Название: Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874
Автор: Graves Charles Larcom
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
isbn: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45003
isbn:
The Future of Coal
It is pleasant to turn from Punch's not very happy handling of the Hyde Park incident to his wiser, if fanciful comment on the warnings of the philosophical alarmists who predicted the speedy exhaustion of our coal supplies, and asked What, then, would Posterity do for force and for fuel? Punch suggests another conceivable fear to balance that of the coal pessimists. If our population continued to increase at the same rate, not only would the bowels of the land be consumed, but its entire face be covered up with towns and factories. For his part he feared neither the one nor the other event: —
If the coal ever runs out, something equivalent to it will doubtless turn up, or else turn down. Somebody will discover a cheap way to set the Thames on fire, or to draw below, and store, atmospheric electricity. By a system of vertical elevation instead of lateral extension, our architecture will be adapted to our area, and our cities, no longer expanding, will continue to ascend. The higher they rise the less will Posterity be troubled with any amount of smoke which it may be unable to consume. The future of England will then be as fresh as a daisy, still as familiar a flower as ever.
The growth of industrialism was not to be dreaded if it was humanely and wisely controlled and directed. That is the moral which Punch draws from the opening of the new docks at Barrow-in-Furness in September, 1867. The occasion was indeed "worth a crowd and a crow": —
A Barrow that has grown, one may say, from a barrow into a coach-and-four in ten years! A Barrow that has swelled almost within the memory of the youngest inhabitant from the quiet coast-nest of some five score fishermen into the busy, bustling, blazing, money-making, money-spending, roaring, tearing, swearing, steaming, sweltering seat of twenty thousand iron workers, and the crime and culture, the dirt and disease, the hard-working and hard-drinking, the death and life, the money and misery they bring along with them!! A Barrow out of which they are tipping 600,000 tons of iron every year!!! A Barrow big enough to hold a Monster-Iron-Mining-and-Smelting Company, with two Dukes among its directors, to say nothing of Lord knows who, in the way of Lords, and Lord knows how many millionaires!!!!
The two Dukes – one of them, Devonshire, a Second Wrangler into the bargain – were both present, and also the first of living orators, Mr. Gladstone. But the person who interested Mr. Punch most was the master-spirit of the great iron company, "one Schneider," and he is not slow to improve the occasion: —
He has hitherto been known to fame among public men chiefly as an ex-M.P., turned out of his seat at Lancaster for gross and shameless bribery. He has seen so much done by energy and money that he probably thought the one as legitimate a lever into Parliament as the other. But he has been punished for his mistake. He has now an opportunity to repair it. His name is the same as that of the President of the French Legislative Assembly, the energetic, far-sighted M. Schneider, whom Mr. Punch has already honoured as the head and heart of the admirably-conducted firm which has made the iron manufacturing district of Le Creusot, a model as yet to be imitated among the great English industries of the same kind…
And now for Mr. Punch's proposition. Suppose M. Schneider were to set himself in real earnest to wipe out the recollection of Lancaster by the redemption of Barrow? What if he were to prove himself the ditto of M. Schneider of Le Creusot, not in name only but in deed, and to make Barrow-in-Furness the Creusot of England, in morals, manners, civilization, education, domestic comfort and culture, as well as in industry, energy and money-making? Here is a work worthy of the noblest ambition, the most determined energy, the highest intelligence, and certain of the richest reward – a reward not to be gauged by dividends, it is true, but beyond the measure of millions. Let there be two Schneiders known in the world for their noble conception and perfect discharge of the duties of a great captain of industry, and let one of them be an Englishman.
Reform Bill of 1867
Henry William Schneider, who started the Barrow Steel Works and was for many years one of the directors, died in 1887. His namesakes of Le Creusot still continue their dynasty. Early in 1870, the year of the Franco-Prussian war, Punch again repeats his comparison of Le Creusot with the greatest and best managed English iron-works to the advantage of the former, on the basis of statistics which had not been contradicted by M. Rochefort or any other of M. Schneider's bitterest enemies.
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No mention is made in the otherwise full and sympathetic notice of James Montgomery in the D.N.B. of this, not the least honourable of the services of that Sheffield worthy. Though his verse, especially in the epic vein, was unequal, the D.N.B., differing from Lord Jeffrey who slated it in the Edinburgh, agrees with Punch in according James Montgomery the title of poet, reserving that of "Poetaster" to Robert or "Satan" Montgomery, who also dealt in epics, and was the victim of Macaulay's famous and ferocious castigation in the Quarterly.
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