82 MECHANICAL ESTABLISHMENTS ABROAD. open the trade in machinery. Better keep our mechanics at home, and reap the profit of making machinery, than lose our best workmen and trade as well. The following is a list of the PRINCIPAL MECHANICAL ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE CONTINENT At LIEGE and SERANG, Mr. Cockerill employs وو At OUGRE, Société pour le fabrication de Fer..... Messrs. Duncan & Grant, Mr. David Bell, At BRUSSELS, Messrs. Renard & Company... 3000 Hands. Mr. Grouselle, Mr. Postula, Mr. Staley 150 At BERLIN, Six small establishments........ At ULLERSDORF, Mr. Lindheim At UEBIGAU, a Société 160 900 250 250 200 250 800 At MULLHOUSE, Messrs. A. Koechlin and Company. At WESSERLING, Messrs. Schlumberger and Company.. 450 At HAMBURGH, Messrs. Gleichmann & Busse... At ZURICH, Messrs. Escher, Wyss, and Company. In addition to the above, there are other establishments, the number and extent of which have not yet been correctly ascertained, amongst them may be mentioned that of the Imperial Manufactory of Alexandrofsky, established by the Emperor of Russia. CHAPTER VI. THE MERCANTILE COMMUNITY OF MANCHESTERDISTRESS OF MANUFACTURERS-CHARACTERISTICS OF BENEVOLENCE, ETC. HE commercial men of Manchester are characterized by habits of the utmost perseverance and energy. They allow little relaxation to the duties of business. An annual visit of a fortnight to a watering place,-generally the nearest,-is all the relief they permit to a year's toil. And this attention to business is not for a few hours only in the day; it commences early in the morning, and is protracted to a late hour in the evening. It is a common thing to see the leading merchants of the town-some of them possessed of wealth to the amount of a quarter of a million sterling-posting from their country villas to their counting-houses between eight and nine o'clock in the morning; and many of them do not return (except when not at the club,-or to a hasty dinner,) till nine or ten o'clock in the evening. Business becomes a habit; and this habit becomes a pleasure; and on this account, with some-more than from mere love of gain-they are impelled in a vocation which, on account of its enterprise and excitement, presents to them the greatest of earthly charms. 84 LONG HOURS OF BUSINESS. So much for the merchants; but their clerks have a different version to give of the charms of business. -They have not the alternation of profit and loss, to keep up a fever of excitement in the mind. Hence a general complaint against long hours, is justly uttered by young men in warehouses and shops. There can be no doubt, that the relaxation given to the bent bow every Sunday, is the cause of a rebound, which tells badly on the cause of morality. In the Companion to the Newspaper, of 1838, there appeared a statement of persons employed in trades in London, which adhered to the system of late hours. It is as follows: A similar table for Manchester would present as great, if not a greater, proportion. The necessity for shopkeepers in Manchester to keep late hours, cannot be said to exist to the same extent in which it does in other towns. Many families have removed into the country, and housekeepers residing at a considerable distance from the best shops in the town, are seldom so improvident as to be compelled to go shopping at unseasonable hours. But A keeps open because B does; and B does because A does, and each is jealous of the other taking a penny more than himself. This is unworthy even of a nation of shopkeepers! By judicious management of business, the clerks and assistants, in shops and warehouses might have their hours of labour considerably shortened. All attempts to interfere between employers and employed, not only prove abortive, but are impertinent; yet we cannot resist giving an extract from a pamphlet, MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 85 published lately by the Rev. R. Parkinson, canon of Manchester, on the condition of the employed in this town. Mr. P. recommends more personal intercourse between employers and their servants, and justly says, "If masters fully understood the influence which even the slightest personal attention produces on the minds of their workmen, they would be more lavish than they are of a simple act of justice which can cost them so little, and would profit them so much. In no way are men so easily led—often, it is true, so blindly led—as through the affections." In the following extract from the same tract, there is much severe truth : "There is no town in the world where the distance between the rich and the poor is so great, or the barrier between them so difficult to be crossed. I once ventured to designate the town of Manchester as the most aristocratic town in England; and, in the sense in which the term was used, the expression is not hyperbolical. The separation between the different classes, and the consequent ignorance of each others habits and condition, are far more complete in this place than in any country of the older nations of Europe, or the agricultural portions of our own kingdom. There is far less personal communication between the master cotton spinner and his workmen, between the calico printer and his blue-handed boys, between the master tailor and his apprentices, than there is between the Duke of Wellington and the humblest labourer on his estate, or than there was between good old George the Third and the meanest errand-boy about his palace. I mention not this as a matter of blame, I state it simply as a fact; a fact which may, perhaps, easily be accounted for from the peculiar circumstances in which we are placed, but which is of the utmost importance to our present inquiry, the object of which is to show that the great impediment in the way of any judicious and effectual relief of the poor, is our ignorance of each other." To carry out Mr. Parkinson's views, no better step could be taken than to abolish the system of late hours. Such a step would advantage all parties. Masters themselves would soon find the benefit of the change in their own improved health; and their servants would have leisure for that mental or physical recreation, which a day's long confinement renders absolutely necessary. The Manchester dinner-hour was celebrated long before it became honoured with a notice in Blackwood's Magazine. It occupies the best hour in the day. About one o'clock the whole town is in motion. Omnibuses crowd the streets to convey to their suburban residences many of our tradesmen, whilst those who are induced by inclination or economy, to pedestrianise it, bustle through the streets in haste amazing! Of course, at this period of the day very little time can be spared for dinner. No sooner swallowed, than off starts again the man of business to seek his customers. With him, dining is a piece of business, and he attends to it, with the greatest despatch! ་ The article in the Magazine above alluded to, contains some humour. Example:-"The rush of the clans from the mountains-of the cataracts from the Alps into the valleys beneath-of three thousand pent-up school-boys, all detained for bad conduct, and then let out at once, only just in time to reach home before dark-of soldiers in a revolt of Irish peasants in a row-or of the Paris students at an emeute-might be compared to the scenes which may be daily witnessed in the city' portion of Manchester when the clock strikes one. No other comparison could be instituted which could express this mighty movement as the moment of DINNER draws near! Now I am willing to confess that I was ignorant, wholly ignorant, till I beheld the scene, that Manchester dines at ONE!!! Rich, poor, ignorant, learned, Destructive, Conservative, Dissenter, Churchman-the mass-yes, the mass, all dine at One!! This would be a deplorable state of things for any people; but, for Manchester warehousemen, with their clerks, porters, servants, friends, visitors, *See Blackwood, April, 1839. |