A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

My request for leave to look in-doors was readily granted. The ordinary class of houses have a kitchen with oven and boiler, a sink and copper; a parlour, or ‘house’ in the vernacular, two bedrooms, and a small back-yard, with out-offices. The floors, mantlepiece, and stairs, are of stone. The rent is 3s. 1d. a week. Gas is laid on at an extra charge, and the tenant finds burners. The supply of water is ample, but the water is hard, and has a smack of peat-bog in its flavour. A woman whom I saw washing, told me the water lost much of its hardness if left to stand awhile. Each house has a back-door opening into the lane; and every stercorarium voids into the ash-pit, which is cleared out once a week at the landlord’s cost. The pits are all accessible by a small trap-door from the lane; hence there is no intrusion on the premises in the work of cleansing. The drainage in other respects is well cared for; and the whole place is so clean and substantial, with handsome fronts to the principal rows, that you feel pleasure in observing it.

The central and corner houses are a story higher than the rest, and what with these and the handsome rows above referred to, there is accommodation for all classes of the employed—spinners, overlookers, and clerks. After building two or three of the parallelograms, it was discovered that cellars were desirable, and since then every house has its cellar, in which, as the woman said, “we can keep our meat and milk sweet in hot weather.” What a contrast, I thought, to the one closet in a lodging in some large town, where the food is kept side by side with soap and candles, the duster, and scrubbing-brush! And though the stone floors look chilly, coal is only fivepence-halfpenny a hundred-weight.

No one is allowed to live in the town who is not in some way employed by the firm. Most of the tenants to whom I spoke, expressed themselves well satisfied with their quarters, but two or three thought the houses dear; they could get a place down at Shipley, or Shipla, as they pronounced it, for two-and-sixpence a week. I put a question to the baker: “I isn’t the gaffer,” he answered.

“Never mind,” I replied; “if you are not the master, we can talk all the same.”

He thought we could; and he too was one of those who did not like the new town. ’Twas too dear. He lived at Shipla, and paid but four pounds a year for a house with a cellar under it, and a garden behind; and there he kept a pig, which was not permitted at Saltaire. There was “a vast” worked in the mill who did not live under Mr. Salt; they came from Bradford, and a train, called the Saltaire train, “brought ’em in the morning, and fetched ’em home at night.”

The railway runs between the town and the factory. You cross by a handsome stone bridge, quite in keeping with the prevalent style of architecture. The hands were returning from dinner as I approached after my survey of the colony, and the prodigious clatter of clogs was well-nigh deafening. My letter of introduction procured me the favour of Mr. George Salt’s guidance. First, he showed me a model of the premises, by which I saw that a six-story wing, if such it may be called, comprising the warehouses, projects at a right angle from the rear of the main building, with the combing-shed on one side, the weaving-shed on the other. In that combing-shed 3500 persons sat down in perfect comfort to a house-warming dinner. The weaving-shed is twice as large. Then there are the workshops of the smiths, machinists, and other artisans; packing, washing, and drying-rooms, and a gasometer to maintain five thousand lights; so that in all the buildings cover six acres and a half. Include the whole of the floors, and the space is twelve acres. Rails are laid from the line in front into the ground-floor of the building; hence there is no porterage, no loading and unloading except by machinery; and the canal at the back is equally convenient for water-carriage. In front the ground is laid out as an ornamental shrubbery, terminated at one corner by the graceful campanile.

Then I was conducted to the boilers, a row of ten, sunk underground in the solid rock, below the level of the shrubbery. They devour one hundred and twenty tons of coal in a week; but with economy, for the tall chimney pours out no clouds of dense black smoke. The prevention is accomplished by careful feeding, and leaving the furnace-door open half an inch, to admit a full stream of air. I was amazed at the sight of such a range of boilers, and yet they were not enough, and an excavation was making to receive others.

Then to the engine-room, where the sight of the tremendous machinery was a fresh surprise. Here are erected two separate pairs of engines, combining 1250-horse power, by Fairbairn, of Manchester. You see how beauty of construction consorts with ponderous strength. Polished iron, glittering brass, and shining mahogany, testify to the excellence of Lancashire handicraft in 1853, the date of the engines. The mahogany is used for casing; and here, as with the boilers, every precaution is used to prevent the escape of heat. As you watch the great cogged fly-wheels spinning round with resistless force, you will hardly be surprised to hear that they impart motion to two miles of ‘shafting,’ which weighs in all six hundred tons, and rotates from sixty to two hundred and fifty times a minute. And this shafting, of which the diameter is from two to fourteen inches, sets twelve hundred power-looms going, besides fulfilling all its other multifarious duties.

Then we went from one noisy floor to another among troops of spinners, finding everywhere proofs of the same presiding judgment. All is fire-proof; the beams and columns are of cast-iron; the floors rest on arches of hollow bricks; and the ventilation, maintained by inlets a few inches above the floor, and outlets near the ceiling, where hot-water pipes keep up a temperature of sixty degrees, is perfect, without draughts. The top room in the main building, running from end to end for five hundred and fifty feet without a break, said to be the largest room in Europe, is an impressive sight, filled with ranks of busy machines and busy workers.

In the weaving-shed, all the driving gear is placed beneath the floor, so that you have a clear prospect over the whole area at once, uninterrupted by the usual array of rapid wheels and flying straps. Vast as is the appetite of those twelve hundred looms for warp and weft, it is kept satisfied from the mill’s own resources; and in one day they deliver thirty thousand yards of alpaca, or other kinds of woollen cloth. Multiply that quantity, reader, by the number of working days in a year, and you will discover to what an amazing extent the markets of the world are supplied by this one establishment of Titus Salt and Co.