But the manufacture of tiles, though economically the most important part of Minton’s work, ought not to distract attention from that great artistic development of his school, which gave us from 1855-1885 the halcyon days of the English china trade. With this period the names of Minton, Ridgway, Brown Westhead and Brownfield are chiefly associated, while such old firms as Copelands and Wedgwoods acquired fresh lustre.
John Ridgway of Cauldon Place is reputed to have produced the best china at the 1851 exhibition, and when he died in 1860 the Cauldon Place Works were bought by Messrs T. C. Brown Westhead, Moore and Co., who have continued to this day to produce the china for which Cauldon Place has always been renowned. William Ridgway, the brother of John, had half a dozen factories in Hanley—George Taylor’s, Elijah Mayer’s, Toft and May’s, D. Wilson’s, Hicks’, Meigh and Johnson’s, besides the old Bell Works, and made both earthenware and china.[200] His son Edward John Ridgway built their present Bedford Works in Hanley, where this family still produce china, as well as “Granite” and printed ware for the American trade.
Nor must the name of William Brownfield of Cobridge be omitted from any account of the prosperous days of the china trade. This firm, which has now closed down, made trial recently of a profit-sharing scheme, which deserved well of the community. Unfortunately it fell upon the bad times near the end of the last century and was discontinued.
The success of Minton in majolica, tiles and porcelain led the Wedgwoods at Etruria to depart so far from their special black basalt and jasper as to take up similar lines of manufacture. Their brown majolica glaze, known as “rockingham,” perhaps the most permanently successful form of majolica, was introduced about 1860.[201] (This “rockingham” glaze had been first employed about 1796 near Rotherham on the Marquis of Rockingham’s estate in Yorkshire.)[202] Then, in 1872, they began again to make porcelain, and this time with great success. A Wedgwood china dinner service of 1296 pieces was selected by President Roosevelt for the White House in open competition with the whole world. From 1880 till 1902 Wedgwoods also made encaustic and white-glazed tiles, though without any financial success. This firm now employs about 700 people, and is carried on by Messrs Lawrence, Cecil and Francis Hamilton Wedgwood, the great-grandson and great-great-grandsons of Josiah Wedgwood, making altogether eight generations of master-potters from father to son, probably a unique example in any industry.
While Mintons, Copelands and Wedgwoods were producing the most costly porcelain, the trade in the commoner china had centred more and more at the Longton end of the Potteries. Charles J. Mason with his “ironstone china” at Fenton between 1820 and 1850 was the precursor of this trade, and it was on this export trade that Longton grew so rapidly throughout the 19th century. The manufacture of cheap “jet” and “rockingham” has become of recent years an important branch of manufacture at this Longton end, and very opportunely, for the cheap china trade has suffered more than any other from the German and Dutch competition. Messrs Wileman’s factory at the Foley, now owned by Mr Percy Shelley, is the most important, but the Longton china trade generally is in the hands of small men. A great part of this china trade was formerly with America, and, apart from ornamental potting, it has always been the solid American trade which has made the fortunes of the Staffordshire potters. In the forties the chief exporters of earthenware to America were Enoch Wood of Fountain Place, and Samuel Alcock of the Hill Top Works, both in Burslem. Samuel Alcock had several factories in Burslem, and deserves mention for his “Parian” figures, but his great trade was in plain white and cream colour with the United States.[203] Alcock’s old Hill Top Works, where John Mitchell once used to entertain Wesley, belong now to Samuel Johnson, noted for his tea-pots.
The close of the American war, 1865, saw the rise of another potting firm destined to grow to importance in the American trade. This was the firm of James and George Meakin. They were the sons of James Meakin, who had been a small master-potter in Hanley, and they produced an uniform hard white earthenware called “granite”—serviceable, plain and cheap. James Meakin, a man of great business capacity, financed and gradually came to control a large proportion of the American buyers, and all through the seventies this firm almost monopolized the trade of the United States in cheap earthenware. James Meakin bought Darlaston Hall, and died in 1885. His “Eagle Works” at Hanley are now carried on by his sons Kenneth and Bernard and by his nephew George Meakin of Cresswell Hall. Alfred Meakin started a similar manufacture at the Victoria and Albert Works in Tunstall in 1874, now taken over by Johnson Bros. These Johnsons, too, nephews of James Meakin, began soon after 1880 to rival the Eagle Works in the production of “granite” and plain printed ware. They have now no less than five factories in Hanley, Tunstall and Burslem specially equipped for this trade. The fourth of the firms known as “The Big American Four” (now reduced to three) is that of W. H. Grindley, who began in 1887 to make “granite” at Wood and Challenor’s old Woodland Works in Tunstall. His new factory at Brownhills is said to afford the best example of up-to-date economical manufacture, and stands out in striking contrast to most of the older “artistic” works. Another factory which owes its reputation to strict specialization and the latest economical machinery is that of Samuel Gibson, in the Moorland Road, at Burslem. Here five hundred men and girls make tea-pots for the world—only tea-pots—in jet and brown and rockingham.
The china trade and the American “granite” trade had their best days from 1870 to 1876. No doubt the general expansion of trade and the temporary absence of foreign competition were the chief factors in producing this prosperity. But a great deal was due to the increased use of steam power and the introduction of automatic machinery, and also to the institution of the Potteries Board of Conciliation and Arbitration.
The clay filter press, with its steam slip-pumps—patented by Needham and Kite in 1856—had replaced the old method of evaporating the moisture out of the clay slip; and during the seventies a mechanical steam-driven “blunger” and a similar “pug-mill” did away with the old laborious “blunging” and “wedging” in the preparation of the clay body. Then that form of the thrower’s wheel, known as the plate “jigger”—which revolved the flat plate moulds—came to be driven by steam instead of by a boy at the wheel handle; and instead of the skilled hand of the flat-presser, a mechanical “form” or “jolly” was used to press the “bat” on to the mould, and give the plate the right contour and thickness.[204]
Such machines for making plates had been invented as long ago as 1845, but for twenty years the objections of the workmen and practical imperfections had postponed their introduction. The “form” used to be applied by hand, and the plates consequently varied in thickness, and it required great skill on the part of the presser to make them properly. The machine, on the other hand, made every plate exactly alike, and made them ten times as quickly as the old hand process. This machine did away with the work of the old skilled “flat-pressers,” and was in general use by 1870. A similar machine, with a somewhat more complicated “jolly,” or “form,” made hollow-ware, such as basins and cups, or even bellied ware, such as ewers or chamber-pots. These came into use gradually from 1870 onwards, and replaced much of the work of hollow-ware pressers and throwers. Then in the eighties came a machine for flattening out those bats of clay which were to be pressed on to the “jigger” moulds and “jollied” into flat or hollow ware.[205] About the same time, too, the steam drive came to be used for turning the thrower’s wheel and for the turner’s lathe—fitted with various devices for controlling the speed of revolution. The manufacture of potters’ machinery is now a considerable industry, and, thanks to the energy and inventive readiness of Messrs Boulton of Burslem, this industry also is centred in the Staffordshire Potteries, and has as wide a range of markets as the Staffordshire pots themselves.
The introduction of all these labour-saving appliances was facilitated by the co-operation of masters and men on an arbitration board. A Trades Union—the fourth—had been reconstituted in 1863 from a few surviving branches of the old Union. They started a fresh newspaper, “The Potteries Examiner,” under the able management of the new Leader, William Owen, the nephew of Robert Owen, the Socialist. By 1865 they were strong enough to strike against that good old trade custom—the annual hiring. The oven-men’s Union, always the most determined branch of the Potters Trades Unions, refused to give up the fight when the other trades were prepared to go in, and by holding out alone they at last succeeded in abolishing the annual hiring, and secured for the potter the right to give a month’s notice. This was in 1866, and the whole trade shared the benefits of the change.[206]
The Staffordshire Potters Unions seem at each burst of activity to have evolved some special enthusiasm or eccentricity. There was the attempt at co-operative manufacture in 1825; the enthusiastic idealism of Robert Owen in 1833; the attempt to put the unemployed on the land in Wisconsin, and so relieve the labour market, which absorbed the enthusiasm and funds of 1845-6; and now the new Union of 1863, under the guidance of William Owen, originated a far more important and practical movement—arbitration in industrial disputes.
At Nottingham, Mr Mundella had in 1867 established a Board of Arbitration in the stocking trade. Its success made it attractive to both masters and men. William Owen approached Mr Mundella, who brought his influence to bear successfully on the pottery masters also, and in July, 1868, a similar Board of Conciliation and Arbitration was established in the potting industry.[207] On it there were ten representatives of each side, who were wherever possible to decide questions that arose. When they could not agree an umpire was to be appointed, whose decision was to be binding. Such men as H. T. Davenport, M.P., Mr Mundella, Sir Thomas Brassey, “Tom” Hughes, have at different times been umpires.
At first the Board worked well. The introduction of each machine was made the occasion for a readjustment of prices; and, although the struggle over “good-from-oven” goes on to this day, the first step was taken before the Board in 1869 on the motion of one of the masters’ delegates, Mr Francis Wedgwood, to abolish this old trade custom and substitute “good-from-hand.”[208] An arbitration award in 1871 raised wages generally.[209]
But the strain came when the masters tried by arbitration to reduce wages. The award in 1877 went against them; in 1879, however, they were more fortunate, for Lord Hatherton awarded a reduction of 1d. in the shilling.[210] A journeyman potter’s wages may be said to have averaged 30s. a week when in full employ, and what are still remembered as “Lord Hatherton’s pennies” were a great grievance in the Potteries. Probably the Board would have broken down at once had it not been for Owen, and for the hope that arbitration next year would put it all right again. But Sir Thomas Brassey’s award on next year’s arbitration made no change,[211] and the Board broke down. At Martinmas 1881 a strike began. It was an immediate failure, for thirteen years of arbitration had sapped the strength of the Union.
For a short time—1885-91—an Arbitration Board was re-established, but it was tolerated rather than supported by either masters or men. In 1891 another award was given against the men, and the Board was painlessly extinguished by a strike of the fighting oven-men. Since then the Union has gradually gained strength, but even now, after a successful strike in 1900 which raised wages by 5 per cent. all round, the potters in all the Unions do not much exceed 20 per cent. of the adult male workers alone. Trades Unions have special difficulties in the Potteries owing to the large number of small masters employing only two or three people in each trade; owing to the prevailing piecework prices which makes the levelling up process difficult; and owing to the number of small Unions into which the working potters are divided. John Lovatt is at present the secretary of the General Union, while Alderman Thomas Edwards for long looked after the special interests of the oven-men.
Invention of recent years has busied itself mostly with the firing of the ovens. Mr J. P. Holdcroft, of Hanley, patented in 1898 a new thermoscope which directs with far greater certainty the exact heating of the ovens.[212] New methods of firing these ovens are also on trial. Both “Producer” and “Mond” gas have been tried and offer some hope not only of more regular firing, but also of abolishing the columns of smoke which have blackened the Potteries for 200 years. The “Climax Kiln” is another device of quite recent date for regulating the firing, and saving the piling up and unpiling of saggars of ware. The ware is packed in an iron cage on wheels and pulled in and out of the furnace mechanically, without drawing the fire.
Both the “Climax Kiln” and a new method of polychrome printing—whereby one transfer only is used to impart many colours to the piece of ware to be printed—have been introduced within the last six years by Mr Leonard Grimwade, perhaps the most enterprising potter of recent times. Mr Grimwade has specialized for the Colonial markets, and holds in them much the position held by Meakins in the American trade. His factories are in Hanley and Stoke, adjoining the Stoke Railway Station.
An off-shoot of the potting trade which almost amounts to an invention by itself is the manufacture of stilts, spurs and thimbles. These are the small “bits” put between the wares to prevent them sticking together when fired in the saggars, and they used to be made when and as wanted in each separate pot-works. It was Charles Ford of Hanley who, about 1840, first made a special factory for these spurs and stilts. He used metal die-stamps driven by a steam hammer which stamped out stilts by the score at a time. James Gimson followed with the invention of the “thimble.” These conical thimbles fit into and one above each other and have a lug on the rim, so that three pillar-supports are built up on which a whole “nest” of plates can rest while in the oven without touching each other. Stacked in this way, the “bits” make no marks on the face of the plate. Somewhat later Wentworth Buller, a member of the well-known Devon family, started a stilt and spur factory at Bovey Tracy in Devonshire, and, finding the cost of carriage to his market prohibitive, he moved his works about 1865 to Hanley. Here he began in 1866-7 to make telegraph insulators—a new pottery industry. He was joined shortly after by his cousin, Captain Ernest Wentworth Buller, the brother of Sir Redvers and an engineer, who became sole owner in 1869. In 1872 J. T. Harris joined the firm, which is now controlled and carried on by his son, John Harris. Having obtained a foothold in the electrical trade, this firm was naturally called on to do all the early electrical work. Just as they had stamped stilts and spurs so they stamped switches, cut-outs, “roses,” and all manner of electric fittings. In 1896 Captain Buller sold out and retired. The elaborate insulators now used are thrown by hand and then turned and screwed, and nearly half the world’s supply comes from Bullers Limited.
A somewhat similar trade was carried on by James Mackintyre and William Woodall, M.P., at Burslem, in the manufacture of furniture fittings. Door plates, door knobs, knobs and buttons of all sorts for the furniture trade are stamped in dies by the score, as are the stilts and spurs. Messrs. Mackintyre are still the chief makers of furniture pottery, though they have by no means a monopoly.
Saggars in which ware is packed for firing are also made by the direct pressure of a large die or press upon the plastic marl.
Messrs Bullers’ most formidable rival in the making of insulators is the firm of Doulton’s Limited; and this last firm carry on also several other variations of the staple trade. Sir Henry Doulton (1820-97)[213] began by making sewage pipes at Lambeth. His trade increased, and he started branch works for making these things at St Helens and at Rowley Regis and Smethwick in South Staffordshire. Between 1867 and 1873, however, he diverted his attention to the more ambitious “Electric” and “Sanitary” ware, and also to the characteristic stoneware known as “Doulton’s.” This new stoneware caught the public fancy, and to it he devoted his Lambeth works. He continued to make the drain pipes at Rowley Regis, and at Burslem he bought in 1877 Pinder & Bourne’s works in Nile Street for his other manufactures. Here Doulton’s produce high-class china and earthenware as well as sanitary and electric pottery and employ nearly 1,300 hands. Sir Henry Doulton was knighted in 1887, the only potter ever so honoured, and died in 1897. In 1899 his son, Henry Lewis Doulton, converted the business into a limited company.[214]
But the branch of the trade known as sanitary pottery owes most of its development in Staffordshire to Mr Thomas William Twyford. His father Thomas Twyford started making plumbers’ ware about 1860, and when he died in 1872 both the Abbey Works and the Bath Street Works in Hanley were making basins and closet-pans of an elementary kind. But no real advance took place till the eighties. In 1885 the wash-out Pedestal closets were introduced, made entirely of earthenware, and in 1889 the latest “deluge” type followed. Those who can remember the old dirty enamelled iron pans will recognize the debt that sanitary science owes to the enterprise of Twyford.
All Twyford’s sanitary pottery was in 1887 concentrated at the present Cliff Vale Works, and experiments were at once set on foot for yet another branch of manufacture. This was the production of very large clay pieces coated with a smooth white surface and suitable for baths and lavatories. The common or fire clay is coated while in the plastic state with a porcelain enamel, which on firing gives a surface enamel polished as marble and more adhesive than any enamel on metal. Very large pieces are coated in this way, and the earthenware article has since 1890 been replacing alike the enamelled metal of Wolverhampton and the marble of Italy. Messrs Twyford’s chief rivals in Staffordshire are the firm of John Taylor Howson of Hanley.
From an artistic point of view the only improvements of recent times are—beside M. Solon’s pâte-sur-pâte and Doulton’s stoneware—the lustre ware of Mr William Burton and the “flambé” ware of Mr Bernard Moore. Mr Burton’s factory unfortunately lies outside Staffordshire, but much of his work, both public and private, is still done in North Staffordshire. He and Mr Moore are the most enterprising chemists and experimenters of the present race of master-potters, and their efforts have also been accompanied by a marked improvement of taste in enamelled earthenware and porcelain.
There remains one modern improvement to point out. It is in the health of the potters. For generations potter’s asthma and lead poisoning have taken their toll of the workers on the pot-banks, but within the last ten years changes have been made, unfortunately only as a result of State interference, which are very sensibly affecting the rate of mortality in the industry.
It was not till 1864 that the Factory Acts interfered in the potting industry. In that year women, young persons and children in the pottery trade first came under the protection of the State. Their hours were limited to ten a day, and Saturday became a statutory half-holiday. This meant a half-holiday for all workers on the pot-banks. Half-time employment has never been considerable in the Potteries, and since the passing of the Education Acts it has gradually and entirely died out. Later Factory Acts have applied to Potteries as well as to other factories, but it was when the Bill of 1891 got into committee that the potting trade became specially and vitally interested in these Acts.
During the passage of the 1891 Factory and Workshop Bill the working potters managed to get added to it a provision empowering the Home Office to make, after due investigation, special rules for the conduct of “dusty processes” in dangerous trades, including potting. As soon as the Act passed, a committee was appointed, and on their recommendation special rules were drawn up, making for greater cleanliness in the dusty and dangerous processes. The employers objected, and a conference followed in 1894 under the presidency of Mr G. W. E. Russell. Nevertheless the rules, slightly modified, were approved and became law.
These special rules, however, were concerned more with general dusty evils and affected potter’s asthma rather than the lead poisoning question. But in 1898 Prof. Thorpe and Dr Oliver drew up their celebrated report on lead poisoning for the Home Office—a report which for a time threw the whole trade into the most furious excitement. The doctors averred that glaze could be made without lead, or without lead in any but the innocuous “fritted” state. What the employers said was emphatic and contradictory. They threatened to close down the whole trade, and no doubt the report was hasty and ill-considered. For four years the controversy raged, and at last in 1902 an arbitration court was held before Lord James of Hereford. Under his award a new set of special rules were drawn up. These rules, besides enforcing sanitary provisions such as those for monthly medical inspection of workers “in the lead,” compelled those manufacturers who continued to use lead in a dangerous state to compensate those of their workers who suffered from lead poisoning, a liability now generally embodied in the 1907 Workmen’s Compensation Act.
When one remembers the intense hostility to this Home Office interference, it is curious to see how satisfactory and easily the rules have worked in practice. Potter’s asthma is nearly extinct, and lead-poisoning cases in the Potteries have fallen from an average of 362 a year in the period 1896-8 to 93 a year over the years 1905-7.[215] About 5 per cent of the cases result in death. The chief credit for this new departure should be attributed to William Owen of the Potters’ Union, and to the Duchess of Sutherland and Sir Charles Dilke.
The latest statistics of the industry show that in 1901 there were about 400 factories employing some 21,000 adult males, 16,000 adult females, and 13,000 young persons under 18 years of age.[216] The employment of great numbers of married women (some 8,000) and the consequent high rate of infantile mortality are now the most serious features of the industry from the sociological point of view.
In conclusion the official figures are given for the export of china and earthenware, so as to show the prosperity at different times of the staple trade of North Staffordshire.