A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

I had seen how stuffs were made, and wished now to see in what manner they were sent into the market. A clerk who came to the inn during the evening for a glass of ale and gossip, invited me to visit the warehouse in which he was employed, on the following morning. I went, and as he had not repented of his invitation, I saw all he had to show, and then, at his suggestion, went to the ‘crack’ warehouse of Bradford, where business is carried on with elegant and somewhat luxurious appliances. I handed my card to a gentleman in the office, and was not surprised to hear for answer that strangers could not be admitted for obvious reasons, and was turning away, when he said, musingly, that my name seemed familiar to him, and after a little reflection, he added: “Yes, yes—now I have it. It was on the title-page of A Londoner’s Walk to the Land’s End. How that book made me long for a trip to Cornwall! And you are the Londoner! Well, of course you shall see the warehouse.”

So I was introduced into the lift, and away we were hoisted up to the fifth or sixth story, when I was first led to the gazebo on the roof, that I might enjoy the prospect of the town and neighbourhood. What a prospect! a great mass of houses, and rounded heights beyond, dimly seen through a rolling canopy of smoke. The sky of London is brilliant in comparison. May it never be my doom to live in Bradford, or Leeds, or Sheffield, or Manchester!

We soon exchanged the dismal outlook for the topmost floor, where I saw heaps of ‘tabs,’ stacks of boards, boxes, and paper for packing. The tabs, which are the narrow strips that hang out from the ends of the pieces while on show, are kept for a time as references. The number and variety of the boards, on which the pieces are wound, are surprising: some are thick, to add bulk and weight to the piece of stuff in which it is to be enveloped; some thin, to save cost in transport; some broad, some narrow, so that every market may have its whims and wants gratified. The Germans who pay heavily for carriage, prefer thin boards: Brother Jonathan as well as John Bull, likes the sight of a good pennyworth, and gets a thick board. The preparation of these boards alone must be no insignificant branch of trade in Bradford; and remembering how many warehouses in other towns use up stacks of boards every month, we see a large consumption of Norway timber at once accounted for.

I saw the press cutting the slips of white paper in which the pieces are tied, and tickets and fancy bands and labels intended to tickle the eyes of customers, without end. A peculiar kind of embossed paper, somewhat resembling a rough towel, is provided to wrap up the American purchases; and Brother Jonathan requires that his pieces should be folded in a peculiar way, so that he may show the quality without loss of time when selling to his own impatient countrymen. Nimble machines measure the pieces at the rate of a thousand yards an hour, and others wind the lengths promptly on the boards; and, judging from appearances, clerks, salesmen, and porters work as if they too were actuated by the steam. And then, while descending from floor to floor, to see the prodigious piles of pieces on racks and shelves, or awaiting their turn in the hydraulic press which packs them solid as a bastion, was a wonder. There were moreen, bombazine, alpaca, camlet, orleans, berége, Australian cord, cable cord, and many kinds as new to me as they would have been to a fakir. One heavy black stuff was pointed out as manufactured purposely for the vestments of Romish priests. And running through each room I saw a small lift, in which account books, orders, patterns, and such like, are passed up and down, and now and then a signal to a clerk to be cautious of pushing sales. And, lastly, on the ground-floor I saw the handsome dining-room, wherein many a customer had enjoyed the hospitality of the firm, and drunk the generous sherry that inspired him to buy up to a thousand when he purposed only five hundred.

This brief sketch includes the two warehouses; one, however—the elegant one—confines itself to the home trade. I made due acknowledgments for the favour shown to me, and hastening to the railway-station, took the train for Mirfield. The line passes the great Lowmoor iron-works, where furnaces, little mountains of ore, coal, limestone, and iron, and cranes and trucks, and overwhelming smoke, and a general blackness, suggest ideas of Vulcan and his tremendous smithy. And besides there is a stir, and a going to and fro, that betoken urgent work; and you will believe a passenger’s remark, that “Lowmoor could of itself keep a railway going.” We pass Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike, places that have something sylvan in the sound of their names; but although the country if left to itself would be pretty enough, it is sadly disfigured by smoke and the remorseless inroads of trade. Yet who can travel here in the West Riding and not be struck by the busy traffic, the sight of chimneys, quarries, canals, and tramways, and trains heavy laden, coming and going continually! And connected with this traffic there is one particular especially worthy of imitation in other counties: it is, that nearly every train throughout the day has third-class carriages.

Mirfield is in the pleasant valley of the Calder. While waiting for a train to Batley, I walked along the bank of the stream thinking of Robin Hood, who lies buried at Kirklees, a few miles up the valley, where a treacherous hand let out his life:

“Lay me a green sod under my head,
And another at my feet;
And lay my bent bow by my side,
Which was my music sweet;
And make my grave of gravel and green,
Which is most right and meet.

“Let me have length and breadth enough,
With a green sod under my head;
That they may say when I am dead,
Here lies bold Robin Hood.”

The object of my visit to Batley was to see the making of shoddy. To leave Yorkshire ignorant of one of our latest national institutions would be a reproach. We live in an age of shoddy, in more senses than one. You may begin with the hovel, and trace shoddy all through society, even up to the House of Peers. I had not long to wait: there was a bird’s-eye view of Dewsbury in passing, and a few minutes brought me to Batley, the head-quarters of shoddy. On alighting at the station, the sight of great pockets or bales piled up in stacks or laden on trucks, every bale branded Anvers, and casks of oil from Sevila, gave me at once a proof that I had come to the right place; for here were rags shipped at Antwerp from all parts of northern Europe. Think of that. Hither were brought tatters from pediculous Poland, from the gipsies of Hungary, from the beggars and scarecrows of Germany, from the frowsy peasants of Muscovy; to say nothing of snips and shreds from monks’ gowns and lawyers’ robes, from postilions’ jackets and soldiers’ uniforms, from maidens’ bodices and noblemen’s cloaks. A vast medley, truly! and all to be manufactured into broadcloth in Yorkshire. No wonder that the Univers declares England is to perish by her commerce.

The walk to the town gives you such a view as can only be seen in a manufacturing district: hills, fields, meadows, and rough slopes, all bestrewn with cottages, factories, warehouses, sheds, clouded here and there by smoke; roads and paths wandering apparently anywhere; here and there a quarry, and piles of squared stone; heaps of refuse; wheat-fields among the houses; potato-plots in little levels, and everything giving you the impression of waiting to be finished. Add to all this, troops of men and women, boys and girls—the girls with a kerchief pinned over the head, the corner hanging behind—going home to dinner, and a mighty noise of clogs, and trucks laden with rags and barrels of oil, and you will have an idea of Batley, as I saw it on my arrival.