THE MORALS OF THE POTTERIES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"] SIR,—I have read with the deepest interest your article under the above heading in the Spectator of January 9th. I have lived as much in as near the Potteries during the last fifteen years, and I can assure you that you are right in saying that what is needed for the development of that most interesting district is an increase in the sentiment of good citizenship.
I do not believe that there is more carelessness, more ignorance, more immorality among the people who live in the Potteries of North Staffordshire than in any other of the great manufacturing cities of England. That there is a vast amount of ignorance and thriftlessness there can be no question of doubt, for my work among the children of the Potteries has brought me to a full, and • at times a heart-breaking, experience of these things ; but it is possible that if one had the same experience among the poor and the nearly poor of Birmingham, Manchester, or London, one would find the same evils. They must unfortunately exist as long as women's labour is carried on under its present economic conditions, for home life remains practically non-existent, and from girlhood to middle—even old—age women have to face the stress and strain, and I may add, the disorganising restlessness, of their work on the pot-banks. I do not say that women should not work in such a manner; I do not say that the wages they are thus able to earn are not necessary to the upkeep of their families ; but I do say, and there are hundreds who will bear me out in the statement, that the lack of home life for women, in whatever clam it may be, has the effect of shrinking the character and of endangering the nervous system of the children born to them. Once having said this, let me assert that, putting aside the froth of vulgarity and self-satisfaction born from a lack of education among the few, and which is beneath notice, the Potteries ill at heart sound. For the last ten years it has been
evolving—struggling towards the light—and stiff and sore as it may be from the process, it is the best thing that has ever happened to the Potteries.
Those of us who love its working people, who admire its trade, and who would bless its children, suffer for and with it gladly. We may, as sensitive individuals, deplore the galvanic shocks from pulpit or Press, we might wish for other methods and other means to foster the awakening life, but there is the hand of destiny behind it all,—a destiny for the Potteries, to make it not only in its labour equal to other proud cities of our land, but in its good citizenship.
In Manchester, Liverpool, London, and other cities we have the well-to-do and the poor at closer quarters. The centre of work for all classes is also the centre of play ; there is, as it were, a comradeship out of school between the richer and the poorer. This for understanding and enlightenment makes all the differ- ence in the world. Unfortunately, the Potteries has not yet grown to this stage,—thank God, it creeps towards it. The rift between class and class must be filled up by education; a wider knowledge will bring a wider sympathy.
The Potteries must become great in its ideals as well as in its capacity. We know the children of the Potteries, we know the immense intelligence in these frail little beings ; through them the district will go forward, and some of us may still be young enough to see it, in the natural course of events, arrive. When the rank-and-file of master-potters can be brought in their ideas and sentiments to the level of such men in the district as the Wedgwoods, the Moores, the Harrises, the Coghills, and other names too numerous to mention, then will the distrust of man for man prevalent to-day die out, the bad motive will be less easily suspected, the best end will be more largely desired. The example will filter down to the brave-hearted, honest workers, and react again upon the young and high-spirited. The petty interests of the individual will become the immense interest of the whole. There is nothing impossible to such stuff as the Potteries peoplo are made of. Not only by sermons, and not by satire or silliness in word or letter, will the end be accomplished, but by a steady recognition of the eternal truth that—
Man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact,
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best : How could man have progression otherwise?"
Stafford House, St. Tames's, S. W.
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