Ireland, and who were willing to go great lengths to wipe out the memory of a hateful past, are now sadly aware that we attempted the impossible. Yet we feel we did right to make the attempt: Great national evils are never cured by a single coup; but each sincere attempt softens the friction, and makes it easier for future generations to solve the difficulty. It may not happen in the lifetime of a Christian statesman that "He who goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bearing his sheaves with him"; but it is true in measure if we take an age-long forecast of a nation :

Knowing this that never yet
Share of Truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;

After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead,
Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus with somewhat of the seer,

Must the moral pioneer,

From the future borrow;

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,

And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

(Whittier.)

i returned to Liverpool from Dublin in a coasting-steamer, and suffered tenfold more from sickness and discomfort than in the Atlantic voyage. I do not know a more choppy or disagreeable crossing than the Irish Sea and its congener the English Channel.

CHAPTER IV

I commence Business on my own Account-The American Civil War in Relation to Trade

I HAD now to make up my mind as to my future course. It seemed perilous to launch into business on my own account at the age of twenty-four, without solid basis of support, yet there seemed no other alternative, and I decided to start on October 1, 1860, as a cotton-broker. But I first took a tour of the leading manufacturing districts of Lancashire, of which I then knew little or nothing. It was dreary work going through these smoky towns, and through the hot stuffy mills, which in those days had little ventilation, and were full of cotton fluff. The wan faces and sickly look of the operatives depressed me. I could not but feel that the cotton planters had something to say when they contrasted the stalwart frames of the negro slaves who grew the cotton, with the pinched and wizened faces of the white people-mostly women and girlswho spun and wove it. Many excellent regulations have been made since then to improve the sanitary conditions of the mills; the cotton operatives have greatly improved in many ways; yet there is much to be done, and I cannot but feel that those countries which are mainly agricultural have a happier lot than those which are mainly industrial. It is true that wealth accumulates faster in the latter wages are higher, and luxuries are more easily attainable by all classes; but―

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

It cannot be denied that the physique of the English people is not what it was at Crécy or Agincourt. However, it is not impossible that science may find ways of purifying the methods of manufacturing. In the days of which I write there was no attempt to consume smoke. A dark pall hung over all our manufacturing towns.

contrasted painfully with the bright skies of New York and Philadelphia, where the anthracite coal produced hardly any smoke: But of late years marked improvement has taken place, especially in Manchester, by enforcing the laws for the consumption of smoke ; and if electricity should supplant steam as the motive power of the future, a complete revolution will take place in the appearance of our manufacturing towns. It may be added that if the plan is adopted of taking factories from our crowded cities to rural places, as Mr. George Cadbury has done at Bourneville, outside of Birmingham, giving the work people healthy homes with gardens attached, we cannot measure the improvement both in physique and morals which may ensue. I am a firm believer in the beneficence of nature's laws, rightly interpreted. I believe that it will be found in the long run that communities and employers who consult the highest good of the working class will reap the largest profits. I believe the saving in health, energy, and contentment will far more than compensate for the cost of sanitary surroundings.

I may add that as a member of Parliamentary Committees that dealt with the Factory Acts, I have always acted on these principles so far as legislation can give effect to them.

I took a small office in Liverpool (with my friend and subsequent partner, E. E. Edwards), and commenced business on October 1, 1860. The price of American cotton was then about 7d. per lb. -the average of some years before that. Great prosperity prevailed in the manufacturing districts, and a very large increase in mills and machinery was going on.1 In America, dark, lowering clouds betokened the coming storm, but it was not believed in England that the catastrophe of a Civil War was inevitable. Many thought that the secession of the Southern States would be acqui

It may be interesting to give the comparative consumption of cotton in 1900 as compared with 1860. It shows how much the proportion of Great Britain has declined as compared with other countries :

CONSUMPTION IN THOUSANDS OF BALES OF 400 lbs.

esced in. Hardly any foresaw that the greatest crisis in the cotton trade was at hand. The largest crop on record (4,800 m.) had been made the previous season, and Liverpool held the largest stock ever known. A cotton famine seemed hardly possible, yet (O mens caeca mortalium !) we were on the verge of it! Soon after I commenced business there arose the wildest speculation that any living man has seen. Stage by stage the dread steps were taken that plunged the Union into Civil War. South Carolina began by passing a secession ordinance, and was followed by all the cotton states. The border States like Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia, hung fire for a time, but ultimately followed, till practically the line of slavery co-existed with the frontier of the Southern Confederacy. Patriots on both sides shrank from the awful arbitrament of war. A thousand ties of relationship, of commerce and of religion, bound the great American Republic together. The fateful stroke was given by the State of South Carolina firing on the Federal Garrison of Fort Sumter at the entrance to the Bay of Charleston. Those guns vibrated through the Northern States, and exploded the magazine of pent-up anger. The whole country rushed to arms. President Lincoln appealed for 70,000 volunteers, who were immediately offered. These raw levies were disastrously beaten at Bull Run, Virginia, and many thought the war then practically over. Lincoln then appealed for 600,000 men, and this vast force was almost immediately raised by the Northern States. So sure were the New York papers that the South would give in, that I remember as though it were yesterday the confident predictions that the war would be over in ninety days! The South was equally convinced that the war would be ended by the intervention of England. A blockade of the Southern ports was instituted by the North, but so feeble was its navy that blockade-running became a business. The Southern people counted on England breaking the so-called "paper-blockade." To use the popular language," the old grandmother sat upon a cotton bale," and would be forced from self-preservation to procure the life-blood of her commerce.

As the cotton famine approached, the price mounted up with fearful rapidity. 12d. per lb. was soon reached. The mills went on half-time; and by the summer of 1862, 2s. 6d. per lb. was reached, or five-fold the price in the summer of 1860! Gigantic fortunes were made by speculation. Almost every one plunged into cotton speculation: a single lucky ccup made a fortune. But

there is a Nemesis which dogs the steps of the eager fortune-hunter: Most of these speculators lost all they had when the tide ebbed away, and the recoil came after the war. They had lost their legitimate business and their habit of patient industry, and many of them sank into chronic poverty. It was pitiable to see men who had bought fine mansions and costly picture galleries, hanging about the flags," watching the chance of borrowing a guinea from an old friend. During my first three years in business I strictly adhered to brokerage business, nor did I take any interest in cotton on my own account till I became a member of a merchant's house, James Finlay & Co., in 1864. I attribute what commercial success I afterwards had to the discipline of those years, but it needed not a little self-denial to abstain from what seemed so easy a way to fortune. If I may here digress for a moment, I may say that commercial success requires the concurrence of two contrary tendencies, caution and enterprise-caution in avoiding risks, in foreseeing consequences and in providing against contingencies, even remote ones. But this alone will not carry a man far. He must also have the eye to originate and the courage to strike, when a favourable opportunity occurs. He must know how to take risks when a reasonable chance offers. Above all, he must work for the future, not the present. He must realize that the slow upbuilding of character brings its reward in course of time. Of nothing am I more certain than that "Honesty is the best policy," if spread over a lifetime, and that there is no opposition between the "Golden Rule" and sound commercial success. have seen the wrecks of countless speculators of phenomenal capacity, who neglected these simple rules. I doubt whether I ever knew of permanent success where the fundamental laws of honesty were not observed. It is true that the methods and rules of business alter from age to age. Traders often canonize into moral maxims the mere machinery of business. I have often heard grievous charges brought against men who had genius to initiate new departures in business; the breach with old customs was treated as a lapse from morality. Yet these great captains of industry who open up new paths of commerce are the real benefactors of a country. They develop trade which would otherwise go to our competitors. No doubt Watt, Arkwright, and Stephenson, by their inventions, pressed hard on the old-fashioned traders: Many of them who could not turn round quickly enough went to the wall; but for one man who lost his living they made room for

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