The manufactures of Kidderminster are of many years standing. In 1536 it was enacted that “No person of what degree or quality soever they be, shall make within the shire of Worcester any manner of woollen cloths, except only within the city of Worcester, the borough and towns of Kidderminster, Evesham, Droitwich, and Bromsgrove, under pain of forfeiting, for every broad cloth elsewhere made, the sum of ten pounds;” and in the time of Charles II an act was passed “for regulating the manufacture of Kidderminster stuffs.” Arras, frieze, cheneys and ratteens, poplin, prunellas, rich brocades and quilted stuffs were all made here in their turn, but the Carpet Manufacture, to which the town has entirely owed its prosperity and fame in later years, was not introduced till the middle of last century. At first the Scotch carpets only were made, but afterwards Wilton and Brussels, and the Kidderminster goods at once acquired celebrity for substantial workmanship and brilliancy of colouring. At the beginning of the present century there were probably about 400 looms at work here, but there are now at least 3,000. The trade has of course been subject to many fluctuations, and there have been several seasons of severe distress amongst the weavers, which have been for the most part coincident with stagnation in other departments of manufacture, and are traceable to the same general causes. During the last ten years the business has been comparatively prosperous, there has been a great increase of production, and the tapestry carpeting is largely exported to the Continent, where its cheapness secures sale in the teeth of the elegant, but costly, “velvets” of France. The many improvements which have been introduced into the method of manufacture during the present century, have principally had reference to the construction of the looms, and economy in the amount of wool used; in design there is still something to be accomplished. The principal varieties now made are the ordinary Venetian carpeting, the Scotch or Kidderminster, Brussels, Wilton, Genoa velvets, Axminster, Saxony, and the patent tapestry carpetings, which last are among the most recent and important introductions. Some of the yarns employed in the fabrication of these were printed and arranged in Halifax, under a patent from Messrs. Crossley, which however expired in September last. Steam looms for tapestry under patents from the same firm are already at work in the town, and steam looms for the manufacture of Brussels carpeting are about to be introduced, the effect of which, upon the general character of the trade, must needs be exceedingly important; but though the change can scarcely fail to occasion temporary distress, it may fairly be hoped that, like all other improvements, it will result in a large increase of the manufacture, and add to the demand for labour and its remuneration. The other manufactures carried on here, principally relate to the preparation of leather; damask silks are made by one manufacturer; and there are one or two spinning mills. There are various tin forges in the neighbourhood, and iron, tin, and screw works at Cookley employing many hands.
Redditch and its neighbourhood is the principal seat of the needle and fish hook manufactures in this kingdom, and has been so for upwards of a century. In 1800 perhaps 500 persons found employment in this business at Redditch, while the present number, including children, is at least 2,300, and the quantity of needles made has increased from 150 to 1,000 millions per annum. A very large population is also engaged in the manufacture, at Astwood Bank, Feckenham, Crab’s Cross, &c., but all the needles so made are known as Redditch needles. The superiority of the article manufactured here ensures it a sale all over the world, and it is only in the common and inferior descriptions that the German makers come into competition with those of this county; in fact, the Germans themselves send to Redditch for their best goods. Some very important improvements have been lately introduced into the manufactories, and especially a contrivance for carrying off the fine steel dust created in the operation of grinding the needles, which was formerly very destructive of the lives of the persons employed. The fish hook trade is carried on to a considerable extent in this neighbourhood, and large quantities of barbs, from the fly fisher’s delicate tackle to the whaler’s harpoon, are annually exported to all quarters of the globe. There is also one pin manufactory in the town. The operative needle makers are amongst the most intelligent of our artizans, and the future prospects of the trade are in most respects encouraging.
Nail Making employs a large number of people both at Bromsgrove and in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge. In the former town and district there were, some sixty years ago, only five or six nail masters or factors, and not more than 400 or 500 persons engaged in the business, but it now furnishes occupation for ten times that number. Twenty-five years since the trade was in a prosperous state, but about this time, owing to the demand being good, an inferior article was made, with which the customers were dissatisfied; and the result of this state of things was the invention of a machine which, by singular ingenuity and application of mechanical skill, cuts every part of the nail at once out of a solid sheet of iron. The rapidity, ease, and cheapness with which nails were thus multiplied, of course caused a great change in the condition and prospects of the nail-making districts. The demand, however, still continues for many descriptions of the article which cannot be made, or so well made, by machine, and supplies a tolerable amount of employment. The French and Germans now successfully compete with us in the manufacture, and the export trade to America is decreasing in consequence of the prohibitory duty imposed by the government of that country. The nailors, as a class, are almost as destitute as the colliers of everything like intelligence, and this is chiefly owing to the early age at which the children work at the trade and are able to earn a livelihood for themselves. The truck system—by which the employer pays the wages of his workpeople, not in money, but in goods of his own providing, and at prices of his own fixing—is an evil of monstrous growth, which has greatly assisted in the degradation of the workpeople. Recently, however, many benevolent efforts have been made to provide them with education and to remedy the social evils which exist amongst them. Thirty or forty years ago there was a considerable linen trade carried on at Bromsgrove. A good deal of flax was once grown in this neighbourhood, and the manufacture by the hand loom was considerable, but the introduction of machinery superseded this mode of making, and enterprise and capital, necessary to the establishment of factories with the latest improvements in machinery, were wanting. Moreover Bromsgrove linens got into disrepute, because those of inferior make were sent here for bleaching and sold as of Bromsgrove manufacture. Bromsgrove itself has been much improved within the last twenty years. In the year 1846 an Act of Parliament was passed for paving, cleansing, draining, and improving the town, and for the better assessing and collecting the parochial rates.
The Salt Manufacture of Droitwich is one of the most ancient businesses in the kingdom, having been carried on for upwards of 1,000 years, and the salt made here has always been celebrated for its strength and purity. From the year 1805 until 1823 salt was subject to a duty of 15s. a bushel or £30 a ton, and this impost was collected by the excise every six weeks. A large capital was therefore required to carry on the trade, and the price of fine salt was at least £32 per ton. In that year, however, the duty was reduced to 2s. a bushel, and in 1825 it was removed altogether; and the highest price of fine salt, since its repeal, has been £1. 2s. 6d. per ton. That such a reduction in price must have led to a greatly increased consumption is self-evident, but there was no very immediate or considerable increase in the make. The proprietors of the original salt works in this borough sought to protect themselves against competition, by buying up most of the land that would be available for the erection of new works, and for a time they kept up their profits. Rival companies, however, did at length find means of establishing themselves, and about twelve or fourteen years ago a large increase of production took place, but the price of the article has been so reduced by this competition that the business has become very unremunerative. Repeated failures have taken place amongst the more recent firms; and half a million of capital, invested in the manufacture within the last twenty-five years, has been entirely lost. Within the last fifty years the primitive method of simply boring for the brine has been improved upon by casing the pit with wood, and more recently shafts have been sunk quite through the fresh water springs, the bottom and sides of which are secured with iron cylinders before boring down to the brine springs. By this means the brine (which lies 173 feet from the surface) is obtained at its full saturation of 42 parts of salt to 100, while formerly it varied between 28 and 37 percent. The present annual make at Droitwich of all kinds of salt is about 80,000 tons, and at the works at Stoke, from 25,000 to 30,000 tons; the average price per ton is scarcely more than 10s. The Droitwich trade labours under considerable disadvantage in the heavy tonnage which the manufacturers have to pay for the carriage of the article to the outports, and the iniquitous tax imposed upon the article in the East Indies, where it is almost a necessary of life, is a great hindrance to an extension of sale.
The manufactures with which Worcester itself is associated, during the half-century just closed, have reached their meridian and have seriously declined. Our porcelain factories were once almost as famous as those of Sévres, and notices will be found in the following pages of continual visits from Royal and distinguished personages to witness the art of the potter, and to give large orders for splendid services of China; but this is one of those articles the demand for which has been greatly affected by a change of fashion, and plate has now almost wholly superseded China for dinner services amongst people of wealth. Truth requires it to be said also that our manufacturers have allowed themselves to be outstripped, in spirit and improvement, by those of other places. At the beginning of this century there were forty or fifty master glovers in Worcester. The trade received a serious check by the suspension of our intercourse with America in 1812, nevertheless, the number had increased in 1826 to 120; but the repeal of the import duty in that year, together with the more general use of Berlin and silk gloves, has had such a damaging effect upon the trade, that there are at present only twenty master glovers in the city. One firm, however (known as the Messrs. Dent’s), has a world-wide celebrity, and manufactures on a very large scale. It was not so much in price as in quality that the Worcester makers had to dread foreign competition; the article sent out from their workshops before the repeal of the duty was clumsily and badly made. Worcester gloves are now equal in every respect to those imported from France, and are often sold as French to accommodate the prejudice of the customer. It seems hard to say why Worcester, a city so centrally situated, and, before the railway era, so advantageously situated as regards the means of communication with other parts of the kingdom, has not become a manufacturing emporium and a place of much greater importance. In my belief, one principal reason has been the hindrance to speculative or bonâ fide building, which exists in the bad tenure of land everywhere around the city; there can be no doubt that this has driven enterprising men to settle in places which in other respects were less suitable for their undertakings. There has, moreover, been a lack of unity and coöperation amongst the inhabitants in the promotion of the general good which has been “the worm i’ the bud” to many schemes which would in all probability have greatly advanced the prosperity of the city. Considerations of the common weal have been postponed to the interests of partizanship. To make an application of our civic motto—Worcester, if faithful to herself, may flourish ever. Worcester is rich in charitable institutions and revenues for alleviating the distresses of poverty. It may be a question, indeed, whether these have not reached the point at which eleemosynary aid ceases to be advantageous, begins to foster dependence, and eats out the energy of a community; but their abundance has at any rate not had the effect of drying up the streams of private benevolence. At least £40,000 have been raised in Worcester at different periods of distress and necessity which have occurred since 1800, for the relief and aid of its own poor.
There are many minor manufactures carried on in the county, especially the preparation of leather at Bewdley, Stourport, and Worcester, which need not be further particularised, and for the remaining towns and boroughs—these—like an honoured aristocracy—repose on their historical associations; the fame which the touches of a master hand, such as Fielding’s, may have cast around their name; or the remembrances of former activity and bustle. But I must not omit a passing notice of Malvern, that gem of nature’s setting, on whose hills the purest air is breathed, the purest water drank, and the richest and most unique inland landscape to be seen in all England. Formerly what is called Malvern Wells was the only part of the hills at which visitors stopped, but for the last twenty years Great Malvern has been gradually growing as a place of resort, and is now a “town” by Act of Parliament. And whether for pleasure or for health it must continue to be resorted to, and to increase in fame and importance; for it abounds in nature’s simplest but most efficacious restoratives, and its beauties will bear repeated inspection, and will be appreciated just in proportion to the cultivation of the mind that dwells on them.
Even from this hasty and cursory glance at the progress of the county during the first half of the nineteenth century, it will be apparent that Worcestershire has not been deficient in contributing her quota to the general prosperity. The age is remorseless in its demands; we cannot stand still. The years that are past press with all their accelerated momentum on the heels of those that follow and hurry them to a yet greater speed. But our resources are not exhausted, nor need we fear that they shall ever be. We do not trace the decay of nations to any failure in the material of greatness, but in the enervation of the mind that should develop it. It only remains for us, then, to be found in the practice of intelligence and industry—which make a people great—and of the virtues which make a people happy.
PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS.
The great change in constituencies and elections which divides with so marked a line the period over which the records of this volume extend has long been accepted by all parties as un fait accompli, and few, if any, would revert to the system of former days, even if it were possible. All now see that by its means we have been enabled to take Reform as our watchword, instead of Revolution, and to escape anarchy and despotism—the Scylla and Charybdis into which the continental nations have been continually falling. Elections in Worcestershire have of course been much the same as elections elsewhere; often scenes of riot and corruption, now and then the occasions of an irresistible burst of popular feeling, but very far from being at any time exercises of calm, deliberative, and patriotic judgment. As to the changes which should be made in the constituencies with a view to remedy existing evils, and to add strength to our constitutional edifice, everybody now-a-days has his own crotchet, and the writer’s is an educational franchise. He believes that it would be perfectly feasible to make a register of all parties who could read and write, in the presence of the revising officer, some declaration of the privileges and responsibilities of a vote, and who could satisfy him that they understood the functions of a representative. No one that had not so far qualified himself for the exercise of the franchise could in these days reasonably complain of being denied it, and it would give a greater impulse to elementary education than all the grants of public money that ever have or ever will be made for the establishment of schools.