Bread-winners abroad

Preface

The many demands made by letter and through the press generally for the Industrial Letters, originally published in the New York Tribune, and also the second series, written for the Philadelphia Press, Chicago Inter-Ocean, and San Francisco Chronicle in a more permanent form, decided the writer to collect those relating to Great Britain —numbering one hundred — for pubHcation in book form, including a special edition for the intelligent workingman, for whom they should have a special interest.

Excepting the correction of typographical errors, no attem.pt has been made at revision, it being deemed better not to sacrifice freshness of impression to the finish resulting from rewriting.

Should the demand for the present volume justify the enterprise, a second, comprising the same number of Letters from the principal industrial centers of France, Grermany, Austria, Hungary, Belgimn, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland, will be issued.

Robert P. Porter,

Contents

PAGE

1. The Arizona—Introduction 9

3. England — Her Start in the Race 11

II. England— Her Start in the Race

At the opening of the present century England, though politically a first-class power, had accomphshed none of her prodigious industrial progress. Manchester was not glorying in her tall and ever-smoking chimneys, but was ^*an inland town of no pretensions for beauty, and at some distance from the sea." Liverpool had scarcely any of her glorious docks. The great ocean steamers which now almost daily ply between New York and England had not yet found their way to her harbor. Leeds and Bradford were not very conspicuous either for trade or manufacture. Even London, the only place of real importance in the kingdom, had not a tithe of the shipping and commerce which now enrich the banks of the Thames.

The quantity of coal annually mined in Great Britain did not exceed ten milUon tons, while to-day it has reached one hundred and forty million tons. Levi, in his History of Commerce^ has almost dramatically shown that with the dawn of the present century a rapid and wonderful change was produced in commerce and industry by the expansion of some of the leading commercial towns. Liverpool derived enormous benefits from the extension of manufactures in Lancashire, from the rapid increase of population in the United States, from the new acquisitions of England in Canada, and the extended cultivation of the West Indies. Birmingham felt all the advantages of the opening of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canals, which enabled her to receive all her supphes of coal and materials for manufacture and building at prices much under the usual car-^ riage rates.

The inventions of Watt, of Hargreaves, of Arkwright, and of Crompton, though hindered by prejudices, were slowly revolutionizing the industrial system of England. **What England possessed then, as she does now," says Levi, ^' was a geographical situation, the most favorable for purposes of maritime commerce, in close proximity to the continent of Europe, and bordering on the ocean, the great open highway to America; mineral riches of enormous value, and, above all, a people of sturdy race, tbe Anglo- Saxon, distinguished for an innate sentiment of independ-

ENGLAND—HER START IN THE RACE, 13

ence and right, for energy of character and aptitude for work, for capacity for material conquests, and courage and tact as colonizers and discoverers." At this time, strange as it may seem, of all British industries the cotton was the least conspicuous. Cotton was too dear to enter into the common dress of people, until the ingenuity of Lewis Paul, Lawrence Earnshaw, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Peel gave England the factory system, and changed Lancashire from an agricultural county to the more active and stirring occupations of industry and manufacture.

The woolen was an old Enghsh industry. Since the time Defoe took his famous journey through ''the Island of Great Britain" Norwich had been known for her baize, Sudbury for her serges, Colchester for her broadcloth, Gloucester for her cloth, and Kendal for her coarse cloth. Even London and York continued for a considerable time to be important centres of the woolen industry. But, says Levi, the increasing prices of provisions, high rates of wages, difficulty of obtaining commodious streams for the scouring and fulhng of cloth, and the restrictions imposed by the municipalities, drove the woolen manufacture away to the villages and townships of Yorkshire ; and these villages, as I shall show in subsequent letters, were destined to become the greatest woolen- producing region in the world. England never looked favorably on the linen industry, and it was left to Ireland or Scotland. In the iron industry not much progress had been made at the beginning of the present century. In 1768 South Staffordshire had no furnace for making charcoal iron, and only nine furnaces where pit coal was used, producing fifteen tons each per week, while in all other parts of England there were twenty -four charcoal furnaces and forty-four pit-coal furnaces. Though possessing all the materials for the fabric of earthenware, it was not until about this time that the skill of Josiah Wedgwood brought the Enghsh potteries into importance. Before this England had depended almost entirely on the importation of pottery from France, Germany, and Italy.

Added to all this came the improvements in the steam-engine and the beginning of an era of chemical discoveries, both important elements in industrial progress.

With these triumphs over physical and moral objects came increasing opportunities of profitable labor and a great increase in the population, especially in the number engaged in manufacture. The large cities had begun to grow. In 1811 England had only twelve cities and towns with a population exceeding 30,000. At the close of the first decade of the last half-century she had thirty-one cities and towns of 30,000 population and upward. Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, with London, are the most densely populated regions of England, and contain in the aggregate nearly twelve millions, or half the population of England and Wales. Manchester and Salford, which at the beginning of this century numbered hardly 100,000, have increased to nearly 600,000; Birmingham, from 80,000 to over 400,000; Liverpool, from 100,000 to over 550,000; Leeds, from 60,000 to over 300,000. But this great growth of the population of cities in a country that has no land for the unemployed cannot be looked upon as an unmixed good. It has been recently said by a well-known English essayist that the development of industrial England has proceeded with a rapidity altogether unprecedented in human history. This is true, but this enrichment cannot be attributed to Free Trade. The mastery of man over nature has increased in an almost immeasurable ratio during the last generation. Kailways, telegraphs, ocean steamers, submarine cables, have brought the peoples of the world together and increased the wealth- producing capacity of man. England stood ready for the race at the start. Professor Sumner said before the Tariff Commission that Protection had put England back a century. What particularly erroneous history of British commerce has the Professor read? With the change in the whole tide of human affairs no legislation could have kept England back a century. Here is what an Enghsh reviewer says of this

SCOTLAND'-INDUSTRIAL CENTERS, 15

period : ^^ We English, very iightly handicapped in the race, with our cheap coal, with our densely crowded cities and socialized workshops, with the first-fruits of mechanic^J invention, with accumulated capital at our command, had the heels of the rest of the world from the start. During the whole of this period, from 1848 to 1878, we had almost undisputed control of the markets of the globe." But at the same time ^'the leaps and bounds of commerce have given far more wealth to the upper classes than comfort or well-being to the lower." These are some of the questions worth a careful study.

in.

Scotland— Industrial Centers.

To-morrow night I start for Glasgow, where I begin my tour of the industrial regions of Great Britain. Take a good map of the British Isles and glance at Scotland in the vicinity of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Then draw with a pencil a rectangle with one of the four angles at Toward Point (near Greenock and Dumbarton), the second at Dundee, the third at Ayr, and the fourth at Dunbar, and within this space are the manufacturing regions of Scotland. This area includes in some cases aU, and in others the most populous parts of the counties of Perth, Fife, Stirling, Renfrew, Ayr, Lanark, Edinburgh, Dumbarton, Kinross, Clackmannan, and Linhthgow. Within this rectangle is an area of about four milhon acres, or one-fifth of Scotland, and a population of 2,300,000, while the remaining sixteen milhon acres boast a population of but 1,450,000 — estimating the total population according to the census of 1881 at 3,750,000, in round figures. Undoubtedly the growth of manufacturing in this section of Scotland may be largely traced to the coal-fields which are almost entirely within these Hues. The Ayrshire coal-field has ninety-nine coal-mines ; the coal-field of the Clyde basin, with Glasgow as a center, no less than 310 mines ; farther north nearly to Stirling, the Clackmannan basin, with thirty-nine mines ; then the narrow basin rimning east along the banks of the Forth to Kilrenny, with thirty-seven mines ; Lothians coal-fields running south-west from Edinburgh, with thirty mines ; and at the extreme south-west the Lower Carboniferous coal continuation of the Cumberland region. Nearly one million tons of pig-iron were produced in 1881 in this region, mostly in the counties of Ayr and Lanark. Coatbridge, near Glasgow, is the center of this iron trade, this town and several others in its immediate neighborhood having been practically created by the industry.

Within a Hmited area, it is said there are more blast-furnaces and a greater output of iron than are to be found in any other region of the world. No less than seventy-two of the places where iron mining is carried on in Scotland are located within the imaginary Hues I have designated, and only fourteen places north and ten places south of them. The manufacture of textile goods (both woolen, fiax, and cotton) is carried on at 102 places (many of which are very important) within the rectangle, and, including Aberdeen, in about fifty places north and twenty -seven locations south of the lines. The principal points to be visited in this part of Great Britain will therefore be the cities within what may be called the industrial portion of Scotland, comprising Glasgow, with a population of 511,000, which perhaps was never in a more flourishing condition than it is at the present day ; yet side by side with its prosperous commerce and its seats of learning, it can show as much misery and can point to as much vice as any city of its size in the empire. The growth of the city is the most interesting feature in its history. Half a million of people fight the battle of life round the spot where St. Mungo is supposed to have pitched his tent. For Bishop Eae's one bridge (finished in 1345) there are now five, and for the sixteen smelting-furnaces of

THE NORTH OF ENGLAND. 17

1830 there are now ten times the number. Iron, coal, cotton, and its dye of Turkey red, enter largely into the causes of its prosperous industry. Time-honored Edinburgh, with 228,000 inhabitants; Dundee, with its population of 143,000, where the linen factories and the iron-works have interruptedly flourished since the Stuarts ceased to trouble the land; the comparatively modem town of Greenock, with 68,000 inhabitants, and its important beet-root sugar interests; Paisley, within seven miles of Glasgow, with a world-wide renown for its manufactures; Perth, the ''Fair City," with 30,000, rich in antiquities, and now celebrated for dye-works; Dumbarton, an important seat of the shipbuilding interest, with 14,000 people; and Stirling, celebrated in history, with a populace at the present time of 16,000.

IV. The North of England

Leaving Edinburgh and coming south, the next places of industrial importance to visit will be the principal towns of the great northern coal-field of Durham and Northumberland. The cities of this region are Newcastle, with 146,000 inhabitants, where coal was first worked in 1260, and around which over fifty important colHeries are located; Gateshead, a place of considerable antiquity and noted for grindstones; Sunderland, near which are some very deep mines; Durham, noted for ^*wood, water, maids and mustard;" Stockton and Darlington, where the first railroad was laid; and that region of country along the estuary of the Tees, with its center at Middlesborough, which owes its great importance to the expansion of iron manufacture.

The remainder of industrial England can be easily designated on the map by tracing with a pencil an imaginary South American continent, with Lancashire, divided at the 2

Eiver Eibble, including Preston and Burnley, and the northern boundary hne of the West Eiding of Yorkshire, for its northern boundary, and Tewkesbury, in Worcestershire, for its Cape Horn, or southern extremity ; for the eastern boundary of this great manufacturing area I shall take the Eiver Trent as far as Burton, and then the eastern boundary line of Staffordshire and Worcestershire until we reach the southern point at Tewkesbury ; for the western boundary the coast to Liverpool, and then the Eiver Weaver to a point just beyond Nantwich; from thence the western boundary of Staffordshire as far as Bewdley, and from that point the Severn to the southern extremity of Worcestershire. It will at once be seen that I have included in this great manufacturing district South Lancashire, the West Eiding of Yorkshire, that part of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire west of the Trent, the section of Cheshire east of the Severn, all of Staffordshire, and that part of Worcestershire east of the Severn. It includes the cotton, the woolen, the lace, the iron, the pottery, and, indeed, the principal manufacturing region of the empire, and embraces all the great industrial towns. To thoroughly study this part of England is the only road to the secret of her wealth, and the only way of forecasting the probabiHties of her contin ued progress; and in prosecuting this work what a rich cluster of great industrial centers must be visited ! Probably in no country can be found in such a narrow area as I have described so many cities famed throughout the globe for the products of their workshops. Beginning at the north-western corner of our imaginary continent with Preston, we find it noted in the seventeenth century for "its checks and unbleached grays;" Burnley is the place where Hargreaves, the carpenter, invented the spinning-jenny ; Burnley, a modern town with extensive cotton-mills ; Chorley, celebrated alike for its slate, coal, and cotton; Eochdale, the center of the flannel trade; Wigan, famous for cannel coal, tall chimneys, quaint streets, and a church built in Edward III.'s reign; Bolton, a city in which, as

THE NORTE OF ENGLAND. 19

early as 1760, cotton, velvets, and muslins were first manufactured on a large scale by Arkwright's machinery, and in which Arkwright once lived as a barber; Oldham, a noted manufacturing town, whose inhabitants seemed rough, hearty, and industrious, and Warrington, known alike for its cotton, fustians, pins, glass, and beer. Besides these, Lancashire boasts Liverpool, which was made "a port of the sea forever" by Henry II., and Manchester and Salford, the industrious progress of all of which will in themselves be worth the space devoted to this entire letter.

In the West Riding of Yorkshire we have Leeds, with 310,000 inhabitants, which before the woolen trade drifted to Yorkshire was nothing but a moorland tract of little value. Bradford, with a population of 180,000, the great seat of the worsted trade, is only eleven miles from Leeds. It is located on the Yorkshire Hills, where three vaUeys and three branch railroads meet; and of it was said three centuries ago, ^'It stood much by clothing." Mr. Walter White, in his record of a walk in Yorkshire, distinguishes between the glories of Leeds and Bradford by describing Leeds as famous for broadcloth, and Bradford as really a grand mart for stuffs and worsted goods. It was probably a boy belonging to a Leeds school who replied to a query put to him at an examination, as to what Bradford was famous for, by saying that Bradford was famous for shoddy. It has been said — and I must say, after spending several days last spring in both cities— with some truth that, with prosperity, something like the envy that exists between Chicago and St. Louis moves the susceptible and sensitive pulses of Leeds and Bradford respectively. The former triumphed when it not only built a lofty town-hall, but crowned it with a lofty tower. The story is told of how painfully the heart of all Leeds was stirred when it was known that a letter had reached the post-office there bearing the inscription, '^ Leeds, near Bradford." It was as if the Bradfordians had erected a loftier town hall, and crowned it with a more majestic tower than the edifice of which Leeds was proud, as a symbol of its supremacy. Near here is HaUfax, noted four centuries ago for ^^a gallows on Gibbet Hill and thirteen houses," now the center of the cloth trade, and contains 74,000 inhabitants. Sheffield, with 285,000 people, black, dingy, and unattractive, in some narts abounding in wretchedness, and yet the great seat of uiie cutlery trade, and situated in a beautiful location on the E,iver Sheaf, where it joins the Don. Huddersfield, with 38,000 population, stands on the hill, over the Colne, and near here was the nunnery where Robin Hood was bled to death by a nun, and here may still be seen his grave. Dowsbury, where broadcloth and cotton goods are made, and Wakefield, celebrated for wool and worsted yarn and rope factories.

V. The Midlands

In that part of Nottingham included in the area to be visited we have East Ratford, noted for '^hats, sail-cloth, and paper;" Mansfield, for hosiery and lace; Newark, manufacturing *^ a little lace and more beer;" Southwell, and many smaller manufacturing towns ; and, lastly, the Queen of the Midland Districts, beautiful Nottingham. Of this city Herr Hemnich said: '^That seems to me the most ancient city that I have yet seen in England." But it has been aptly said that in Nottingham the useful always had precedence of the ornamental. Nottingham made stockings before it made lace; but it was a gentleman, says Dr. Doran, who invented the stocking frame, and an ordinary Nottingham stocking-weaver who first made bobbinet, by so adapting his frame as to make it produce the imitation of lace after it had woven the reality of stockings. Soon after the Rev. William Lea invented the stocking-frame at the

THE MIDLANDS. 21

end of the sixteenth century, the old trunk-hose sKpped away from the Umbs of our ancestors. Nearly two hundred years later— that is to say, in 1770— Hammond, a weaver, was sitting at one of Lea's old-fashioned frames, and as he phedhis task his thoughts dwelt on the expensive pillow-lace made of flax thread, by aid of fingers and bobbins, and he thought of the old Italian lace made by the needle, of the costly productions of Brussels, Alengon, and Valenciennes, of Honiton lace, made like the ItaHan, and of Buckingham lace, which more nearly resembled the commoner point d' Alengon. The result of these thoughts was the far-famed bobbinet which made Nottingham famous even in bazaars of Eastern Ind. It is still the center of the cottonhosiery and bobbinet trade.

In the portion of Derbyshire included in the area under discussion we have the interesting town of Stavely ; Derby, noted for lace-making, iron and brass manufacturing, for its ribbons, and for silk-throwing; Buxton, for its "Buxton diamonds," and Chesterfield, for its tobacco factories.

As we enter Staffordshire, the entire county being included in our area, the first important district is the pottery region, including Stoke, Burslem, Hanley, Tunstall, and a number of other places, all of which, since the time of Wedgwood, have been noted for the manufacture of earthenware. The account of the trip through this region will be of considerable interest on the other side of the Atlantic, as the United States still imports over half the amount of earthen and glass consumed. Stafford is noted for boots and shoes : Burton and Litchfield for their famous ale, and Dudley, with 88,000 inhabitants, raised into importance by its iron and coal works; Wednesbury, with 125,000 people, almost wholly engaged in the iron trade ; Wolverhampton, an ancient town founded by King Egbert's sister, now the seat of the iron trade of the " Black Country" and containing 165,000 inhabitants. The "Black Country" is a region of Staffordshire covering about thirty square miles of barren soil, beneath which are rich crops of coal, iron, and stone. There are no fields, no trees, nothing in the landscape but smoking chimneys, heaps of slag, blast furnaces belching forth red flames and the most dilapidated houses where the operatives live. About the mines and furnaces and around the heaps of slag in the Black Country may be seen, by the glare of the furnaces by night and day, the stolid animal faces of the women, with shoeless feet and uncovered legs and arms begrimed with clotted filth, assisting the men in their work. Indeed, savage-featured, reckless, dirty men and women, whose main enjoyment seems fighting and carousing, form the chief attraction of this rich mining and manufacturing district. It has been said that, setting aside the romance of the manufacture of iron under the Britons, we may assert that it is reeking but healthy labor, and not royalty with an offensive impetigo^ that has made Birmingham one of the most remarkable cities in the kingdom. Labor and the sons of labor have done it all — not suddenly, but by slow degrees. Leland could only say of Birmingham that it was inhabited by ^* smiths that use to make knives and all sorts of cutting-tools; and many lorimors that make bitts, and a great many nailers." Camden, traveling in the sixteenth century, says, *^Most of the inhabitants be smiths." Thus did the great city commence a career of prosperity and usefulness, and to-day, with over 400,000 population, is one of the noted manufacturing cities of the world.

In the district of Worcestershire, included in the imaginary lines I have drawn, are Stourbridge, where glass was first manufactured in 1557; Kidderminster, long celebrated for its carpets; Droitwich, for manufacturing fine salt; Evesham, for its *' stockings and ribbons; and Tewkesbury, for nails, cotton, lace, and mustard," for Shakespeare says, **As thick as Tewkesbury mustard." At Worcester, in 1751, the manufacture of porcelain was first established, for which it is celebrated to-day, as well as for the manufacture of gloves. This, with a few important places Hke Stockport, Northwich, Macclesfield, and Crewe, in Cheshire, comprises

GLASGOW— ITS TRADITION. 23

a bird's-eye view of the industrial regions of England. From here we proceed to South Wales, and to obtain a. clear idea of the work it will be best to include Monmouthshire, for that with Glamorganshire properly constitutes the great iron and coal district which has Merthyr-Tydvil for its center. A general view of this section and of the south-western counties of England, around all of which clusters much of interest and importance for an inquiry like this, must be left for subsequent letters, as the present one has already reached the limit of the space allotted.

VI. GrLASGow— Its Tradition

Considering the hap-hazard manner in which tradition teUs us Glasgow was ushered into existence, it has a most uniform and substantial appearance. Indeed, accident surrounded the very birth of its founder, but, perhaps, the less said about that the better. Certain it is, however, if the two wild bulls with their ghastly burden had gone in the opposite direction, the saintly Mungo would have followed them. But the strange cortege arrived safely on the site now occupied by Glasgow Cathedral, and it must have been here, near the stream in the dark ravine, that St. Mungo built his hut. At that time in the forest, on the site of the eastern or manufacturing quarter of the present city, dwelt a class who loved war and had an appetite for human flesh. It is said of them that they cared much less for roasted sheep than for a roasted shepherd, if he were but young. Shepherd or shepherdess was all one to these proto-Glasgovians, who were nice epicures, and had their favorite sHces in the richest parts of their victims. With . such queer neighbors it must have been an accident that the young and tender saint was not ''called " to administer to their bodily instead of their spiritual appetites.

However, on reUgious grounds the inhabitants prayed

BREAD-WINNERS ABROAD.

hiTTi to remain, and a bishop was sent for from Ireland to consecrate St. Mungo to the holy office to which he had been elected. His success was immense. People who were disrespectful to him met with fearful deaths; he sowed sand in the fields and reaped good and wholesome grain ; under his guidance wolf and stag worked together at the plow; barns filled with grain were moved from one part of the country to the other ; the king kicked him and immediately the foot thus ingloriously applied was attacked by gout. In time, like all great men, he became impopular, and then he departed for Wales. But the Glasgow people would not let him remain, and the saint was persuaded to return, and afterward transferred his cathedral to Glasgow, where he continued to perform as extraordinary miracles as he had done before. Perhaps to some of these the people of Glasgow are indebted for early lessons in the honesty for which they are noted. Under the influence of the pious St. Mungo, the heads of stolen sheep became petrified and fixed on the hands of the thief, and the mills on the banks of the Clyde would not grind stolen grain. These same mills would not work during church hours on Sundays ; and I noticed that this goodly example has likewise been followed to this day, for in Glasgow, unlike the English cities, those modern mills of gin and destruction are not opened on Sunday, as the law is rigorously enforced. The dislike for Sunday trading is clearly shown in some statistics which the chief -constable, Captain McCall, gave me this morning. During the last decade, annually, at a date unannounced in advance to the shopkeepers, the police have visited and taken a census of the shops and other places of business found open within the City of Glasgow and doing business at any time during the day, with the following almost uniform result :

1872 2,019

1873 2,048

1874 2,032

1875 2,074

1876 2.109

1877 2,031

1878 2,243

1879 2,218

1880 2,243

1881 2,209

GLASGOW—ITS TRADITION. 25

Of this number not one public-house is reported to have been found open. Of the 2,209 places found open last year, 859 were fruit and confectionery shops, 277 groceries and provisions, 610 milk-shops, 113 green grocers, 179 druggists, and only 59 tobacconists. The others were as follows : Barbers, 11; eating-houses, 29; fruit-stores, 4; news-rooms, 3; pie-houses, 14; fleshers (butchers), 9; stationers, 23; coaldealers, 9; bakers, 3; baths, 1; undertakers, 5; cab offices, 1; total, 2,209. These facts form a strange contrast to the wholesale Sabbath-breaking of such cities as Chicago, where the open theatres, variety shows, concert-halls, and saloons make a saturnalian feast-day of Sunday ; and yet Glasgow, like its sister city of the West, has over half a miUion inhabitants.

As the good-natured chief constable of Glasgow slowly read off these exhibits of the Sunday raids on a class of shops which seem almost necessary to the comfort of the poorer classes in the city, my mind reverted to the accounts of the even more strict supervision of the streets less than a century ago. From 12 o'clock on Saturday night, in Glasgow, when the Sabbath began, to 12 o'clock on Sunday night, when it finished, all the gates of the city were closed, and no one was allowed to pass in or out, save on very special necessity. In the daytime, as we read in ^*Eob Roy," ^^ searchers" were appointed to take note of all persons idling on the highway or drinking in taverns, or even in their own houses, during kirk-hours. A man who shaved himself, or a barber who dressed his wig on the Sabbath risked being led up before the Kirk Session. The sale of milk was even forbidden on Sundays. The Glasgow people of those days would almost stone a man for whistling a call to his own dog on Sunday, and they cast a scornful look on the unrighteous who sought for fresh air in the fields, meadows, or country lanes. It is said this lasted until 1820. Indeed, as late as 1876 a man was taken up and actually convicted and fined for singing ^^ WiUie brewed a Peck o' Malt" in the streets on the Lord's day. It is said he pleaded that he sang the words to one of Moody and Sankey^s hymn-tunes, but that did not save him.

Robert Chambers describes Glasgow, in the latter half of the sixteenth century, as a mere *^ little town," with the distinction of possessing a university and of carrying on a small coasting trade. The townsmen, and indeed townswomen also, were a choleric race, given to cry loudly, to strike fiercely, and, -moreover, to be as ready with the sword or pistol as with fist and tongue. Shots were fired ^* promiscuously" in a crowded market-place or barroom. Glascow tailors carried swords on their thighs like gentlemen, and angry Glasgow wives had words on their tongues not at all Hke those used by ladies. The manufacturing enterprise of the people had dawned even at this early date, and Scottish nobles became traders and manufacturers. In 1688 Viscount Tarbat was chief partner in a little manufactory in the city, which paid very good dividends. Though not free from the many semi-barbarities characteristic of the times, the population were ^' canny" and enterprising. They were patriotic, too, for when the town-surgeon, in speaking of the city itseM as 'Hhe hungrie toune of Glasgow," this ** odious and grit offence" was punished by applying the unhappy doctor's pension for the year to *Hhe common works of the toune." In 1652 about one third of the city was destroyed by fire. After this the Council sent **a man of practical experience" to Edinburgh *'to visitie the engyne thair for sleekening of fyre." A fire-engine was finally bought, and is thus quaintly described in the proceedings of the Council: *^ An ingyne for castyng of water on land that is in fyre."