Most of these outlying towns had populations ranging from ninety to a hundred thousand, but in so far as interesting or entertaining developments of civic life were concerned—proportioned to their size—there were none. They might as well have been villages of five hundred or one thousand. Houses, houses, houses, all of the same size, all the same color, all the same interior arrangement, virtually.
Everywhere—in Middleton, Oldham, and Rochdale, which I visited the first day, and in Boulton, Blackburn, and Wigan, which I visited the next—I found this curious multiplication of the same thing which you would dismiss with a glance—whole streets, areas, neighborhoods of which you could say, “all alike.”
In Middleton I was impressed with the constant repetition of “front rooms” or “parlors.” You could look in through scores of partly open doors (this climate is damp but not cold) and see in each a chest of drawers exactly like every other chest in the town and in the same position relative to the door. Nearly all the round tables which these front rooms contained were covered with pink, patterned, cotton tablecloths. The small single windows, one to each house, contained blue or yellow jardinières set on small tables and containing geraniums. The fireplace, always to the right of the room as you looked in the window, glowed with a small coal fire. There were no other ornaments that I saw. The ceilings of the rooms were exceedingly low and the total effect was one of clean, frugal living.
The great mills bore pleasing names, such as Rob Roy, Tabitha, Marietta, and their towering stacks looked down upon the humbler habitations at their base much as the famous castles of the feudal barons must have looked down upon the huts of their serfs. I was constrained to think of the workaday existence that all this suggested, the long lines of cotton-mill employees going in at seven o’clock in the morning, in the dark, and coming out at six o’clock at night, in the dark. Many of these mills employ a day and a night shift. Their windows, when agleam in the smoke or rain, are like patins of fine gold. I saw them gleaming at the end of dull streets or across the smooth, olive-colored surfaces of mill ponds or through the mist and rain. The few that were running (the majority of them were shut down because of the strike) had a roar like that of Niagara tumbling over its rocks—a rich, ominous thunder. In recent years the mill-owners have abandoned the old low, two-story type of building with its narrow windows and dingy aspect of gray stone, and erected in its stead these enormous structures—the only approach to the American sky-scraper I saw in England. They are magnificent mills, far superior to those you will see to-day in this country, clean, bright and—every one I saw—new. If I should rely upon my merely casual impression, I should say that there were a thousand such within twenty-five miles of Manchester. When seen across a foreground of low cottages, such as I have described, they have all the dignity of cathedrals—vast temples of labor. I was told by the American Consul-General at London that they are equipped with the very latest cotton-spinning machinery and are now in a position to hold their own on equal terms with American competition, if not utterly to defy it. The intricacy and efficiency of the machinery is greater than that employed in our mills. I could not help thinking what a far cry it was from these humble cottages, some few of which in odd corners looked like the simple, thatched huts sacred to Burns and “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” to these lordly mills and the lordly owners behind them—the strong, able, ruthless men whom I saw eating in the breakfast-room at the Midland the day before. Think of the poor little girls and boys, principally girls, clattering to and from work in their wooden shoes and, if you will believe it (I saw it at Boulton on a cold, rainy, January day), in thin black shawls and white straw hats, much darkened by continuous wear. One crowd that I observed was pouring out at high noon. I heard a whistle yelling its information, and then a mouse-hole of a door in one corner of the great structure opened, and released the black stream of mill-workers. By comparison, it looked like a small procession of ants or a trickle of black water. Small as it was, however, it soon filled the street. The air was wet, smoky, gray, the windows even at this midday hour gleaming here and there with lights. The factory hands were a dreary mass in the rain, some of them carrying umbrellas, many without them, all the women wearing straw hats and black shawls!
I looked at their faces—pale, waxy, dull, inefficient. I looked at their shapeless skirts hanging like bags about their feet. I looked at their flat chests, their graceless hands, and then I thought of the strong men who know how to use—I hesitate to say exploit—inefficiency. What would these women do if they could not work in the mills? One thing I am sure of: the mills, whatever charges may be brought against their owners in regard to hours, insufficiency of payment, indifference of treatment, are nevertheless better places in which to spend one’s working hours than the cottages with their commonplace round of duties. What can one learn washing dishes and scrubbing floors in a cottage? I can see some one jumping up to exclaim: “What can one learn tying commonplace threads in a cotton mill, taking care of eight or nine machines—one lone woman? What has she time to learn?” This—if you ask me; the single thought of organization, if nothing more. The thought that there is such a thing as a great machine which can do the work of fifty or a hundred men. It will not do to say the average individual can learn this method working in a home. It is not true. What the race needs is ideas. It needs thoughts of life and injustice and justice and opportunity or the lack of it kicked into its senseless clay. It needs to be made to think by some rough process or other (gentleness won’t do it), and this is one way. I like labor-leaders. I like big, raw, crude, hungry men who are eager for gain—for self-glorification. I like to see them plotting to force such men as I saw breakfasting at the Midland to give them something—and the people beneath them. I am glad to think that the clay whose womankind wears black shawls and straw hats in January has sense enough at last to appoint these raw, angry fellows, who scheme and struggle and fight and show their teeth and call great bitter strikes, such as I saw here, and such as had shut tight so many of these huge solemn mills. It speaks much for the race. It speaks much for thinking, which is becoming more and more common. If this goes on, there won’t be so many women with drabbly skirts and flat chests. There will still be strong men and weak, but the conditions may not be so severe. Anyhow let us hope so, for it is an optimistic thought and it cheers one in the face of all the drab streets and the drab people. I have no hope of making millionaires of everybody, nor of establishing that futile abstraction, justice; but I do cherish the idea of seeing the world growing better and more interesting for everybody. And the ills which make for thinking are the only things which will bring this about.
CHAPTER XVIII
SMOKY ENGLAND (continued)
At Middleton the mills are majestically large and the cottages relatively minute. There is a famous old inn here, very picturesque to look upon, and Somebody of Something’s comfortable manor, but they were not the point for me. In one of its old streets, in the dark doorway of an old house, I encountered an old woman, very heavy, very pale, very weary, who stood leaning against the door post.
“What do you burn here, gas or oil?” I asked, interested to obtain information on almost any topic and seeking a pretext for talking to her.
“Hey?” she replied, looking at me wearily, but making no other move.