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CHAPTER XXVII

Bradford’s Fame—Visit to Warehouses—A Smoky Prospect—Ways and Means of Trade—What John Bull likes—What Brother Jonathan likes—Vulcan’s Head-quarters—Cleckheaton—Heckmondwike—Busy Traffic—Mirfield—Robin Hood’s Grave—Batley the Shoddyopolis—All the World’s Tatters—Aspects of Batley—A Boy capt—The Devil’s Den—Grinding Rags—Mixing and Oiling—Shoddy and Shoddy—Tricks with Rags—The Scribbling Machine—Short Flocks, Long Threads—Spinners and Weavers—Dyeing, Dressing, and Pressing—A Moral in Shoddy—A Surprise of Real Cloth—Iron, Lead, and Coal—To Wakefield—A Disappointment—The Old Chapel—The Battle-field—To Barnsley—Bairnsla Dialect—Sheffield.

“What is Bradford famous for?” was the question put at a school-examination somewhere within the West Riding.

“For its shoddy,” answered one of the boys. An answer that greatly scandalized certain of the parents who had come from Bradford; and not without reason, for although shoddy is manufactured within sight of the smoke of the town, Bradford is really the great mart for stuffs and worsted goods, as Leeds is for broadcloth.

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.

Having found the factory of which I was in search, I had to wait a few minutes for the appearance of the principal. A boy, who was amusing himself in the office, remarked, when he heard that I had never yet seen shoddy made: “Well, it’ll cap ye when ye get among the machinery; that’s all!” He himself had been capt once in his life: it was in the previous summer, when his uncle took him to Blackpool, and he first beheld the sea. “That capt me, that did,” he said, with the gravity of a philosopher.

Seeing that the principal hesitated, even after he had read my letter, I began to imagine that shoddy-making involved important secrets. “Come to see what you can pick up, eh?” he said. However, when he heard that I was in no way connected with manufactures, and had come, not as a spy, but simply out of honest curiosity, to see how old rags were ground into new cloth, he smiled, and led me forthwith into the devil’s den. There I saw a cylinder revolving with a velocity too rapid for the eye to follow, whizzing and roaring, as if in agony, and throwing off a cloud of light woolly fibres, that floated in the air, and a stream of flocks that fell in a heap at the end of the room. It took three minutes to stop the monster; and when the motion ceased, I saw the cylinder was full of blunt steel teeth, which, seizing whatever was presented to them in the shape of rags, tore it thoroughly to pieces; in fact, ground it up into flocks of short, frizzly-looking fibre, resembling negro-hair, yet soft and free from knots. The cylinder is fed by a travelling web, which brings a layer of rags continually up to the teeth. On this occasion, the quality of the grist, as one might call it, was respectable—nothing but fathoms of list which had never been defiled. So rapidly did the greedy devil devour it, that the two attendant imps were kept fully employed in feeding; and fast as the pack of rags diminished, the heap of flocks increased. And so, amid noise and dust, the work goes on day after day; and the man who superintends, aided by his two boys, earns four pounds a week, grinding the rags as they come, for thirty shillings a pack.

The flocks are carried away to the mixing-house. As we turned aside, the devil began to whirl once more; and before we had entered the other door, I heard the ferocious howl in full vigour. The road between the buildings was encumbered with oil-casks, pieces of cloth, lying in the dust, as if of no value, and packs of rags. “It will all come right by-and-by,” said the chief, as I pointed to the littery heaps; and, pausing by one of the packs which contained what he called ‘mungo,’ that is, shreds of such cloth as clergymen’s coats are made of, he made me aware that there is shoddy and shoddy. That which makes the longest fibre is, of course, the best; and some of the choice sorts are worked up into marketable cloth, without a fresh dyeing.

Great masses of the flocks, with passage-ways between, lay heaped on the stone floor of the mixing-house. Here, according to the quality required, the long fibre is mixed in certain proportions with the short; and to facilitate the subsequent operations, the several heaps are lightly sprinkled with oil. A dingy brown or black was the prevalent colour; but some of the heaps were gray, and would be converted into undyed cloth of the same colour. It seemed to me that the principal ingredient therein was old worsted stockings; and yet, before many days, those heaps would become gray cloth fit for the jackets and mantles of winsome maidens.

I asked my conductor if it were true, as I had heard, that shoddy-makers purchased the waste, begrimed cotton wads with which stokers and ‘engine-tenters’ wipe the machinery, or the dirty refuse of wool-sorters, or every kind of ragged rubbish. He did not think such things were done in Batley; for his part, he used none but best rags, and could keep two factories always going. He had heard of the man who spread greasy cotton-waste over his field, and who, when the land had absorbed all the grease, gathered up the cotton, and sold it to the shoddy-makers; but he doubted the truth of the story. True or not, it implies great toleration among a certain class of manufacturers. Rags, not good enough for shoddy, are used as manure for the hops in Kent; so we get shoddy in our beer as well as in our broadcloth.

In the next process, the flocks are intimately mixed by passing over and under a series of rollers, and come forth from the last looking something like wool. Then the wool, as we may now call it, goes to the ‘scribbling-machine,’ which, after torturing it among a dozen rollers of various dimensions, delivers it yard by yard in the form of a loose thick cable, with a run of the fibres in one direction. The carding-machine takes the cable lengths, subjects them to another course of torture, confirms the direction of the fibres, and reduces the cable into a chenille of about the thickness of a lady’s finger. This chenille is produced in lengths of about five feet, across the machine, parallel with the rollers, and is immediately transferred to the piecing-machine, by a highly ingenious process. Each length, as it is finished, drops into a long, narrow, tin tray; the tray moves forward; the next behind it receives a chenille; then the third; then the fourth; and so on, up to ten. By this time, they have advanced over a table on which lies what may be described as a wooden gridiron; there is a momentary pause, and then the ten trays, turning all at once upside down, drop the chenilles severally between the bars of the gridiron. At one side of the table is a row of large spindles, or rollers, on which the chenilles—cardings, is the factory word—are wound, and the dropping is so contrived that the ends of those which fall overlap the ends of the lengths on the spindles by about an inch. Now the gridiron begins to vibrate, and by its movement beats the ends together; joins each chenille, in fact, to the one before it; then the spindles whirl, and draw in the lengths, leaving only enough for the overlap; and no sooner is this accomplished than the ten trays drop another supply, which is treated in the same expeditious manner, until the spindles are filled. No time is lost, for the full ones are immediately replaced by empty ones.

Now comes the spinners’ turn. They take these full spindles, submit them to the action of their machinery by dozens at a time, and spin the large, loose chenilles into yarns of different degrees of strength and fineness, or, perhaps one should say, coarseness, ready for the weavers. And in this way those heaps of short, uncompliant negro-hair, in which you could hardly find a fibre three inches long, are transformed into long, continuous threads, able to bear the rapid jerks of the loom. I could not sufficiently admire its ingenuity. Who would have imagined that among the appliances of shoddy! Moreover, wages are good at Batley, and the spinners can earn from forty to forty-five shillings a week. The women who attend the looms earn nine or eighteen shillings a week, according as they weave one or two pieces.

Next comes the fulling process: the pieces are damped, and thumped for a whole day by a dozen ponderous mallets; then the raising of the pile on one or both sides of the cloth, either by rollers or by hand. In the latter case, two men stretch a piece as high as they can reach on a vertical frame, and scratch the surface downwards with small hand-cards, the teeth of which are fine steel wire. Genuine broadcloth can only be dressed by a teazel of Nature’s own growing; but shoddy, far less delicate, submits to the metal. So the men keep on, length after length, till the piece is finished. Then the dyers have their turn, and if you venture to walk through their sloppy, steamy department, you will see men stirring the pieces about in vats, and some pieces hanging to rollers which keep them for a while running through the liquor. From the dye-house the pieces are carried to the tenter-ground and stretched in one length on vertical posts; and after a sufficient course of sun and air, they undergo the finishing process—clipping the surface and hot-pressing.

From what I saw in the tenter-ground, I discovered that pilot cloth is shoddy; that glossy beavers and silky-looking mohairs are shoddy; that the Petershams so largely exported to the United States are shoddy; that the soft, delicate cloths in which ladies feel so comfortable, and look so graceful, are shoddy; that the ‘fabric’ of Talmas, Raglans, and paletots, and of other garments in which fine gentlemen go to the Derby, or to the Royal Academy Exhibition, or to the evening services in Westminster Abbey, are shoddy. And if Germany sends us abundance of rags, we send to Germany enormous quantities of shoddy in return. The best quality manufactured at Batley is worth ten shillings a yard; the commonest not more than one shilling.

Broadcloth at a shilling a yard almost staggers credibility. After that we may truly say that shoddy is a great leveller.

The workpeople are, with few exceptions, thrifty and persevering. Some of the spinners take advantage of their good wages to build cottages and become landlords. A walk through Batley shows you that thought has been taken for their spiritual and moral culture; and in fine weather they betake themselves for out-doors recreation to an ancient manor-house, which I was told is situate beyond the hill that rears its pleasant woods aloft in sight of the factories.

The folk of the surrounding districts are accustomed to make merry over the shoddy-makers, regarding them as Gibeonites, and many a story do they tell concerning these clever conjurors, and their transformations of old clothes into new. Once, they say, a portly Quaker walked into Batley, just as the ‘mill-hands’ were going to dinner: he came from the west, and was clad in that excellent broadcloth which is the pride of Gloucestershire. “Hey!” cried the hands, as he passed among them—“hey! look at that now! There’s a bit of real cloth. Lookey, lookey! we never saw the like afore:” and they surrounded the worthy stranger, and kept him prisoner until they had all felt the texture of his coat, and expressed their admiration.

Again, while waiting at Mirfield, was I struck by the frequency of trains, and counted ten in an hour and a half. In 1856, a million and quarter tons of iron ore were dug in the Cleveland and Whitby districts; and the quantity of pig-iron made in Yorkshire was 275,600 tons, of which the West Riding produced 96,000. In the same year 8986 tons of lead, and 302 ounces of silver were made within the county; and Yorkshire furnished 9,000,000 towards the sixty millions tons and a half of coal dug in all the kingdom.

I journeyed on to Wakefield; and, as it proved, to a disappointment. I had hoped for a sight of Walton Hall, and of the well-known naturalist, who there fulfils the rites of hospitality with a generous hand. Through a friend of his, Mr. Waterton had assured me of a welcome; but on arriving at Wakefield, I heard that he had started the day before for the Continent. So, instead of a walk to the Hall, I resolved to go on to Sheffield, by the last train. This left me time for a ramble. I went down to the bridge, and revived my recollections of the little chapel which for four hundred years has shown its rich and beautiful front to all who there cross the Calder, and I rejoiced to see that it had been restored and was protected by a railing. It was built—some say renewed—by Edward the Fourth to the memory of those who fell in the battle of Wakefield—a battle fatal to the House of York—and fatal to the victors; for the cruelties there perpetrated by Black Clifford and other knights, were repaid with tenfold vengeance at Towton. The place where Richard, Duke of York, fell, may still be seen: and near it, a little more than a mile from the town, the eminence on which stood Sandal Castle, a fortress singularly picturesque, as shown in old engravings.

After a succession of stony towns and smoky towns, there was something cheerful in the distant view of Wakefield with its clean red brick. It has some handsome streets; and in the old thoroughfares you may see relics of the mediæval times in ancient timbered houses. Leland describes it as “a very quick market town, and meatly large, the whole profit of which standeth by coarse drapery.” You will soon learn by a walk through the streets that “very quick” still applies.

Signs of manufactures are repeated as Wakefield, with its green neighbourhood, is left behind, and at Barnsley the air is again darkened by smoke. We had to change trains here, and thought ourselves lucky in finding that the Sheffield train had for once condescended to lay aside its surly impatience, and await the arrival from Wakefield. As we pushed through the throng on the platform, I heard many a specimen of the vernacular peculiar to Bairnsla, as the natives call it. How shall one who has not spent years among them essay to reproduce the sounds? Fortunately there is a Bairnsla Foaks’ Almanack in which the work is done ready to our hand; and here is a passage quoted from Tom Treddlehoyle’s Peep at T’ Manchister Exhebishan, giving us a notion of the sort of dialect talked by the Queen’s subjects in this part of Yorkshire.

Tom is looking about and “moralizin’,” when “a strange bussal cum on all ov a sudden daan below stairs, an foaks hurryin e wun dereckshan! ‘Wot’s ta do?’ thowt ah; an daan t’ steps ah clattard, runnin full bump agean t’ foaks a t’ bottom, an before thade time to grumal or get ther faces saard, ah axt, ‘Wot ther wor ta do?’—‘Lord John Russel’s cum in,’ sed thay. Hearin this, there diddant need anuther wurd, for after springin up on ta me teppytoes ta get t’ lattetude az ta whereabaats he wor, ah duckt me head underneath foaks’s airms, an away a slipt throo t’ craad az if ide been soapt all ovver, an gettin as near him az ah durst ta be manardly, ah axt a gentleman at hed a glass button stuck before his ee, in a whisperin soart of a tone, ‘Which wor Lord John Russel?’ an bein pointed aght ta ma, ah lookt an lookt agean, but cuddant believe at it wor him, he wor sich an a little bit ov an hofalas-lookin chap,—not much unlike a horse-jocky at wun’s seen at t’ Donkister races, an wot wor just getherin hiz crums up after a good sweatin daan for t’ Ledger,—an away ah went, az sharp az ah cud squeaze aght, thinkin to mesen, ‘Bless us, what an a ta-do there iz abaght nowt! a man’s but a man, an a lord’s na more!’ We that thowt, an hevin gottan nicely aght a t’ throng, we t’ loss a nobbat wun button, an a few stitches stretcht a bit e t’ coit-back, ah thowt hauf-an-haar’s quiat woddant be amiss.”

We went on a few miles to a little station called Wombwell, where we had again to change trains. But the train from Doncaster had not arrived; so while the passengers waited they dispersed themselves about the sides of the railway, finding seats on the banks or fences, and sat talking in groups, and wondering at the delay. The stars shone out, twinkling brightly, before the train came up, more than an hour beyond its time, and it was late when we reached Sheffield. I turned at a venture into the first decent-looking public-house in The Wicker, and was rewarded by finding good entertainment and thorough cleanliness.