William Nelson A Memoir 8

William Nelson A Memoir 8

CHAPTER V.

 

_HOPE PARK._

 

 

The premises on the Castle Hill became ere long too limited for the

rapidly-growing business. William Nelson had been joined in the

enterprise by his younger brother, Thomas; and with their combined

energy many novel features were developed and advances made in fresh

avenues of trade. The publications of the establishment were attracting

attention by their improved typography and tasteful embellishment.

Ampler room and greater subdivision of labour had become indispensable.

So, looking around for some more suitable locality, their attention was

directed to a group of antiquated dwellings at the east end of the

Meadows, the remains of one of the suburban villages swallowed up when

Old Edinburgh burst its mural barriers and extended over the surrounding

heights.

 

In an address given by William Nelson to those in his employment, at one

of his social entertainments, when a building was in progress at Hope

Park which he then assumed was to be the final addition to the works,

he traced the rise of the firm, interspersing the graver narrative with

humorous incidents, and with kindly notices of some whom he referred to

as faithful fellow-workers, from the time when he first gathered them

around him in the new workrooms on the Castle Hill. One of the

reminiscences of their entertainer’s narrative is thus recalled:--When

Hope Park grounds were about to be built upon, Mr. Nelson, being curious

to explore the place, made a visit to what he described as a wilderness

of cabbage gardens, with no end of pig-sties. One grumphy (Anglice, a

sow) he noticed in a corner where the joiner’s workshop afterwards

stood, which, as he humorously described it, “kept its carriage!” The

body of a four-wheeled coach, still in good condition, had been

consigned to this novel use. The contrast was striking when, in later

years, the smooth grass lawn, with its tasteful array of shrubs and

flower-plots, filled the area enclosed on three sides by the Hope Park

works.

 

But the full development of the establishment was the result of years of

patient and steady progress, until it grew to proportions adequate for

the varied departments embraced in the comprehensive scheme, with all

its ingenious improvements in machinery for economizing labour. Its tall

chimney showed from afar the scale on which its operations were carried

on; though at a later date William Nelson realized very strongly the

injury to the amenities of the city, and the obstruction to the

magnificent views of the surrounding landscape, occasioned by such

adjuncts to its manufactories, and laboured by precept and example to

get rid of them. In the later Parkside Works gas-engines are the sole

motive power, and their general introduction was advocated by him as a

substitute for the unsightly chimney with its obscuring volumes of

smoke.

 

With the numerous workmen that were ultimately engaged in all the varied

branches of skilled labour, the Hope Park establishment came to be

recognized as one of the most important centres of economic industry in

the city; and, so far as printing, publishing, and binding are

concerned, is spoken of by Mr. Bremner, in his “Industries of Scotland,”

as the most extensive house in Scotland. The new buildings, when

completed, formed a stately range of offices enclosing three sides of a

square, where, under a well-organized division of labour, with the aid

of machinery adapted to its varied operations, the entire work, from the

setting of the types to the issue of the bound and illustrated volumes,

was done on the premises. Compositors, draughtsmen, photographers,

lithographers, steel, copper, and wood engravers, electrotypers,

stereotypers, folders, stitchers, and binders, plied their industrious

skill. The work-men and women employed on the establishment latterly

numbered nearly six hundred; and few centres of industry have been

characterized by more harmonious relations between the representatives

of capital and labour.

 

The printing of books has constituted an important branch of Scottish

industry from the days of Chepman and Miller, on through Bassendyne,

Hart, and Symson, to our own time. The names of Fowlis, Constable,

Ballantyne, Cadell, Blackwood, Oliver and Boyd, Chambers, Blackie,

Collins, Neill, Black, and Nelson, are all familiarly associated with

the literary history of the century; and, with only three exceptions,

they belong to Edinburgh. It was fitting, indeed, that Edinburgh should

take the lead in developing the typographer’s art, where, in 1507,

Walter Chepman set up the first printing-press in Scotland; and where,

in the memorable year when “the flowers o’ the forest were a’ wede away”

on Flodden Hill, he built the beautiful Chepman Aisle which still adorns

the collegiate church of St. Giles, and endowed there a chaplainry at

the altar of St. John the Evangelist. Edinburgh, in the days of the

Scottish Caxton, was even more noteworthy for its authors than its

typographers. Dunbar, Gawain Douglas, and the makers of that brilliant

age, were followed by Montgomery, Drummond, Allan Ramsay, and Fergusson;

and along with this array of poets, reaching to him whom Burns owned as

his master, Hume, Robertson, Mackenzie, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and

Walter Scott, combined to transform their old romantic town into the

Modern Athens of later years. Their genius was not without its influence

on the special aspect of Edinburgh’s industries, including some of the

novel forms of periodical literature which have so largely contributed

to the culture of the masses.

 

The social entertainments and lectures provided by William Nelson at an

early stage for his employés have already been noticed; but in the

spring of 1868 he extended his generous sympathy over an ampler field,

and organized a _fête_ for the whole journeymen printers and

stereotypers of Edinburgh. The invitation met with a cordial response,

and the appearance presented by the assembled guests in the galleries of

the Museum of Science and Art was the theme of admiring comment. They

were summoned to this novel social gathering by one who justly claimed

recognition as an employer “who set a high value upon whatever is

calculated to foster kindly feelings between man and man.” The

invitation said: “For one evening let us lay aside care or irksome duty,

and come out with those we love best, and let us look each other fairly

in the face. In the matter of head we do not much differ; at heart we

are agreed. We need to have the bow unstrung occasionally. Let us do so

in company for once, and see if we can help each other to a happy

evening.” The answer to this was the assembly of upwards of a thousand

workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, in the Industrial Museum, to

listen to a lecture by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, on the noble art in

the service of which they were enlisted; and to enjoy the humour and

pathos of some of Scotland’s choicest national songs, including Burns’s

proud protest, which could there be appreciated without any thought of

social wrong--“A man’s a man for a’ that!” The _Scottish Typographical

Circular_, in its comments on this unique gathering, remarked: “Here

were a thousand men, nearly all in superfine black coats and spotless

shirt-fronts; a thousand women in tasteful dresses and bonnets of the

latest mode, setting off the comely features of the printers’ wives, or

the fresh, pretty faces of their sweethearts; and in all this great mass

of the ‘lower orders’ not a word out of joint; not a gesture of

impatience; no crowding, jostling, or selfish preferring of one’s own

enjoyment; nothing but courtesy and that perfect good breeding which

prompts men to give their neighbour’s comfort the precedence of their

own convenience.” It was a gathering that Scotland might be proud of,

whether we assign to the host or the guests the chief prominence. The

matter of dress, to which the critic so specially directed attention,

was not unworthy of note as an evidence of provident thrift, and of the

self-respect which is nowhere more fitting than in the skilled artisan.

 

The spirit manifested in gatherings such as this is the best antidote

for those conflicts between labour and capital which have proved so

detrimental to both. Yet, as will be seen by a letter addressed less

than four years later to his former traveller, Mr. James Campbell, he

had evidence that a perfect solution of this great social problem has

yet to be devised. The letter is dated from Dunkeld, where he had been

spending a holiday with his family. In 1851 he had married Miss

Catherine Inglis of Kirkmay, Crail; and at the date of the letter he was

surrounded by a happy family, consisting of his son Frederick and four

daughters, to whom he thus alludes: “The children have enjoyed their

stay immensely, and none more than Master Fred, who got capital

trout-fishing in the Braan, a tributary of the Tay, and in the

Butterstone, a stream about six miles distant.” His greatest happiness

was in his own family circle, and surrounded by the friends whom he

welcomed to his hospitable home. But the cares inseparable from his

extensive commercial transactions could not always be so exorcised; and

now a succession of inclement seasons and bad harvests was clouding the

prospects of all. “We have had,” he writes, “a most miserable time of it

for many months past, as far as weather is concerned. I don’t remember

of such a long continuance of wet weather as there has been this year.

It has lasted, I may almost say, all summer, up to within the last few

days; and the result is that the crops have suffered terribly. As to the

potatoes, the disease is everywhere, and potato starch-mills will have

full employment this winter. It is a time calling for sympathy and

forbearance on all hands. But, in addition, strikes for shorter hours

and increase of wages are the order of the day; and it looks as if the

words of the song, ‘Hard times come again no more,’ were ere long, as a

general rule, not to be suitable for this country, as such times cannot

be far distant for both masters and men, if there be not a cessation

soon to this war between capital and labour. Things are all quiet at

present in the trades of printing and bookbinding, but it is rumoured

that heavy demands for both shorter hours and higher wages will be made

by the men next month; and it is known that they have been preparing for

a struggle by subscribing largely to a strike-fund ever since the

beginning of the year, so that there is no doubt coming events are

casting their shadows before.

 

“Things must be in a strange way in New York just now with operative

printers. We know this from two of our men, who went out there some

months ago in the hope of bettering their condition; but they were glad

to come back to us, and they are both at work again, each at the machine

at which he worked before he left. The history of the experiences of one

of the men was as follows:--He got to New York, but he had no sooner

begun to look out for work than he was set upon by a committee of

operative printers, who were at the time on strike, and he was offered

eleven dollars a week if he would not ask for work. The offer was too

good a one for him to refuse, and he went about for several weeks with

his hands in his pockets. By-and-by he was asked if he would not like to

go back to Scotland. He said he had no objections, and it was arranged

that his passage back should be paid. When the day came for his leaving,

some of the New York men came down to the steamer to see him off, and

they gave him five dollars for pocket-money during the voyage, and a sum

of ten dollars to give to his wife, whom he had left behind in