J. Ewing Ritchie

“ From the villages all round, even from as far as Newry, people come to work at the mills. Tuesday is the day when fresh hands are taken on, and great is the joy when an application receives an affirmative reply. The crowd round the door is the best possible test of the popularity of the place: you get a better idea of its magnitude when I tell you that it employs upwards of 4,000 hands, and that it pays away in wages as much as £50,000 a year. I have said there is little of that troublesome discontent which seems chronic in Ireland in and around Bessbrook. ”

“ Far, far away is the power which sets all this machinery in motion, and on it works untiring and as if for ever. The flax, however, is not fit for spinning and weaving as it comes to Bessbrook. Even though it comes there in the scutched state, a great deal has to be done to sort it and purify it. It is no joke going into a scutching mill. The dust and noise are hideous. It is bad enough to see the men and boys hackling it at Bessbrook. ”

“ A farm of 300 acres, belonging to the Firm, must also be noted, by means of which that real luxury, pure milk—a thing unknown in our great metropolis—is placed within the reach of all. There are allotments in which the householders work on a summer’s evening, and at one end of the town are some better classes of houses, in which the gentlemen connected with the works or the estate—which belongs to the same proprietor—reside; just below these spreads out a picturesque sheet of water, which feeds the mill, and is here useful as well as ornamental. ”

“ By night the place looks like a palace of glass, as the cheerful light, eloquent of labour and capital and intelligence, shines out of its thousand windows. We get out of the train, and ascend the road on our right. If it be daytime we shall have a pleasant walk. Behind us is Newry, or rather the valley in which it is seated, where its merchants and tradesmen sell and buy and get gain; and the river with its ships, which trade to Liverpool and all parts of our English coast. ”

“ Machinery does it all. All that human intelligence has to do with the operation is, after the patterns have been secured in their proper places and machinery set at work, to see that the threads do not break, and that the uniform action of all be maintained. What leaves, and flowers, and garlands, are thus woven into the cloth! They are very proud of their damask at Bessbrook. ”

“ Thus the linen trade flourished and became more important every year; of this importance Belfast may be considered as the outward and visible sign; every one knows that, in consequence of its being the seat of the linen trade, it has become the most prosperous town in Ireland. ”

“ As it is not all light and cheerful employment, most of the work is downstairs. Joyfully we ascend the big stone p. 27staircases and reach the upper air, where again we admire the beautiful order and the exquisite machinery; and the neat appearance of the women and girls employed in this, which is the weaving factory—large, airy, and well lighted—excite our admiration. I must add, the place is not a little noisy, with the clack and click, and whirr and whizz, of no end of looms. Here the first thing done is to wind the yarn on spools for warp, and pirns for weft. ”

“ The linen trade of Ulster now represents a capital of several millions, and employs men, women, and children.
What has developed it to its enormous extent has been the application of steam. No longer the weaver sits in his isolated cottage. He is a hand in a mill, and weaving is a complex affair, requiring, to make it pay, gigantic operations and many hands. The factory system has many disadvantages, which tend to the mental, moral, and physical deterioration of the hands engaged in it. ”

“ It is very beautiful, and has no superior in the trade.
In another part of the premises we find men at work at hand-looms, some of the beams of which are of immense breadth, and to move which requires the brawnier hands and firmer muscles of men. You, perhaps, wonder at this. Naturally the stranger expects the power-loom to have superseded the hand-loom. That it has done so, to a great extent, is evident from the most cursory inspection of Bessbrook, or any other weaving mill. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the very finest descriptions of linen are made with hand-looms. ”

“ The discipline of the Roman Catholic Church of course prevents a great deal of mischief. If the priests do not marry themselves, they are great promoters of matrimony in other people. But, after all, they are not all Roman Catholics in Bessbrook—indeed, there, the followers of the old religion are rather in a minority.
Commercially, Bessbrook may be said to be of the first importance in the linen trade. The produce of its looms enjoys a world-wide reputation. Such confidence have buyers in them that, as a London gentleman remarked, “You may purchase them in the dark.” ”

“ Inside, you feel, directly you have passed the threshold, that you are in a magic scene of industry, with its long, long rooms, filled with wonderful machinery harmoniously working, requiring, in many cases, only the attendance of a child. ”

“ That the times in which we live are out of joint is a truism too obvious to require comment. As much now as in old days the cry is, “Who will show us any good?” We hear much of modern progress; but there are many who, like Mr. Froude, intimate that what we call progress is in reality merely change, and that change is not necessarily always for the better. ”

“ There is nothing inferior in the quality of the Bessbrook linen. It may be pronounced unsurpassed. What is manufactured there is sold to the trade, who put their own name to it, and export it to all parts of the world. The Spanish are customers, and so are the Americans. The warehouses of London and Belfast and Manchester are full of linen manufactured at Bessbrook. The public do not know the name, but the merchants and shippers do.
Bessbrook is placed in the centre of the flax-growing district of Ireland, and this is why the linen trade flourishes in that district. ”

“ In many cases it is found that the higher the wages earned by the operative, the more drunken and dissipated are his habits. No fact has been more conclusively established. Where you shut up the public-house, the gin-palace and the beer-shop, you have less pauperism and crime, more honest, decent, sober living, than you have where these places are open. If this be true in England, where the people are more phlegmatic and less wild on politics and religion, it is trebly true of Ireland, where the people are supposed to be at all times too passionate and ready to take offence ”

“ I don’t imagine they have got the millennium at Bessbrook, but I feel justified in saying that there people live in charity with each other, who, in other parts of Ireland, would be at work cracking each others’ skulls. How is this? I reply, the secret is to be found in the temperance character of the place. People discuss without the stimulating influence of the national drink, and the result is they never come to blows. The nearest public-house, outside the estate, is called Sebastopol, on account of the fighting of which it is too often the centre. ”

“ At Bessbrook the family is placed in one or other of the houses built for the operatives, and work is found for all. If the father cannot work in the mill, he is set to mend the roads, to work on the farm or at the quarries, to be a waggoner, or to make himself generally useful: and the services of such people are in request, as all the repairs of the mill-gear are done by workmen on the spot. ”

“ As wages are, the workman who is but a moderate drinker wastes money and time which, if better employed, would enable him to do better for his family and himself. At Bessbrook this is clearly felt; the men and women who come there have no desire to leave it—the mild despotism of a paternal government suits them. ”

“ I write of one of the most successful efforts that has yet been made to free the factory of them, and to carry it on in a way advantageous, not only to the employer, but the employed. For these purposes it is necessary that the factory be an isolated one; that it should be a community by itself, an imperium in imperio, governed by its own laws, with its own special educational, religious, and philanthropic establishments ”

“ Now nothing remains but to take it to the weaving shed, and attach it to the looms, where the yarn is transmogrified into plain linen, hollands, sheeting, damask, and towels. The manufacture of damask is exceedingly interesting. Patterns of great beauty are procured at much expense. In one part of the mill you come to a large room, in which the designers, male and female, are at work drawing designs, and adapting them to the requisite scale. ”

“ In a land where discord runs high, where party passions are strong, where intemperance adds fuel to the flame of lawlessness, is not this saying a great deal? If some of our manufacturers and employers of labour would visit Bessbrook, I fancy they would not find their time thrown away. ”

“ Sunday is a busy day at Bessbrook. At an early hour the Roman Catholics may be seen going to mass, and then, as the day wears on, the general public are visible marching to one place of worship or another. Few, very few, stop away. All the boys and the men are at a place of worship—if the mothers, and the infirm and the sick, have to stop at home. ”

“ From many other districts in England, Scotland, and Ireland, a similar testimony reaches us. From all the judges of the land, from all our clergy, from all our prisons and penitentiaries—affirmation, mournful in its monotony, reminds us that drink is the bane of the working-man. ”

“ Associations of all kinds exist partly for the bettering and partly for the bewildering of the public. Money is freely subscribed for them; for Dives has a dim idea that he owes much to Lazarus, and would at all times rather discharge the debt by letting a few crumbs fall from the table, than by personally clothing his naked form and binding up his loathsome sores. ”

“ Nor is this all; the country is full of weavers, who work away all day at their hand-looms, lamenting probably the good old times before steam had altered the mode of linen manufacture—when the article in question was scarce—when wages were high, and linen only the luxury of the very rich. The old hand-looms remain, and people still get their living by working at them. As I have said already, under certain conditions it is necessary that they should remain. In the country round here there are 900 of such weavers who are employed in connection with the Bessbrook Mill. ”

“ Richardson’s Flax-spinning Mills at Bessbrook, a model town near Newry, and not far from the headquarters of Ireland’s principal source of wealth, the linen trade.
A few words as to this trade may not be out of place here. The art of weaving is of great antiquity. In Ireland for many years attention has been paid to this branch of industry. Its linen manufacture has existed from the earliest period. ”

“ They have a hard time of it. In their dreary cabins wretchedness seems to reign supreme. At the outside, a couple of rooms comprise the whole extent of the building devoted to the human biped, and he is but little better lodged than his cow or pig—that is all. ”

“ Ruskin leave the domain of the beautiful fiercely to arraign what in our wisdom, or want of it, we term Political Economy and its pitiless laws, we may be sure that all the social problems of the age have not been satisfactorily solved. ”

“ On our left and right are mountains and hills, well planted with white cottages and farmers’ houses, which look smilingly at us in the morning sun. The interiors, we admit, may be capable of improvement. ”

“ If it be true that our rich men are becoming richer every day, it is equally true that our poor are becoming poorer. Might has taken from the peasant his strip of land, and has driven him into the towns, where he dies of bad air, bad water, bad food, bad lodging, bad pay ”

“ Quakerism has no monopoly of the place; Roman Catholics and Protestants abound, and the result is, every operative, with his family, makes a point of attending some place of worship, and on a Sunday all the churches and chapels in the district are well filled. You don’t see at Bessbrook what you may often see elsewhere—the intelligent and independent operative lounging about on a Sunday morning, ragged, unshaven, unwashed, a short pipe in his mouth, the penny radical newspaper in his pocket, an untaxed and ill-bred cur at his heels, waiting for p. ”

“ Another cause of the good condition of the place may be found in the reward given under certain conditions to the deserving and to the saving—habits induced by the establishment of a bank, depositors in which receive interest at the rate of five per cent. That the men appreciate the advantage of such an institution is clear, when I state that some of them are depositors to the extent of £300 or £400. ”

“ Here, men are at work, steeping the yarn in a mixture which is supposed to strengthen it, and the secret of which is generally pretty well kept. Men also are required for other purposes: the yarn is to be scoured or bleached, as the case may be, and then dried, and all this work is done by lads or men. ”

“ Muck of all kinds surrounds their dwellings, and yet they seem to thrive, and the shoeless, unwashed, ragged boys and girls you meet up there, have faces and figures you often seek in vain amongst more civilised people and in more comfortable homes. ”