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INDUSTRIAL manufacture has
never found itself at home in Edinburgh. Distilleries and breweries and
rubber factories are its chief great works, and there are engineering shops
on a not very large scale. It is not a city of public works. There was in
Lord Cock-burn's time an inch nation on the part of the municipality to
endeavour to promote the establishment of manufactures, with the view of
improving the financial position, which was then at a very low level. His
lordship did his best to combat this idea, pointing out with force how the
attraction of Edinburgh to the stranger was enhanced by the natural beauties
of the situation, and how freedom from disfigurement by manufactures was an
important element in the charm of its aspect. When referring in 1835 to the
insolvent condition of Edinburgh, he says, speaking of the proposal to
effect a financial recovery by encouraging factories: "I rejoice that we
cannot excite it by steam. We must try to survive on better grounds; on our
advantages as a metropolis, our adaptation for education, our literary fame,
and especially on the glories of our external position and features . . .
undimmed by the black dirty clouds from manufactures, the absence of which
is one of the principal charms of our situation."
The present generation has
reason to be thankful that wiser counsels prevailed, and that the thought of
converting our lovely town into a paltry imitation of Glasgow faded away. A
real manufacturing on seaport town such as Glasgow has its glory in
successful industry; it is a splendid strong man—the demonstration of
power—while, on the other hand, a city such as Edinburgh fills the place of
the graceful woman, whom tis a joy to look upon, and whom it would be a
wrong to put to strenuous tasks, by which her fine lines would be destroyed
and her being coarsened* Lord Cockburn s reference to Edinburgh's dependence
on her adaptability for education is remarkable in view of what has happened
since his time. Edinburgh has for long possessed many charitable
institutions for education, some of which were formerly conducted on a
residential system, described often as "monastic," children being separated
from their parents, and tending to acquire habits of life unsuited to the
surroundings to which they had to return when schooldays were past.
This was seen to be
unsatisfactory, and the Merchant Company of Edinburgh, in the Seventies of
last century, set itself strenuously to introduce a change by which the
benefits of the educational funds provided by generous donors might be
utilised on a more useful and extended scale for day-school training and
technical instruction. After full try by a Royal Commission, statutory power
was given to concentrate the management of a large number of educational
institutions under the Merchant Company's control. The result hasbeen <n
every respect satisfactory. There is no city anywhere in which parents of
the mi idle class can more easily obtain good school education for their
children at a very moderate outlay. This tends greatly to the prosperity of
the city. Very many persons possessed of a fixed but not high income migrate
to Edinburgh, because of the teaching facilities which the schools of the
city provide. Retired civilians and soldiers who have been pensioned after
service, and others who have a moderate competence and are not engaged in
business, settle down in Edinburgh. And these are the best citizens a town
can have. They give stability to a community. The ups and downs of trade do
not affect them. Their course in life is steady and free from anxieties,
they form the best customers for another section of the community—the retail
traders—and are regular n meeting their engagements. Thus Edinburgh
prospers. Its amenity as well as its educational facilities draw many to
dwell in it, and the provision for their wants gives increasing custom to
the retailer, and so swells the number of those who sell goods. Edinburgh's
not a city of the millionaire, nor is it the city of gigantic failures. Its
banking catastrophes have all had the word ''Glasgow' in the name of the
insolvent business, the great commercial city having its gigantic successes
and its equally gigantic crashes, while Edinburgh has moved along a path «n
which there has been less of great ascents and disastrous falls. It is cause
for thankfulness that we have reached a stage where we are prosperous,
without the aid of the whir of the spinning-jenny or the clang of the
iron-works, with their smoke shafts vulgarising the landscape and polluting
the air.
One very marked illustration
of the difference between the middle of the last century and the time that
has followed is given by a consideration of what the newspaper Press was in
those days. The Edinburgh citizen was quite content with a not very large
four-page news-sheet, at the price of 3^., delivered at his door twice a
week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and giving, as it did, news of London several
days old, and news from India and other distant countries as much as three
to four months after date. In Edinburgh the advertising public were
accommodated by a weekly paper containing advertisements only, which was
very much larger than the Tuesday and Friday newspapers, and which was
delivered on Saturday at every door gratis, and was collected on Monday, and
sent for a penny to any people in the country who were willing to subscribe
for it. I he sheet bi ought very substantial profit to those who issued it,
and it was the medium for publishing such orders of the law courts or
notices as were required by law to be made public, the Court ordering
advertisement to be made in the North British Advertiser, as it was called,,
This was a most prosperous venture, but was unable to survive the competition
of the penny daily, and died a lingering death before the close of the last
century." What a change has taken place, when at the price of a penny a
journal is delivered daily, varying from twelve to sixteen or even twenty
large pages printed twice as closely in the advertising section than was the
case formerly, and when in Edinburgh there are two halfpenny papers, each at
least three times as large as the original penny Scotsman. Of course all
this could never have been accomplished with the old modes of type-setting,
and printing not from stereotype but from the type itself, and not by many
paper webs being printed on at one revolution of a cylinder, and the sheets
cut off and folded mechanically, but by separate sheets passed into and out
of the press by hand. A modern printing office; a marvel of mechanical
efficiency.
I have spoken of my
association with the Scotsman newspaper. When I first came to be connected
with it, Its offices were in old, low-ceilinged rooms besides close in the
High Street. It was rapidly growing to such an extent that it was
transferred to a handsome and, as was then thought, commodious building in
Cockburn Street. The one penny issue had been going on for some years, and
once my friend J. R. Findlay told me of an incident in its history which it
can do no harm to repeat, now n the day of its magnificent success. When
first the one penny daily edition came to be issued, it was a small
four-page sheet, not much bigger when folded in two, if indeed as big, as a
fair-sized table-napkin. Findlay told me that it had not been doing so well
as was desirable, and that a visit was paid to Mr. Ritchie, his uncle (a
kind friend to me), who was a supporter of the venture's finance, to ask him
for £800 to tide over a difficulty. Mr. Ritchie signed a cheque, and in
handing it over informed his visitors that they must not expect any more
from him, that if the paper could not go on to success, then so far as he
was concerned it must just stop. The venture was then at its turning-point.
The tide began to flow, and prosperity took the place of anxiety.
To-day the Scotsman and its
daughter, the Evening Dispatch, are housed in magnificent premises in the
new North Bridge Street, and the Scotsman—sixty columns or more—is carried
daily by early special trains throughout the length and breadth of the
land, circulating at early hours in all quarters. Their only rival, the
Evening News, is at the present time greatly enlarging its premises. |
