# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/A doomed town

A DOOMED TOWN.
There is nothing more characteristic of the rapid development of our national industry and prosperity during the last few years, than the enormously increasing extent of our principal manufacturing towns. In every direction the daisied meadows, shady lanes, and rural walks, are being displaced by rows of semi-detached villas, tall prison-like factories, or acres of little box-shaped cottages. Villages and hamlets find themselves annexed in the most summary fashion by the once insignificant towns, and converted into suburbs, the farmhouse giving way to the factory, while the railway goods station takes the place of the picturesque dairy. The utilitarian conquers the poetical and sentimental. Yet there are one or two exceptions to the rule. The sun has its spots, and the brightest sky its tiny clouds. So with the prosperity of our manufacturing towns. While the majority are speeding on the peaceful path of progress, one or two are sadly halting, and threatening to fall into the rear, if not to remain behind entirely. Of these, Macclesfield is one. As we pass over the Chernet Valley line, it is impossible not to remark the dull and melancholy appearance of the place. The houses look as if they had not been repaired for years, the chimneys are in a state of ruin, the walls and windows are black with dust and soot, the woodwork has long been a stranger to the painter’s brush, and the dismal and woe-begone aspect of the whole scene conveys a vivid idea of industrial desolation. Yet Macclesfield was not always thus. There was a period when the tide of prosperity filled its factories with the hum of the human bees, as they industriously toiled, with willing hands and hopeful hearts, through the bright sunny days of summer, unconscious of the coming season of adversity. Step by step the employers and employed advanced in their career of success, until at one time it seemed as if Macclesfield was destined to become the principal manufacturing town of Cheshire; but the fatality which sooner or later overtakes all localities where silk is the staple manufacture, crushed the rising energies of the town, and inflicted upon it a blow from the effects of which it may never wholly recover.
Much of the recent industrial importance of Macclesfield arose from the extensive development of the broad silk trade, a generation or two since, by the founder of the Brocklehurst family, who yet retain the vast silk-throwing factories which overshadow, like huge spectres, the cottages of the operatives. But the sudden fluctuations to which the silk-manufacture is so liable, has proved too much for the prosperity of the town, especially as it possessed no other industrial resources. It is useless to attempt to prove that the French treaty is answerable for the state of things at present existing here, because the decline of its manufactures can be traced back for several years, to a date when the French commercial treaty was as yet a thing to be dreamed of. It has been the same at Coventry. The system of protection so long adopted as the ruling principle in all questions relating to the industry of this country, tended to destroy the very objects which it was intended to maintain. Freed from foreign rivalry, and possessing an artificial status in the market, the Macclesfield silk manufacture exhibited very little improvement during the later years preceding its reverses. It trusted more to the spirit of monopoly than to any attempt at excellence for the purpose of maintaining its position, and when the protective duties were repealed, it at once went to the wall. The French treaty merely accelerated the fate which must have arrived sooner or later, and in so doing it has rendered a mercy to the operatives by diminishing the length of their sufferings. They no longer hope against hope. So long as the faintest chance remained of the resumption of the silk manufacture on its former extensive scale, they would have dragged on their miserable existence without making an effort to better their condition. Now, however, they are allowing themselves to become absorbed in other trades, and although the struggle may be severe, it must be light compared with what might have been. Still the fate of the operatives is a sad one, and cannot but be regarded with sympathy.
Reared to the trade when children, they find themselves in their manhood unable to enter on any other with the smallest chance of obtaining a livelihood; at least, this is the case with the greater number; and so hundreds of them linger on in a state of semi-starvation. Nothing reveals more truthfully the condition of the Macclesfield weavers than the present depreciated value of cottage property. During the last twenty years, there have not been twenty houses built that would rent at 40l. per annum; on the contrary, many are going to ruin, while the bulk of the dwellings, which are of the cottage class, do not yield any rents at all. In fact, there are about 2,200 uninhabited houses in the town, and these, with their closed shutters, grimy windows, and neglected exteriors, impart a cheerless look to the silent thoroughfares. There is nothing more provocative of melancholy than a visit to the deserted homes of the weavers, to stand amongst the rotting remains of the looms, and to mark the numerous evidences which still remain to testify to their general ability and taste. Here was a board on which flower-pots were placed, there a bookshelf, yonder a cupboard for botanical specimens, while the walls around were decorated with cheap maps and prints. But all is over now. ​The Macclesfield silk-weaver is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Every artisan who can master a few shillings and a little energy, endeavours to take leave of the blighted town. They are wise. Many have reached the colonies, where their once soft and delicate hands have become hard and horny with handling the axe and spade; others have drifted to other towns in the kingdom, but very few have ever returned to die in the place of their birth. A curse seems to lie on it. Well situated for a manufacturing seat, possessing ample communication, both by rail and canal, with other towns, and owning an abundance of cheap labour, together with many other advantages, somehow or another Macclesfield fails to attract capital. A site amid the bleak and mountainous regions of Yorkshire or Lancashire seems preferable to a town which is apparently doomed to industrial ruin. Is not this a problem worth the studying? Like Coventry, Macclesfield affords a terrible proof of the folly of fostering a manufacture which can only exist by the maintenance of an artificial monopoly, and which perishes the moment that the legislative props are removed. Yet a gleam of hope shines through the murky darkness. It is said that when things get to the worst, they mend; and it may be that, when happier days shall come, when our cotton supply shall resume its former magnitude, Macclesfield may regain, as a cotton manufacturing town, the reputation which it has lost as the seat of the broad-silk manufacture.
John Plummer.