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Book One: A Poor Man

at the Gate Series

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Chapter Six

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It took Joseph a month to realise that the putting-out system was no longer sensible or necessary for spinning but was an unavoidable evil of weaving.

The demand for cotton had outgrown the old methods of supply, the market was unbalanced, out of kilter, had no stability, needed to be modernised. Weaving was insoluble, for the while, in the absence of workable powered looms that could be operated by semi-skilled hands in a factory, but the major problems of spinning had been solved – the manufacturer had a choice of the older water-frames that could be run by unskilled women or the new mules that produced a finer thread but demanded the strength of men.

At the moment raw cotton was taken out to the cottages and came back, eventually, as thread or yarns, no two cottagers producing at exactly the same thickness and strength or in the same time-span. ‘The cotton was of poor quality or too dirty or adulterated or was still on the wheel’ – the excuses came every Saturday, the finished goods came back less frequently. Joseph suspected that some of his yarns went out the back door, sold against cash to other factors, but he could not prove it. The weavers were worse, being mostly men – cloths that came back were often too loosely woven or stretched beyond belief in an attempt to get something for nothing, quality was take it or leave it. Where the weavers were good in quality they were too often wholly irresponsible, working just enough to live and pay the week’s bills; Saturday morning was pay-day; Saturday afternoon and evening and the whole of Sunday was drunk; Saint Monday was for recovery, too often hair of the dog, meaning that Tuesday went to recuperate from the excesses of Monday. Work for many started for the week on Wednesday and then the men pushed sixty hours production out of the three days, quality disappearing from sheer fatigue.

Quality, quantity, reliability, all demanded the new manufactury, yet the great mass of the men hated the very idea of giving up their freedom, of surrendering to the discipline of the knocker-up rattling his pole on their windows before five to get them to the mill-gate to sign in for six o’clock. The few weavers who were prepared to work in a mill were almost invariably feckless drunks or ham-fisted bodgers, unable to make their own way and sacked within a very few days.

The only answer was to get the spinners under control and then slowly pressure the weavers into responsibility and pray for the power loom to be perfected so that unskilled labourers could take their place and consign the feckless drunks to the gutter and then, as they died, to the history books.

Joseph paid a visit to one of the few spinning mills, sat up bold on its hillside, a pair of waterwheels powering at least a hundred of frames, clattering and clacking deafeningly. The owner was proud of his enterprise, was only too pleased to boast of it, unworried by competition because he could sell at least twice his output without any effort – but he was rich already, was not concerned to expand his own premises. Joseph nodded and smiled and looked intently – the organisation was obvious enough, the machines known to him and, as he had heard, the work-force was almost entirely women and children.

“They queue up to work here, Mr Star! A housemaid in service gets her keep, and half a crown a week, paid quarterly; a chambermaid in a hotel or an inn gets a few pennies more, and the chance to earn extras if she’s pretty and willing; both will work twelve hours a day, at least, six days a week with a half-day on Sunday, if they have a good employer. My girls get eight bob a week, cash in hand on Saturday morning when they go home at midday, and they get all of Sunday off, and I give them half an hour for dinner, free and gratis! The children are off the Poor Law and from the Foundlings Hospital, and they work no more than eight hours a day and they get a breakfast and dinner, and a good meal, mutton and spuds each time – no bread and scrape here, sir; they don’t get any money, of course, that goes to the Vestry, but the girls can come back to work here when they are twelve and we put the word out for the boys if they have shown willing, can normally find them a place.”

Slaves were treated worse, Joseph knew, but mostly they did not have to smile and say thank you to their masters; this country was not the heaven on earth he had imagined when he was a little boy wanting only to get out of Antigua. However, it would do...

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“Land, Mr Clapperley, on a good, year-round stream that will take a header-pond. Twenty acres, at least, more if you can get it at a sensible price, waste ground or moor, for the best. Where can I find an engineer? Can you put me in touch with reliable builders who can throw up a good, solid mill?”

For his fee Clapperley could provide any and all of Joseph’s needs, and in quick time. A fortnight and he was inspecting two hundred acres of poor land backing onto the Manchester road, within a couple of furlongs of the canal and not three miles from Lodge Cottage. The soil on the hillside was acid and grew little and the bottom was boggy. Enquiry disclosed that the area belonged to no parish and so paid no Poor Law rate.

Four hundred pounds bought the land from the farmer whose family had held the acres for years and had never been able to make sensible use of them other than to run goats whose milk was unpopular and meat was spurned. Three thousands would build the mill and the waterwheels and put fifty frames inside for the carding and spinning. That left nearly two thousands for his working capital, enough to buy a part-load at auction and pay wages for six months. He expected to be selling thread within three months, splitting his output, some to go to his own weavers, more to go onto the market – there was a demand for good yarns from the hosiers and the glovers, both wanting strong, coarse threads for their knitters.

Two successful years and he would be looking to expand – the profits were there because cash-money was not. The banks would not lend to new firms, and preferred to put their money out to old-established merchants rather than manufacturers, not understanding the new industry; private investors were few and far between, most wanting security, unprepared to take any risk at all with the inherited wealth that was their status and their power in the land. For those who would take a risk, the rewards were high and taxation was non-existent; a fortune could be made very rapidly, provided there was a lesser fortune to invest in the first instance.

John McKay, a young Scottish engineer – English schools produced none - appeared, introduced by Clapperley as an expert in his field and drawing a very pretty plan of his proposed mill; hired on for three hundred a year he stood over the builders as they brought bricks to the site and burned their clay and lime to make mortar, and then watched them cut footings down to the sandstone, finding it to be solid and unfaulted. The design was quickly amended and the natural stone formed the floor to the mill, saving money and adding strength; the spoil they cut out was carted straight downhill and tipped into the edge of the bog, helping it to firm up more quickly. As an experiment, McKay built large windows into the roof and upper walls of the big brick box that was the mill, hoping to save on lamp-oil and make it easier to watch over the machines; there would be no openings in the lower ten feet, of course, the operatives not to be encouraged to waste time looking at the scenery.

It was a busy few months for Joseph, teaching himself the cotton trade whilst setting up house and learning how to make a life with a young wife of a very different social order. Fortunately for both, Bennet – and where she had gained her knowledge they did not enquire, though Joseph had some suspicions of the major – had very carefully explained a wife’s marital duties to Amelia and had led her to expect to thoroughly enjoy her husband, thus bringing a very smug expression to the faces of both newly-weds; it made the give-and-take of marriage much easier for both.

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They concentrated on the coarsest yarns at first, it being much simpler to spin them and achieve a high standard in their output, and meet all of their orders on time. In a year or two, when they had the expertise, they would go for the higher prices of the finer threads but they preferred to walk first, run later, a sentiment Clapperley applauded as well-expressed, mindful of his commission.

Marks acted as buyer at the auctions and continued to work with his weavers, men who had known him for some years and had a tenuously friendly relationship with him, when they were sober. The dyers were all larger firms, fairly long established and reliable enough and, again, knew Marks and found it easy to deal with him. Joseph worried about Marks – he had shown himself to be a good worker, a reliable employee who gave of his best, and that was not a natural state of affairs for a man who had been treated as he had been – he should have been harbouring a grudge, surely could not be so docilely obedient as he showed. Joseph had no knowledge of ‘respectability’, the new god of the middle order of people, and of the horror of debt and stigma of imprisonment that had broken Marks’ spirit and left him terrified and cringing.

The girls who worked in the mill were all that had been forecast – obedient beyond belief, they walked their two or three or four miles from their parents’ cottages or terraces in town, almost none coming from the villages, and queued up to be ticked off on the paymaster’s register and be at their places ready for the six o’clock start, and then they worked, silent, heads down, hands busy until the belts stopped for their dinner when they filed out into the fresh air, and very often the rain, and unwrapped the piece of cloth from their bread and cheese, or dry bread alone at the end of the week, and ate it quickly and neatly and queued up at the necessaries and then trotted back to be ready for the wheels to start turning again; in the afternoons they worked up to the second of six o’clock and then quickly swept up round their machine before making their number on the roll again and setting off home in twos and threes in the cold and darkness of winter or the long evenings of summer. And they competed for the privilege! They would beg to write their sisters’ names into the books for any vacancy that might arise and chance that could occur.

It was years before Joseph fully understood the girls’ desperation to get into the mills, realised just how slight were the opportunities open to them. They could go into service, rise perhaps to cook in a middle-class house, unwed and always fearful of losing their place and having nothing and nowhere to go; a few could take employment as counter-jumpers in the big new shops just starting to open, eighteen hours a day, six days a week, living-in under discipline, badly paid and worse fed; more could go to the mills. The rest must either stay at home, unpaid drudges contributing nothing to the family budget, or, as perhaps a quarter of them did, they could go on the game, making a precarious living walking the streets in regular or occasional prostitution until age, disease, desperation and the gin bottle brought them to the river. A mill girl numbered herself amongst the aristocracy of the unwed working class, earning enough to save six pence a week, every week, so as to bring a very respectable sum with her on marriage in her mid-twenties to a husband with a trade of his own, an end which many actually achieved. As a result the workforce in the mills was both grateful and obedient, and highly profitable, bringing the mill well into the black inside six months.

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Roberts Iron Founders returned a profit from the very first, but it was a tiny, miserable, inadequate trickle of cash; even allowing for the low price Tom had paid, it was a poor return, less than he was earning from the funds remaining in Martin’s bank.

Within three months Tom had called George Mason into conference, asking the single question.

“Why, George?”

“Like I said when first I met thee, sir, we still ain’t got enough contracts – we work flat out for three days of the six, potter for the other three, and I’d like to go to seven day working, never let the furnaces get cool, except when it’s time to change the linings, save a load of coke that way. Second thing, most of our cast goes to low price jobs, we don’t do sufficient of the big, expensive stuff, the trusses and pillars for mills and bridges in particular. Third problem is the wrought iron – we just didn’t ought to be doing it, Mr Andrews, not using coke. If I had my way, sir, we’d shut down on wrought and turn to crucible steel, making parts for steam engines and factory machines and forging hammers and presses – skilled, top of the line stuff, where the money is.”

“Can you do it?”

“I know how, and I knows where to lay my hands on four good blokes what have worked at Huntsmans before moving on to another master who tried to cut their wages when times got a bit hard last year. They told ‘im where to stick ‘is wage cuts, and came on down here when they found every door in Sheffield was closed to ‘em, they being marked men, you might say. Two pound ten a week, they’d cost, and worth twice as much in profit to us.”

“But, George, they’re stroppy buggers, be forming a combination and calling strike at the drop of a hat.”

“Best we don’t drop our hats then, master. Besides, they’ll be taking home twice as much as any other man in the works, there won’t be any wanting to listen to them if they calls for a strike, and they’ll ‘ave too much money to lose by going out. As well, if we builds on four more cottages up the lane we can give them to ‘em while they works for us, like a farmer’s tied places, only decent; all four are married with wives and little ‘uns back in Sheffield living with their mums for the while. On the one hand, we keeps them grateful, on the other they’re out in the road if they shouts their mouths off, and they’ll know it.”

Carrot and stick – it worked for donkeys, it should work for foundrymen.

“Do it, George. I’ll contact our customers for wrought and tell them we shall be ending production. They’re mostly one off jobs, I believe, apart from the ploughshares.”

“Ploughshares are month on month, sir, just a word of mouth for how many are needed. Give them good notice – it will take at least three months to build the crucibles, so we can keep them sweet.”

“We need a traveller if we are to get more contracts, especially in steel, where we aren’t known.”

Mason stirred uneasily, almost for the first time in their acquaintance seemed unsure of himself.

“I ain’t certain that I’m doing right by this, sir, but I’ve got a young brother, twenty years between us, almost. He went to the Grammar School, being as how I could find the cost of clothes and books when he passed the examination what gave him free entry, so he has the knowledge and speaks right. He can learn about our costs and prices quickly – he’s a bright lad, no question, sir – and he could travel for us, if it’s not an imposition, sir, me putting his name forward.”

“I had rather employ a man I know – and any brother of yours is likely to be a good worker. I know I can trust you, George, so I reckon I can trust your family. What do you say to offering him a small wage, say a pound a week, and his expenses – hotel rooms and such, buying a horse for him as well, and then give him a share of the profits he makes. Say ten parts in the hundred of the money the firm makes on every contract he brings in?”

“He would be making big money after five years or so, sir – I reckon he could be raking in damn near a thousand a year in the end!”

“So the firm would be making nine thousand, George – sounds good to me.”

“It’s a lot of money, sir!”

“It is. You should be doing the same, of course, except that your ten per cent will be of all the firm’s earnings, not just the contracts your brother brings in. Later, when Roberts has got big enough, I may well leave the whole management of the works to you, George, while I do something else – coal mines, maybe. When that happens you will get a share in the firm as well as more of the profits. I don’t believe in something for nothing, George – I want a lot from you, so it’s only fair to pay for all I take.”

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Money making was easy, Tom had discovered, if you had money already and the country was booming; it occurred to him that one day the country might stop expanding and he wondered what would happen then – perhaps he should start to keep an eye on what was happening nationally, so that he might be able to get a warning of bad times if they seemed likely. For the while canals were spreading apace, there was a turnpike building between every big town in Lancashire, and likely elsewhere, iron was expanding and coal was being hauled out of the ground in thousands of tons while cotton was mushrooming and he still had five thousands sat in the bank, uncommitted, safe but not really earning. Perhaps he could find something for that money, in another field though.

“Mr Clapperley! What should I do with about five thousands of cash money? ‘Eggs in one basket’, you know, I am unwilling to put it to work with the rest of my money.”

“A rational thought, sir, and there are several possibilities. Safest is Consols, Government Loan stock, payment guaranteed from the Consolidated Fund, the Exchequer in effect. Being safe, Consols pay poor returns, four and one half at maximum, three more common. For high returns one must take a greater risk, but even then one can reduce the chances of default; I would suggest that you make two or three loans, Mr Andrews, of one or two thousands to venturers who are unable to borrow elsewhere, who the banks, for example, will not touch. Twenty-five per centum is not unheard of for such, sir.”

“Six times as great as Consols, and more than twice the rate most banks would charge. What sort of business makes a profit that can pay that, Mr Clapperley?”

“Black ivory, for one, sir – most of the English trade is Liverpool-based now.”

“Slaving? No! I have seen slavery in the Sugar Islands, Mr Clapperley, and I will have no part in it. A dirty business and for dirty people, sir – I have no weak stomach and have killed my man in fair fight, sir, and more than once, but I will have no part in flogging and butchery.”

“As you will, sir – I have seen neither slavery nor warfare, can comment on neither. I would add, sir, that no money of mine is involved in slaving, but there is a high profit and I could not but draw it to your attention.”

“That was your duty, sir, and you were correct to perform it, however distasteful it may be to both of us.”

The awkward moment was over, for the while.

“Horse-coping, Mr Andrews, is a risky trade – the buyer typically going to the Irish fairs and then bringing his purchases across the sea to England, often some dying in storms or losing condition badly, and, of course, possibly simply not finding buyers and having to be kept over winter, at some expense. A client of mine proposes to buy in the northern parts of the country and then take his horses to the little port of Larne, which is only a half of a day’s sailing from Stranraer in Scotland, a far out of the way place, admittedly, but with the advantage that the beasts may be walked a quiet month south to Manchester, corn fed and regaining their condition on the road and coming to market strong and healthy. He aims to move six strings of thirty over the summer months, buying for no more than ten pounds and selling typically at eighty to one hundred. He would ask to borrow two thousands and repay twenty-five hundreds at season’s end.”

“Done, Mr Clapperly, the money to pass through your hands, neither my face nor my name to be seen.”

“My fee to be, say, fifty guineas, ten per centum on the interest?”

“Certainly, sir, payable when your client squares up at the end of trading.”

“As well, sir, a lady known to me needs a thousand temporarily to cover a run of bad luck on her tables – three times in a week the faro bank has been broken! Unheard of – it rarely happens once a year, and of course, she had funds put aside to cover that eventuality, but not thrice! She would pay fifty a month interest, hoping to repay in three months, certainly in four.”

Tom knew nothing of gambling and gaming houses, except that they were illegal but the law was never enforced while they were discreet and allowed no silly suicides or scandals on their premises. In any case, the government had no business interfering with private pleasures – what people did with their own money and out of public view was their own business; to hell with the law!

“By all means, Mr Clapperley, but it occurs to me that collection of such a debt might perhaps raise difficulties – one could hardly go to court, I would imagine?”

“No, sir, one could not, but I can vouch for the lady’s probity.”

“Good. You might, perhaps, wish to point out that I am capable of making my own collection if needs must.”

Clapperley shuddered, he was not a man of violence, was quite content to restrict his assaults to those sanctioned by the law and the courts.

“Two thousands more, Mr Clapperley?”

“By the end of the week, Mr Andrews, I have one or two ideas, will have to pursue them a little further.”

Tom visited Martin and arranged to make a cash withdrawal on the following morning and then took his gig back to his lonely house to clean and load his pistols for the benefit of Mr Clapperley’s nerves. Greatly to his dismay he had discovered that the local business community was aggressively low church and chapel, committed to thrift, soap and overt sexual rectitude – one could not openly keep a mistress in one’s mansion and expect to gain another contract from these men; behind closed doors no doubt all was different – ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was, he understood, an expression of local invention. Discovering the exact location of those closed doors was not easy, however – they were not discussed here, it was very different to New York where such matters had been boasted of. Clapperley, now, was obviously familiar with at least one gaming house and from gambling table to ‘knocking shop’ was normally one very short step – he must have a very precise idea of the location of the Lancashire dens of iniquity, could probably offer a detailed, guided tour, but to use his services would be to open oneself to blackmail, he was a lawyer, after all. Better not to take advice in this matter from him; it was, however, becoming a matter of some urgency to locate a source of relaxation.

He entered Clapperley’s chambers next morning in a black mood, frieze coat flapping open and pistol butts displayed at each stride. He counted out sixty bank notes of different size and pattern and print and drawn on a mixture of country and London banks, but all of fifty pounds denomination and known and acceptable at face value; notes drawn on obscure, minor country banks might fetch a discount, but the majors were well enough known to be as good as gold, almost.

“Three thousands, Mr Clapperley. Would you wish me to escort you when you carry them out of the building, sir, or have you your own arrangements?”

It was a dangerous sum of money, a long lifetime’s earnings for a farm labourer, worth killing for as Clapperley was only too well aware.

“Thank you, Mr Andrews, but I shall send the money by messenger rather than carry it myself. The men are quite well-known in the town, and are never attacked for fear of the consequences, I understand – they tend not to bother the courts of law, according to rumour.”

“Sensible – the parish constable is of little value for the apprehension of felons, I understand, Mr Clapperley.”

Clapperley left the distasteful topic – he could find nothing amusing or interesting in even the second-hand discussion of violence.

“I have been able to confirm another rumour that had come to my ears recently, Mr Andrews, speaking last evening to a contact who often has specialised knowledge.”

Tom nodded, he had heard of paid informants, men who knew everything and everybody like Bob had in New York.

“The Corporation, as is well-known, intends to build an Infirmary, for the betterment of the health of the poor people of the town – the infectious diseases of the slums spread all over if unchecked – and have finally decided on a location. They will build on the hillside behind Chamberlain Street, on the outskirts where there is a healthy wind to blow away the miasmas, a decision recently taken and not to be public knowledge. A few guineas and I can discover the exact plots of farmland they will wish to purchase...”

“How much?”

“Two hundred in golden guineas, coin so much more convincing than paper in these matters.”

“And we may then purchase ourselves and discuss the resale with the Corporation, possibly even with the same gentlemen who sold us the information?”

“Just so, Mr Andrews. We may also be able to nominate a builder of our choice.”

“And to think that I went privateering in the Sugar Islands when I could have been a pirate here! Yes, Mr Clapperley, I think we should put our money to work for us, it is I believe our Christian duty to do so!”

Clapperley looked a little surprised at this last.

“I remember, vaguely, from Dame School, sir, something about the Parable of the Talents – it is incumbent upon us to set our money to work for the best return.”

Clapperley simpered weak approbation for this stroke of wit, finding it somewhat strong for his taste, and enquired, apparently apropos of nothing, whether Mr Andrews had had much contact with Miss Roberts, for her time of strict mourning must be at its end and she would be venturing more into public.

“I have seen nothing of her, Mr Clapperley – I thought it best to build a fence around the house – to maintain her privacy – and she has not strayed out of her acre of garden, to my knowledge.”

“One wonders how she will occupy her time now, Mr Andrews – she was always used to be about the works and performed much of the bookkeeping, I believe.”

“Her father not doing so for being unable to follow the figures from column to column, they tending to dance about so after the first half bottle.”

Clapperley smiled primly, his lawyer’s training not permitting him to associate himself with so damaging a comment.

“I presume she will have local acquaintances, Mr Clapperley, young ladies of like age.”

“Probably not, sir. Her brother was socially active, and made few friends for the family, and Mr Roberts Senior was of an abrasive disposition, not a well-liked man, even at his best.”

“So her existence will be reclusive, you fear, Mr Clapperley, yet a young lady with twelve thousand pounds is unlikely to remain uncourted, surely.”

“Normally, I would agree with you, Mr Andrews.”

Tom pondered Clapperley’s words on his way back to the works, trying to read between the lines, to discover what precisely was the message in them; the little lawyer was not one for idle conversation and his advice, however veiled, had so far been worth listening to.

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“George? Miss Roberts, she was used to be busy in the works, was she not?”

“Aye, sir, you could call it that.”

So there had been a reason for Clapperley’s idle chat, Tom made a note to thank him, as obliquely as he had made his warning, the nature of which he must ferret out for himself.

No need to be subtle with Mason – his loyalty was unquestioning and his mouth stayed closed.

“All right, George, tell me the details.”

Mason clasped his hands behind his back, he would never sit in the office, assumed a righteous pose, face stern.<