Correspondence
A LETTER FROM MANCHESTER. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Everything moves in Manchester, except trade. With regard to trade, the Government itself is not more helpless than we are. We have had a Cotton Week, but it is, after all, only the size of a mole-hill, though thrown up with much spirit, and no one can convert it into the mountain that we need. The Chamber of Commerce has taken a referendum to find out what its members think about Protection and Free Trade. It drafted no fewer than six questions in order to find out precisely. Those who are in favour of Protection will soon have the satisfaction of seeing their policy applied to themselves more and more in India. Within . a short time India will have Dominion status and, with autonomy, the right, which she will certainly exercise with vigour, of setting up a handsome and increasing barrier against British and Lancashire goods. Manchester Protectionists cannot complain of this. Free Traders, perhaps, may be allowed to think that a small but powerful fraction of India ' will be enforcing Protection' at the expense of the illiterate
• and unvoiced masses. Bombay millowners and Bengal lawyers will make short work, in the day of their power, of the Mahatma's Khaddar policy. More profitable to Manchester, in the long run, than any referendum, will be the report just brought back by a Manchester civic deputation which has visited technical schools and colleges on the Continent. More profitable to the whole of England, if notice is taken of it. " It would appear," says the report, " that in the contest for supremacy the ground has been shifted from armaments to technical education," and it appears also that in all these Continental colleges the buildings -•and equipment- are of the - very finest. Everything is _,complete, modern and abundant." Except in London, England has nothing like it. A Cotton Week is only a gesture, though a -good one. It solves nothing. The hope of the future lies in the acceptance, and the application, of such reports as this.
The University flourishes. We have just celebrated the eightieth anniversary of the old Owens College—" Owens " is still the battle-cry on the sports ground and " College " still the cry of the tram-conductor—and the Jubilee of the Victoria University. There was a magnificent conferment of honorary degrees in the Free Trade Hall. General Dawes, Mr. Snowden, Miss Margery Fry and Dame Ethel Smyth were among the recipients, and the doctors' gowns made a banked-up blaze of colour on the lofty platform. Ashburne Hall, the women's hostel, is to have' a new wing. The College of Technology is to be extended. The University Museum, having already been extended, has undergone a rearrange- ment, and now in the new wing there is an admirable collection of archaeological exhibits from many civilizations. The Library of the Manchester Medical Society, which has existed for nearly one hundred years, has been presented to the University.
• The municipality flourishes, too. It has conferred the freedom of Manchester on Mr. C. P. Scott. The spokesmen of the city sang Mr. Scott's praises appropriately, but I doubt whether anyone has yet pointed out that his uniqueness has consisted in this, that he is the only instance of a Hebrew prophet sitting in an editorial chair. He was, of course, more humane than the prophets, but in all moral affairs he had their rightness and downrightness, and not even Jeremiah was more willing to be thrown into noisome dungeons for conscience' sake. Then, we have had the laying of the foundation-stone of the Municipal Library. For years we have had a ramshackle makeshift on our best open site—a thing for wailing and spitting—but soon it will disappear, and then, in its place, we shall have another stone-laying, that of a new Art Gallery. Slow, but—perhaps we may at last say—sure. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who laid the stone of the library, dwelt on the kinder aspects of our history. It is curious how differently our public men react to the influence of books. Mr. MacDonald, who loves them, spoke in swelling rhetoric and told us we ought to take our shoes off when we entered the .sacred portals of a great library_ Mr. Baldwin or Lord Hewart, who also love books, talk about them in an intimate, friendly, personal way. Mr. MacDonald's is the platform method, all the time.
The municipality is preserving Wythenshawe Hall (the gift to Manchester of Mr. and Mrs. E. D. Simon) as an old family-house of the seventeenth century. It contains pictures taken from our Central Gallery, but that is not the idea - the point is that, pictures, porcelain and furniture all consort with the rooms of the old Hall. The Art Gallery Committee in this pursues an admirable policy. There are now six branch galleries in Manchester all carefully treated according to their individual characters. Another matter in which the city is taking a distinct line is in regard to the height of new buildings. We are in for an age (with apologies to the U.S.A.) of skyscrapers. Of course, they only scrape the sky by comparison with our ordinary buildings. The City Council is apparently going to insist on a standard of reasonable moderation in height, in order to preserve light and air for the streets and to stave off congestion as far as possible. It is to be hoped also that the Council will only permit an occasional skyscraper arising impressively from its small neighbours. Rows of them should be forbidden, the occasional giant encouraged. Two other signs of activity: the trams were recently banished from the longest of our city routes (over seven miles) and motor-'buses substituted. The experiment has been a success, and now it is announced that another important route is to be dealt with similarly. The tram is surely doomed. The Watch Committee is demanding that all drivers of Corporation 'buses shall have passed medical and driving tests. The men complain, but it is common sense. Finally, municipal affairs demand a reference to the lamented death of Mr. Spurley Hey, the Director of Education. He was a great administrator, a man of ideas as well as of efficiency, and he lived, as was said of W. T. Arnold in journalism, " like an anchorite to his order." We have just enjoyed a lively and promising experiment in music and broadcasting. The B.B.C., of the Northern Region, and Sir Hamilton Harty with the Halle Orchestra are collaborating in a month's concerts—a fortnight in Manchester, a week in Liverpool and a week in Leeds. The majority of the concerts are being broadcast. There are all sorts of unanswerable things to be said for this admirable enterprise. It provides first-rate concerts ; it provides them in the summer months when good music in the cities is almost unobtainable ; it provides them cheap ; it supports a great orchestra and conductor ; it furnishes an admirable pro- gramme through many days for the wireless listener. Up to the time when I write it has been well supported by the public. May it become a permanent quality of a Manchester
and North of England summer am, Sir, &c.,
:YOUR MANCHESTER CORRESPONDENT.
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