to mind the original law as to joint-stock banks. The monopoly wrought its own destruction, for there was one county at least, a despised but courageous one in the north, which was not likely to remain a passive spectator. Contemporaneously with the new bleaching process above described, contemporaneously also with the employment of the new cotton machinery, calico-printing obtained the provincial footing which from that time forwards has never ceased to strengthen, and which now renders Lancashire the most important district in the world in regard alike to the immensity of production and the inexpressible beauty of the workmanship. It is not too much to say, with an eminent author, that the calico-printing works of Lancashire are entitled to count with the most distinguished English seats of useful science, and the most interesting scenes of the exercise of tasteful invention. The earliest enterprise was in Manchester itself, in 1745, the year of the visit of Prince Charles and his army, the original Lancashire efforts having been made, so history says, by the grandfather of the late distinguished surgeon, Mr. Joseph Jordan. The "works" were situated on the banks of the Irwell, close to St. Mary's Church. Blackburn soon followed, and under the influence of the supreme abilities of the Peels, remained for many years the uncontested centre. Print-works are now met with in every little recess where there is supply of water, doubtless the first thing looked for when they were founded. The natural current sufficed at first; but it soon became customary to construct home or private reservoirs, and upon these the dependence is now essentially placed. No county in England needs so much water as Lancashire, and certainly there is not one that presents so many little bits of water-surface artificially prepared. It is pleasant to observe that the reservoirs belonging to "works," when belonging to a man of taste, have often been rendered extremely pretty by the introduction of water-lilies: flowers not only of unrivalled queenliness among aquatics, but distinguished among our native vegetation by the pensive languor always associated with the idea of the Oriental—the water-lilies' birthright—for, as a race, they are much more Asiatic than European, and by happy coincidence the most appropriate that could be placed there, the water-lily being the emblem not more of the Nile than of the Ganges.

The multiplicity of the printing processes, and their complexity, call for many distinct buildings. Hence, when large, and isolated away in the country, as very generally happens, a print-works has quite the look of a rising village. There is a laboratory, with library, for the managing chemist, a suite of apartments for the designers, and a house and fruitful garden for the resident partner, with, in addition, not uncommonly, a schoolroom for the children. When the designers have completed their sketches, the engraver's work begins—a business in itself, and carried on almost exclusively in town, and especially in Manchester. Originally the pattern was cut upon a block of wood, usually sycamore, the success of the transfer to the cloth depending chiefly upon the dexterity of the workman. In 1785 this very primitive mode was superseded by "cylinder-printing," the pattern being engraved upon copper rollers, as many as there are colours; and though "block-printing" shares the unquenchable vitality of hand-loom weaving, the roller may now be considered universal. The employment of copper supplies another very interesting illustration of the resort made to this metal in almost every kind of high decorative art, and prepares us to understand the fitness of the ancient mythological use, and why associated with the goddess of love and beauty.

These great undertakings—the bleaching, the dyeing, and the printing of the calico—demand steady supplies of the chemicals and other agents by means of which the various objects are attained. Hence in Lancashire the unrivalled number and extent of the manufacturing chemical works; and, especially in Manchester, the business,—never heard of in many English counties, here locally distinguished as the "drysalter's." The drysalter sees to the importation from foreign countries of the indigo, the madder, and other dye-stuffs in daily request; he deals also in the manifold kinds of gum constantly asked for, supplying himself partly from abroad, viâ Liverpool, partly from works close by which prepare it artificially. A well-known sight in Manchester is that of a cartload of logs of some curious tropical dyewood, rudely hewn by the axe, and still retaining in the cavities of the bark little relics of the mosses and lichens of their native forest.

The chemical works are located principally in the extreme south-west, especially near Widnes, a place which at once betrays itself to the passing traveller in the almost suffocating atmosphere, and the total extinction of the beauty of trees and hedges, spectres and gaunt skeletons alone remaining where once was verdure. Here we find in its utmost vigour the manufacture of "soda-ash" (an impure carbonate), and of chloride of lime, both for the use of bleachers; also, prepared from the first-named, "caustic soda," for the soap-boilers of Liverpool and Warrington; and chlorate of potash, peculiarly for the dyers. Nitric acid also is made in immense quantity, the basis being Chilian saltpetre, though for their materials for the soda-products the manufacturers have no need to go further than Cheshire, the supply of salt being drawn entirely from the Northwich mines. The discharge of stifling vapours was much worse before the passing of the Alkali Act than at present; and, curiously enough, though by no means without a parallel, involved positive loss to the manufacturer, who now manages to detain a considerable amount of good residuum previously wasted. The Act permits a limited quantity of noxious matter to go up the chimney; the stream is tested every day to see that the right is not abused: how terrible is the action even of that little the surrounding fields are themselves not slow to testify; everything, even in summer, looks dirty, lean, and dejected. Sulphuric acid is likewise manufactured on a great scale, especially at Newton-le-Willows, the basis (except when required to be very pure, when sulphur is employed) being iron pyrites imported from Spain. Hundreds of thousands of tons are prepared every year. There is probably not a single manufacturing process carried on in England in which chemical agency is involved which does not call for it. Hence, in the consumption of sulphuric acid, we have always a capital index to the state of trade, so far as regards appeal to the activity of the producing classes.