A LETTER FROM MANCUESTER. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR ,—You inquire what we have been doing or arc doing in Manchester. In the realm of deeds—not much. The business man would say, nothing at all. He is not himself one of the optimists, nor much of a believer in them. He would like to see the silver lining to the clouds, but with his own eyes, and contracts neither for railways in Australia nor for cruisers on the Clyde console him for the lack of markets for his dhooties and poplins.
But if there is no great movement in trade, there is a move- ment in ideas ; and, after all, they say it is ideas that make the world go round. Mr. Keynes is partly to be thanked for that. Probably no one outside Lancashire really understands how big a thing Mr. Keynes achieved in getting himself listened to by the cotton trade. For the cotton industry less than any other likes advice or interference. It does not like unity ; it does not recognize leaders ; it is made up of all kinds of tough and independent elements, each one of which thinks it knows its own business best and is ready to express that view without timidity. And now there is on the stocks a Cotton Yarn Association which all the members of the American section of the trade are being urged to join, and if they join they will be bound under penalties to act together, to follow the policy laid down for them by the committee whom they elect, and in particular not to sell their products under the minimum prices which the committee fixes. The discipline of hard times will have accomplished much if it imposes on a large part of the cotton trade a voluntary and genuine submission to authority. Perhaps the process will go further. There is talk, as there has been for a long time, of a comprehensive inquiry into the position and the problems of the industry. The cotton trade really needs a General Staff, whose business it should be to sit down and do some hard thinking. It does not get one because of the defects of its virtues.
There is talk of a Civic Society, and of this too we have heard before. It would concern itself to uphold dignity and
beauty in city life. But is not this, it may be said, the function of a City Council ? It is, but then the City Council is busy with a myriad details of practical affairs, and not
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every man who gives his time and thought to gas and elec- tricity committees can think in large terms of the City Beauti- ful. In some countries they try to get round the difficulty by appointing a paid and permanent official whose business it is to take a high and a long view of his city's needs. But what if you get the wrong sort of official ? Such things have been known. '
• Mr. Wareing, of Huddersfield, has been here propounding a scheme for the foundation of a new theatre. Mr. Basil Dein has been here, too, lamenting that the theatre is on a sick-bed. The critics fell upon Mr. Dean at once.with tomahawks. They showed that there had never been a time when someone or other had not been lamenting the theatre's decadence, that the " pictures " are a quite different art or not an art at all, and therefore not to be feared, that good plays are still pro duced in London, that Mr. Dean himself has helped to produce a good play, and that in various places amateurs are alive. This is all very well for a small handful of people in London who have the run of the first nights ; if you can always see the best that is going, you are apt to think that it is not so bad. In Manchester we have found nothing to replace the ohl Theatre Royal and Miss Horniman's Gaiety, both of them ltmg abandoned to the films. We have, it is true, a small repertory theatre, where the audience can always be trusted to laugh at the wrong place, and an amateur society which produces interesting plays, both new and old—it has just pro- duced a new one by Mr. Stanley Jast—but which plays in an attic to a few score of people. One would have thought there was at least room for a new theatre which could produce a few good plays on tte strength of a large quantity of the merely tuneful, " bright " or farcical. Only, no one will risk his money on it.
Politics, below the surface, are interesting. A good deal of discontent is reported in the Labour ranks, but no one knows how much it means. Liberals think their prospects are brighter than they have been for some time if the new Liberal Council will only die a quick and quiet death and the Lloyd Georgians do not talk too much about a victory for Lloyd George. Manchester Liberals have never taken sides in the great feud and perhaps that is why they are in better fettle than the party is in most of the great towns. What they ask is that Mr. Lloyd George should follow the note of his speech of January 19th—leave his personal enemies alone and talk good Liberalism. Then lie will soon have the party really behind him.
Shortly, if the City Council approves, we shall make a beginning with the " one-way " system of traffic. The problem here is different from London's. The trams run into the centre of the city and in the heart of the congested area the streams of traffic arc slowed down and disrupted by the heavy lorries which serve the warehouse area. There is comfort in the thought that some of our great firms still prefer the horse to motor-traction. Perhaps the day will come when visitors will be brought specially to Manchester to see its cart horses, noble survivors of an expiring race.
Canon Peter Green has just celebrated the 25th anniversary of his work in Salford. He is alleged to have refused more offers of distinction (including the Bishopric of Lincoln) than most clerics have dreamt of. There is no more lively or interesting mind in Manchester (thereby meaning also Salford), no one more devoted to good causes or more ardent in contro- versy in their behalf, and withal he labours contentedly and with a single aim as parish priest. Long may he be content !
• The flag was flying mast-high at the Constitutional Club the other day. Mr. Churchill was the guest. His speeches were disappointing. He seemed to think it was election-time. To say that the movements of Mr. Cook and Mr. Chen spring from the same root—Bolshevism—assumes an ignorance about, the Cantonese Nationalist revolution of which we in Manchester (who profess to know something about China) are not guilty. Bolshevism has played its part in China, and we should haVe been glad to hear what part from Mr. Churchill. Surely he does not think his new party unworthy of the serious treatment which he used to.give his old one ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
YOUR MANCHESTER CORRESPONDENT.
February 1611,, 192:.
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