: Bessbrook and Its Linen Mills: A Short Narrative of a Model Temperance Town by Ritchie J Ewing James Ewing - Temperance; Linen industry Northern Ireland Bessbrook; Bessbrook (Northern Ireland)

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BESSBROOK AND ITS LINEN MILLS.

A SHORT NARRATIVE OF A MODEL TEMPERANCE TOWN.

BY J. EWING RITCHIE.

London: WILLIAM TWEEDIE & CO., LIMITED, 337, STRAND.

UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS.

BESSBROOK AND ITS LINEN MILLS.

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. When such men as Mr. 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. 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; where his sons learn crime, and his daughters how much better rewarded is vice than virtue. Underneath the whited sepulchres of our boasted civilisation there lie rottenness and dead men's bones. Of talk we have somewhat more than enough, as must necessarily be the case now that woman claims to appear on the platform on an equality with 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. It is not clear that we have improved on that very much. It is clear that for lack of it we have a great deal--especially in our crowded manufacturing districts--of social anarchy--of progress the wrong way--of licence which means licentiousness, of teaching and talking downward rather than upward. The need of silent divine action, as Thomas Carlyle writes, is very great at this time.

In Ireland, in one spot in particular, this silent divine action has now been in progress some twenty years, and the result is worth noting. I write of Mr. 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.

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. Its mills, factories, and docks, combine the commercial and mercantile features both of Liverpool and Manchester. Its situation is most picturesque--its streets are broad and uniform. Some of the linen-warehouses are palaces, and nowhere in the world are there finer buildings, more attractive shops, and greater symptoms of prosperity and wealth. It is not merely the seat of shipping, of commerce, of manufacture, but its intellectual claims are of no common character. It calls itself the Irish Athens, and its colleges, and libraries, and newspapers, and general intelligence, bear out in some degree that claim. The linen trade of Ulster now represents a capital of several millions, and employs men, women, and children.

"He sees his little lot the lot of all; Sees no contiguous palace rear its head To shame the meanness of his humble shed; No costly lords the sumptuous banquet deal To make him loathe his vegetable meal; But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, Each wish, contracting, fits him to the toil."

As we wend our way, a fine breeze meets us from the distant downs. You can fancy the sportsman may find on the distant heather something that may repay his toil, or the artist something he may love to transfer to his canvas; but you would never guess that in so romantic a spot there was so unpoetic a thing as a flax-spinning mill. On our right runs a little stream, which, ere it reaches its destination in Newry, sets more mills going, considering the distance, than any other in the country.

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