his 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOU^MENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
MAR 9 1949 G ? 
 ■^Y 15 1949 9^ 
 
 irr: — " 1?J 
 
 
 ti.i2 ^ x-?-rrr 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 HC257.S4 M15 
 
 Social and industrial history of Scotlan 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 973 918 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029973918 
 
The 
 Social and Industrial 
 History of Scotland 
 
 a 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AVTHOR 
 
 THE UNION OF ENGLAND AND 
 SCOTLAND. 8vo., Pp. 542. 
 10s. 6d. net. (Published 1896 : 
 Re-issue 190T.) 
 
 THE HISTORY OF EDWARD THE 
 THIRD. 8vo., Pp. XXX and 606. 
 18s. (Published, March 1900.) 
 
 THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OP 
 THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 
 8vo., Pp. XX and 84fl. 21s. net. 
 (Published, April 1902.) 
 
 A HISTORY OF MODERN 
 LIBERTY. 3 Vols. 
 Vol. I.— 8vo., Pp. xxii and 398. 
 Vol. II.— 8vo., Pp. xi and 479 
 
 30s. net. (1906.) 
 Vol. III.— 8vo., Pp. xviii and 501. 
 15s. net. (1908.) 
 Longmans, Green <5v Co. 
 
 THE SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL 
 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND : 
 From the Earliest Times to the 
 Union. 8vo., Pp. viii and 183. 
 9s. net. (Published, May 1920.) 
 Blachie <5n Son, Limited. 
 
The 
 
 Social and Industrial 
 History of Scotland 
 
 From the Union to the 
 
 Present Time 
 
 1 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES I^ACKINNON, M.A., Ph.D., D.D. 
 
 Begius Professor ol Ecclesiastical History, trniversity of Bdinbuigh 
 
 Formerly Lecturer iu History, TTniversity of St Andrews 
 
 and Queen Margaret College, TJniTersity of Glasgow 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1921 
 
\(plX^p 
 
 ^J 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In a recently published work (Messrs Blackie & Son) the author 
 reviewed the Social and Industrial History of Scotland from the 
 earliest times to the Union. In the present work he reviews this 
 branch of Scottish History from the Union to the present time. 
 
 There is room for such a work, in view of the widespread 
 interest at the present time in social and industrial history, and 
 the lack of an adequate review of that of Scotland during the 
 last two centuries. The valuable works of Sir Henry Craik and 
 Dr Mathieson do not go beyond 1843, and are, besides, largely 
 concerned with politics in church and state. The special work 
 of Mr Bremner on The Industries of Scotland, published in 1869, 
 is full of valuable information as far as it goes, but is rather ill- 
 arranged and ill digested. The half century from 1869 to the 
 present time has been largely left in abeyance by the historian. 
 It is one of extraordinary and complicated development, 
 particularly in the industrial sphere, and should appeal strongly 
 to the reader of to-day, inasmuch as it is bound up so closely 
 with his own experience. 
 
 The lack of special works on this part of the period has made 
 the writing of this one no easy task. The Author has had to 
 search over a wide field for his material, and has found difficulty 
 at times in obtaining first-hand information. He has by no 
 means exhausted the field, and professes only to give a review 
 which, while intended for the general reader, as well as for 
 teachers and students of Scottish history, may serve as an intro- 
 duction to farther intensive study. To this end, he has added, at 
 the conclusion of each part, a list of sources from which he has 
 drawn his material. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 He desires to express his obligations to many friends from 
 whom he has received valuable information in the course of his 
 studies — in particular, to his colleagues, Professors Wallace and 
 Hudson Beare; Dr Oliver, Principal of the South of Scotland 
 Central Technical College ; Dr David Murray, Glasgow ; Sir John 
 Lindsay, D.L., Town Clerk of Glasgow; Mr Paton, City Cham- 
 berlain, and Mr Fenton, Depute City Chamberlain, Edinburgh; 
 Sir John Ross, LL.D., Dunfermline; Mr J. L. Innes, Kirkcaldy; 
 Mr James E. Bell, Mr Duncan McGlashan, and the late Mr David 
 Deuchars, M.V.O., Edinburgh; Mr Nicholson, Librarian, Mr 
 Cuthbertson, Assistant Librarian, and the Staff of Edinburgh 
 University Library. To Mr James A. R. MacKinnon, LL.B., 
 Advocate, he is indebted for valuable legal information and for 
 useful suggestions in the course of reading the proofs. 
 
 Edinburgh, February, 1921, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 SECTION PAGB 
 
 1. General Aspect - - 1 
 
 2. The Progress of Agriculture - 3 
 
 3. The Progress of Industry and Commerce 10 
 
 4. The Growth of Towns - - 21 
 
 5. James Watt and the Steam Engine - 24 
 
 6. Social Conditions - - - 29 
 
 7. Education and Culture - - 35 
 
 8. Religious Life - 44 
 
 9. The Rise of Scottish Art - 48 
 10. Poor Relief and Crime - 54 
 
 Sources - - 57 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH 
 CENTURIES 
 
 1. General Features ----- - 58 
 
 2. The Progress of Agriculture - - - 59 
 8. The Mining, Iron and Steel Industries - 79 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 4. Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering 93 
 
 5. The Textile Industries 104 
 
 6. Secondary Industries 119 
 
 7. The Rise and Extension of Railways 131 
 
 8. Commercial Enterprise 145 
 
 9. The Scottish Trade Union Movement 158 
 
 10. Education ... 170 
 
 11. Culture 190 
 
 12. Printing and Publishing 205 
 
 13. Art 213 
 
 14. Religious Life 222 
 
 15. Poor Relief 240 
 
 16. Municipal Enterprise and Social Progress 245 
 
 17. Shadows of Social Life 262 
 Sources - 271 
 Index 275 
 
THE 
 
 SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL 
 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 1. Genekal Aspect 
 
 Looking merely on the surface, the eighteenth, compared with 
 the seventeenth, might be described as a tame century. Apart 
 from the two Jacobite Risings in 1715 and 1745, it is singularly 
 undramatic. Politics lapsed to the level of the petty animosities 
 of Whig and Jacobite and these gradually died away after the 
 cause of the exiled Stuarts had received its death blow at 
 Culloden. Jacobitism survived only in the romantic songs in 
 which a sentimental allegiance to an impracticable ideal found 
 pathetic expression. The Union from which so much had been 
 hoped, and for which so much had been sacrificed, seemed 
 for long -a failure, and only five years after its consummation 
 a proposal was made in the Parliament at Westminster to 
 dissolve it. The eagerly expected prosperity did not come till 
 well into the century. The people had not the same interest in 
 poUtics as in the days when political and ecclesiastical affairs 
 were debated and decided in the Scottish Capital. Scottish 
 members and purely Scottish questions figured little in the 
 greater assembly at Westminster, where Scottish interests were 
 A 1 
 
2 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 viewed by English politicians from the standpoint of those of 
 English parties. The limitation of the franchise to a handful 
 of voters in both burghs and counties (about 4000 in all) de- 
 prived politics of the magnetic attraction of the days before the 
 Union and the Revolution, when men and parties contended over 
 questions of such far-reaching importance in Church and State. 
 This political lassitude endured throughout the century when 
 Scotland, in marked contrast to the previous century, submitted 
 to the bureaucratic regime of " uncrowned kings " like Henry 
 Dundas. 
 
 Happily, this stagnation was confined, except in the political 
 sphere, to the first half of the century. The second half of it 
 was a period of new vitality — which showed itself in a marked 
 transformation of the national life. The Union at last proved 
 its efl&cacy in the quickening of commerce, of which Glasgow 
 was the great centre. Industry made a great bound forward in 
 the rapid development of the linen, woollen, cotton, and iron 
 manufacture to which the application of improved machinery 
 and especially the inventive genius of James Watt gave a 
 powerful impulse. Agriculture shared in the advance of other 
 industries in a remarkable degree. Shipbuilding and the im- 
 provement of communication by land by the construction of 
 roads and canals greatly favoured commercial and industrial 
 expansion and social progress. In literature, science, philosophy, 
 ■art, education, Scotland sprang from the mediocrity of former 
 days into a brilliant position among the nations. Its social life 
 also underwent a marked betterment in many respects as the 
 result of the accumulating wealth which raised the rate of wages 
 and the standard of living. Its religion lost much of its old 
 narrowness and crudeness under the influence of a broader 
 culture. The energy which in the previous century had 
 exhausted itself with such grim intensity in violent political and 
 ecclesiastical contention was directed into the channel of prac- 
 tical life. The second half of the eighteenth century equally 
 with the seventeenth may be described as a period of revolution. 
 Only the revolution takes the form, not of a convulsion of the 
 body politic, but of a truly formative, if less obtrusive process of 
 industrial and social advance. 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 2. The Progress of Agriculture. 
 
 During the first half of the eighteenth century there was no 
 appreciable advance in agriculture, though enterprising and en- 
 lightened landowners like Adam Cockbum of Ormiston, and his 
 son John, and the Earl of Haddington set a praiseworthy 
 example in adopting new methods to increase the productiveness 
 of their estates. Their example was, however, but sparingly 
 followed, and it is only in the second half of the century that 
 a notable advance becomes observable. Even towards its close 
 it was far from complete, the old methods surviving alongside 
 the new in the more sequestered districts of the Lowlands, 
 not to speak of the Highlands. A variety of adverse condi- 
 tions worked against progress in the earlier part of the century. 
 As the result of a series of inclement seasons at the end of the 
 seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth, large tracts 
 of land went out of cultivation and were for long left 
 in a waste condition. Till far into the century the 
 method of tilling ,the soil was still very primitive. The 
 plough in use varied with the district. But it was usually 
 a cumbrous implement which required four or more horses 
 or oxen to draw it, one man to hold it, another, walking 
 backward, to lead the team, and a third, or even a fourth, to 
 follow it and compress the furrow and break the clods. Some- 
 times the crooked spade, or cascroin, worked with the hand, 
 was used instead of the plough and the turning over of the soil 
 involved an immense amount of manual labour. The harrows 
 had wooden teeth which wore quickly away and merely 
 scratched the stiffer soils. In some northern districts they were 
 tied to the horses' tails to save the expense of providing harness. 
 
 The system of cultivation, like the mode of ploughing and 
 harrowing, was also of a primitive kind. The farm was usually 
 divided into " infield " and " outfield." Infield was the land 
 nearest the steading which absorbed all the farm manure and 
 was perpetually under crop. The outfield was the pasture land 
 beyond, which was occasionally ploughed in patches for com for 
 four or five years running, when it was exhausted and then left 
 
4 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 for some years in pasture till it recovered. The system of 
 " runrig " was also in vogue, under whicli a number of tenants 
 living in a town or village cultivated the adjacent land, divided 
 into " rigs " or ridges which changed hands every year — a 
 practice very adverse to enterprise on the part of the individual 
 cultivator. Another common method was to lease a farm to a 
 number of tenants, each cultivating his separate portion, but 
 each dependent on the consent of the others in the working of it. 
 The land was usually leased to tenants by the year and this 
 short and uncertain tenure tended to discourage enterprise. As 
 the cultivator might be turned adrift at the end of the year, he 
 had no incentive to improve the land, and if, nevertheless, he 
 attempted to do so, his rent might be raised. Without a reason- 
 ably secure tenure in the form of longer leases, agricultural im- 
 provement was impossible. What could be done by this expe- 
 dient was conclusively shown by Adam Cockbum of Ormiston, 
 Lord Justice Clerk at the beginning of the century, whose wise 
 policy was continued and extended by his son John, with most 
 beneficial results to both landlord and tenant. The generality 
 of proprietors were, however, all too slow to profit from such an 
 example. Moreover, rents were paid largely in kind and only 
 to a comparatively small extent in money. Money was, indeed, 
 very scarce throughout the first half of the century and without 
 money it was impossible for the proprietors to improve their 
 estates. Loans for such a purpose were very difiicult to raise 
 and could only be obtained on " wadset," which pledged the 
 land of the borrower to the lender if the loan was not repaid by 
 a specified date. The enterprise of the tenant was farther ham- 
 pered by the remains of the feudal obligation that persisted 
 from past centuries. Serfdom had long disappeared in the sense 
 of binding the tiller of the soil to the estate and selling him along 
 with it. But restrictions remained which greatly impeded his 
 economic freedom even in the eighteenth century. Part of the 
 rent was paid not merely in kind, but in service, which bound 
 the tenant to give so many days' work to the proprietor in 
 manuring and ploughing the home farm, reaping his crops, 
 carrying peats or coals to the mansion house, such serwce being 
 included in the general term arrage and carriage. " Bondage 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 5 
 
 days " and " Bonnage " were the significant terms also applied 
 to these services. No less grievous was the custom of " thirl- 
 age "—another remnant of feudal times — which obliged the 
 tenant to pay to the barony miller a certain proportion of the 
 grain he produced (multure) whether ground at his mill or not, 
 in addition to the miller's charges for the com actually ground 
 by him.i He was also " thirled " to the local smithy and had 
 to pay annually so much in kind to the blacksmith for plough 
 irons and shoeing of horses though he might not have made use 
 of his services. These dues and services were not only felt to 
 be very vexatious and gave rise to much ill-feeling and conten- 
 tion. They were a serious bar to productive energy. 
 
 Lack of sufficient care in cleansing the soil of weeds greatly 
 lessened production and one inveterate weed called gool was all 
 too common in spite of laws punishing those who neglected to 
 keep it down and of gool courts, which survived in some 
 parishes till the end of the century, to inflict the penalties on 
 offenders. Another drawback was the lack of proper means of 
 transit owing to the bad roads, and of serviceable vehicles. 
 Goods were carried in sacks or creels on the backs of horses, or 
 in tumbrils with wooden wheels which revolved with the axles. 
 It was in this primitive fashion that manure was transported to 
 the fields and peats from the moss. Carts were not in common 
 use in the Lowlands till 1760, while in the north the old method 
 of locomotion lasted much longer. The absence of proper drain- 
 age prevented the farmer from making adequate use of the low- 
 lying, swampy ground, and led him to cultivate the poorer land 
 on the hill sides. He sowed this land with the least productive 
 kind of grain — ^grey oats and here — whilst the late ploughing and 
 sowing resulted in late and precarious harvests. Before the 
 general sowing of turnips and artificial grasses, which only 
 became common in the second half of the century, there was no 
 adequate supply of winter feeding for cattle and horses, which 
 were fed on straw and mashed whins. On this poor diet the 
 farmer's stock was so emaciated that the cattle had to be carried 
 (" lifted ") to the pasture in spring and fresh meat could not be 
 had in winter. During this season only salt beef in the form of 
 
 1 "Insucken" denoted the grain liable to "thirlage"; " outaucken " that not so liable. 
 
6 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 " the mairt " killed in the autumn was available for those who 
 could afford this luxury. The supply of animal food was further 
 limited by the ravages of foxes, which preyed on the flocks, 
 though the hired fox hunter, with his pack of dogs, who was to 
 be found in every district, or the less expensive method of trap- 
 ping or poisoning, helped to some extent to coimteract this pest. 
 The food of the people was largely vegetarian, consisting of 
 oatmeal porridge and cakes, pease bannocks, barley and kail 
 broth. In some districts, however, salmon was so common dur- 
 ing the season that servants stipulated that they should not be 
 given it more ,than three times a week, and in the early part of 
 the century it was sold at from Id. to 2d. per pound. If simple, 
 this diet was at least wholesome and free from modem adultera- 
 tion. On this simple life large families were reared, though 
 the lack of proper sanitation tended to breed disease and epi- 
 demics which thinned the population all too frequently. Unfor- 
 tunately in virtue of the growth of population and the backward 
 methods of cultivation, the land had ceased to produce sufficient 
 food to feed the inhabitants. In many districts the lack of 
 food was only too general, and in seasons of dearth it was 
 disastrous. 
 
 The wages of farm labourers seem to have been very inade- 
 quate, though they began to rise from about the middle of the 
 century. The rate varied with the district, but even in the 
 more liberally paid districts and in cases where the wife might 
 earn a few additional pounds by spinning and the children, if 
 old enough, might also add to the scanty family income, a bare 
 subsistence was usually all that was possible. Only by the most 
 economic housekeeping and the simplest diet could the income 
 be made to square with the expenditure. 
 
 In the second half of the century the agricultural depression 
 began to give place to a marked improvement, due to the gradual 
 removal of the defects and drawbacks which had hampered this 
 primary industry. The general introduction of long leases gave 
 the farmer a more secure tenure and an adequate return for 
 his enterprise, whilst binding him to employ more serviceable 
 methods of manuring and working the soil. Equally effective 
 were the abolition of the runrig system, the introduction of a 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 7 
 
 fixed rotation of crops, tiie substitution of more fruitful seed for 
 the grey oats and bere, the use of artificial grasses for pasture and 
 hay, the enclosure of fields by dykes or hedges, the drainage of 
 Bwampy ground, the use of lime in addition to farm manure, the 
 invention and application of machinery and improved imple- 
 ments, the abolition of '* thiriage " and services. The winnow- 
 ing fan and the barley mill, which improved upon the old method 
 of grinding barley by " knocking stones," had been introduced 
 from Holland by James Meikle at Saltoun in 1710 and became 
 common after the middle of the century. The swing plough, 
 drawn by two horses, was invented by John Small of Dalkeith 
 in 1750, and was a great advance on the ponderous and ineffec- 
 tive implement hitherto in use. The threshing machine was at 
 last, in 1787, perfected by Andrew Meikle, son of James, and 
 ere long displaced the flail, though this old-fashioned way of 
 separating the corn from the straw prevailed in some districts 
 far into the next century. Before the end of the eighteenth 
 there were as many as 350 threshing machines in operation in 
 East Lothian, with a marked saving from the new method in 
 time and labour and in the quantity of grain threshed. The 
 growing of potatoes and turnips in fields as well as in gardens, 
 to which their cultivation had for long been confined, greatly 
 increased the supply of food for man and beast. The cattle, 
 which had starved through the winter on straw and mashed 
 whins, grew fat on the more substantial keep provided by the 
 hay and turnip fields, and salt beef ceased to be the only avail- 
 able commodity in the larder in winter. The reclaiming of 
 bogs and moors brought more land under cultivation. The 
 improvement of the roads in virtue of the Turnpike Act of 1751, 
 which assessed proprietors and tenants for the upkeep of the 
 highways, led to the use of improved vehicles and to increased 
 and more rapid communication, and enabled the farmer to bring 
 his produce more easily to market. The growth of trade and 
 manufactures in the towns, which created a larger demand for 
 food stuffs, also encouraged agricultural enterprise. The value 
 of land rose in proportion, and the increased rents, which began 
 to be paid exclusively in money, enabled the proprietor to spend 
 much more in the improvement of his estate. Loans for this 
 
8 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 purpose were more easily obtainable from the banks which were 
 established in the county towns as well as in the larger cities. 
 The Montgomery Act of 1770, so named from the Lord Advocate 
 of the time, further enabled the proprietor of entailed estates to 
 undertake improvements by placing on his successors part of the 
 expense of enclosing, draining, and planting his land. Estates 
 also came into the hands of those who had made fortunes in 
 commerce at home and in the Plantations, and the business 
 capacity and freedom from conservative ways of these new pro- 
 prietors favoured agricultural development. The spirit of 
 change was, however, sometimes more enthusiastic than prac- 
 tical and the experiment of adopting English methods in a 
 country, whose climate was less propitious than that of the south 
 of England, was not always a success. The new system of com- 
 bining small into large farms involved hardship to the small 
 tenants, who were compelled to become labourers, or drift into 
 the towns, or emigrate to the Colonies. The policy adopted in 
 the north of turning small holdings into sheep runs caused acute 
 misery and led at times to violent resistance, with transporta- 
 tion as the penalty of the luckless resisters. The raising of rents 
 by the proprietors in the Highlands was not justified by greater 
 returns from the land. The tacksmen who became leaseholders 
 also rack-rented their sub-tenants, the productivity of whose 
 holdings was far more limited than in the south. There was, 
 in consequence, destitution in many a Highland glen and this 
 destitution was aggravated by the limitation of arable land, lack 
 of employment and enterprise, over-population, the persistence 
 of backward methods of cultivation, frequent failure of crops, 
 vagrancy, wretched housing, and cA^ction of the small holder. 
 For these evils emigration to the North American Colonies pro- 
 vided a harsh, though only a partial remedy. 
 
 In the south, on the other hand, the rise in rents was only an 
 indication of the increased value of the land and the rising 
 prosperity of the farmer. In Berwickshire, for instance, rents 
 rose from between Is. 6d and Ss. to 21s. an acre, in Perthshire 
 from 5s. to 45s. in 1784, in the Carse of Gowrie from 6s 8d. to 
 even £6. in 1783. Though a similar advance took place in all 
 the Lowland counties, the farmer could become prosperous in 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 9 
 
 virtue of better ciiltivation, enlarged production, and higher 
 prices, and in not a few cases could buy his farm even at the 
 enhanced rates going. And not only the farmers, but their 
 servants benefitted by this improvement. Though wages and 
 conditions of life varied for the peasantry with the district, the 
 general trend was an upward one. In the interval between the 
 middle and the end of the century the wages of ploughmen and 
 labourers had doubled, rising to an average of £14 or £15 for the 
 former in the more developed regions, and from 6d. in summer 
 and 5d. in winter to Is. and lOd. a day for the latter. Better 
 houses for the working class had also begim to displace the 
 miserable hovels of an earlier time, and a notable improvement 
 had also set in in dress and diet. It is not too much to say 
 that before the end of the century the agricultural industry had 
 been revolutionised, though the old conditions of tenure and 
 the old methods of cultivation lingered in the Highlands and 
 the remoter districts of even the Lowland counties. Whereas 
 in the early part of the century the comparison between England 
 and Scotland was all in favour of the former, by the end of it 
 Scotland was beginning to redress the balance and was laying the 
 solid foundation of that eminence in agriculture which in the fol- 
 lowing one was to reverse the comparison in its favour. 
 
 A striking result of this development was a marked change 
 in the external aspect of the country by the planting of woods 
 and forests. Woods were still nearly as rare in the Lowlands 
 during the early part of the eighteenth century as in previous 
 centuries. The improvement of the land and the landscape by 
 plantations was at first the concern of only a few progressive 
 proprietors like Lord Haddington, Cockbum of Ormiston, Lord 
 Loudon, the Duchess of Gordon, and the Countess of Eglinton, 
 and Dr Johnson could still in 1778 say with some truth, if far 
 more exaggeration, that " a tree in Scotland is as rare as a horse 
 in Venice." Trees might be seen around the mansions of the 
 gentry, and hitherto unknown varieties like the larch, the silver 
 fir, the walnut, the maple, the laburnum, the beech and chest- 
 nut were grown in sheltered gardens and carefully nursed on the 
 assumption that they could not thrive in the open. Farmers 
 opposed extensive planting on the plea that hedges and trees 
 
10 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 spoiled the land and harboured the enemies of their crops. The 
 prejudice against this improvement was long inveterate and 
 showed itself in the destruction of plantations by the people 
 overnight in spite of the old pains and penalties. This pre- 
 judice was all the more surprising inasmuch as the waste land 
 was found admirably fitted to rear a great variety of trees, and 
 the scarcity of wood, which had to be imported from Norway and 
 the Baltic for building and other purposes, was a general 
 grievance. 
 
 It was only in the second half of the century that this pro- 
 judice began to give way to more practical considerations and 
 progress in afforestation immensely improved the monotonous 
 aspect of the country, afforded shelter to growing crops, helped 
 to drain the soil and temper the climate. Planting on a large 
 scale became a sort of passion with both lords and lairds, and the 
 forests of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Perthshire date from this 
 period. The Duke of AthoU, for example, covered 16,000 acres 
 with larch. Grant of Monymusk, Lord Findlater, Lord Murray 
 and others planted spruce, beech, oak and elm by the million. 
 To " be aye stickin' in a tree " was now an essential of rural 
 economy. These plantations are sufficient to take the edge oS 
 Dr Johnson's sarcasm, though there were still treeless regions 
 along his route and the improvement in the general aspect of 
 the country, even where tree planting was in full swing, was 
 not the work of a day. Gardening also profited from the general 
 advance of the time, the earlier style of artificially ornamental 
 trees and shrubs in the form of animals, copied from Holland, 
 giving place later to a more natural arrangement. A variety of 
 fruits and vegetables began to be cultivated and even the kail- 
 yard of the cottar showed in this respect a marked improvement 
 by the end of the century. 
 
 3. The Progkess of Industry and Commerce 
 
 The Union was at first a dismal disappointment from the 
 material point of view and the disappointment lasted till the 
 fourth decade of the century. Scotland expected a burst of pros- 
 
THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 11 
 
 perity from freedom of trade with England and its colonies which 
 did not come. Instead of it came increased taxation, with loss of 
 her French trade and no appreciable expansion of trade with 
 England and the colonies in return. The politicians who had 
 carried the Union against bitter opposition seemed to have sold 
 their country for a mess of pottage. The revenue did not by a 
 long way balance the expenditure of Government. Customs and 
 Excise produced very much less than before the Union and the 
 decrease was greatly helped by the smuggling of wine, brandy, 
 and tea. Coin was very scarce and paper money almost the 
 only currency. Lack of capital, which the Union failed to pro- 
 duce, lamed every effort at economic development. Monopoly 
 and privilege were still jealously guarded by the royal burghs 
 against the non-royal, and the old narrow and selfish spirit 
 still dominated the guilds, especially the merchant guilds in 
 their attitude towards the craft guilds. The £2,000 annually 
 granted for seven years by the terms of the Treaty of Union, for 
 the purpose of developing manufactures and fisheries, were 
 allowed to accumulate without practical application to this object. 
 Internal trade was hampered by bad roads and primitive means 
 of transport. 
 
 Even in the dreary years succeeding the Union there were, 
 however, signs of the approach of the prosperity which it made 
 possible. In 1727 Parliament appointed a Commission, sub- 
 sequently known as the Board of Manufactures, to administer 
 the fund for the encouragement of industry, particularly the linen 
 industry, offered premiums for the cultivation of lint and hemp 
 and prizes to housewives who made the best piece of linen cloth, 
 and established spinning schools for teaching the children to spin. 
 The effect of this legislation ere long appeared in a notable 
 advance of the linen manufacture, for the improvement of which 
 ten skilled Frenchmen with their families were brought from 
 France and settled on what subsequently became known as 
 Picardy Place, Edinburgh. The spinning and also the weaving 
 of linen yam were begun or developed all over the country, and 
 this ancient industry entered on its career of growing prosperity 
 throughout the rest of the century. Already in the first decade 
 after the passing of the Act the number of yards of linen cloth 
 
12 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 manufactured had risen from about two to over four and a half 
 millions and the value from £103,000 to £185,000. Ten years 
 later, in 1748, the figures were well on to seven and a half mil- 
 lions, valued at fully £424,000. Part of the credit of its further 
 development was due to the British Linen Company, incorporated 
 in 1746, which provided the manufacturers with capital and 
 material and carried on an extensive linen trade until it restricted 
 its business to that of banking, as the British Linen Company 
 Bank. 
 
 Progress in the woollen industry, to which the Commissioners 
 assigned a much smaller proportion of the available fund, was 
 much less rapid. In 1733, while fairly thriving at Edinburgh, 
 Kilmarnock, and Stirling, it was still in a backward state at 
 places hke Hawick and Galashiels, where it subsequently became 
 the staple industry. English competition after the Union 
 also tended to retard its progress. The fishing industry, 
 to which the Commissioners gave substantial financial aid, 
 was also but slowly developed. Compared with the pre- 
 vious century it had, in fact, greatly declined, and 
 owing to this decline, partly due to the increase of the 
 salt duties after the Union, which made fish curing un- 
 profitable, the enterprising Dutch reaped by far the greater 
 part of the harvest of Scottish waters. Despite the 
 inducement of herring bounties and the institution of 
 " The Society of Free British Fishery," from the middle 
 of the century onwards progress was very slow, and, with 
 the exception of Wick, was confined to the West Coast, 
 where Campbelltown and Stomoway prospered into thriving 
 centres of the industry. 
 
 Commerce, like industry, derived little immediate advantage 
 from the Union. What the Union was capable of accomplishing 
 in the way of commercial expansion is, however, shown by the 
 rising prosperity of Glasgow and Greenock, which it favourably 
 affected before its beneficial influence was felt in the general 
 trade of the country. The Treaty threw open to the merchants 
 on the Clyde the trade with the colonies, from which they had 
 previously benefitted only by illicit trading in evasion of the 
 Navigation Laws. Greenock had prepared the way for this 
 
THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 13 
 
 development by constructing a spacious harbour between 1707 
 and 1710, and in 1719 its first ship sailed for the West. A year 
 earlier Glasgow, which had carried on what little oversea trade 
 it possessed in vessels chartered from Whitehaven, had pre- 
 ceded it in the dispatch of its first vessel across the Atlantic. In 
 less than twenty years the number of its ships had risen to sixty- 
 seven. The establishment of the linen manufacture in 1725 
 added to the limited variety of exported goods, and the import 
 of colonial products, especially tobacco, greatly increased its 
 wealth in spite of the competition and hostility of western 
 English ports. Glasgow ere long, in fact, ranked next to Lon- 
 don £is a centre of the tobacco trade. 
 
 In the second half of the century came at last the industrial 
 and commercial expansion of which these beginnings were the 
 modest anticipation. In 1772 there were two hundred and fifty- 
 two lint mills in Scotland. Ten years later the linen manufacture 
 was carried on in every county except Peebles and Clack- 
 msmnan. Forfarshire led by a long way ; Fife, Perth, Renfrew, 
 and Lanark coming next, the total number of yards for the whole 
 country being nearly fifteen and a half millions, valued at 
 £775,000. In 1798 the number of yards had swelled to about 
 twenty-one and a quarter millions, with a value of £850,000. In 
 certain parts of the country, however, the industry had declined 
 before the end of the century. In the northern counties, for 
 instance, at Edinburgh, long famous for its damasks, which in 
 quality and price stood very high, and at Glasgow where, by the 
 end of it, the cotton manufacture had largely displaced that of 
 linen. The tendency was ultimately in the following century 
 towards the concentration of the industry in the counties of Fife, 
 Perth, and Forfar, where the introduction of improved machinery 
 and steam propulsion enormously increased the output. The 
 making of linen thread was also prosecuted at various places, 
 such as Inverness, Banff, Aberdeen, and especially at Paisley, 
 where it was introduced in 1725 from Holland, and became, and 
 has ever since remained, a distinctive industry. The process of 
 bleaching was improved by Dr Home by the application of a 
 mixture of water and sulphuric acid. Chlorine, which was 
 applied by the French chemist Berthollet in 1785, was introduced 
 
14 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 at Aberdeen in 1787. About ten years later chloride of lime 
 was substituted by Mr Tennant of Glasgow. 
 
 In 1733 Patrick Lindsay, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, had 
 emphasised in his book The Interest of Scotland Considered the 
 deficiencies that hampered the woollen industry. Forty-three 
 years later Mr Lock in his " Essays on Trade " was able to 
 chronicle considerable progress in the spinning and weaving of 
 woollen yam which was carried on at Edinburgh, Dalkeith, 
 Musselburgh, Tranent, Haddington, Dunbar, Linton, Linlith- 
 gow, Galashiels, Hawick, Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh, Peebles, 
 Selkirk, Mofiat, Dumfries, Sanquhar, Ayr, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, 
 Stirling, Alloa, Perth, Montrose, Aberdeen, Peterhead, Elgin, 
 Inverness. Weaving was also carried on in every village from 
 the yam spun in the homes of the people. Besides cloth, blan- 
 kets, carpets, stockings, and flannels were manufactured. In 
 the making of carpets Kilmarnock ultimately took the lead, the 
 value of its production being estimated at £21,000 in 1791. 
 Aberdeenshire was preeminent in the stocking industry, which 
 represented an annual value of £120,000, until it was displaced 
 by Hawick, where the stocking frame was first introduced in 
 1771, and other southern towns The application of improved 
 machinery in the carding, spinning, and weaving of wool, as in 
 the case of the linen manufacture, greatly increased production, 
 though the full effect of this departure was felt only in the next 
 century. Whilst the invention of this machinery was first 
 brought into exercise in connection with the cotton industry in 
 England, it was easily adapted to the manufacture of woollen 
 and linen stuffs. Hargreaves' invention of the spinning jenny 
 in 1767, which worked several spindles at once, multiplied the 
 number of cotton threads spun at the same time by a single 
 spinner. His invention was improved by Arkwright and Comp- 
 ton (the spinning frame and the spinning mule) during the next 
 dozen years. Arkwright also produced an improved carding 
 machine, and soon after (1785) Cartwright invented the power 
 loom to take the place of the handloom, which similarly facili- 
 tated the weaving of the thread into cotton cloth. These im- 
 provements had to run the gauntlet of popular prejudice and ill- 
 will which found expression in riots in Lancashire. Increased 
 
THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 15 
 
 production by machinery was regarded as tending to lessen em- 
 ployment and lower wages, and time was needed to show that 
 the improving and cheapening of manufacture would inevitably 
 increase the demand for the goods manufactured and thus in- 
 crease the number of hands employed. Some years later (1794) 
 Mr Bell of Glasgow also constructed a machine to supersede the 
 hand loom, which was improved by Mr Miller of the same city, 
 and was brought into practical use in 1810 in a factory at 
 PoUockshaws. The application of steam and water power to the 
 driving of this machinery further prepared the way for the textile 
 development of the next century. 
 
 The cotton industry, which these inventions were devised to 
 improve, was introduced into Scotland in 1778 by an English 
 company, which built a small cotton mill at Rothesay. Ten 
 years later about a score, driven by water power, had been 
 established, eight of them in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, three 
 in Perthshire, and two in Midlothian, and a number of factories 
 were set up on the Solway in the south-west, which were, how- 
 ever, shortlived. Lanarkshire ere long took the lead, that at 
 New Lanark being founded by David Dale, whose manager and 
 son-in-law, Robert Owen, was not only one of the pioneers of 
 the cotton industry, but a social reformer who evinced a rare 
 practical interest in the workpeople and made New Lanark a 
 model village. Glasgow and the Clyde district became the 
 centre of the industry. Calico garments ere long vied with 
 woollen, and the expanding trade in cotton goods was favoured 
 by the heavy duties imposed on Indian calicos and muslins and 
 by an abundant supply of all too cheap labour. 
 
 Relative progress is observable in a number of other indus- 
 tries. At Edinburgh and Glasgow the tanning and manufac- 
 ture of leather were carried on, and Edinburgh in particular 
 became famous for its production of leather goods. It supplied 
 the army with large quantities of boots during and after the 
 American War as well as maintained a large export trade with 
 the West Indies. Snuft boxes, writing cases, drinking mugs, 
 etc., were made of this material which, in virtue of a special pro- 
 cess, acquired the appearance of tortoise shell and made it cap- 
 able of a high polish. Edinburgh also took the lead in coach- 
 
16 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 building, whose development was due to John Home, who m 
 1738 went to London to perfect his knowledge of the trade and, 
 on his return, introduced new tools and trained a number of work- 
 men to become experts in constructing the various parts of a 
 coach. The result was a rapid development of the industry and 
 a large export trade to the Continent. Paper making also found 
 its chief seat in the Edinburgh district, the oldest mill being at 
 Valleyfield, Penicuick, which was started in 1709. Whilst in 
 1763 there were only three mills in the district, which produced 
 6400 reams annually, the number had grown to twelve ten years 
 later, with a production of 100,000 reams. Printing advanced 
 with the advance in paper making from four printing offices in 
 Edinburgh about the middle of the century to twenty-seven in 
 1779. Glasgow, however, surpassed Edinburgh in the excellence 
 if not the quantity of its printed books, and the brothers Foulis 
 of that city brought out between 1744 and 1770 a series of 
 classical works whose typography challenges comparison with 
 that of any other country. Newspaper enterprise had also 
 started on its prosperous career in Edinburgh and Glasgow and 
 in some other towns. The Glasgow Journal, which flourished for 
 over a century, dates from 1729. The Glasgow Herald was 
 begun in 1783, though it then, and for twenty years after, bore 
 the name of The Advertiser ; The Glasgow Courier in 1791. The 
 establishment of The Edinburgh Advertiser in 1764 was due to 
 the enterprise first of Alexander Donaldson, and afterwards his 
 son, James Donaldson, who made a large fortune as printer 
 and publisher, which he bequeathed for the endowment of 
 Donaldson's Hospital. The Edinburgh Gazette was begun in 
 1699, though the official publication under this name was not 
 started till near the close of the eighteenth century. The 
 Evening Courant, which survived till 1886, followed in 1718; 
 The Caledonian Mercury, incorporated in 1867 with The Scots- 
 man, two years later; The Edinburgh Weekly Journal in 1744; 
 and The Aberdeen Journal, which still survives, in 1748. Other 
 provincial papers established within the century were The Kelso 
 Mail (1797), and The Greenock Advertiser (1799). The Scots 
 Magazine first appeared in 1739, to be followed by The Weekly 
 Magazine, started by Walter Ruddiman at Edinburgh in 1768. 
 
THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 17 
 
 Leith and, later, Edinburgh led the way in the manufacture of 
 glass; Glasgow, where the first pottery was founded in 1748, 
 in that of earthenware; Greenock in sugar refining, though it 
 was anticipated by Edinburgh and Leith in attempts, which 
 were not very successful, to develop this industry. Edinburgh 
 further gained supremacy in the brewing industry in spite of 
 the malt tax which was extended to Scotland in 1725, and pro- 
 duced a serious riot at Glasgow, whilst the distilling of whisky, 
 licit and illicit, was supreme in the Highlands and its consump- 
 tion, which was favoured by smuggling, gained materially in the 
 course of the century on that of beer. Edinburgh also main- 
 tained the preeminence in the making of plate and jewellery 
 which it had inherited from an earlier time, of which the 
 Hospital endowed by George Heriot, the enterprising goldsmith 
 of James VI, who left part of his large fortune for this purpose, 
 is the fitting memorial. 
 
 Coal had long been used as fuel on a limited scale in Scotland. 
 As early as the twelfth century power was granted to the monks 
 of Holyrood to work coal in the lands of Carriden, near 
 Bo'ness, and in the beginning of the thirteenth the coal in the 
 estate of Tranent was made over by charter to the monks of 
 Newbattle. At the end of it that on the estate of Pittencrief 
 was granted to the monks of Dunfermline. It seems to have 
 been used largely in connection with salt works, but the growing 
 scarcity of wood led to its more general use and by the end of 
 the sixteenth century it was burned in hall and kitchen as well as 
 forge. Its value as fuel had become so generally recognised that 
 Acts were passed in this century by the Scottish Parliament pro- 
 hibiting its export. In the seventeenth century an export duty 
 was substituted for this prohibition. 
 
 At first the supply seems to have been obtained from the out- 
 croppings of seams on river banks or in valleys. Later a primi- 
 tive form of mining was adopted by driving tunnels into the 
 seams. This method was superseded by the more effective one 
 of sinking shafts from the surface down to the seams and raising 
 the coal and pumping out the water by various contrivances. 
 For this purpose a steam engine was first applied in Scotland ia 
 1762. Means were devised for ventilating the workings as the 
 
 B 
 
18 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 shafts were deepened, and the expedient consisted at first of caus- 
 ing a rush of air from the surface down the shaft by means of 
 a furnace at the mouth of the workings. Under these condi- 
 tions the life of the miner was a most laborious and dangerous 
 one and the labour was intolerable and demoralising in the case 
 in which women and children were employed to carry the coal 
 from the workings to the surface. His lot was aggravated by an 
 old law of 1606 which made him in many mines virtually a serf, 
 and which was extended in 1661 to all other colliery workers. 
 He was " thirled " for life to the mine in which he worked and 
 eold along with the land to the proprietor who bought it. If 
 he ran away or entered the service of another mine owner, he 
 was liable to be punished as a thief who had " stolen " himself 
 and his service from his master. To assist detection a collar 
 was rivetted on his neck with the name of the owner on it. The 
 same restriction applied to the workers in salt pans. In return 
 the master was bound to maintain his serfs in sickness and old 
 age and provide for their burial. Their wages were relatively 
 high compared with those of the free miners — ^2s. 6d. a day in 
 1768, or about three times that of a day labourer of the same 
 period. Their existence and that of their women and children 
 was, however, little above that of the brutes and there certainly 
 was ample reason for the passing, in 1776, of the Act which 
 abolished such servile conditions for those who after this date 
 should " begin to work as colliers and salters," and emanci- 
 pated those imder a given age who were already engaged in these 
 occupations. The act was not inspired by humanitarian motives, 
 but by the necessity of attracting more workers to the develop- 
 ing industry, and it was not till 1799 that an additional act 
 absolutely abolished the baneful system. 
 
 Progress in the mining, smelting, and manufacture of iron ore 
 is connected with the establishment of the Carron Iron Works 
 in 1760. The smelting of iron ore was an ancient Scottish 
 industry, as the remains of the numerous bloomeries show. 
 These were mostly situated in the Highlands where the necessary 
 wood for making the charcoal used in the process was obtain- 
 able. The ore was transported to these forests for the reason 
 that it was more compact and portable than the timber. The 
 
THE PROGRESS OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE 19 
 
 establishment of the Carron Works led to a great change both 
 in the method and the locality of the iron industry. Their 
 founder was Dr Roebuck who was bom at Sheffield in 1718, had 
 studied medicine at Edinburgh University, practised as a 
 physician at Birmingham, ultimately devoted himself to 
 chemistry, and established a manufactory of sulphuric acid at 
 Prestonpans. He then turned his attention to the smelting of 
 iron ore and found on the Carron, near Falkirk, a spot well 
 suited by the combination in the district of ironstone, coal, and 
 water power for the realisation of his plan of establishing an 
 iron foundry. He found that coal in the form of coke could be 
 used more effectively in smelting than charcoal, and from the 
 English engineer Smeaton he obtained valuable assistance in the 
 provision of more powerful blast cylinders, which the substitu- 
 tion of coke for charcoal in the furnaces rendered necessary. 
 These blowing engines were worked by means of water wheels, 
 but the extension of the works rendered the supply of water 
 inadequate. To make good this defect James Watt erected a 
 steam engine for pumping the water back into a reservoir and 
 thus procuring the additional power. The works ordinarily 
 employed about 1000, besides miners and other workmen, and 
 the iron produced was wrought into cannon cast solid and bored 
 by drills not only for the British, but every European Govern- 
 ment, pipes, cylinders, sugar boilers, anchors, stoves, and 
 grates. The variety/ of ore used was the " clayband," the 
 superior " blackband " not being discovered till the beginning 
 of the next century. The construction of the Forth and Clyde 
 Canal from Grangemouth to Bowling, near Glasgow, begun in 
 1768, and completed in 1790, greatly aided the development 
 of the foundry, which by the end of the century had become the 
 largest in Europe. New furnaces were erected in the shires of 
 Lanark, Ayr, and Fife, and in 1796 the number had risen to 
 seventeen, producing 18,640 tons of pig-dron annually. 
 
 Industrial expansion by encouraging home and foreign trade 
 had a marked effect on the increase of shipbuilding on the Clyde 
 and in some of the eastern ports. Leith, which had only 2,285 
 tons of shipping in 1744, had increased its tonnage to 18,000 in 
 1792, which was engaged mainly in the Baltic trade. In 1779 
 
20 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 it launched its first ship of war for the Navy— the Fury of 16 
 guns — ^since, it is said, the reign of James VI. The shipping of 
 the Fife ports, long decadent, revived in the second half of the 
 century and at the end of it Dysart and Kirkcaldy had each 
 4000 tons. By this time Grangemouth was a busy port with a 
 large coasting and Baltic trade. About twenty-five ships be- 
 longed to its neighbour Bo'ness, while there was some ship- 
 building at Kincardine-on-Forth. Further north Dundee, Mon- 
 trose, and Aberdeen were also becoming thriving ports, the 
 tonnage belonging to Aberdeen being in 1800 23,236, that of 
 Dundee 8,741, of Montrose 6,555. Whilst Glasgow had only 
 6,600 tons in 1735, it was credited with fully ten times this 
 number in 1771 — an evident exaggeration. By the deepening 
 of the Clyde by means of dredging, which was carried out by 
 the engineer Golbome and completed in 1773, vessels drawing 
 not more than from 7 to 8 feet of water were enabled to reach 
 the Broomielaw. But the larger vessels discharged at Port- 
 Glasgow, which belonged to the Glasgow Corporation, and an 
 extensive traffic was carried on between it and the Broomielaw 
 by a fleet of flat-bottomed boats called garbarts, which gave 
 employment to a large number of bargemen. The lead in 
 shipbuilding and in the number of its registered ships was held 
 by Greenock, which in 1800 possessed 35,057 tons. Shipbuild- 
 ing was also carried on at Ayr, and Irvine had 5,788 tons of 
 shipping. The total for the whole country shows a substantial 
 increase during the second half of the century, though the in- 
 crease seems to have fluctuated according as the country was at 
 peace or war. In 1763 it owned 1,062 vessels of about 60,000 
 tons, in 1770 1,509 with a tonnage of 88,849. In 1792 it had 
 risen to 2,143 with a total tonrage of 162,274, manned by 13,491 
 seamen. There was a decline till the end of the century, due 
 apparently to the war with France, the figures in 1799 being 
 2,081 with a tonnage of 148,110. 
 
 The increase in shipping was paralleled by the increase in 
 imports and exports. In 1760 the imports were valued at 
 £850,792, the exports at £1,086,205. In 1774, before the out- 
 break of the American War, they had increased by £202,276 and 
 £872,142 respectively. There was a falling ofl in the trade with 
 
THE GROWTH OF TOWNS 21 
 
 America during the war and in 1782 the balance of import over 
 export was against Scotland to the extent of fully £155,000. 
 But in 1800 the imports had more than doubled the figures 
 reached in 1774 and the exports were close on 2^ millions, the 
 balance being well in favour of Scotland. The excise revenue 
 of £30,000 in 1707 had swelled in 1797 to £1,293,084. 
 
 In addition to the business capacity and energy of merchants 
 and manufacturers, finance played an important part in develop- 
 ing the rising prosperity of the country. The three principal 
 banks that had been established in Edinburgh before the middle 
 of the century — ^the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank, and the 
 British linen Company — and banking firms such as Coutts & 
 Co., extended their activity to the provincial towns. Others 
 such as the Perth Banking Company, the Glasgow Arms Bank, 
 and the Ayr Bank, were founded in these towns, in spite of the 
 efiorts Oif the older companies to crush them. Banking, which 
 had long been pursued by merchants as part of their miscel- 
 laneous business, became a separate profession, and the indis- 
 criminate issue of paper money to make good the lack of bullion 
 was decisively checked by Act of Parliament in 1765 in the 
 interest of an improved and reliable currency. 
 
 4. The Growth of Towns 
 
 The industrial and commercial progress of Scotland is also 
 apparent in the expansion of its towns and the growth of popu- 
 lation. In the early years of the century Edinburgh, including 
 Leith, which since the Reformation had been a dependency of 
 the Capital, had a population of 30,000. In 1760 Macpherson 
 records it at double the number. At the close of the century it 
 had swelled to over 80,000. Before the middle of the century a 
 beginning in town extension had been made by the erection of 
 two streets — ^New Street and St John Street — off the north and 
 south sides of the Canongate respectively. In 1763 the North 
 Loch was drained and the North Bridge completed in 1772, three 
 years after the collapse of the south end of it owing to the 
 scamped work of the engineer, W. Mylne, and the lack of 
 
22 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 proper supervision on the part of the Town Council. Further 
 west a huge mound had been constructed across the valley some 
 years earlier. In 1788 the Register House was finished and 
 before the end of the century the magnificent New Town had 
 taken shape as far west as Castle Street, the plan of this northern 
 extension being prepared by James Craig, a nephew of the poet 
 Thomson. A beginning of expansion on the south side had also 
 been made by the construction of the South Bridge over the 
 Cowgate and the building of George Square. Town extension 
 was a much-needed boon in a city like Edinburgh which, owing 
 to its situation on a ridge between two ravines and its lack of 
 cleanliness, was long a cramped and unsavoury place to live in. 
 The migration which began in the second half of the century to 
 the New Town was the beginning of a much belated change for 
 the better. Previous to this period the quaint, homely life of 
 an earlier time had changed little. Even lords and lairds, 
 judges, professors, lawyers, ministers, and physicians lived in 
 scanty flats up the dark, dirty stairs of its closes and wynds, as 
 well as in its spacious High Street and Canongate. For business 
 as well as for drinking, which was an essential of many a trans- 
 action, numerous taverns were available. A regular prac- 
 tice was to repair thither several times a day, and for this 
 dubious practice bad and insufficient housing was probably 
 largely responsible. Drinking bouts, with their multifarious 
 toasts and sentiments, were also an obligation of private hospi- 
 tality throughout the greater part of the century, though con- 
 viviality was happily becoming more self-respecting towards the 
 end of it. Life and character might become less original owing 
 to such changes, but the loss was counterbalanced by the gain 
 in refinement and propriety. 
 
 At the time of the Union Glasgow was a pretty town of 12,500 
 inhabitants. In 1760 Macpherson describes it as " a beautiful 
 and increasing city " with 26, or 27,000. Three years later 
 the number was 28,300 and in 1801 its population of 77,385 
 nearly equalled that of Edinburgh. Its commerce had suffered 
 a temporary eclipse during the American War. For this check 
 its merchants speedily found a remedy in the extension of the 
 trade with the Continent and the West Indies. The deepening 
 
THE GROWTH OF TOWNS 23 
 
 of the Clyde and the completion of the Forth and Clyde Canal con- 
 tributed materially to its recovery. In the year in which the 
 war ended it established a Chamber of Commerce for the promo- 
 tion of trade and manufactures. Here is the picture of its 
 surging industry and commerce sketched by Macpherson in 
 1800. " Before America became independent of Great Britain, 
 the foreign commerce of Glasgow was chiefly with that coimtry ; 
 and consequently it was deranged by that event. But the 
 enterprising spirit of the merchants has found new channels of 
 commerce, sufficient to employ their capitals and industry. 
 They have also turned their attention more than formerly to 
 manufactures, whereby the city has become the centre and fos- 
 tering parent of a prodigious number of manufacturing estab- 
 lishments. There are thirty printflelds within the influence of 
 this hive of industry. The towns and villages in a circuit of 
 many miles around, and some at considerable distances, are 
 filled with spinners, weavers, and the many other classes of 
 work-people, depending upon the fabrics of the loom and the 
 stocking frame; and there are in the neighbourhood several 
 ironworks for making cannon and all other articles of cast iron, 
 which, taken collectively, are perhaps scarcely inferior in import- 
 ance to the Carron Works. The works for window glass, bottle 
 glass, and ornamental glass are extensive and thriving. Sugar 
 baking, malting, and brewing are old established concerns. But 
 it would be almost as difficult to particularise all the manu- 
 factures of Glasgow as those of London, and it may suffice to 
 say that manufactures of almost every kind are carried on with 
 spirit and activity, and generally in joint stocks by companies, 
 or, as they are generally called here, concerns, under the manage- 
 ment of one or more of the partners ; and that the manufactures 
 requiring fire have the vast advantage of coals close to the 
 city." 
 
 Glasgow's neighbour. Paisley, had a population of only about 
 4,000 in the middle of the century. In 1792 it had reached 
 14,000 and a large part of the town had been rebuilt within the 
 previous half-dozen years. In the same interval that of Dundee, 
 which had suffered direly at the hands of General Monk in the 
 seventeenth century and had only slowly recovered, had increased 
 
24 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 from 12,000 to 20,000, of Perth from 9,000 to about the same 
 total, of Aberdeen from 15,000 to 24,000, Over the whole 
 coimtry the population had risen from over a million at the 
 beginning of the century to 1^ millions in 1797, and in 1801 by 
 fully an additional 100,000. 
 
 5. James Watt and the Steam Engine 
 
 Part of this prosperity was made possible by James Watt, 
 the improver of the steam engine. Watt, who was bom in 
 1786, early showed a capacity for mechanics. This capacity he 
 inherited from his grandfather who had migrated from Aber- 
 deenshire to Crawfordsdyke, near Greenock, where he taught 
 mathematics and navigation, became bailie of the place, and 
 latterly a prosperous merchant of Greenock. His father, who 
 combined the occupations of shipwright, shipchandler, builder, 
 and general merchant, was also a man of ability and took an 
 active part, as member of the Town Council and Treasurer, in 
 the afiairs of the burgh. His mother, Agnes Muirhead, is 
 described as " a gentlewoman of good understanding and 
 superior endowments." Their son, James, was a delicate boy 
 and received a good deal of his education from his parents. He 
 was a precocious pupil with a taste for mathematics, and very 
 dexterous in the use of the tools with which his father presented 
 him. " Jamie has a fortune at his finger ends " was a saying 
 among his father's workmen. He had the observant, enquiring 
 mind that loves to make experiments and get at the secret of 
 things, as the story of the tea kettle shows. Before he was 15 
 he had twice read Gravesande's Latin Manual on Physics and 
 interested himself in electricity and chemistry. In 1754, at the 
 age of 18, his father, having been overtaken by misfortime in 
 business, sent him to Glasgow to learn the art of mathematical 
 instrument maker. Whilst working for a time with a mechanic 
 who repaired spectacles and fiddles and made fishing tackle, etc., 
 he attracted the notice of Dr Dick, the Professor of Natural 
 Philosophy, who advised him to proceed to London for further 
 instruction in his chosen craft and gave him a letter of intro- 
 duction to a friend. Through this friend he found in Mr Morgan, 
 
JAMES WATT AND THE STEAM ENGINE 25 
 
 mathematical instrument maker, a master willing to give him a 
 year's instruction for £20. Fortified with this increased prac- 
 tical knowledge, he was back in Glasgow in 1758, bringing with 
 him new tools and material wherewith to make others and 
 hoping to start a business of his own. The Guild of Hammer- 
 men, in which a m.athematical instrument maker was required 
 to enrol, required, however, an apprenticeship of seven years in 
 the burgh and without this qualification he could not be 
 admitted. Happily his friends in the University, Adam Smith 
 and Joseph Black among them, came to the rescue and not only 
 employed him as instrument maker within its precincts, where 
 the laws of the Guild did not prevail, but allowed him a room 
 where he could exhibit his instruments for sale. There was, 
 however, little demand for his quadrants and other products 
 and he was fain to make or mend a variety of articles such as 
 fiddles and flutes, spectacles and fishing tackle in order to 
 subsist. Black gave him an order for an organ and though 
 he knew nothing about organs and had no ear for music, he had 
 an extraordinary aptitude for learning how to make things, and 
 made up for the defect by studying the laws of harmony. The 
 organ was, therefore, forthcoming in due course and was a 
 remarkable success. 
 
 In the winter of 1763-64 he turned his attention to the appli- 
 cation of steam as a motive force. He began by experimenting 
 with Newcomen's engine, a model of which was in the Univer- 
 sity. The steam generated in the boiler only produced a few 
 strokes in the piston which works the engine, and the engine 
 stopped. More steam was generated, and the engine would not 
 work at all. The piston in the cylinder in Newcomen's engine 
 was forced up by the steam and thrust down by the pressure 
 of the air on the open top of the cylinder. But the condensing 
 of the steam cooled the cylinder and thus interfered with the 
 steady working of the piston. How to remedy this defect, pro- 
 duced by condensation within the cylinder, was the problem. In 
 seeking a solution Watt began by investigating the properties or 
 nature of steam. He realised that invention depends on the 
 grip of scientific principles— the study of the facts or phenomena 
 of nature, apart from any practical application of them, as the 
 
26 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 true way of arriving at this application. Moreover, he possessed 
 in an eminent degree the faculty of mastering every phase of a 
 subject which excited his interest and engaged his attention — 
 the true test of success in any department of work. As the 
 result of his investigation, he discovered the fact of latent heat 
 in water transformed into steam, which, unknown to him, had 
 already been discovered by Dr Black. He found that one 
 pound of steam blown into cold water heats it six times more than 
 one pound of boiling water poured into the cold water does. 
 This higher rate is the amount of latent heat in the steam. He 
 further found that the total amount of heat in the steam remains 
 the same whatever the pressure, but that 4/5ths of it was lost in 
 heating the cold cylinder and that only l/5th acted on the 
 piston. The problem now was to get the total heat of the steam 
 to act on the piston so as to increase its power fourfold. For 
 this purpose the cylinder in which the piston works had to be as 
 hot as the steam, and to secure this the steam had to be carried 
 off into a separate condenser instead of being left to condense 
 within the cylinder and thereby cool it. This was the truth 
 that flashed on his mind as he walked one Sunday afternoon, early 
 in 1765, on Glasgow Green. To maintain the cylinder at the 
 required temperature he encased it, leaving a space, between it 
 and the case, filled with steam. The cylinder he used for this 
 purpose was a brass syringe connected with a tin can, which 
 served as a condenser, into which the steam rushed after driving 
 up the piston, which was thrust down by the air pressure into 
 the vacuum thus created, and driven up again by a new blast 
 of steam into the cylinder, and so on as long as the steam was 
 applied. The experiment made with this primitive contrivance 
 was a triumphant demonstration of the idea that had flashed 
 on his mind on that fateful Sunday afternoon. 
 
 This experiment he toiled to bring to practical fruition in the 
 model engine which he constructed in an old cellar in the city. 
 The difficulties in the way of success were increased by the lack 
 of skilled workmen in the making of the parts and their conse- 
 quent imperfections. The result was that it " s^nifted at many 
 openings," or joints, and would not work smoothly. A second 
 and larger one, begun in a more commodious workshop, was a 
 
JAMES WATT AND THE STEAM ENGINE 27 
 
 great improvement on the first, though it also, on being set to 
 work, revealed many defects of workmanship. These defects 
 were, however, only mechanical; the principle of the separate 
 condenser was absolutely correct. Want of funds was another 
 difficulty, for the invention could not be perfected without 
 money and the patent which he desired to take out was an ex- 
 pensive matter. The Government of the day certainly did not 
 show an enlightened interest in scientific invention, or any 
 adequate sense of its practical value. He had, besides, to work 
 for his living and do surveying in connection with the canal 
 schemes of the period, and this made heavy inroads on the 
 valuable time which should have been given to the work of per- 
 fecting the engine. Dr Roebuck helped and Dr Black also. At 
 last in 1768 he succeeded in constructing a model which worked 
 smoothly. In August of that year he went to London to secure 
 the patent and after distracting delays finally, on January 5, 
 1769, obtained it. 
 
 Success was, however, still mitigated by failures. An engine, 
 constructed on the successful model, to work Dr Roebuck's coal 
 pits at Bo'ness, showed many defects owing to the imperfect 
 workmanship of the mechanics — so great is the distance between 
 a successftil model and a successful working engine. Worse still, 
 Dr Roebuck got into financial difiiculties over his pits and Dr 
 Black had to come to the rescue to pay for the patent. Happily 
 a new friend and co-operator came on the scene in Matthew 
 Boulton of Birmingham. In 1775 began the memorable partner- 
 ship in the manufacture of engines, though lack of trained 
 mechanics was still a serious drawback. Orders came from 
 ■mine-owners for engines to pump their mines. But there were 
 financial anxieties not a few to overcloud the expansion of the 
 new enterprise, to which Boulton contributed his rare business 
 ability and Watt his still rarer inventive genius. The develop- 
 ment of the engine by a series of further experiments increased 
 the demand for it by enabling it to be used for a great variety of 
 practical work. This development consisted in adapting it to 
 produce a rotatory motion and thus turn the wheels of all kinds 
 of mills and machines, in the use of steam on the expansive 
 principle, in the double acting engine by which steam, instead 
 
28 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 of the air, as in Newcomen's engine, was used to press the piston 
 downwards as well as upwards, in the composite engine in which 
 the same steam worked the piston of a second cylinder and thus 
 doubled the power. These and other improvements were 
 covered by the patents of 1781, 1782, and 1784, and at last, in 
 the second half of the twenty-five years of co-operation of the 
 two partners, prosperity dawned. Both retired in 1800, leaving 
 the management of the firm to their sons, and Watt was enabled 
 to enjoy the fruits of his strenuous career in a happy old age 
 " when he enjoyed life as he had never done in his youth." He 
 lived nearly twenty years after his retirement, dying at Heath- 
 field in Staffordshire in 1819, after he had seen the application 
 of the isteam engine in the steamship and the railway 
 locomotive. 
 
 In 1787 Mr James Taylor suggested to Mr Millar of Dalswin- 
 ton, to whose sons he was tutor, the idea of applying the steam 
 engine to propel ships. Mr Millar caught at the idea as a solu- 
 tion of the problem of propelling ships by mechanical contriv- 
 ance, to which he had for some time been directing his attention. 
 To this end he had made use of a paddle wheel fitted between 
 two boats and turnd by the hand. By this device he had suc- 
 ceeded in propelling a double boat at a speed of several miles an 
 hour on a trial trip made from Leith. Taylor suggested to him 
 that steam should be applied as a substitute for manual power 
 in order to obviate the severe labour required to move the 
 paddles. He found in William Symington an engineer capable 
 of carrying out his idea. Symington constructed an engine to 
 be used for driving the paddles and the experiment took place in 
 Dalswinton Loch in the summer of 1788. The engine mounted 
 by him on the deck of the double boat propelled the paddle 
 wheels, placed in the space between the two boats, at the rate of 
 five miles an hour. The experiment was a success, but nothing 
 further was done to develop it until 1801, when Symington 
 succeeded in interesting Lord Dundas, one of the directors of 
 the Forth and Clyde Canal, in the enterprise. Taking advantage 
 of Watt's improvements, he constructed an engine which pro- 
 pelled a paddle boat, the Charlotte Dundas, on the Canal at a 
 speed of between six and seven miles an hour. The boat was 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 29 
 
 used to tow barges on the Canal and was the first steam propelled 
 vessel to be put to practical use. Unfortunately the directors of 
 the Canal, fearing lest the action of the waves caused by the 
 paddles should damage the canal banks, decided to discontinue 
 its use, and Symington, the inventor of the first practical steam 
 boat, having failed to obtain an annual pension from the 
 Government, died in poverty. 
 
 6. Social Conditions 
 
 Social conditions underwent a gradual change in keeping with 
 the economic advance characteristic of the second half of the 
 century. During the first half of it manners and customs still 
 differed little from those prevailing in the previous century. In 
 the country houses of lords and lairds, ladies in middle age wore 
 the carefully handled dresses which had been part of their 
 marriage outfit. Whilst these lords and lairds had little money 
 to dispose of, there was plenty of substantial food on their tables, 
 in virtue of the payment of rent in poultry and other kinds of 
 produce. The standard of comfort was still, however, rather 
 primitive even in the houses of the country gentry. The beds 
 usually stood in inlets in the walls, with sliding doors, and the 
 windows of the rooms were without sashes. Food was eaten 
 from wooden or pewter plates. Glasses were scarce, if bottles 
 and casks were numerous, and in many households the ale or 
 wine was drunk from the same glass, which went the round of 
 the table. Knives and forks were not too plentiful and it was 
 not considered boorish to pick the bones and make use of the 
 knife to convey food to the mouth. Tea drinking was creeping 
 in and became common in great houses towards the end of the 
 first quarter of the century, in spite of the protests of old- 
 fashioned people against " the vile drug." Men of rank kept a 
 lumbering coach, imported from Holland and drawn by six horses, 
 to convey them when on a journey over the deeply rutted roads, 
 with two footmen standing behind armed with long poles to prise 
 it out of the ruts, and one to go in front to give warning of any 
 obstruction. Lairds went on horseback with their ladies behind 
 
30 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 them, and one of their labouring men on another horse to attend 
 them. Both wore homespun made of the yam which the 
 members of the household spun on the rock and reel, and later 
 the spinning wheel, and woven by the village " wabster," 
 except on special occasions when gayer garments were donned. 
 The plaid was an indispensable part of feminine clothing for 
 gentle and simple, though it differed in quality according to 
 rank. English broadcloth and foreign fashions were, however, 
 like tea, beginning to appear from about the first quarter of the 
 century. The younger generation was learning these fashions in 
 the capital, or in Holland and France, whither the sons of nobles 
 and gentry went to study law or medicine. 
 
 Despite these greatly deplored innovations, fashion changed 
 slowly, and in Edinburgh in 1720 there was only one milliner. 
 In the country the travelling tailor and weaver long sufiSced for 
 the simple needs of the country housewives of the upper class. 
 Family life in these homes, under the Calvinist regime, was of 
 the Spartan type, parents being regarded by their children not 
 only with reverence, but with awe, the rigid intercourse between 
 them allowing no scope for familiarity or endearment. Sunday 
 must have been for the young a fearful and tiresome day, being 
 devoted to religious exercises, private as well as public, from 
 morning to night, including attendance twice at long and heavy 
 services in the kirk. Whilst there was much intercourse and 
 mutual hospitality among the gentry of a parish or district, it 
 was conditioned by the political passions and prejudices of the 
 day. Whig and Jacobite assorted little together, the Stuart 
 loyalty of the latter being obnoxious to the former, while the 
 Jacobite hated with a perfect hatred the Hanoverian allegiance 
 and the Presbyterian strictness of his Whig neighbour. In 
 those days of limited incomes and large families it was not deemed 
 a humiliation to apprentice younger sons to shopkeepers in 
 training for the vocation of " merchant," who was a retailer of 
 a miscellany of articles ranging from candles and tobacco to lace, 
 wine, and pearls. Many of these Edinburgh " merchants " 
 were the brothers of lairds, baronets, and even lords. In the 
 Highlands, where prejudice and pride were strong, a gentleman, 
 whilst despising shopkeeping, might be found keeping an inn, or 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 81 
 
 plying the trade of a cattle dealer and selling to English graziers 
 the black cattle which he drove down from the hills and glens to 
 Criefl market or tryst. 
 
 The lack of communication tended to prolong this old world 
 social life. In 1740 Lord Lovat took eleven days to travel in 
 his diariot from Inverness to Edinburgh, with numerous mishaps 
 to the vehicle by the way. In 1749 a stage coach began to run 
 between Edinburgh and Glasgow twice a week at a fare of 9s. 6d. 
 and performed the journey of 46 miles in twelve hours — a great 
 improvement on previous times, when a coach and six horses 
 required a day and a half. By the middle of the century carriers 
 were only beginning to carry goods between the towns, in place 
 of cadgers with their creels on horseback. Even as late as 1770 
 a carrier took a fortnight for the journey from Edinburgh to 
 Selkirk and back with a load of six hundredweight. Up to 
 1754 there was only a monthly stage coach between Edinburgh 
 and London, which did the journey in from twelve to sixteen 
 days, letters being carried by the post in six days. From 
 Edinburgh to the larger towns as far north as Inverness and 
 Thurso letters were at first carried by foot postmen, till the 
 horse-post gradually introduced a quicker mode of transport. 
 The primitive character of Scottish roads, which underwent no 
 improvement till the second half of the century, certainly offered 
 little inducement to travel. 
 
 From about 1760 the old ways underwent a marked trans- 
 formation. New mansion houses, better furnishings, a more 
 varied diet, and more sumptuous fashions came in. Better 
 roads led to better vehicles and more rapid communication, and 
 this of itself always brings with it social change. Instead of 
 one stage coach a month from Edinburgh to London, there were 
 now two daily, which reached the Capital in 60 hours. Glasgow 
 ultimately came into direct communication with Ix)ndon, the 
 journey lasting five hours longer. By the end of the century the 
 journey between it and Edinburgh was reduced to six hours. 
 Postal communication and inns were also greatly improved. 
 The improvement in agriculture and trade brought increasing 
 wealth — another unfailing innovator of old habits and customs in 
 the style of living. The Statistical Account of Scotland, 
 
32 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 written between 1790 and 1797, and throwing a flood of light on 
 the social condition of the people, is full of complaints of what 
 the writers, who were usually the parish ministers, deem the 
 extravagant addiction of their parishioners to new fashions in 
 dress and unwonted luxuries. The round hat has replaced the 
 Kilmarnock bonnet as the headdress for men on Sundays and 
 market days, English broadcloth the old homespun. Their 
 women folks despise the coarse stuffs of less pretentious times 
 for silks and cotton. Formerly a watch and a clock were 
 rarities in the parish. Now every farmer has an eight-day clock 
 and nearly every farm servant a watch. The use of whisky and 
 tea for ale and beer has spread like a plague over the land, and 
 the widespread practice of tea drinking comes in for more severe 
 censure than even the immoderate use of whisky. Fifty years 
 ago a tea kettle was usually only to be found in the laird's 
 mansion or the minister's manse : now the tea kettle is in evidence 
 in nearly every cottage and is almost invariably regarded by the 
 writers as a most ominous sign of the degeneration of the times. 
 The growing use of tobacco among both, men and women is 
 equally dangerous to both health and morals. The increase in 
 the consumption of tea is all the more surprising in view of the 
 price, which was 4s. per lb., whilst the pound of sugar sold at 
 lljd. Wages had begun to rise and with this rise the price of 
 food had also risen during these fifty years. A poimd of beef or 
 mutton, which cost Id. or l|^d. per pound about the middle of 
 the century, cost 6|d. or 6d. towards the end of it. Similarly the 
 price of a dozen of eggs had risen from Id. to 4d. or 6d., a fowl 
 with a dozen of eggs from 4d. to between Is. 4>d. and Is. 9d., 
 a pair of geese from 2s. to 5s. 6d., a turkey from 3s. to 7s., a 
 pair of pigeons from l|d. to 6d., fourteen haddocks from 1^. to 
 Is. 6d., and a bottle of claret from Is. to 6s. Another indication 
 of what even these censorious writers regard as an improvement 
 was the general use of forks and knives at table, which had pre- 
 viously been unknown among the country people at least. The 
 diet of the farming class, if not so generally that of their servants, 
 showed a corresponding advance in the greater use of meat. The 
 housing of the working class was also beginning to show a 
 relative improvement in the better cultivated districts at least. 
 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 33 
 
 The fishing population— a numerous body in the east coast 
 towns and villages — constituted a class by itself. The women 
 took an active part in their husbands' labour, gathering bait, 
 baiting the lines, carrying the fish in creels, containing perhaps a 
 himdredweight, to their customers or to the market, often a 
 long distance off; carrying, too, their husbands on their backs 
 through the shallow water, even in the coldest weather, to their 
 boats in places where there was no pier, in order " to keep their 
 men's feet dry." Withal a hardy race to whom Dr Carlyle, in 
 his account of Inveresk, and other writers devote a well merited 
 meed of admiration. 
 
 The people led laborious lives and seem to have taken life 
 rather seriously. Holidays were few, recreation and festivity 
 limited. Hallowe'en and Beltane (1st May) were celebrated by 
 the lighting of bonfires, with the quaint practices, reminiscent of 
 pagan times, so racily depicted by Bums in the case of the 
 former. Yule and New Year were feast days in the material 
 sense, and the occasion of shooting matches, football, and other 
 diversions. On Shrove Tuesday the boys indulged in cock-fight- 
 ing, the dues going to the schoolmaster as part of the perquisites 
 of his office. Curling was the favourite winter game in the 
 south. Archery still had its devotees, and there was golf on the 
 links at Musselburgh, Leith, St Andrews, and Montrose. The 
 tendency by the end of the century was towards increased social 
 intercourse among neighbours and friends by the giving of 
 dinners and suppers. The reaping of the last sheaf, called the 
 maiden, was celebrated in some parishes by bringing it home to 
 the music of bagpipes or fiddles and spending the evening in 
 dancing and merriment, the girl whose fortunate lot it was to 
 gather it acting as queen of the feast. Another old time occa- 
 sion of festivity was " the daubing," when the neighbours 
 assembled to assist in building the mud^ walls of a new farm- 
 house, and after the operations, were regaled with meat and 
 drink, the feast finishing with a dance. Marriages and even 
 funerals were also the occasions of festivity and were associated 
 with many popular superstitions. Certain days and months — 
 Friday and the months of January and May — were regarded as 
 unlucky for marrying. Some would only marry wben the moon 
 c 
 
34 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 was waxing and the tide flowing. The day once fixed lor the 
 ceremony must, if at all possible, be observed for fear of the evil 
 consequences that were supposed to follow a change of date. 
 Marriage being " a tying of the knot," all knots in the apparel 
 of bride and bridegroom were loosed before the ceremony and 
 tied again after it. A common feature was the penny 
 wedding, the company present providing by its contributions the 
 feast, which lasted for a couple of days and was usually the 
 occasion of much rough merriment and excess. It was cus- 
 tomary to invite the whole parish to a funeral, the beadle going 
 round to proclaim the death and the invitation, and preceding 
 the coflftn ringing his bell on the way to the graveyard. Wakes 
 or watching the corpse by the neighbours before burial were held, 
 and the spirit of the departed was assumed to remain near the 
 body till it was committed to the grave and to keep watch at the 
 churchyard gate, till relieved by that of the next person who was 
 buried. The day of the funeral was practically a holiday, for 
 the whole of the inhabitants of a parish were invited to attend 
 and refreshed themselves only too well before and after the 
 obsequies. The funeral, in fact, seems to have often ended in 
 a carouse. " From the death to the interment," notes one 
 writer, whose account seems to be generally applicable, " the 
 house is thronged by night and day and the conversation is often 
 very unsuitable to the occasion. The whole parish is invited at 
 10 o'clock in the forenoon of the day of the funeral, but it is 
 soon enough to attend at 3 o'clock afternoon. Every one is 
 entertained with a variety of meats and drinks. Not a few 
 return to the dirge (potation after the funeral) and sometimes 
 forget what they have been doing and where they are," 
 Happily he adds that in his own day (at the close of the cen- 
 tury) these excesses were pEissing away. 
 
 Superstition was not confined to marriages and funerals. The 
 belief in fairies, ghosts, and witches was still common, especially 
 in the north. Ghosts of course appeared to the benighted wan- 
 derer in lonely places. Similarly the less fearsome fairies were 
 to be seen in their green apparel and beaming faces, and one 
 previously sceptical clergyman returning from a Presbytery 
 dinner was fain to confess that he had been seized by them and 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 85 
 
 carried in the air to his own door ! What were accounted super- 
 natural sounds were heard at night about the farm steading and 
 regularly repeated, it might be, for weeks and months on end, 
 until some old man, who possessed the art of conjuring the evil 
 thing, was sent for to exercise his skill on the haunted spot. No 
 fisherman would dream of going to sea on certain days or turn 
 his boat against the sun's course, and generally the lucky way 
 in performing many actions was that from east to west. 
 Second sight and the evil eye were articles of faith, incanta- 
 tions and charms as a protection from " scaith " or evil still 
 common. Other devices, such as drawing imaginary circles, 
 placing knives in the walls of houses, or branches of mountain 
 ash above the stalls of the cattle also served to frustrate the 
 ill intentions of the evil spirits. Lakes, wells, and rivers had 
 their genii who could heal diseases and foretell events to those 
 who sought their haunts and made them a present of some 
 small object. Saints' or holy wells, such as St Columba's or 
 St Fillan's well, were invested with the same virtue, the saint 
 receiving for his kind offices in healing disease a variety of 
 oSerings such as pins, needles, bits of clothing, etc. 
 
 7. Education and Culture 
 
 The establishment of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland at 
 the Revolution placed the schools under the supervision of the 
 Presbytery within whose bounds they were situated. All 
 schoolmasters were required to sign the Confession of Faith as 
 a condition of holding their office, and in 1706 the ministers 
 were enjoined by the General Assembly to visit and examine all 
 public schools within their Presbyteries at least twice a year. 
 This ecclesiastical supervision obtained throughout the cen- 
 tury, though there were occasional attempts on the part of 
 schoolmasters to evade the obligation to sign the Confession and 
 of Town Councils to dispute the right of visitation by Presby- 
 teries of the burgh schools without their concurrence. The 
 tendency towards the end of it was to question and curtail the 
 jurisdiction of the Presbyteries to the extent of allowing an 
 
86 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 appeal to the civil courts against their decisions. Their zeal 
 was, however, not confined to keeping an alert eye on the re- 
 ligious views of the schoolmaster and on the instruction of their 
 pupils in the Catechism. They strove with laudable persever- 
 ance to bring into operation the law of 1696 directing the 
 establishment of a school in every parish, which heritors were 
 only too ready to neglect. Their efforts were not very suc- 
 cessful and a large proportion of the population in many Low- 
 land parishes could not read or write. The state of education 
 was far worse in the Highlands, though the Society for the 
 Propagation of Christian Knowledge strove to provide at least 
 religious instruction in the remoter districts, and the church 
 had established 109 parish schools in the Highlands by the year 
 1732. Distance from the school was one of the difficulties in 
 educating the dwellers of the Highland glens, and even at the 
 end of the century a very large percentage of the people were 
 still illiterate. Hence the old custom in both Highlands and 
 Lowlands of reading the Psalms to be sung line by line in order 
 that the people might join in the singing. Though illiterate 
 the people in the Lowlands were not so ignorant as one might 
 infer from the imperfections of elementary education. They 
 learned a great deal from the services which it was obligatory 
 to attend and were well drilled in the Catechism by the minis- 
 ters who held regular visitations for catechising their flock. 
 Their knowledge at least of divinity of the old fashioned 
 orthodox type was by no means contemptible, and many who 
 could neither read nor write could, in their own narrow 
 fashion, expatiate with no mean force on the fundamentals. 
 
 On the whole, however, popular education throughout the 
 century was at a low level. The schoolmasters were miser- 
 ably paid, the school was often but a wretched hovel which also 
 served as the poor master's dwelling. Many of them lived 
 their strenuous lives on the verge of starvation owing to the 
 niggardliness of Town Councils and heritors, whose sense of the 
 value of education, measured by the means they provided to 
 maintain it, was lamentably deficient. It is strange to read 
 that the pittance allowed the schoolmaster as salary was eked 
 out, not only by small quarteriy fees, but from the proceeds of 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 87 
 
 cock-fighting on Eastern's E'en, when the boys brought their 
 cocks to the schoolroom, paid the master a trifle for the right 
 to pit them against each other, and in addition left the dead 
 birds as a perquisite of his office. Nevertheless in not a few of 
 these schools sterling work was done in return for this pitiful 
 remuneration. From many of them " the lad of pairts " made 
 his way to the University and some to distinction in tht pro- 
 fessions. Some of these schoolmasters themselves, like 
 Thomas Ruddiman, attained to distinction in learning and 
 literature. Very noteworthy is the democratic spirit which 
 embraced the children of all classes in a common instruction, the 
 son of the laird sitting beside the son of the farmer and the 
 cottar on the same bench. 
 
 The first quarter of the century is rather a dreary period in 
 the history of the Scottish Universities. The higher educa- 
 tion had suffered from the political and ecclesiastical turmoil 
 of the previous century. The system in vogue by which the 
 " regent " or professor taught to his students all the subjects 
 necessary to a degree was not favourable to distinction or even 
 proficiency in any one subject on the part of the professor. This 
 objectionable system was discarded at Edinburgh in 1708, at 
 Glasgow in 1727. At St Andrews it lingered till near the middle 
 of the century and at King's College, Aberdeen, till the end of 
 it. The instruction was given in Latin, in which the student had 
 been well drilled in the Grammar Schools, and it was only in the 
 second quarter of the century that English began to take its 
 place as the medium of lecturing. The students who could 
 afiord it lived in rooms within the colleges where a strict discip- 
 line, aggravated by exacting religious exercises, prevailed, with 
 the result that outside residence was greatly preferred. The 
 supervision, especially on Sunday, when they had to go twice 
 to church, and were examined afterwards on their knowledge of 
 the sermon and dared not go out for recreation, was indeed a 
 burden grievous to be borne. Most of them were as a rule lads 
 of from 13 to 15 and careful supervision was advisable in view 
 of their extreme youth. Excessive regulation was, however, bad 
 educationally and in the second half of the century, under the 
 humanising influence of moderatism, it was going out of fashion. 
 
88 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Philosophy and physics were obligatory for a degree in Arts 
 and they were still taught in the old scholastic fashion in the 
 early part of the century. Gradually, however, as the " regent- 
 ing " system disappeared, more competent teachers and new 
 methods of teaching brought a new life into the class rooms and 
 raised the Universities out of the rut of mediocrity. A number 
 of chairs in law and medicine, which had hitherto been studied 
 in Holland or France by the more reputable practitioners, were 
 founded, and the number of students at Edinburgh and Glasgow 
 was more than doubled during the second half of the century, 
 Edinburgh having 1,600 in 1800 and Glasgow 800 in 1792. At 
 Edinburgh the stately building designed by Adam was begun 
 in 1789 to replace the humbler tenement of an earlier time. This 
 new life may be said to date from the advent of the mathema- 
 tician Colin McLaurin — a worthy successor of the three Gregorys 
 — at Edinburgh in 1786, and of the philosopher Francis 
 Hutcheson at Glasgow in 1780. Hutcheson's lectures on 
 Philosophy, which were delivered in English, " constituted," 
 says his recent biographer, Professor Scott, " a revolution in 
 academic teaching." He discarded the old text books and the 
 old scholastic method and gave his students the benefit of his 
 own inspiring thought. Among those who conferred distinction 
 on themselves and the Universities as scholars or men of science 
 were Principal Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, 
 Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, John Robison, Joseph Black, the 
 three Munros, John and James Gregory, William Cullen, Hugh 
 Blair, and Robert Simson. It would be easy to enlarge the list 
 by including many names of men of varying degree of eminence 
 in order to emphasise the great advance made since the seven- 
 teenth century by the Universities as centres of a vigorous intel- 
 lectual life. This advance is in truth as remarkable as that 
 observable in the" industrial sphere. The intellectual and moral 
 energy, which had expended itself in the political and ecclesiasti- 
 cal struggles of the preceding century, now found scope in 
 literary and scientific pursuits and completely redeemed Scot- 
 land from the general intellectual mediocrity of that century. 
 
 Not only within, but outside the Universities there was a 
 notable rise in culture. In the society of the Capital and the 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 39 
 
 University towns the leaven of an active intellectual life was at 
 work throughout the latter half of the century. The literati of 
 Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and Aberdeen could compare favour- 
 ably with those of London or any other European capital, and 
 the reputation and influence of some of them were not confined 
 to this side of the Border or even of the Channel. The Scottish 
 intellect in the eighteenth century earned the enthusiastic 
 appreciation of Mr Buckle who, after emptying the vials of his 
 wrath and also of his prejudice on the heads of the Scottish 
 divines of the seventeenth, had only admiration for " the 
 eminent and enterprising thinkers (of the eighteenth) whose 
 genius lighted up every department of knowledge and whose 
 minds, fresh and vigorous as the morning, opened for themselves 
 a new career, and secured for themselves a high place in the 
 annals of European intellect." Hume influenced in a powerful 
 degree the thought of the Continent as well as of his native land, 
 though he failed to obtain the chair of Moral Philosophy at 
 Edinburgh. Adam Smith may be said to have created the 
 science of Political Economy, Hutton that of Geology. Besides 
 these there was a large number of highly cultured men in the 
 professions — lawyers like Monboddo, Kames, and Henry 
 Erskine; and ministers like John Erskine, Alexander Webster, 
 Robert Wallace, and Jupiter Carlyle. Literature in the stricter 
 sense found in Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson pre- 
 cursors of Robert Bums, the peerless lyric poet, in whose muse 
 vernacular Scottish poetry attained its perfection and its climax. 
 His songs alone would have made him immortal. Remarkable is 
 the bevy of ladies who also excelled, on a limited scale, as song 
 writers. Mrs Cockbum, Miss Elliot, Joanna Baillie, Lady Anne 
 Lindsay, Lady Naime gave voice alike to the pathos and the 
 humour of Scottish life, high and humble, in such gems as 
 " Auld Robin Gray," " The Flowers of the Forest," " The Land 
 o' the Leal," " The Auld Hoose," and " The Laird o' Cockpen." 
 Jacobitism redeemed its exaggerated king-worship by the 
 touching devotion of such outpourings of its loyalty as " Flora 
 MacDonald's Lament." The romantic note also found expres- 
 sion in James Macpherson's Fingal and Temora, which professed 
 to discover to a responsive age the authentic remains of the 
 
40 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ancient Gaelic muse. These Ossianic poems were largely the 
 composition of their would-be discoverer, whilst embodying 
 genuine fragments of traditional poetry and reflecting with con- 
 siderable success the mystic Celtic spirit. But they caught on 
 in spite of hostile critics like Dr Johnson, who was stoutly 
 opposed by Dr Blair, and they gave a powerful impulse to the 
 Romantic movement in European literature. Music, both vocal 
 and instrumental, had many amateur devotees in Edinburgh, 
 who performed at the concerts given in St Cecilia's Hall in the 
 Cowgate, and in 1764 a playhouse was licensed in the Capital 
 where the citizens might -gratify their taste for the drama with- 
 out fear of the law and the outcry of the Kirk against such a 
 Satanic innovation. AUan Ramsay, bookseller as well as poet 
 and wigmaker, did much for the wider diffusion of culture by 
 starting a circulating library in 1726, which provided, in spite 
 of the ecclesiastical censor, the latest literature from London. 
 Even among the country people the old taste for edifying works 
 of divinity was beginning to relax and in place of Peden's 
 Prophecies, or Rutherford's Letters, or Boston's Fourfold State, 
 the coarse popular chap books of a Dugal Graham were being 
 read at many a cottage fireside. Hundreds of thousands of 
 these popular books were being sold about 1770, though, unfor- 
 tunately, the widespread demand by no means denoted a 
 growing refinement of popular taste. 
 
 In philosophy, political science, and literature, in particular, 
 Scotland in the second half of the eighteenth century contri- 
 buted what may fairly be termed an epoch-making quota to the 
 intellectual life of the age. In respect of its quality and its 
 influence, the achievement of Hume, Adam Smith, and Bums in 
 their respective spheres takes a place of the first rank in the 
 history of European culture. From 1789, when he published his 
 Treatise of Human Nature, till his death in 1776, Hume 
 steadily added to his reputation as a thinker by a series of 
 philosophical works, including the Philosophical Essays Con- 
 cerning Human Understanding, the Enquiry Concerning the 
 Principles of Morals, and the Natural History of Religion, 
 besides his History of England and a series of Essays on Politics 
 and Ethics. In his recent book on English Philosophers and 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 41 
 
 Schools of Philosophy Professor Seth pronounces him " the 
 greatest English philosopher," though his system of thought has 
 bred many critics 'and antagonists. He was what is termed an 
 empiricist in philosophy. In other words, he not only based all 
 knowledge on experience, but held that the mind itself is " but 
 a bimdle of different conceptions." His system accordingly 
 tends to scepticism, to shake belief in the identity, the reality of 
 the perceiving self, apart from its perceptions, and, when applied 
 to revealed religion, to strike at the foundations of received 
 beliefs. But it was acutely and powerfully reasoned and exer- 
 cised a decisive influence by quickening the thought of men like 
 Reid, and especially Kant and Hegel, who elaborated their 
 antagonistic systems under his stimulating influence. In this 
 respect his influence on the development of modem thought was 
 far-reaching. 
 
 The germ of Adam Smith's epoch-making work as an 
 economist is to be found in the lectures on Justice and Police, 
 which he delivered whilst Professor of Moral Philosophy at 
 Glasgow University, and which were only lately discovered and 
 published. These lectures afford convincing proof that he had 
 thought out the main principles of his more mature work on The 
 Wealth of Nations independently of the French writers from 
 whom he was long believed to have borrowed them. They 
 were delivered long before he had met Quesnay and Turgot in 
 France. It was, however, during a two years' sojourn in France 
 in 1765-66, where he took the opportunity of discussing economic 
 problems with these distinguished economists, that he began to 
 write the Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of 
 Nations, which he gave to the world in 1776. In it he sought 
 to undermine the Mercantile or Protective system which was then 
 and had long been in vogue, and to demonstrate that freedom of 
 trade and industry was the true way to develop both. Under 
 the Mercantile system the chief object of the State was con- 
 ceived to be the maintenance of its power for defence and offence 
 against other States which were regarded as its rivals for power. 
 Hence the necessity of amassing treasure which provides the 
 sinews of war, of restricting by navigation laws its trade to its 
 own shipping, which provides a strong navy, of fostering popula- 
 
42 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 tion which provides a strong army. The idea was that, in order 
 to maintain itself against its rivals and grow wealthy and power- 
 ful, it must protect itself by restriction of trade and industry in 
 its own interest. The principle, in common language, was to 
 better yourself by beggaring your neighbour, since the gain of 
 other nations is so much loss to one's own. In place of this 
 system Smith advocated one based on freedom of trade. 
 National wealth, he contends, does not consist in the amovmt of 
 national treasure, but in productive labour. An indispensable 
 condition of production is liberty, " leaving every man free, as 
 long as he does not violate the laws of justice, to pursue his own 
 interest in his own way." The exercise of this liberty benefits 
 industry by giving scope for man's labour. Therefore all the 
 artificial restrictions of industry in the form of protective devices 
 (close corporations or guilds, bounties, monopolies) in vogue 
 under the Mercantile system are injurious to industry by ham- 
 pering production. Equally beneficial is the exercise of liberty 
 in the domain of commerce, whether internal or foreign. What- 
 ever tends to favour the free exchange of commodities only 
 benefits the people. In the domain of foreign commerce in 
 particular, the less restriction the better. The idea that wealth 
 consists in treasure and that, therefore, a nation must export 
 more than it imports in order to have a favourable balance in 
 money as the result of its trade is false. If foreign trade in- 
 creases production it increases wealth apart altogether from a 
 favourable money balance. But it will not increase production 
 if a nation acts on the principle of trying to keep down the 
 commerce and industry of other nations on the assumption of 
 a mistaken self interest. Self interest will really derive more 
 advantage from the prosperity of these nations, because their 
 prosperity will increase their power of buying from others what 
 they do not produce. Therefore the less restriction, the greater 
 freedom, the better. Mutual self interest consists in making 
 international trade as free and consequently as active as possible. 
 The work was a direct challenge to prevailing economic opinion 
 and practice. But it made a powerful impression on the 
 economic thought of the time and exercised a marked influence 
 on the fiscal policy of the country, as is shown by the commercial 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 43 
 
 treaty in a free trade direction concluded by Pitt with France in 
 1786. Some of its contentions and conclusions have been chal- 
 lenged and improved on by later economic writers like Bastiat. 
 There came in the second half of the nineteenth century a strong 
 reaction against the competitive spirit in industry, which his 
 system tended to foster, in the direction of subordinating the 
 interest of the individual to that of the commimity in the social 
 and economic sphere. But in the main its practical influence 
 has lasted. The work was, in fact, not a mere chain of reason- 
 ing on economic principles. This reasoning was enriched and 
 strengthened by the historic data on which its author liberally 
 drew to illustrate and enforce it. And it not only developed and 
 advocated a new theory. It sought both to show a better way 
 of increasing national prosperity and with it the material wel- 
 fare of the people and to attain a better international system, 
 based on the mutual interest of the nations. 
 
 The muse of Robert Bums whose short, if meteoric career as 
 poet began in 1786, when he ventured to publish a first collection 
 of poems, seldom goes far afield, though it ere long carried his 
 fame the wide world over. It is concerned largely with himself, 
 with the scenery amid which he lived, the people among whom 
 he dwelt. His poetry is the man as he toiled, and loved, and 
 suffered; caroused, and erred, and repented; dreamed, and 
 aspired, and pitied. It is instinct with life in all its 
 phases — ^grave and gay, tragic and comic, high and low, 
 good and bad, as the poet experienced and saw it. Just 
 because he was so alive himself, he has a keen eye for 
 the unreal— for pretension, hypocrisy, quackery, and cant — 
 and withers it in the cutting blast of his satire. Witness 
 " Death and Dr Hornbook." He cannot refrain from 
 exercising it even on the Kirk and its narrow Calvinist creed, as 
 in " Holy Willie's Prayer," " The Holy Fair," " The Kirk's 
 Alarm," and " The Twa Herds." Of course he exaggerates the 
 failings of ministers and creeds, as satire, to be effective, must 
 do, and his own failings were certainly fitted to draw on him the 
 attention of the censor in the pulpit. Nevertheless there was 
 material enough for the satirist to work on in the formalism and 
 hypocrisy in which conventional religion was too apt to deck 
 
44 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 itself, and the satirist's blast did good in helping to clear the 
 religious atmosphere of his time. It ought to be remembered, 
 too, that, with all his failings, the satirist was a deeply religious 
 man, as " The Cottar's Saturday Night " and many other pieces, 
 as well as his deliberate statements on the subject in his letters to 
 Mr Cunningham and Mrs McLehose, prove. As a moralist he 
 was, at his best, superlative, and no better advice on the right 
 conduct of life could be given to the young than " The Epistle 
 to a Young Friend." Such utterances are the best antidotes to 
 the unfortunate tendency, which he shared with his age, to 
 glorify the drinking habit, of which he finally became the tragic 
 victim. Conviviality, coupled with sobriety, was not the 
 fashion in those days, and Bums' influence undoubtedly helped 
 to prolong the fashion, to the ruin of many besides himself. 
 Even here the moralist does not fail to utter a warning note on 
 occasion out of his own sad experience. Of the humour of 
 which the Scottish tongue and the Scottish temperament are 
 capable, he is the peerless medium in rhyme at least. What 
 more inimitable than " Tam o' Shanter " and the " Address to 
 the Deil " ? And who has pictured the social customs and 
 joys of the people, as in " Hallowe'en," with such spirit and 
 masterly simplicity? Peerless, too, are the songs in which he 
 celebrates the passion which he could not always control, but to 
 which he gave the sweetest and finest expression in such lyrics 
 as " My Nannie's Awa," " Green grow the Rashes," " Com 
 Rigs are Bonnie," " Afton Water," and many more. Pity that 
 these and other lyric gems of the Scottish muse are so little 
 appreciated by our boys and girls, our young men and maidens, 
 who all too generally prefer the rubbish of the music hall to the 
 treasures of the bards of former days, even of the chief of them. 
 
 8. Religious Life 
 
 The change from Episcopacy to Presbyterianism at the Revolu- 
 tion left much bitter feeling in the south-west and in the region 
 north of the Tay, where the Episcopalians were very strong. 
 This feeling survived till well into the first half of the eighteenth 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 45 
 
 century, when a new generation of clergy had taken possession 
 of the parishes and the old animosities begotten of the persecu- 
 tion of the Presbyterians by the Episcopalians before, and of the 
 Episcopalians by the Presbyterians after, the Revolution died 
 down, and were only revived for a brief period by the excitement 
 of the Forty-Five. Their place was taken by the outbreak of 
 ecclesiastical contention within the Church, which caused no 
 little ferment among the people, in certain districts at least, and 
 resulted in a series of small schisms. Religion entered deeply 
 into the lite of the people. There were long services on Sunday, 
 which it was obligatory to attend, and on at least one week day, 
 whilst the minister carried the instruction of the pulpit to the 
 homes of his parishioners by systematic visitation and examina- 
 tion in the Cathechism and the Scriptures. The churches in 
 which they worshipped were often mean and miserable hovels, 
 ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, and for long unheated and unseated, 
 which the parsimonious heritors neglected to keep in repair. 
 " Dark, damp, dirty hovels " is the description which the 
 minister of Glenorchy applies to many of them even at the end 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The great " occasion " of the year in the religious life was the 
 celebration of the Communion, when the people flocked from the 
 neighbouring parishes to the parish church in which the Sacra- 
 ment was to be held. The services extended over several days in 
 addition to Simday. Popular ministers drew great crowds, and in 
 " The Holy Fair " Bums has rather irreverently given a vivid 
 description of the scene. It was no easy matter to provide food 
 and shelter for such a concourse, and the attraction consisted for 
 many in such excitement and good oheer as were to be had. 
 These assemblies were for the preachers with a popular gift 
 regular field days. The church or the tent was crowded to over- 
 flowing during their long harangues, whilst the man who had no 
 unction or little action had the mortification to find that the ale 
 barrels and the bread and cheese outside had more attraction for 
 the crowd than his unsensational oratory. Though these cele- 
 brations were the nurse of genuine religious feeling. Bums hardly 
 exaggerates the right human failings which he hits ofl, and the 
 change to a more decorous order of things which, under the 
 
46 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 influence of Moderatism, took place during the century, was 
 certainly a change for the better. 
 
 The century witnessed a gradual change in religious use and 
 wont. In some respects it was a change for the better, though 
 it greatly distressed the minds of the old-fashioned who strove 
 to keep alive the religious fashions and forms of an older time. 
 The stem Calvinism in creed and life was losing its hold on the 
 educated classes. Superstitions like witchcraft and ghost appear- 
 ances were becoming relics of past beliefs. Ministers who had in 
 their Arts course attended the lectures of profesisors like 
 Hutcheson and Adam Smith, Adam Fergusson and Thomas 
 Reid were better educated and more liberal and sensible, and 
 this clerical type gradually displaced the narrow remnant of 
 Covenanting days. The name attached to this more liberal 
 thinking section — the Moderates — is significant of the broader 
 spirit in the Church, which presents such a contrast to that of 
 the previous century. Even the party which in theology cham- 
 pioned the old doctrines and was known as the Evangelicals 
 shed the extreme narrowness of former days. The Moderate 
 influence is apparent in the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline 
 with its obtrusive and tyrannical methods. It was losing its 
 harsher features when Bums arose to satirise it and the theo- 
 logical narrowness with which it was associated. The reaction to 
 which he gave such telling expression had many representatives 
 among the more cultured clergy. Religion became more 
 human ; the Sabbath less of a tyranny and a terror. It gained 
 in charity what it lost in fervour and severity. A remarkable 
 evidence of the growth of this more tolerant spirit is afforded by 
 the change of attitude towards the drama and the playhouse. 
 In the middle of the century the theatre was still under the ban 
 of the Kirk, and great was the scandal when John Home, 
 minister of Athelstaneford, ventured in 1756 to produce his 
 tragedy of Douglas— vrhich the philosopher Hume too fondly 
 judged superior to Shakespeare — in Edinburgh, and even minis- 
 ters like Jupiter Carlyle dared to witness. The Edinburgh 
 Presbytery sounded a warning note against these " dangerous 
 entertainments " and " such seminaries of vice and folly," and 
 to escape deposition Home was fain to resign his charge, whilst 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 47 
 
 Jupiter Carlyle manfully faced the " libel " of the Presbytery of 
 Dalkeith. The Presbyteries fulminated in vain against this scan- 
 dalous and illegal conduct, and in 1764 Edinburgh at last got its 
 licensed theatre. Towards the end of the century it was no 
 longer a crime for even ministers to be seen at the playhouse, 
 and when Mrs Siddons came to Edinburgh the General Assembly 
 was half deserted by its members. Dancing assemblies also 
 became fashionable in spite of pulpit denunciations, and music, 
 both vocal and instrumental, had many amateur devotees in 
 Edinburgh, who performed at the concerts given in St Cecilia's 
 Hall in the Cowgate. 
 
 On the other hand, the preaching of the Moderates, as repre- 
 sented by the affected and formal oratory of a Blair, failed to 
 make the pulpit the potent force in popular life that it had been 
 in less enlightened, but far more explosive days, when religion 
 was a real, if to some extent a misdirected power in both pubhe 
 and private life. From this point of view there was force in the 
 reproach of the Evangelical party that Moderatism with its 
 commonsense morality (" legalism ") was tending to deaden the 
 spiritual life based on the more experimental apprehension of the 
 Gospel. Certain it is that, if the services became more decorous 
 and refined, the churches were far less crowded than formerly. 
 Moderatism by its insistence on the legal rights of patrons in the 
 face of popular opposition to unwelcome presentees tended, too, 
 to alienate the democratic spirit that was still a power in the 
 religious, if not in the political sphere in Scotland. Whilst 
 comparatively liberal in thought, it was strongly conservative 
 and reactionary in ecclesiastical politics and ranged itself on 
 the side of " law and order." Hence the secessions which, under 
 the Erskines, took place in 1733 (the Associate Presbytery) and 
 under Gillespie in 1761 (the Relief Presbytery). The former 
 represented the old narrow spirit which had lingered in its purity 
 among the Cameronians, the direct descendants of the Covenan- 
 ters, who had refused to acknowledge an uncovenanted Revolu- 
 tion settlement. In 1747 they took to quarrelling among them- 
 selves over the question of taking the oath, imposed on citizens 
 taking office in certain towns after the Forty-Five, to defend 
 " the true religion presently professed," and went asunder into 
 
48 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Burghers and Anti-Burghers. The Burghers further divided 
 into " Auld Lichts " and " New Lichts " over the question of 
 maintaining the Solemn League and Covenant, according as they 
 affirmed or denied its continued obligation. The old religious 
 temper, which laid such stress on the minutiae of ecclesiastical 
 beliefs, thus continued to colour the social life of the people de- 
 spite the growing tendency to relegate them to the realm of 
 things indifferent. 
 
 9. The Rise of Scottish Aet 
 
 Scottish painting has little to its credit before the eighteenth 
 century. The Reformation period made havoc of the old art 
 associated with the Roman Catholic Church, and the poverty 
 and civil struggles of the country in the seveMeenth were tm- 
 favourable to the rise of the new. This new art takes its be- 
 ginning in the first half of this century with George Jamesone, 
 who was bom at Aberdeen towards the end of the sixteenth and 
 became " apprentice " to his uncle, John Anderson, painter 
 at Edinburgh, in 1612. There is ground for believing that he 
 spent some time at Antwerp improving his art under Rubens, 
 though definite proof is lacking. His style at all events reveals 
 the Flemish influence. He certainly paid a visit to Italy in 1683 
 which, however, seems to have left little or no trace ia his later 
 work, which includes a number of portraits of notable persons 
 of the time. Though in his later period between the Italian 
 visit and his death in 1644 he worked too hastily to do full 
 justice to his powers, " the general air of his finer pictures," in 
 the judgment of Mr Caw, " is distinguished, the tone refined, 
 the handling delicate and charming in its clear fluency of 
 touch, and the simplicity of his motive reposeful and ever 
 dignified." 
 
 Most of the work of John Michael Wright, who is said to have 
 been a pupil of Jamesone, was done in England during the 
 second half of the seventeenth century. John Scougal, on the 
 other hand, remained at home and produced many portraits in 
 his studio in the Advocates' Close in Edinburgh during his long 
 
THE RISE OF SCOTTISH ART 
 
 49 
 
 career, which closed in 1730. They are of unequal merit, but 
 some of them, especially those of Lord Harcarse in the Par- 
 liament House, Lord Carrington at Dalmeny, Sir John Clerk of 
 Penicuik and his lady, and the Countess of Lauderdale in Thirle- 
 stane Castle, are highly appraised by the critics. His contem- 
 porary, David Paton, is remembered for his miniatures in 
 pencil, " of great rarity and remarkable beauty," a number of 
 which are preserved at Hamilton Palace. Among the 
 foreigners who found patrons in Scotland in the second half of 
 the seventeenth century were the Fleming De Wett, and Sir 
 John Medina. The former left a very questionable memorial 
 of his productivity in the one hundred and ten imaginary por- 
 traits of Scottish kings from fabulous times to Charles II., which 
 astonish the visitor to the gallery at Holyrood and which he 
 undertook to supply for the sum of £240. A few painted from 
 life, of which several survive at Glamis Castle, convey a more 
 favourable impression of his craftmanship. Medina was equally 
 productive, for, according to an old writer, " he filled the 
 country with portraits " before his death in 1710. According 
 to Vertue he brought with him a large number of ready-made 
 figures minus the heads, and the heads he added from the 
 actual sitters till the supply was exhausted. With some excep- 
 tions his works are not rated very highly by the critics. " Sir 
 John's work," judges Mr McKay, " at its best far from robust, 
 often descends to a feeble and vapid imitation of Lely." He 
 had at least a phenomenal success, was the last to receive a 
 Scottish knighthood before the Union, and left a considerable 
 fortune to his son who followed his profession without reflect- 
 ing any credit, in the artistic sense, on his father. This success 
 evinces not so much a love of art on the part of his patrons as the 
 desire to have their portraits done in accordance with the aristo- 
 cratic fashion of the time. 
 
 An interest in art for its own sake in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century is evidenced by the founding in 1729 of " the 
 School of St Luke " at Edinburgh for the training of native 
 artists, which unfortunately did not live long. Some years 
 before its foundation William Aikman left Edinburgh for London. 
 He had improved his art in Italy where he spent a number of 
 D 
 
50 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 years before settling in Edinburgh in 1712. For the next dozen 
 years he produced many portraits, including that of his cousin, 
 Clerk of Penicuik, as a baron of Exchequer, and of Allan Ram- 
 say, which are among the best samples of his art. " Aikman 
 at his best," says Mr McKay, " was a capable craftsman, but in 
 common with the painters of his time, he lacked the strength of 
 character to substitute an outlook of his own for the conventions 
 by which he was surrounded." Allan Ramsay, the son of the 
 poet, received his first training in the St Luke School, which he 
 continued at London and in Italy. For eighteen years after his 
 return in 1788 he was a notable figure among the Edinburgh 
 literati and was one of the founders of the Select Society, of 
 which Hume, Adam Smith, and Robertson were members. In 
 1756 he removed to London and ultimately became painter to 
 George III. He was a highly cultured man, with literary as 
 well as artistic tastes, and had the rare distinction for a Scot 
 of gaining the appreciation of Dr Johnson. He spoke many 
 languages, moved in the highest social circles, and corresponded 
 with Voltaire and Rousseau. His contemporaries, who were 
 perhaps jealous of his social success, did not rate his work very 
 highly. He produced much and left much to his assistants, and 
 modem critics have a good deal to say of his defects. To Mr 
 McKay he seems " a mediocre artist," though he had in him the 
 makings of a really great one, which he neglected to develop. 
 The charm which he could lend to some of his female portraits, 
 especially those of his wife and Mrs Bruce of Amot, and the 
 virility of those of the Earl of Hoptoun, the third Duke of Argyll, 
 and MacLeod of MacLeod tend, however, to raise him above 
 mediocrity, and the critics are unanimous in their appreciation 
 of the elegance of design which characterises his chalk sketches 
 and studies. 
 
 Glasgow followed the example of Edinburgh in establishing a 
 school of art, the initiation of which in 1758 was due to Robert 
 Foulis, the publisher and printer, and his brother Andrew. For 
 over twenty years Robert gave his time to the venture at the ex- 
 pense of his proper business. The University provided rooms for it. 
 A collection of pictures, prints, and casts was brought together, 
 and teachers of painting, engraving, and copper plate printing 
 
THE RISE OF SCOTTISH ART 51 
 
 were brought from the Continent. But it met with scant sup- 
 port and at his death in 1775 it had to be abandoned as a 
 failure. More efiective was the foundation of the school of de- 
 sign by the Board of Manufactures at Edinburgh. Of this school 
 Alexander Runciman, who had been trained in the Glasgow 
 Academy and under the Norries, painters and decorators in 
 Edinburgh, and had sojourned for a time in Italy, became 
 master in 1771. He brought from Italy an enthusiasm for his- 
 torical painting and found a congenial task in depicting for Sir 
 John Clerk scenes from Ossian on the ceiling of the drawing 
 room at Penicuik House and from the life of St Margaret on 
 the cupola of a staircase in the same building. * Somewhat 
 theatrical, these decorative scenes, which unfortunately were de- 
 stroyed by a fire in 1899, were not without a certain imaginative 
 grandeur and impressiveness. His younger brother John, who 
 died before his gifts were fully developed, gave promise of greater 
 mastery in the same dramatic genre in his treatment of Biblical 
 subjects and in his King Lear. Another pupil of the Glasgow 
 Academy, David Allan, Runciman's successor as master of the 
 Edinburgh School, devoted himself after a long sojourn at Rome 
 to the delineation of scenes from Scottish life, in this respect a 
 precursor of David Wilkie. " Technically," judges Mr Caw, 
 " his work shows little real accomplishment . . . yet his designs 
 are interesting as studies of character and as representations of 
 the customs and costumes of a bye-gone age, while their effect 
 on Scottish painting was great." Alexander Naysmyth, who 
 combined the professions of architect and mechanician with that 
 of artist, was another pioneer in the domain of landscape, and 
 is also remembered for his portrait of Bums and of the fair 
 daughter of Lord Monboddo, " the heavenly Miss Burnet " of 
 the poet's enthusiastic acclaim. 
 
 These two were the heralds of what was about to reveal itself 
 in Raebum, Wilkie, and others — an art that was specifically 
 Scottish. From Jamesone onwards Scotland had produced a 
 series of painters, but no school of painting. Their art was con- 
 ventional rather than individual or national and was devoted 
 almost exclusively to portraiture. For this lack two reasons 
 may be adduced. " There was not," says Mr Caw, " a suffi- 
 
52 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 ciently patriotic and national sentiment among those who could 
 have patronised art, and, there being little opportunity for 
 artistic training at home, artists, even if fashion had not pre- 
 scribed Italy, had to study abroad, with the result that they 
 returned with the ideas of the school in which they were trained. 
 Almost without exception the artists named in this chapter 
 studied in Italy, a number of them for many years, and as there 
 was no tradition in Scotland, and the artists were too few in 
 numbers to create an atmosphere, they remained bound to what 
 they had been taught. But with increase in numbers and with 
 a quickened feeling of nationality abroad, first one and then 
 another found his way to more personal expression, and the last 
 ten years of the century contained the germs of a distinctive art. 
 Henry Raebum had emerged into prominence and was produc- 
 ing some of the portraits on which his fame most securely rests, 
 Alexander Naysmyth had abandoned portrait for landscape in 
 1793 and was instructing one or two of those who were to give 
 it character and style ; and David Allan had commenced to paint 
 scenes of Scottish rural life as early as 1783. Thomson of 
 Duddingston was bom in 1778, William Allan in 1782, Wilkie 
 in 1785, and Watson Gordon in 1788, and the appointment of 
 John Graham (1754-1817) to the mastership of the Trustees' 
 Academy in 1798 resulted in increased and better opportunities 
 for artistic training at home. Before the century closed, 
 art in Scotland had commenced to assume some national 
 characteristics." 
 
 Towards the end of the century the change to a fuller, larger 
 life, which found expression in the manifold activity of the 
 nation, produced an environment more favourable to art. The 
 spirit of enterprise and invention, the keener interest in nature, 
 the larger culture and the possession of greater wealth, with the 
 refinement which culture and wealth tend to foster, furnished 
 this more favourable environment. The New Town of Edin- 
 burgh and the expansion of Glasgow and other cities were an 
 indication of the new age that had been growing in the second 
 half of the century out of the old. The work of Raebum 
 is a proof that art had begun to respond to a new in- 
 spiration in the domain of portraiture, and that of Wilkie 
 
THE RISE OF SCOTTISH ART 53 
 
 and Thomson of Duddingston was soon to reveal it in 
 genre and landscape. 
 
 Henry Raebum, bom in 1756, and an orphan at six, was 
 educated at Heriot's Hospital, and at fifteen became a gold- 
 smith's apprentice. He attracted the notice of David Deuchar, 
 an etcher and seal engraver, who gave him some lessons and 
 introduced him to Martin, the artist, who had been a pupil and 
 assistant of Allan Ramsay. His connection with Martin soon 
 ended in friction, but his marriage in 1778 with one of his clients 
 who was a lady of means enabled him to complete his self 
 training by a sojourn at Rome from 1786 to 1787. His sojourn 
 improved his technique without spoiling the individuality of bis 
 genius. On his return he established his studio in George Street 
 — afterwards removed to York Place — and straightway com- 
 manded success, which continued unbroken till his death in 1823. 
 The year before his death he was knighted by George IV. at 
 Hopetoun House, and seven years earlier had been elected a 
 member of the Royal Academy. He painted all the notables of 
 his time and produced over 700 portraits. Among the more 
 famous of them are those of Dr Spens in the Royal Archer 
 uniform, MacDonell of Glengarry in full Highland costume, Sir 
 John Sinclair in the striking garb of a Highland chief and a 
 military officer combined, Henry Erskiae, Mrs Scott Moncrieff, 
 Mrs George Kinnear, and Mrs James Campbell. Remarkably 
 free from convention, he gave to his portraits the stamp of 
 actuality, putting in practice the advice of Byres never to paint 
 an object without having it before him, and he had the supreme 
 art of reflecting character in colour. " To recall the Raebums 
 you have seen," says Mr Caw, " is to recall not so much a 
 gallery of pictures as a number of people you have met person- 
 ally, and this is due, of course, to the consummate art with 
 which the painter expressed his own impressions of actuality. 
 And the efiect is heightened by the unconscious air of his sitters, 
 who seem unaware that they are being looked at. His portraits 
 are splendidly convincing — they capture at the first glance ; you 
 feel that that must be the man." 
 
54 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 10. Poor Relief and Crime 
 
 At the beginning of the century Scotland, according to 
 FJetoher of Saltoun, swarmed with beggars. The circumstances 
 of dearth and famine in which he wrote were exceptional. But 
 owing to the depression of the first half of it the number was 
 still comparatively large, for the professional beggar was a 
 legacy of former times, despite the old laws against the "sturdy" 
 race. In 1579 Parliament had authorised, though it did not 
 make compulsory, an assessment for the poor in each parish. 
 But the enactment remained practically a dead letter and by the 
 year 1740 only eight parishes had taken advantage of it. The 
 method in vogue was that of licensing so many indigent persons 
 in each parish to beg within its bounds, beyond which they were 
 not permitted to exercise their calling, and to grant relief from 
 the church collections for this object. Relief was thus dependent 
 on the charity of the people, which was dispensed either directly 
 in kind, or indirectly in money, through the agency of the Kirk 
 Session, which distributed the collections. " Distressed per- 
 sons," such as cripples and other sufferers, who were popularly 
 known as " objects," were carried in carts or barrows from 
 house to house throughout the parish by the inmates who, after 
 relieving their needs, expedited them in this fashion to their 
 neighbours. The begging fraternity invariably turned up at 
 marriages, funerals, and communions to get a share of the good 
 things going. The collections as a rule were meagre, for the 
 people, especially in the early part of the century, had little to 
 spare in the form of dyots, bodies, groats, and bawbees of which 
 the infinitesimal parts of the Scots shilling consisted, the shilling 
 being only equal in value to the English penny, and the pound 
 to Is. 8d. sterling. Moreover, the poor box at the church door 
 was the receptacle for the bad copper money in circulation 
 which was refused at the shop or the market. When the box 
 was opened it was often found to contain nearly as many bad 
 coins as good, and Kirk Sessions were often at their wits' end to 
 meet the demands made on them. The weekly dole was, there- 
 fore, small, but it at least offered no temptation, as did the 
 
POOR RELIEF AND CRIME 65 
 
 statutory relief in England, to live on the rates or undermine a 
 healthy spirit of self respect and independence among the people, 
 characteristic of Scots folk in the olden days. 
 
 The improvement in agriculture in the second half of the 
 century, by providing more work and higher wages, ultimately 
 tended to diminish pauperism in the rural districts, except in the 
 Highlands. The progress of commerce and industry similarly 
 affected the towns for the better. At the same time the change 
 in economic conditions, by favouring the concentration of popula- 
 tion in the large towns, to some of which the destitute from the 
 Highlands drifted, tended to increase the number of the poor, 
 without materially increasing the means of their relief from 
 voluntary sources, and made the problem of pauperism a press- 
 ing one. Moreover, if wages rose, prices also rose and provi- 
 dence among the working class did not necessarily increase with 
 them. This fact alone made the task of relieving the poor, who 
 from various causes increase with the growth of population in 
 cities, a difficult one. The civic authorities were thus compelled 
 to face the question of compulsory assessment versus voluntary 
 relief in towns like Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Paisley. There 
 was a strong feeling against departing from the old method as 
 tending to lower self respect and put a premium on poverty. 
 The ministers were for long almost unanimously in favour of 
 maintaining the old method of voluntary relief. They were, 
 however, fain to confess the inadequacy of the church collec- 
 tions to cope with the task in many parishes. In the larger 
 towns at all events it was becoming hopeless, and Glasgow, 
 Paisley, and Edinburgh were compelled in the second half of the 
 century to have recourse to the law of 1579 and make trial of 
 compulsory assessment. By the year 1800 ninety-three parishes 
 had adopted this expedient. 
 
 Witchcraft was still accounted a crime and punished as such 
 till well into the century. The last victim of this horrible delu- 
 sion was burned at Dornoch in 1727, but happily the abolition 
 of the Act against witches in 1736 rendered a repetition of such 
 an atrocity henceforth impossible, to the consternation of all 
 believers in the " traffickers with Satan," including Mr W. 
 Forbes, professor of law at Glasgow, who in 1733 still gravely 
 
S6 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 expatiated in his lectures and his Institutes of Scots Law on the 
 evidence of this hellish agency. Child murder was a common 
 crime in the first half of the century, due in part to the rigorous 
 ecclesiastical discipline which subjected the mother of an ille- 
 gitimate child to the obloquy of a public penance before the 
 congregation. Executions from this cause were at all events 
 common before the more humane influence of Moderatism re- 
 laxed the old censorship of ministers and Kirk sessions. The 
 criminal law was, however, much less brutal than in England, 
 where no fewer than 164 crimes involved the death penalty. 
 Whilst murder, or arson, or robbery of a serious nature were 
 punished by death, imprisonment or banishment from the 
 burgh, with branding and a whipping into the bargain were as 
 a rule the only punishment for ordinary theft. Notorious 
 thieves of the vagabond type, known as " somers " or 
 " Egyptians " were liable to banishment from the realm, and 
 if caught in the act were hanged. The hereditary jurisdictions 
 which invested the greater barons with the power of holding 
 criminal courts within their domains had become a grave abuse, 
 though interested persons might still defend them. The juries 
 in these courts being composed of the lord's dependents, their 
 verdict was naturally such as the lord or his baron bailie chose 
 to make it. The lord's hangman or dempster was much in evi- 
 dence under this arbitrary regime, especially in the northern 
 parts. Transportation, though illegal, was a common device, 
 since it enabled the impecunious baron to turn the administra- 
 tion of justice to his profit by sending the accused to the planta- 
 tions in return for a money payment by the agent of some 
 planter, as an alternative to the death penalty. It was not till 
 1748, after the second Stuart rising, that this arbitrary and cor- 
 rupt jurisdiction disappeared at a cost to the country of 
 £152,000, or about one-fourth of what these greedy magnates 
 demanded. The riddance of this oppressive system was well 
 worth the money. Serious crime was, however, rare in Scotltind 
 and its punishment mild in comparison with England, and such 
 practices as the public flogging of criminals, especially of women, 
 ere long came to grate on the public taste and disappeared. The 
 prisons or tolbooths were, however, no better than in the southern 
 
POOR RELIEF AND CRIME 57 
 
 country, and the lot of their inmates, of whom the majority were 
 dishonest debtors, was foimd by John Howard towards the end 
 of the century to be wretched in the extreme. 
 
 Sources: — Sinclair, Old Statistical Account of Scotland (1T91-99); 
 Macintosh of Borlum, Treatise Concerning the Manner of Fallowing the 
 Ground (1724); Burt, Letters from a Oentleman in the North of Scot- 
 land (1726), (edition 1815) ; Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the 
 Eighteenth Century, edited by Allardyce (1888); Murray, Life in Scot- 
 land a Hundred Years Ago (1900) ; Dunbar, Social Life in Former Days 
 (1865-66); MacPherson, Annals of Commerce, III and IV (1805); Knox, 
 View of the British Empire (1785); Bremner, Tfce Industries of Scot- 
 land (1869); MacKinnon, The Union of England and Scotland (2nd edition, 
 1907); Graham, Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (1900); 
 and Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1901) ; Couper, 
 The Edinburgh Periodical Press (1908) ; Grant, History of the Newspaper 
 Press, III (1872); Norrie, Edinburgh Newspapers Past and Present (1891); 
 Ferguson, The Brothers Foulis and Early Glasgow Printing (1889); Mathie- 
 son, The Awakening of Scotland (1910); Kerr, History of Banking in Scot- 
 land (2nd edition, 1902); Arnot, History of Edinburgh (1788); Gibson, 
 History of Glasgow (1777); MacGeorge, Old Glasgow (1880); Marwick, 
 The River Clyde and the Clyde Burghs (1909); Grant, History of the 
 Burgh Schools of Scotland (1876); Strong, History of Secondary Education 
 (1909); Gibson, Education in Scotland (1912); Muirhead, Life of James 
 Watt (1858); Carnegie, James Watt (Famous Scots Series); Woodcroft, 
 Origin and Progress of Steam Navigation (1848); Scott, Francis Hutcheson 
 (1900); Knight, Hume (1886); Huxley, Hume (1879); Seth on Hume in 
 English Philosophers and Schools of Philosophy (1912); Adam Smith, The 
 Wealth of Nations, ed. by Nicholson (1884); Rae, Life of Adam Smith 
 (1895); Hirst, Adam Smith (1904); Farrer, Adam Smith (1881); MacPherson, 
 Adam Smith (Famous Scots Series) ; Currie, Bums' Poems and Letters ; 
 Blackie, Life of Bums (1888) ; Hepburn Miller, Literary History of Scot- 
 land (1903); Buckle, History of Civilization, III, (ed. 1885); A. (5arlyle, 
 Autobiography 1722-1805 (1860); Cunningham, Church History of Scotland 
 (1882); McKay, The Scottish School of Painting (1906); Caw, Scottish 
 Painting Past and Present (1908); Murray, Robert and Andrew Foulis 
 (1913). 
 
PART II 
 
 THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH 
 CENTURIES 
 
 1. General Featuees 
 
 The nineteenth century was a period of marked social and 
 industrial progress in Scotland. The promise of the second 
 half of the previous century was realised on a scale undreamt 
 of at the dawn of its successor. In every sphere there is observ- 
 able a stirring of new life as the innate energy of a sturdy race 
 at last found adequate scope for its practical expression. Under 
 the influence of the French Revolution the stagnation of Scottish 
 political life was broken and the movement for political eman- 
 cipation started on its progressive course, whose stages are 
 marked by a series of political reforms which ultimately gave 
 the franchise to the working class as well as the middle class, 
 and finally secured at least the partial political emancipation of 
 women. No less striking is the spirit of industrial and com- 
 mercial enterprise which was the concomitant of the indus- 
 trial revolution and which, though not without its drawbacks 
 for the working class, not only vastly developed the national 
 wealth, but greatly contributed to the material and social im- 
 provement of the people. In literature the first quarter of the 
 new century gave birth to those masterpieces in fiction which 
 portray with such dramatic power and such insight and 
 sympathy the national life and history and created a world-wide 
 interest in Scotland and its people. In education and science, 
 in art and religion the new century had also a great mission to 
 
 58 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 59 
 
 fulfil and the record of its achievements in these spheres is also 
 one of great things. It witnessed, in fact, the rise of a new 
 Scotland in which the old would have no little difficulty in 
 recognising itself. 
 
 2. The Progbess of Agriculture 
 
 A great impulse was given to Scottish agriculture by the 
 French Revolution war. In 1795 the price of wheat rose from 
 50s. to 81s. 6d. per quarter, and in the following year to 96s. 
 In 1812 it attained the record of 126s. 6d. A large amount of 
 waste land passed under cultivation, and the rapid progress be- 
 tween 1795 and 1815 is apparent from the fact that the rent 
 derived from agricultural land in Scotland rose from 2 millions 
 to 5^ millions sterling during these twenty years. 
 
 Agriculture, like other industries, had, however, its ebbs and 
 flows from the conclusion of the war in 1815 onwards. During 
 the next ten years, for instance, there was a marked decline, 
 due to trade depression, from the inflated prices of the previous 
 years, and in 1822 the quarter of wheat had fallen to 4i4s. 7d. 
 The Government might attempt by means of the Corn Law, 
 limiting the importation of foreign com, to maintain the price. 
 But trade depression by limiting the capacity of the people to 
 purchase food, tended to frustrate the efiect of this protective 
 measure. Then came another period of prosperity in conse- 
 quence of the revival of trade which the close of the war had 
 depressed. Another factor which materially affects the industry 
 is the weather and thus, in spite of protection, bad trade and 
 bad seasons periodically lessened the farmer's profits. The arti- 
 ficial stimulation of prices by the Com Law was removed by 
 its abolition in 1846 and agriculture had henceforth to depend on 
 the law of supply and demand and the resource of the agricul- 
 turist. Moreover a prosperous period tended inevitably to bring 
 about a rise in rents owing to competition in the letting of farms. 
 During the thirty years following the middle of the century rents 
 rose nearly fifty per cent., and when a series of bad harvests 
 supervened, as in the years between 1872 and 1881, the resulting 
 
60 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 loss and distress were little short of calamitous. The industry 
 was also hampered by the laws relative to it, especially the law 
 of Hypothec, which were conceived in the interest of the landlord 
 rather than the tenant. On the whole, however, judging from 
 the increasing acreage under cultivation, the industry made a 
 substantial advance during the first three-quarters of the cen- 
 tury. The number of acres of farmed land, including grasses 
 under rotation and permanent pasture, rose, for instance be- 
 tween 1857, when statistics first became available, and 1877 from 
 8,556,572 to 4,668,221. 
 
 Despite this substantial advance, the landlord a:nd tenant 
 system, under which agriculture was largely prosecuted in Scot- 
 land, was far from satisfactory to the tenant. Apart from the 
 disadvantageous effects of recurring trade depression and bad 
 harvests, the conditions on which the land was held by the 
 tenant were not fitted to encourage enterprise on the part of the 
 farmer, or yield an adequate return for his capital and labour. 
 Farmers are proverbial grumblers, but the grievances incident 
 to the system sixty years ago were by no means merely 
 querulous. So serious had the situation become in 1879 — owiag 
 partly to a series of bad harvests, partly to the evils inherent 
 in the current tenure of the land — that the Government was com- 
 pelled to nominate a Royal Commission to enquire into the 
 causes of the prevailing distress. In consequence of its report 
 a beginning was made in the legislative removal of the farmers' 
 grievances in the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883, which was 
 extended by those of 1900, 1908, and 1920. The Act of 1883 
 gave to the tenant at the expiry of his tenancy compensation 
 for improvements made by him during it as far as these were not 
 justly due to the inherent capabilities of the soil. The sum paid 
 in compensation is defined as that which " fairly represents the 
 value of the improvement to the incoming tenant." Hitherto 
 all improvements made by the tenant accrued to the landlord at 
 the termination of the tenancy. " If," writes Sir Isaac Cou- 
 ncil, " the tenant by the use of expensive manures had brought 
 up the land to a high state of fertility, if with or without the 
 approval of his landlord he had spent money on additions to the 
 buildings, or in drainage operations, it was quite open to the 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 61 
 
 landlord at the end of the lease to claim all the improvements 
 as belonging to him, and in some cases the tenant had the option 
 of quitting the farm and leaving behind him the capital so ex- 
 pended or of paying a rent increased to some extent in conse- 
 quence of the very improvements which had been effected at his 
 own cost. The Act of 1883 changed all this by providing that, 
 subject to certain conditions, compensation should be paid to the 
 tenant for such improvements." The Act further limited the 
 right of Hypothec, which the landlord possessed under the 
 amended Act of Sederunt, of summarily removing a tenant whose 
 rent was in arrear for twelve or even six months. The amend- 
 ing Act of 1900 dealt mainly with the question of disputes over 
 the amount of compensation and directs that in case of such 
 disputes " the difference shall be settled by arbitration," and 
 makes the award of the arbitrator final. The Agricultural 
 Holdings Act of 1908 extended the compensation to the tenant 
 in case of disturbance when compelled to quit his farm " without 
 good and sufficient cause and for reasons inconsistent with good 
 estate management." That of 1920 is intended to ensure se- 
 curity of tenure to the tenant by increasing the compensation, 
 in case of disturbance, so as to cover all loss incurred thereby, 
 to a year's rent, and, if the whole loss exceeds this sum, even 
 two years' rent. It further gives compensation, on certain con- 
 ditions, for improvements made by the tenant whether he may 
 be required by the terms of the lease to make them or not. 
 Moreover, however good and sufficient the landlord's reasons for 
 getting rid of a tenant (the wish, for instance, to terminate the 
 tenancy of the home farm in order to cultivate it himself) com- 
 pensation for disturbance shall nevertheless be made, where 
 there is no fault on the part of the tenant. 
 
 The Act also introduces the principle of minimum prices, which 
 are to be fixed by Commissioners, and are to rise or fall in the 
 same proportion as the cost of production. It empowers the 
 Board of Agriculture to compel, within certain limitations, the 
 owner or occupier to cultivate in accordance with the rules of 
 good husbandry in cases in which the production of food can be 
 increased by improved cultivation. The Act has, however, 
 been subjected to no little criticism in the interest, not merely of 
 
62 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the landlord, but of the consumer and even the farmer himself, 
 whose industry, it is contended, would benefit far more from the 
 stimulus of economic competition, than from Government pro- 
 tection and control. 
 
 Another grievance arising from the havoc to crops caused by 
 the preserving of game was mitigated by the Ground Game Act 
 of 1880. Before the passing of this Act the tenant was, indeed, 
 entitled by the common law to kill rabbits for the protection of 
 his crops and to claim compensation for damage from this cause. 
 But the right might be limited or excluded by the terms of his 
 lease and it did not extend to hares. It was, moreover, diflS- 
 cult to substantiate any claim for compensation and such a 
 claim was apt to induce friction with the landlord, which might 
 easily react unfavourably on the tenant's interest. " In most 
 cases," says Sir C. N. Johnston (Lord Sands), " landlord and 
 tenant found it easy so to adjust and respect their mutual rights 
 that the landlord enjoyed his sport and the tenant suffered no 
 injury greater than he ought fairly to have counted upon on 
 entering into the lease. Unfortunately, however, there were 
 cases, exceptional no doubt, but quite numerous enough to 
 attract general public attention, in which game preserving was 
 carried by landlords, or more frequently by game lessees to an 
 extent which was most oppressive." Hence the Ground Game 
 Act, which gave the tenant the right to protect his crops by kill- 
 ing not only rabbits, but hares, and made the right inalienable 
 by any contract or agreement. In the Agricultural Holdings 
 Act of 1908 the right to compensation for injury to crops by 
 winged game or deer was granted. 
 
 Though the conditions of tenure were materially improved by 
 successive Acts of Parliament, the increase of cultivation, 
 characteristic of the first three-quarters of the century, was not 
 maintained in the last quarter of it. The fall in prices due to 
 increasing oversea competition tended to lessen the production 
 of grain and led to the increase of stock raising. The acreage 
 devoted to wheat growing, for instance, fell from 223,152 acres 
 in 1857 to 81,185 in 1877. Forty years later, in 1917, it had 
 fallen to 60,981. Similarly the production of barley decreased 
 from 269,845 acres in 1877 to 159,186 in 1917, whilst in the case 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 63 
 
 of oats the increase was insignificant, being respectively 
 1,024,882 and 1,041,543 acres. In the case of green crop there 
 was also a considerable decrease. On the other hand, the acreage 
 of permanent pasture and grass under rotation shows a marked 
 increase from 2,542,088 acres in 1877 to 2,903,711 in 1917, and 
 nearly the whole of this increase is assignable to permanent 
 grass. Stock raising thus displaced arable farming to a consider- 
 able extent during these forty years. 
 
 The effect of the last two years of the war has, however, been 
 to bring more land under grain and other cultivation and with 
 the quickened sense of the importance of corn-growing, which 
 the war has produced, and which the Act of 1920 is intended to 
 foster, there seems to be a likelihood that this increase wiU con- 
 tinue, though a portion of the additional land ploughed has 
 been found to be unsuitable for this purpose. 
 
 In the cultivation of garden produce Scotland has attained a 
 well merited preeminence. The Scottish gardener has taken the 
 lead in his profession in the United Kingdom in which he may 
 be described as ubiquitous. Fruit growing under glass is carried 
 to a state of perfection unsurpassed and probably unequalled in 
 any other country, and the open air cultivation of fruits and 
 vegetables, suitable to the climate, is correspondingly advanced. 
 Much of the progress is due to the energetic and enlightened 
 efforts of the numerous horticultural societies and to the in- 
 creasing attention devoted to scientific training and equipment. 
 Market gardening has likewise become an important industry 
 and a considerable area in the neighbourhood of the larger towns 
 is devoted to this purpose. Fruit farming for the purpose of 
 jam-making has developed in certain regions, particularly in 
 Perthshire and Lanarkshire, where the soil has been found to 
 be specially adapted for the growing of raspberries and straw- 
 berries. Crieff, Auchterarder, Blairgowrie, and Lanark are the 
 chief centres of this thriving industry. 
 
 There has been a remarkable advance during the nineteenth 
 century in stock breeding, which is largely due to the interest in 
 the subject fostered by the Highland and Agricultural Society 
 and the county and local agricultural societies. The Clydesdale 
 breed of horses is superior to that of any other country for 
 
64 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 heavy draught work. It has long ceased to be exclusively 
 raised in the region from which it originally took its name and 
 is bred in other parts of Scotland. Large numbers are ex- 
 ported to the United States, the British Dominions, and other 
 oversea lands. The premiums offered by the agricultural 
 societies to induce the owners of first-class stallions to circulate 
 them for breeding purposes in particular districts have contri- 
 buted to maintain this superiority. 
 
 Scotland possesses four native breeds of cattle — ^the Ayrshire, 
 the Polled Aberdeen or Angus, the Galloway, and the West 
 Highland. In addition to these the Shorthorn breed was intro- 
 duced from England into Scotland early in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury and gradually extended northwards through the eastern 
 lowlands to the Pentland Firth. Its introduction was due to 
 Mr Robertson of Ladykirk, in Berwickshire, and Mr Rennie of 
 Phantassie, in East Lothian. Early breeders in Aberdeenshire 
 were Captain Barclay of Ury and Mr Cruickshank of Sittyton. 
 Shorthorns are imported in considerable numbers from Ireland 
 and the North of England for fattening in the southern and 
 eastern counties. The Ayrshire cow, whose improvement by 
 crossing with the English shorthorn dates from about the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, is first favourite with the dairy farmer 
 in virtue of the quantity and the quality of her milk, the average 
 per cow being from 480 to 500 gallons of rich milk. Conse- 
 quently cheese and butter making has greatly developed in 
 Ayrshire and the south-west of Scotland. Dairy farming has, 
 however, spread to other districts, and is now more or less exten- 
 sively prosecuted in the neighbourhood of the larger towns and 
 even in some of the remoter districts which have quick through 
 communication by rail. The native supply of butter and cheese 
 is, nevertheless, far below the demand, and an enormous quan- 
 tity is imported from abroad. 
 
 The north-eastern counties, on the other hand, form the chief 
 beef-producing centre and their polled breed deservedly takes 
 first place in the English meat markets, " prime Scots," as it is 
 termed, invariably heading the quotation lists. The magnificent 
 herds of these animals which may be witnessed grazing in the 
 fields in summer, or stalled in winter in the byres of any fair 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 65 
 
 sized farm of the north-east, are perhaps the finest achievement 
 of the Scottish farmer. The high state to which the breed has 
 been brought owes much to men like Mr Watson of Keillor, and 
 especially to Mr McCombie of Tillyfour, whose exhibition of 
 these splendid animals at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 beat that 
 of any other country in this particular competition. Their fame 
 has spread the world over and extraordinary sums are paid by 
 home and foreign breeders for breeding cows and heifers. At 
 the Montbletton sale, near Banff, in 1882, for instance, a seven- 
 year-old cow fetched 325 guineas, and her three-year-old 
 daughter 295. In the same year at the Earl of Airlie's sale at 
 Cortachy Castle three cows realised 300, 400, and 500 guineas 
 respectively. In the following year the price of a yearling 
 heifer belonging to the herd of Mr Auld of Bridgend rose as high 
 as 510 guineas. At Perth in 1918 Mr Kerr of Harvieston paid 
 2100 guineas for a bull calf bred at Ballindalloch, and a year later 
 4000 guineas were obtained at Perth for a bull belonging to Lady 
 Cathcart. This record was broken by the price paid in 1920 for 
 a ten months' old calf belonging to Mrs Stewart of Millhills, 
 which fetched 6600 guineas. 
 
 Galloways are similar to the Polled Angus, but do not mature 
 so early, whilst tougher and thriving better on high-lying, ex- 
 posed pasture and, therefore, much in vogue as recruits for the 
 prairie herds of the Far West. In this latter respect the splen- 
 did West Highland cattle are unique, with their shaggy hair, 
 grand horned heads, magnificent proportions, and their adapta- 
 bility to the mountain pasture and wild winter climate of the 
 Highlands. In many districts they are never stalled and require 
 artificial feeding only in the severest seasons. 
 
 Of sheep the two native varieties are the Cheviot and the 
 Blackfaced, but Border Leicester, Half Breeds, Blackfaced 
 Cross, and Shropshire Downs are also reared in large numbers, 
 whilst Orkney and Shetland have their own particular breed of 
 a small, but hardy variety with soft, silky wool. The moun- 
 tainous character of a large part of Scotland explains the pre- 
 valance of the two first-named breeds, which are adapted to high 
 altitudes and maintain themselves on the wild pasture of the 
 hills and moors. This fact lends an agricultural value to these 
 
 E 
 
66 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 elevated regions which they would not otherwise possess and 
 sheep farming is the staple industry of the Southern Uplands 
 and the Highlands of Scotland. From about the middle of the 
 nineteenth century attempts were made by Mr James Brydon to 
 improve the Cheviot breed, and the improved breed was in high 
 favour until it was found that the attainment of size and beauty 
 had been achieved at the sacrifice of hardihood — an essential 
 of a mountain sheep. The Cheviot was introduced by Sir John 
 Sinclair into the Highlands about 1790 and thrives well in the 
 lower altitudes. But on the higher altitudes only the Blackface, 
 which was introduced from the Southern Uplands, can stand the 
 inclemency of the Highland winter. 
 
 The total number of sheep maintained in Scotland in the year 
 1917 was 6,873,234, of cattle 1,209,859, of horses 210,048. Pig 
 breeding is also extensively carried on, though this industry 
 shows a decline in recent years compared with forty years ago, 
 the figures being 132,945 for 1917, 153,237 for 1877, and 188,307 
 ten years earlier. It has, however, been taken up as a special 
 industry in districts with a large concentration of population, 
 where the supply of appropriate feeding stuffs is available. The 
 same is true of poultry farming, which is being specially prose- 
 cuted in many districts. 
 
 The breeding and feeding of cattle has in recent pre-war years 
 been less profitable than formerly. The importation of foreign 
 cattle for fattening has been forbidden because of the risk of 
 disease, whilst the importation of fat cattle has been permitted. 
 The farmer has accordingly to face a growing competition in the 
 finished article, whilst he is prevented from importing what we 
 might call the raw material of this branch of his industry. 
 Moreover the foreign and home products are allowed to be sold 
 in the shops without any compulsory discrimination between 
 them. This is distinctly unfair to the home producer, who com- 
 plains that the middleman gets the lion's share of the profit. 
 
 A steady improvement in the method of cultivation is apparent 
 throughout the century and this improvement is due in large 
 measure to the progressive application of machinery and scientific 
 knowledge to agricultural operations. The reaping machine has 
 almost entirely displaced the scythe in the mowing of grain and 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 67 
 
 hay. Various attempts were made in the early years of the 
 century by Mr John Gladstones of Castle Douglas, Mr Alex 
 Kerr of Edinburgh, and Mr James Smith of Deanston, to solve 
 the problem of constructing an appliance fox this purpose, for 
 which the Highland and Agricultural Society offered a premium. 
 Though favourably reported on at the time, none of these 
 proved of permanent practical value. The first to construct a 
 really workable machine was the Rev. Patrick Bell of Carmyllie 
 who, in 1827, invented a reaper which was used for some years 
 on Forfarshire farms and secured for the inventor a premium of 
 £50 from the Highland and Agricultural Society. Forty years 
 later he was presented with £1,000 subscribed by Scottish agri- 
 culturists in recognition of his services. On coming home one 
 day from the harvest field on his father's farm at Inchmichael, 
 Mr Bell was seized with the desire to invent a machine that 
 would lessen the labour of the harvester. His eye lighting on 
 a pair of garden shears hanging near, he conceived the idea of 
 clipping com by machinery and constructed a small wooden 
 model of such a reaper. With this model he proceeded to Edin- 
 burgh and showed it to Sir John Graham Dalyell, who had 
 considerable knowledge of mechanics. Sir John encouraged him 
 to construct a machine for trial in the following harvest and the 
 trial was a success. The presentation was a well merited one, 
 for, apart from its practical merits, the machine seems to 
 have exercised some influence on the further development of the 
 reaper. Four of the machines were sent to America and it was to 
 American as well as English mechanical ingenuity that the 
 reaper owed its later perfection. An exhibition of American 
 machines at the International Exhibition of 1851 gave an im- 
 pulse to the gradual adoption of the manual delivery machine 
 which was followed by the self -delivering machine, and ulti- 
 mately by the combined reaper and binder whose use is now 
 universal. 
 
 The application of steam to agriculture was exemplified in the 
 attempt, suggested by the eighth Marquess of Tweeddale in 
 1837, to construct a steam plough. In this year the Highland 
 Society offered a premium of £500 and sent a deputation to 
 Lancashire to examine a plough invented by Mr Heathcot. It 
 
68 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 worked satisfactorily in the mossy ground in which the trial took 
 place, and was brought down for exhibition in connection with 
 the Society's show at Dumfries in the same year. It was tried 
 for three days in the Lochar Moss, near Dumfries, but during 
 the night after the third day's trial it disappeared in the Moss, 
 where it still lies buried. The premium, having failed to pro- 
 duce an invention, was withdrawn in 1843. Another offer in 
 1851 and 1852 produced two contrivances by Mr James Usher, 
 Edinburgh, and the Messrs Fisken of Gellybum, Stratheam. 
 Neither of them was adjudged satisfactory, and it was not till 
 1857 that Mr Fowler was awarded a new premium for a machine 
 which was satisfactorily tried at Stewart Hall, near Stirling. 
 Several sets of steam ploughs were later in operation on the 
 hiring system in various districts, but the working of them was 
 found to be satisfactory only in level land free from stones and 
 other obstacles, and has only been adopted to a very limited 
 extent. The motor tractor and the motor plough have, especi- 
 ally under the stress of the war, begun to make their appear- 
 ance, and seem to have a better chance of coming into general 
 use. The horse swing plough, which has undergone several im- 
 provements since its invention by Mr Small in 1760, stiU holds 
 the paramount place in the tillage of the soil. On the other 
 hand, steam was successfully applied to drive the threshing mill, 
 and displaced water power on many farms before the portable 
 threshing machine, drawn by traction engines, came into vogue. 
 Invention has also been busy providing other implements which 
 the progress of agriculture has demanded, such as the drill plough 
 with double boards, the sowing machine, which has largely ousted 
 the old method of scattering the seed by the hand, the cylindrical 
 roller, which has displaced the old wooden roller, the grubber, the 
 iron and the chain harrow, the milking machine, the turnip 
 hasher, the potato planter and digger, the horse rake, the hay- 
 making machine, etc. 
 
 The application of science to agriculture has been an essential 
 of its nineteenth century development. The ordinary farmer is 
 naturally conservative, clinging to the ways of his fathers and 
 not too ready to entertain any innovation. This feeling long 
 militated against progress. But prejudice in favour of use and 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 69 
 
 wont has gradually been giving way to the conviction that agri- 
 culture, like every other industry, depends for its full success on 
 the practical application of the scientific data applicable to it. 
 The recognition of this fact is already apparent among the more 
 enlightened agriculturists of the later eighteenth century, and it 
 found expression in the foundation of the chair of Agriculture 
 and Rural Economy at Edinburgh in 1790, which was endowed 
 by Mr Johnstone, a member of the Faculty of Advocates, better 
 known as Sir William Pulteney. Chairs or lectureships have 
 since been founded in all the Scottish Universities. Institutions 
 specially devoted to the scientific education of the young farmer 
 have been established in the Agricultural Colleges affiliated with 
 the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. Ex- 
 perimental farms on scientific principles form part of the equip- 
 ment of these colleges, and others are carried on by the Board of 
 Agriculture, which was reconstituted in 1911, and by directing 
 agricultural policy, encouraging research, and supplying scientific 
 information, has been of great benefit to the industry. The wide 
 scope and practical effects of its activity may be studied in detail 
 in the important annual reports presented to Parliament. 
 
 Not the least share of the merit of this development on the 
 practical side is due to the numerous agricultural societies, chief 
 of which is the Highland and Agricultural Society, founded in 
 1784 under the name of the Highland Society for the improve- 
 ment (including agriculture and manufactures) of the Highlands. 
 In 1787 it received a royal charter, and two years later a grant of 
 £3000 to enable it to carry out its objects. It strove at first to 
 realise these objects by giving prizes or premiums and medals for 
 essays on prescribed subjects relative to the Highlands, and for 
 merit in practical farming in the Highland districts. Premiums 
 were given, for instance, for the best results in the cultivation of 
 grasses and potatoes, in the rearing of stock, the reclaiming and 
 improving of waste land, the improvement of agricultural im- 
 plements and machinery, draining and irrigation, butter and 
 cheese making. In addition to the sums expended in furthering 
 these practical objects, the Society evinced a keen interest in the 
 language and literature of the Highlands. It published a valu- 
 able contribution to the Ossianic controversy, and made a coUec- 
 
70 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 tion of Gaelic manuscripts, now in the Advocates' Library at 
 Edinburgh. In 1828 it published a Dictionary of the Gaelic 
 language, and fifty years later voted 100 guineas towards the 
 endowment of the Gaelic chair in the University of Edinburgh^ 
 In 1809 it offered for the first time honorary premiums for 
 afforestation, and such premiums were awarded in 1821-22 to 
 various proprietors in the Highlands who had planted consider- 
 able areas of their estates, the lead being taken by Mr Mackenzie 
 of Kilcoy with over half a million of trees covering 379 acres, and 
 Sir James Colquhoun of Luss with about 400,000 in about 61 
 acres. This departure became a regular part of the Society's 
 policy, but the progress of forestry in Scotland in the nineteenth 
 century slackened considerably owing to the decline of the early 
 enthusiasm for planting, and only revived late in the century. 
 This revival was due to the energy of the Royal Scottish Arbori- 
 cultural Society, with which the Highland Society has co-oper- 
 ated, and latterly of the Board of Agriculture. Early in the 
 century it turned its attention to the encouragement of farm 
 management by the improvement of various kinds of grasses, the 
 breeding of stock, the growing of turnips and potatoes, the curing 
 of butter, beef, and pork by means of premiunas for such objects. 
 In 1801 it instituted the first ploughing match at Hoddam, in 
 Annandale, and in 1822 organised its first show, which was held 
 in December of this year in an enclosure behind Moray House, 
 Edinburgh, and consisted of an exhibition of fat stock of various 
 breeds. From this modest beginning the great annual exhibition 
 of stock, implements, and produce gradually developed, and this 
 development may be measured by the fact that whereas the 
 drawings at the first exhibition amounted to £51 10s., the sum 
 drawn at that at Edinburgh in 1919 rose to about £17,000. It 
 also gave an impulse to the formation of the numerous county 
 and district societies and shows, which have contributed so much 
 to energise local effort. 
 
 Equally praiseworthy was the endeavour to further agricul- 
 tural education. To its advocacy was due the grant by the 
 Government of £150 for ten years for the better endowment of 
 the chair of Agriculture at Edinburgh University in 1868, to 
 which it guaranteed an equal sum for the same period. In 1856 
 
THE PROGRESS OP AGRICULTURE 71 
 
 it took up the question of the education of young agriculturists 
 and obtained a supplementary charter entitling it to grant 
 diplomas in the science and practice of agriculture to successful 
 candidates after examination. Sixteen years later it appointed 
 a Board of Examiners in Forestry, which granted certificates to 
 students of approved practical efficiency. Its work in this 
 direction has, however, been superseded by that of the agricul- 
 tural colleges, in whose institution it bore a creditable part, and 
 of the County Councils which provide lecturers and demon- 
 strators in rural districts in methods of agricultural production. 
 In 1823 it made a grant for veterinary instruction to Mr Dick, 
 certificates being awarded to students who passed the requisite 
 examination entitling them to practise as veterinary surgeons. 
 This venture developed into the establishment of the Dick Veter- 
 inary College at Edinburgh in 1839 under its auspices. It was, 
 however, rather backward in taking up the project of an experi- 
 mental farm, which was repeatedly brought before it from 1821 
 onwards. The expense of maintaining such a farm was the chief 
 obstacle, and there was not a sufiiciently general sense of the value 
 of science to agriculture to induce the members to face the finan- 
 cial risk involved. It was not till 1877 that it leased two ex- 
 perimental stations in East and West Lothian for the purpose of 
 determining the agricultural value of various manures in the 
 production of a rotation of turnip, barley, grass, and oat crops. 
 This policy has been energetically taken up in recent years by 
 the Board of Agriculture, which has acquired a number of ex- 
 perimental farms throughout the country. 
 
 One effective result of the more general sense of the value of 
 scientific farming is apparent in the application of chemical 
 manures, guano, ground bones, etc., which enabled the farmer 
 to cope to some extent with the fall in prices by increasing his 
 produce per acre. By this expedient much land has been kept 
 in cultivation which would otherwise have gone into pasture. 
 There are large agencies for these manures in Glasgow, Leith, 
 Dundee, Aberdeen, etc., and their produce is marketed over a 
 wide area. 
 
 Under the landlord and tenant system farms in Scotland are 
 of considerable acreage, and often of large extent. To acquire 
 
72 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the tenancy of an ordinary farm requires a considerable capital, 
 and accordingly this system suffers from the drawback of ren- 
 dering it very difficult for the competent farm servant to rise to 
 the position of a tenant. To remedy this drawback, and also 
 counteract the tendency to rural depopulation, consequent on the 
 increasing emigration from country to town, the policy of creat- 
 ing small holdings has been adopted, and legislation has been 
 passed conferring on the Board of Agriculture powers to acquire 
 land for this purpose (Small Landholders' Act of 1911) in the 
 Lowlands as well as the Highlands. These powers were ampli- 
 fied by the Small Holding Acts of 1916 and 1918, and in the Land 
 Settlement Bill introduced by the Scottish Secretary in 1919. 
 
 The question of making such a provision has long been an 
 urgent one in the Highlands. The unsatisfactory state of this 
 region is traceable to the arbitrary action of the proprietors over 
 a century ago in transforming the land into large sheep farms 
 and clearing out the crofters from the interior of the counties of 
 Sutherland, Ross, and Inverness, and settling a residue of them 
 on patches of ground on the coast, where they formed crofting 
 townships. The land so cleared was used for rearing sheep in- 
 stead of rearing men, and when sheep farming became less pro- 
 fitable owing to competition in wool and mutton from the 
 Colonies and elsewhere, large sheep farms were turned into deer 
 forests and let at high rents to wealthy sporting tenants. The 
 crofters who were allowed to settle in these townships were 
 unable to find a sufiicient maintenance for themselves and their 
 families, since they were prevented from extending their hold- 
 ings, although there was plenty of land of a kind for this pur- 
 pose. Moreover, the population, in spite of emigration, had been 
 greatly increased by the kelp industry which flourished during 
 the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of 
 the nineteenth, until it was ruined by the reduction of the import 
 duty on salt and barilla. It was then that the fell eilects of the 
 land policy which was clearing the people out of their holdings 
 at a time when the population had increased and employment 
 had materially shrunk, became most severely felt. Misery, 
 migration, and depopulation, aggravated by bad seasons and 
 disease, were the inevitable fruits of this hard and narrow, if, for 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 73 
 
 the landlords, profitable policy. The government appointed a 
 commission in 1841 to enquire into the prevailing destitution, and 
 the commission could only suggest emigration as a remedy. The 
 failure of the potato crop in 1846 and the following four years 
 emphasised the urgency of remedial measures, and during these 
 years the starving people subsisted largely on public subscrip- 
 tions administered by Destitution Boards in Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow. The proprietors gave what pecuniary assistance they 
 could, and some of them, like Lord MacDonald and MacLeod of 
 MacLeod, spent all their resources in contributing to the relief 
 of their tenants. Such an emergency measure left the economic 
 situation unchanged. The State did little or nothing to remedy 
 this situation, except to prescribe emigration, and eviction for 
 non-payment of rent was frequent. The result was friction and 
 unrest, which at last in the early " eighties " broke out in acts of 
 violence in Skye, Lewis, and other regions. The crofters resisted 
 attempts to oust them from their holdings, and even took pos- 
 session of the land in some places in order to enlarge their crofts. 
 This drastic action led to collisions with the police and even the 
 military forces of the crown, and the trial and imprisonment of 
 some of the offenders. It forced the Government to appoint a 
 Commission of Enquiry in 1883, which forms the first serious 
 attempt to deal with the problem. The Commission recom- 
 mended the recognition, extension, improvement, and registra- 
 tion of existing townships and the formation of new ones, and 
 these townships were not to be reduced or dissolved without the 
 consent of two-thirds of the occupiers. In addition to enlarged 
 townships, compensation was to be given for improvements and 
 state aid to enable the crofters to purchase their holdings. 
 
 The result of this report was the Crofter Holdings Act of 1886, 
 which conferred security of tenure on certain conditions, a fixed 
 fair rent, compensation for improvements, and facilities for the 
 enlargement of holdings. The Act also instituted a body of 
 commissioners — the Crofters' Commission — ^with both executive 
 and judicial functions. It continued to perform these functions 
 for twenty-six years until it was displaced by the Land Court 
 instituted by the Small Holders Act of 1911. During this period 
 it dealt with 22,111 applications for a fixed fair rent, and reduced 
 
74 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 these rents by about one-fourth, besides cancelling arrears to the 
 extent of 67 per cent, of the total amount dealt with. It re- 
 ceived 4,864 applications for enlargement of holdings, and made 
 enlargements to the extent of fully 72,000 acres. There was, 
 however, little improvement of the cultivation of the soil, and in 
 addition tp poor crops overstocking was a prevalent evil, which 
 the Grazing Act of 1908 attempted to remedy. To alleviate the 
 congestion a special board — the Congested Districts Board — waa 
 formed in 1897, which up to 1912 created 640 new holdings and 
 granted enlargements to 1,138 crofters. All this well-meant 
 legislation and effort did not, however, allay discontent, which 
 sometimes showed itself in lawless disturbance, and the Land 
 Court, which displaced both these bodies in 1912, has in recent 
 years been engaged with considerable effect in improving on the 
 work of its predecessors. Even so, occasional crofter raids seem 
 to show that the problem of establishing a feasible existence for 
 the crofting population is by no means finally settled. 
 
 The condition of the agricultural worker was materially im- 
 proved throughout the century. Compared with the second 
 half of the eighteenth century he is better paid, housed and fed, 
 and works shorter hours. The regular working staff of a good 
 sized farm consists of a grieve, a foreman ploughman, ordinary 
 ploughman for each pair of horses, a cattleman, a shepherd, and 
 men, women, and boy labourers, with extra workers at certain 
 times, though the increasing use of machinery has tended to re- 
 duce their number. These are engaged at fairs or feeing mar- 
 kets, the married men usually for twelve, the unmarried for six 
 months. Unlike the English farm workers, those of Scotland 
 show a growing tendency to migrate from farm to farm after a 
 year or two's engagement. About the middle of the century 
 regular farm work extended over 11 hours a day, besides extra 
 time in attending to horses. The number was subsequently re- 
 duced to 10 in summer and from dawn to dusk in winter, and 
 more recently the demand for a 48 hours' week has made itself 
 heard. The introduction of the weekly half-holiday has, how- 
 ever, considerably lessened the total number of hours worked per 
 week, and the lot of the worker is distinctly less arduous and 
 exacting than formerly. Housing, which was still bad before 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 75 
 
 the middle of the century, was improved during the second half 
 of it, though the improvement has been much greater in some 
 regions than in others, especially in the counties of Berwick, 
 Roxburgh, and East Lothian, and, generally speaking, still 
 leaves much to be desired, according to the Report of the Royal 
 Commission on Housing. In some parts of the Highlands it is 
 deplorable. 
 
 In crofting areas, like Lewis and the Outer Isles, civilisation, 
 as far as housing is concerned, is still that of the primitive age. 
 " The housing conditions in Lewis are deplorable. A great 
 number of the houses are of the ' black type,' rough stone walls 
 with thatched roofs, no fireplaces or chimneys. In many the 
 cattle are housed under the same roof as the human beings, and 
 one has to go through the byre before the living accommodation 
 is reached. The byre and kitchen are separated from each other 
 by a wooden partition (though in some cases this is awanting), 
 which often does not extend to the roof. As the manure from 
 the byre is removed only once a year, the conditions can be 
 better imagined than described. In the living room the fire of 
 peats is built up on the ground, surrounded by a ring of flat 
 stones, in the centre of the room, and the smoke finds an outlet 
 where it can. As the thatched roof does not extend to the 
 eaves, but only to the centre of the wall, it is needless to say 
 that the wall, — which between the two layers of dry stones of 
 which it is built is packed with earth or turf — is more or less 
 constantly damp. Many houses of the worst type have no 
 window or only a small one in the roof. This so-called window 
 is, however, often grass covered. Any light is obtained from 
 the fire or lamps. The sites and surroundings of the houses are 
 most unhealthy." 
 
 According to a recent statement of Lord Lovat in the House 
 of Lords, in no fewer than 107 houses in Skye on the Govern- 
 ment's own property cattle and men were under the same roof. 
 In Lewis no fewer than 5,000 houses required repair, and in 
 something like 1,000 houses cattle and men lived under the same 
 roof, separated only by a sheet or boards. The defects of croft- 
 ing housing had led to greater depopulation than any other 
 cause during the past thirty years. 
 
76 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 The system of lodging and feeding farm servants in the farm 
 house declined from about the middle of the century onwards, 
 and in the southern and eastern counties it has almost disappeared 
 and survives only on smaller farms in these regions. The bothy 
 system, under which the unmarried workers live in a " bothy " 
 and cook their own food, still prevails in the north and east, but 
 has greatly declined or become extinct in the south and south- 
 west. It is not conducive to comfort or health and has been 
 condemned by all the commissions of inquiry appointed in the 
 second half of the century. " It would be diflBcult to say," 
 remarks Mr Pringle in reviewing in 1894 the evidence furnished 
 by these commissions, " which of the reports, 1867, 1879, or 
 1893, is strongest in its terms of condemnation; but in one 
 point they agree : they recognise the difficulty of altogether 
 abolishing it; but they believe that a great deal could be done 
 by increasing the supply of farm cottages to reduce the necessity 
 for such places." It certainly had its share of the responsibility 
 for rural depopulation, and to those who remember what it was 
 in the days of their youth forty or fifty years ago the wonder is 
 that men could be got to endure its discomfort and its usually 
 deteriorating effect. 
 
 More substantial has been the improvement in wages and other 
 earnings in the shape of meal, potatoes, and free house and 
 garden. In the case of ordinary married ploughmen, Mr Pringle 
 calculates the approximate increase during the second half of the 
 century at about 69 per cent., though the rise varies with the 
 county or district. There is a similar advance in the case of 
 other farm workers. Wages have not suffered from agricultural 
 depression, and the worker has also benefited by the fall in the 
 prices of provisions. One result has been a corresponding rise 
 in the standard of living. About the middle of the century the 
 use of butcher meat was still very limited and oatmeal and 
 potatoes were still the staple diet. By the end of the century the 
 use of meat had become common, at the expense, however, of 
 the decrease in the use of oatmeal, which is greatly to be de- 
 plored. On the other hand, the rise in wages does not seem to 
 have been accompanied by the practice of thrift. " The great 
 increase in wages and general improvement in other things have 
 
THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE 77 
 
 not been accompanied by any endeavours to lay by money or 
 anticipate old age. The fact of more money coming in only 
 means more money going out in the case of 75 per cent, of our 
 labourers. The few who deny themselves luxuries in ordinary 
 everyday life can and do save; but the same took place on the 
 miserable earnings of forty years ago." In the judgment of the 
 commissioners of 1892-93 the condition of farm workers is on the 
 whole highly satisfactory. It is, however, questionable whether 
 the workers themselves would generally subscribe to this judg- 
 ment, and Mr Pringle admits the presence of a spirit of discon- 
 tent, especially in regions in the neighbourhood of the industrial 
 cities. Trade Unionism has penetrated the agricultural popula- 
 tion, and in the Scottish Farm Servants' Union the workers have 
 an active organisation which agitates for improved conditions in 
 their interest. Certain it is that these conditions are not such as to 
 induce the people to remain on the land in the face of the attrac- 
 tions of the towns or the colonies, and too large a proportion of 
 the agricultural population has succumbed to these attractions, 
 with the result of steadily increasing rural depopulation. The 
 use of machinery has, indeed, lessened the former scope for 
 manual labour. Increased transport facilities, the lure of higher 
 wages in the industrial centres, and increasing inducements to 
 emigrate have also had their effects. But there are factors of a 
 social as well as an economic nature which irresistibly tell in the 
 direction of depopulation. The energetic, ambitious worker has 
 too little scope for the realisation of his aspirations. The pros- 
 pect of rising from servant to master is too limited rmder a 
 system which necessitates a considerable capital to take and stock 
 a farm. Small holdings is the policy by which a remedy is 
 being sought under the Small Landholders Act. Whilst opinions 
 differ widely as to its feasibility, there can be no doubt of the 
 advisability of seeking to remedy this defect in the interest of the 
 better class of agricultural worker. These workers form a most 
 valuable element of the population, and it is essential to raise 
 their status, which has long been rated on a low scale, and as far 
 as possible give them a better prospect in life. 
 
 It is only fair to let them speak for themselves in this matter, 
 as voiced by Mr Duncan, the Secretary of their Union, in a tem- 
 
78 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 perate address to the conference on the improvement of agricul- 
 ture in August, 1917. " What ought first to be done is to let 
 the workers feel in social life that they form the vital part they 
 do in the industrial life of the community. The social defect in 
 Scotland tells seriously on the man, but more so on the farm ser- 
 vant's wife, and, due to the way in which the people are scat- 
 tered, there is no opportunity for the children. Often, leaving 
 home at the age of 14, they are never again in contact with the 
 family. Further, the farm worker, like all other workers, is 
 suffering from what is called ' labour unrest.' We had it before 
 the war, and we have it now. ... In the trend of things there 
 is the indication that there are aspirations rising among the 
 workers — aspirations that are not confined to questions of wages 
 and material things of life. It is the desire of the worker to 
 have some control over the disposal of himself, some share in the 
 control not only of government, but of industry also. This will 
 have to be dealt with on the farm as in the industrial field. 
 Unless we can give some opening or outlet to that spirit, there is 
 no hope of keeping a contented or settled population in the rural 
 districts. . . . He would then become a partner in the industry 
 and not merely a wage earner who is directed at every stage of 
 his work. . . . The erection of ladders like small holdings will 
 not satisfy the farm workers. There are 70,000 of them in 
 Scotland and we cannot provide small holdings for them all. All 
 these fancy schemes will never touch the kernel of the problem 
 which is to deal with the mass of the workers living on the farm. 
 The workers' aspiration is towards more self-control, more self- 
 guidance, and an opportunity to share in the enlightenment that 
 science is bringing to everybody— an existence that is not merely 
 the existence of a wage earner." A remedy for the lack of 
 social life in the country districts, to which the speaker referred, 
 has recently been sought in the establishment of rural Institutes 
 for the education and recreation of the people. 
 
 To Scottish agriculture the war may be said to have been a 
 blessing in disguise. It at least has not been devoted to the 
 mad work of destruction, as in the case of other industries, and 
 its prosperity was the well-earned reward of intensified produc- 
 tive energy in the increase of the national food supply during a 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 79 
 
 protracted period of threatening shortage. Prices have risen, 
 more land (some of it, however, unsuitable land) has been 
 brought under cultivation, and, more important, agriculture has 
 been shown to be still a prime industry, to neglect which is to 
 imperil the national safety. It would be rather misleading to 
 give figures in proof of this advance during the war period, since 
 the conditions have been so abnormal. Such an advance is the 
 usual concomitant of war, especially a protracted war, which 
 produces in the industry a state of unnatural excitation. At 
 all events the general conviction among the farming class seems 
 to be opposed to the policy of state tutelage and regulation, and 
 not too friendly to the guaranteeing of grain prices unless the 
 guarantee is extended to the chief agricultural products. Even 
 protection is no longer regarded as a panacea against agricul- 
 tural depression. 
 
 3. The Mining, Iron, and Steel Industries 
 
 In the search for coal the geologist has rendered valuable help 
 to the engineer by placing at his disposal scientific information 
 as to the particular location of coal, ironstone, and oil shale in 
 any given area, and the probable strata to be penetrated in the 
 attempt to reach these minerals. To ascertain the actual 
 presence of the mineral and the thickness of the seam, boring is 
 resorted to, and for this purpose a variety of appliances, driven 
 by steam power, are used according to the nature of the strata 
 and the depth to be bored. The next operation is the sinking 
 of the shaft. Before the invention of the atmospheric engine by 
 Newcomen in 1710 the depth of mine shafts was limited by the 
 diflftculty of carrying ofi the water. Sixty fathoms was about 
 the greatest depth attainable in the United Kingdom, the 
 diameter of the shaft being at most between 7 and 8 feet. Since 
 then this depth has been greatly exceeded, and already in 1840 
 the shaft at Nitshill, Renfrewshire, had a depth of 175 fathoms. 
 By the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887 each mine must in 
 ordinary circumstances have at least two shafts, with which 
 every working seam must be connected and between which there 
 
80 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 must be a communication of not less than 4 feet high by 4 feet 
 wide. The shafts in Scotland are usually rectangular, but in recent 
 times the circular shaft has been adopted, as at Niddrie Colliery, 
 with a diameter of 17 feet. The eliptical form is also in use in 
 the Wemyss Collieries in Fifeshire. For shaft making, implements 
 and machinery of a very varied kind, according to the nature and 
 depth of the strata to be worked through, have been devised. 
 
 The shafts having been made, main roads are constructed by 
 blasting and drilling in the area to be worked. Two methods 
 of working the coal are in vogue — ^the bord (Saxon for road) and 
 pillar, and the long wall methods. The former, known by the 
 local name of " stoop and room," is that mainly in use in Scot- 
 land, and consists in driving passages or " rooms " through the 
 coaJ of from 12 to 20 feet wide, leaving pillars or " stoops " of 
 the coal, between 10 to 20 yards square to support the roof of 
 the passage. These pillars remain till the limit of the seam is 
 reached, and are then cut away, the miner working backwards 
 and using wood props to support the roof. By the long wall 
 method the whole of the coal is removed as the miner works in- 
 ward and the passage maintained by walling it with stone or 
 waste. Modifications of both systems are also in operation. 
 
 Ventilation is an essential in order to dilute and remove the 
 noxious gases in the mine and thus secure as far as possible the 
 safety of the miner. Fire damp was long considered to be the 
 main cause of explosion, but coal dust was ultimately found to 
 be an equally dangerous factor, as Mr Galloway showed in 1878, 
 though it was only in recent times that the subject was 
 thoroughly investigated and convincing proofs of the fact 
 accumulated. To ventilate the mine the expedient of the fur- 
 nace was long in use, but this expedient has been largely super- 
 seded by ventilating fans driven by steam or electricity. The 
 invention of the safety lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1815 
 further contributed to the safe working of the mine. 
 
 In the early days of coal mining in Scotland, when the mines 
 were comparatively shallow, the coal was carried by bearers 
 along the pit bottom and up the stairway in the shaft to the pit 
 mouth. In the mines in the eastern district these bearers were 
 generally women and even children of tender years, and the 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 81 
 
 weight carried by the women might be as high as several hundred- 
 weights. The physical and moral effects of such toil, protracted 
 over 15 or even 18 hours out of the 24, were deplorably bad. 
 Mechanical hoisting in cages drawn up the shaft by windlasses 
 driven by horse power, and later by steam winding engines, 
 ultimately superseded the primitive method of carrying the coal 
 in buckets up the wet and slippery stairway. It was still in 
 vogue in the Lothian coalfield in the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, and the laborious operation is described by Mr R. Bald 
 in his General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland, published in 
 1808. " In these collieries, where this mode is in practice, the 
 collier leaves his house for the pit about 11 o'clock at night 
 (attended by his sons, if he has any sufficiently old) when the 
 rest of mankind are retiring to rest. Their first work is to pre- 
 pare coals by hewing them down from the walls. In about three 
 hours after, his wife (attended by her daughters, if she has any 
 sufficiently grown) sets out for the pit, having previously wrapped 
 her infant child in a blanket and left it to the care of an old 
 woman, who, for a small gratuity, keeps three or four children 
 at a time, and also, in their mother's absence, feeds them on aJe 
 or whisky mixed with water. The children who are a little 
 more advanced are left to the care of a neighbour; and under 
 such treatment it is surprising that they ever grow up or thrive. 
 The mother having thus disposed of her younger children, de- 
 scends the pit with her older daughters, when each, having a 
 basket of suitable form, lays it down, and into it the large coals 
 are rolled ; and such is the weight carried that it frequently takes 
 two men to lift the burden upon their backs ; the girls are loaded 
 according to their strength. The mother sets out first, carrying 
 a lighted <;andle in her teeth ; the girls follow, and in this manner 
 they proceed to the pit bottom, and with weary steps and slow 
 ascend the stairs, halting occasionally to draw breath, till they 
 arrive at the hill or pit top, where the coals are laid down for 
 sale, and in this manner they go for 8 or 10 hours almost with- 
 out resting. It is no uncommon thing to see them, when 
 ascending the pit, weeping most bitterly from the excessive 
 severity of the labour ; but the instant they have laid down their 
 burden on the hill, they resume their cheerfulness and return 
 
 F 
 
82 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 down the pit singing. . . . The weight of coals thus brought to 
 the pit top by a woman in a day amounts to about 86 cwts., 
 and there have been frequent instances of 2 tons being carried. 
 The wages paid them for this work are eightpence per day." 
 
 Even after the abolition of this drudge system female and 
 child labour was retained for transporting the coal from the 
 working to the bottom of the shaft, and the report presented 
 to Parliament in 1842 by the commissioners appointed at the in- 
 stance of Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, revealed 
 the shocking conditions under which this labour was carried 
 on. " In the East of Scotland," the commissioners reported, 
 " where the side roads do not exceed from 22 to 28 inches in 
 height, the working places are sometimes 100 and 200 yards dis- 
 tant from the main road ; so that females have to crawl back- 
 wards and forwards with their small carts in seams in many cases 
 not exceeding 22 to 28 inches in height. The whole of these 
 places, it appears, are in a most deplorable state of ventilation. 
 The evidence of their sufferings, as given by the young people 
 and the old colliers themselves, is absolutely hideous." 
 
 The result was the Act of 1842, prohibiting the employment 
 of boys under 10 years of age, limiting the period of apprentice- 
 ship, and putting a stop to the employment of women. 
 
 The method of conveying the coal underground by small 
 baskets was displaced by the use of larger ones shod with iron 
 and dragged by men or horses. Still later these were super- 
 seded by small railways, wheel carriages, and to a certain extent 
 steam haulage. Coal cutting machinery driven by compressed 
 air is also in operation in a number of collieries. Electricity for 
 the purpose of signalling and electric lights in the main roads are 
 among other improvements. 
 
 The main coalfields are situated in the central counties and 
 the largest output is still from those of Lanark and Ayr. In 
 recent years there has, however, been an extension of the mining 
 industry in the Lothians and Fife, and this extension eastwards 
 has been actuated by the necessity of finding new sources in view 
 of the steadily increasing demand and the possibility of the ulti- 
 mate exhaustion of existing fields. Industrial development is 
 dependent on coal supply. As the late Mr Stanley Jevons 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 83 
 
 pointed out, " coal stands not beside, but entirely above all 
 other commodities. It is the material source of the energy of 
 the country — the universal aid— the factor in everything we do ; 
 without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of 
 early times." For the production of iron and steel, for the 
 generation of propulsive power on land and sea, for the work- 
 ing of factories, for instance, coal is an essential requisite. 
 Britain's industrial greatness ultimately rests on its coal mines. 
 Hence the growth of the coal output with the growth of such 
 enterprises. This growth has, accordingly, steadily advanced 
 during the nineteenth century, and from about the middle of it 
 it has been almost quadrupled, though the industry has been 
 subject to frequent strikes adversely affecting the output in the 
 years in which they have occurred. In 1854 it was nearly 7| 
 million tons; in 1880 it was fully ISJ millions; in 1900 it had 
 risen to over 83 millions ; in 1908 to fully 39 millions. Through- 
 out this period Lanarkshire has held the lead of the coal pro- 
 ducing counties with more than half the whole tonnage, its total 
 in 1900 being over 17 millions. Fifeshire was second with about 
 5| millions, Ayr third with fully 4 millions, Stirling fourth with 
 nearly 2J millions, Midlothian fifth with 1^ millions, and West 
 Lothian sixth with fully 1 million, whilst Clackmannan, Dum- 
 barton, and East Lothian were near or over half a million, and 
 Renfrew occupied the lowest place with about 13,000. In 1908 
 the proportion for Fife had risen to nearly 8| millions, for Stir- 
 ling to nearly 3 millions, Midlothian to nearly 2j millions. West 
 Lothian to nearly 2 millions. East Lothian to over 1 million, 
 and Renfrew to nearly 100,000. 
 
 The export of coal bulks largely in Scottish export trade, of 
 which by far the largest portion is centred in the Firth of Forth. 
 From the Fife ports alone upwards of 5 million tons were shipped 
 in 1918, Methil leading the way with 3^ million and taking first 
 place as a coal shipping port in Scotland, Burntisland being next 
 with nearly 2| millions. The total from the ports on the south 
 side of the Forth — Leith, Granton, Bo'ness, and Grangemouth 
 — was considerably over 4J millions. In 1911 the total shipments 
 from Scotland to home and foreign ports (including bunker coal) 
 was 16| millions. 
 
84 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Oil shale is now mined only in Mid and West Lothian, though 
 it is found in limited quantities in other districts and was for- 
 merly worked on a large scale at Burntisland in Fifeshire. 
 Within the limited area mentioned it was also mined by the 
 Clippens Oil Company at Straiten and Burdiehouse, but owing 
 to litigation with the Edinburgh Water Trust, the Company was 
 compelled to abandon operations. In one or two places — at St 
 Catherine's, Liberton, near Edinburgh, and in the Broxburn dis- 
 trict, for instance — ^natural oil in small quantities has been 
 found. But practically the crude oil has to be extracted from 
 the shale mined for the purpose, and in this respect the oil pro- 
 ducing industry in Scotland is carried on under difficulties and 
 disadvantages unknown in those more favoured regions of the 
 world where the liquid is obtained from the vast reservoirs in the 
 bowels of the earth, as in the oilfields of America, the Caspian, 
 and Burma. " The Scottish oil," says Mr Caddell, " in its dry 
 matrix of black shale, has first to be laboriously won — ^blasted 
 out of mines hundreds of feet deep, hauled or hoisted by 
 machinery to the light of day and crunched into small pieces be- 
 tween strong iron teeth,' then carried perhaps some miles to the 
 retorts, where it is carefully distilled and separated from its 
 earthy casing — before it ever reaches the condition of the crude 
 petroleum that spouts up in other countries ready made." 
 
 The oil shale is described by the same authority as " a minutely 
 laminated, or amorphous black, or dark brown clay shale con- 
 taining nitrogen, hydrocarbons, and other substances of organic 
 origin derived from the macerated remains of plants and 
 animals." The oil producing material in the shale was named 
 Kerogen by Professor Crum Brown, and this substance is dis- 
 tilled into crude oil and refined into paraffin and other products. 
 
 The father of the industry was James Young, who was bom in 
 1811, learned the trade of a cabinet maker at Glasgow, and after 
 attending the lectures in chemistry of Professor Graham, be- 
 came his assistant. Later he became assistant to the Professor 
 of Chemistry at University College, London, and chemist at 
 Tennant's Chemical Works, Manchester. Whilst occupying this 
 latter post he was consulted by Professor Lyon Playf air about a 
 petroleum spring in a coal pit in Derbyshire, where in 1848 he 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 85 
 
 erected works for refining the petroleum and where for a couple 
 of years oils and paraffin were produced until the spring was 
 exhausted. Young rightly inferred that the oil was the result 
 of the natural distillation of coal and coaly substances, and in 
 the course of his experiments he discovered in 1850 at Boghead, 
 near Bathgate, a seam of what seemed to be cannel coal, but 
 was in reality a rich kind of oil shale which yielded 120 gallons 
 or more of crude oil per ton. In the same year he took out a 
 patent for the production of parafBn from bituminous coal and 
 in partnership with Messrs Meldrum and Binney started distilla- 
 tion works near Bathgate. Even before the expiry of Mr 
 Young's patent in 1864 other works began to spring up through- 
 out the region at Broxburn, Uphall, Mid-Calder, West Calder, 
 Kirkliston, etc., and in 1865 Mr Young started new works at 
 Addiewell, near West Calder. The decade between 1860 and 
 1870, during which the number of oil works increased from 6 to 
 90, was a period of rapid expansion. After 1870 American 
 competition began to tell adversely on the Scottish industry, and 
 later this competition was aggravated by the exploitation of the 
 oil fields of the Caspian, Galicia, Burma, and other regions. In 
 1880 the number of Scottish works had decreased to 26, to 14 in 
 1890, and 9 in 1900, and now only 7 have survived in the struggle 
 for existence at Addiewell, Broxburn, Pumpherston, Oakbank, 
 Dalmeny, Philipstown, and Tarbrsix. 
 
 The efiect of this steadily increasing competition was a lower- 
 ing of the retail price of refined burning oil from about 3s. 6d. 
 during the period of Young's patent to 4|d. per gallon in 1911. 
 But for the other substances in addition to burning oil contained 
 in the shale, such as sulphate of ammonia, petrol, naphtha, tar, 
 and the improvement in the machinery and the processes of pro- 
 duction, the industry would ere now have been extinct. 
 
 Three million tons of shale are mined per annum, showing a 
 rile of a million tons in the first decade of the twentieth cen- 
 tury, producing 72 million gallons of crude oil, 75 per cent, of 
 which was refined into finished products, and over 50,000 tons 
 of sulphate of ammonia. " The advance in scientific techno- 
 logy," says Mr Cadell, " has led to such additional economies in 
 the processes of manufacture that it is now possible, in spite of 
 
86 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 many adverse conditions, to work profitably seams which used to 
 be considered too poor to be of any commercial value. Indeed 
 such is the recent progress in the scientific construction of the 
 retorts that the shale is now made to distill itself with the heat 
 derived from its own residual combustible gases, and no fuel is 
 required except in the temporary process of starting new plant. 
 The waste incondensible gases and tars produced are used for 
 fuel at various stages, and electricity lends its wonderful help in 
 different ways. All these economies have given much import- 
 ance to the question of the future life of the shalefields, in which, 
 no doubt, an immense quantity of oil — and ammonia producing 
 shale of various qualities — still exists for future development." 
 
 " The companies," says a writer in The Scottish Bankers' 
 Magazine of January, 1913, " employ in their mines and works 
 fully 10,000 men, paying in wages £1,000,000 per annum. In 
 addition, a large number of men are indirectly employed in the 
 production of fuel, chemicals, and plant. . . . The total capitd 
 of the six limited liability companies, whose shares are publicly 
 quoted, is approximately £1,670,000. . . . Last year's aggre- 
 gate net profits amounted to approximately £165,000." 
 
 By the beginning of the nineteenth century the annual pro- 
 duction of pig-iron was about 20,000 tons. At the end of the 
 third decade of the century it had grown to about 37,000, whilst 
 the number of furnaces had risen, during the same period, from 
 17 to 27. The invention of the hot blast by Mr Neilson, 
 manager of the Glasgow Gas Works, in 1828, (juickly multiplied 
 production. This expedient consisted in heating the air before 
 injecting it into the furnaces, and the substitution of the hot for 
 the cold blast reduced the quantity of coke consumed in the 
 smelting of one ton of iron from 8 tons If cwts. to 2 tons 13 J 
 cwts. Raw coal instead of coke was first used at the Calder 
 Ironworks in 1881, and its use resulted in a further saving of 
 fuel. This substantial reduction in the cost of production gave 
 a great impulse to the industry. By 1886 the annual total of 
 pig-iron had risen to 75,000 tons, in 1845 to 475,000, in 1855 to 
 820,000, in 1865 to 1,164,000, and in 1880, 1,049,000. The 
 highest total reached within the period 1845-80 was 1,206,000 in 
 1870. It thus multiplied the number of smelting works, some 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 87 
 
 of which were established in the west of Fife as well as on the 
 south side of the Forth. But it was in the west that the in- 
 dustry attained its full development. As early as 1786 the Clyde 
 Ironworks had been established by Mr Cadell, one of the original 
 partners of the Carron Company, in the parish of Old Monk- 
 land, and it was here that David Mushet, the discoverer of the 
 " black band," and later Mr Neilson, the inventor of the hot 
 blast, carried out the experiments that contributed so much to 
 its development. 
 
 The most valuable deposits of ironstone are situated in 
 Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, and it was in those districts, where in 
 1901 there were 79 furnaces in blast, that production was cen- 
 tralised. Most of the works were started between 1830 and 
 1840. The more important of those in Lanarkshire are at Coat- 
 bridge, Coltness, Govan, Tollcross (the Clyde Works), Cambroe, 
 Calder, Wishaw, Shotts ; in Ayrshire, Glengamock, Eglinton, 
 Lugar, Dalmellington, Muirkirk, Ardeer. The largest are those 
 at Gartsherrie, Coatbridge, belonging to Messrs Baird & Co., who 
 were the first to apply the hot blast, and who also own the works 
 at Eglinton and Lugar. Coatbridge, where those of the 
 Summerlee and Langloan Companies are also situated, is in fact 
 a town of blast furnaces. Besides pig-iron, bye-products such 
 as tar and ammonia are obtainable by condensation of the gas 
 given oft by the coal, which is also used for heating the blast. 
 Messrs. Baird were the first to erect machinery for this purpose 
 in 1880. 
 
 "Blast furnaces, fairly familiar objects, are large, circular, 
 tower-like erections. The interior, which is not straight in 
 form, but contracts towards top and bottom, is lined with re- 
 fractory fire-brick and ganister (a very refractory siliceous rock) ; 
 around this is an annular space or ring filled with loose material 
 to allow of expansion, and the outer wall of masonry is enclosed 
 in iron sheathing strongly bound together. The furnaces range 
 from 40 feet or so to 100 feet, and even more, in height, with 
 internal capacity of 500 to 25,000 cubic feet or over. The modem 
 furnaces are the highest, but it has been found that practical 
 difficulties in working counterbalance the advantages of greater 
 height when carried beyond a certain point. One advantage of 
 
88 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the higher furnace is to render previous calcining of the ore less 
 necessary, the same efiect being accomplished in the upper part 
 of the furnace. At the top of the furnace is a gallery or plat- 
 form from whence the charge is admitted. The mouth of the 
 furnace is closed by means of a large cone, which can be lowered 
 by a chain when the charge is being admitted and then closed 
 again. The closed top is a modem advance. Formerly the 
 mouth was open, and the great, lurid flames belching out made 
 the blast furnace a picturesque feature of the district where it 
 was erected. Many well remember the time when " Dixon's 
 blazes," as they were familiarly called, formed a landmark ia 
 Glasgow; and when shipmasters on the Ayrshire coast could 
 shape their course by the glare of the Ardeer furnaces. But the 
 old order changes, and the picturesque has given way to the 
 practical. The closed tops came into being when the gases 
 generated in the blast furnace were utilised with resulting efB- 
 ciency and economy - . . The charge consists of fuel, ore, and 
 flux. The first is commonly coke, but may also be coal or a 
 combination of both . . . The flux is commonly limestone, 
 although other agents are also used. It is introduced in con- 
 sequence of the impurities remaining in the ore. It combines 
 with the silica and other prejudicial matter and forms a slag or 
 cinder separated from the iron. A strong blast of air is intro- 
 duced through piping surrounded by water tuyeres (outer cas- 
 ings). Powerful blowing engines force the blast into the furnace 
 and through the charge therein. The water circulating through 
 the tuyeres serves to cool the inlet where the heat becomes in- 
 tense and might cause trouble by fusing the parts. ... As the 
 charge becomes affected by the intense heat, chemical and other 
 changes take place, impurities being taken up by the flux, 
 though some others partially remain, as sulphur, phosphorous, 
 and carbon. After these changes, fusion speedily ensues, and 
 the molten iron falls to the bottom, the slag floating on the top, 
 while other waste elements escape in the form of gases. ... At 
 the bottom of the furnace is an aperture called a tapping-hole, 
 kept closed till the melting of the iron is completed. A large 
 bed of sand is formed in front of the furnaces in which channels 
 are made with smaller furrows branching off from them. These 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 89 
 
 are called sows and pigs respectively, whence the term pig-iron, 
 The tap hole being opened the melted iron runs out like a stream 
 of liquid fire, flows down the large furrows into the smaller ones, 
 where, on cooling, it assumes the familiar form of the oblong 
 bars called pig-iron." 
 
 The diminishing supply of ironstone led to the importation of 
 ore from Spain and other regions, which is landed at Glasgow or 
 Ardrossan. About 115 million tons have been mined in Scot- 
 land, and though the total Scottish ironstone has been reckoned 
 by Professor Louis as high as 8,000 million tons, only a relatively 
 small portion of this vast quantity can be economically utilised. 
 The bulk of the more valuable Scottish deposits is now, in fact, 
 exhausted, and there has been a decline in the Scottish ore mined 
 from well over 2| millions in 1880 to over half a million in 1913. 
 Recently, however, a large deposit has been discovered on the 
 island of Raasay, Skye, from which the first consignment was 
 shipped to Glasgow in 1911. On the other hand, the quantity of 
 ore imported has risen enormously from about 42,000 tons in 
 1879 to nearly IJ millions in 1899. Another reason for this im- 
 portation is the need for pig-iron free from phosphorus for the 
 manufacture of mild steel, for which the Scottish pig-iron is un- 
 suitable. In 1900 the output of pig-iron amounted to 1,156,885 
 tons and was slightly below the total of 1865, but in 1910 it 
 had risen to 1,427,828, and in 1913 to 1,369,259. The Carron 
 Company, which still holds a foremost place in the industry and 
 uses only the black band from its own mines, produces over 
 2,200 tons per week. 
 
 The Carron Works long held the pre-eminence in the manufac- 
 ture of malleable iron and iron goods, though the making of 
 cannon, for which they were famous, ceased about the middle 
 of the nineteenth century. In 1819 a rival appeared in the Fal- 
 kirk Iron Works, which were started by some enterprising work- 
 men from the parent company, and developed into what was for 
 a time the second largest foundry in Scotland. By the year 1880 
 there were 21 foundries in the district, which, with the Carron 
 Works, gave employment to 6,000 men. Foundries also sprang 
 up at Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith, Kirkcaldy, Dundee, and Aber- 
 deen. At Carron, besides the famous " carronades," as the 
 
90 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 small cannon were named, the articles manufactured were mainly 
 those in domestic use, such as stoves, grates, cooking ranges, 
 boilers, pots, rain pipes. At the Falkirk Works, which in 1848 
 passed into the hands of the Messrs Kennard, the products in- 
 cluded the castings of iron bridges, such as the Solway Viaduct, 
 and a large variety of artistically designed articles for practical 
 or ornamental use. 
 
 With the development of the pig-iron industry the production 
 of cast iron and malleable iron also shifted its centre to the west, 
 many of the foundries being connected with the blast furnaces, 
 though this connection ultimately ceased, and iron manufacture 
 became a separate industry. Coatbridge is the chief centre of it, 
 but Motherwell and Wishaw are good seconds. Before the sub- 
 stitution of mild steel for iron in shipbuilding and other indus- 
 tries, large forgings in the shape of plates, armour, shafts, etc., 
 were produced, and it was to meet the necessity for a more 
 serviceable instrument in forging huge products of this sort than 
 the tilt hammer of James Watt that James Nasmyth, the 
 engineer and son of the painter, invented the steam hammer in 
 1889. Cast iron is manufactured for castings, such as water sad 
 gas pipes. It is hard and brittle and cannot be welded or 
 rivetted and is not pliable. Malleable iron, on the other hand, 
 is ductile and fibrous and can be bent, twisted, welded, and 
 rivetted. Its manufacture begins in the puddling furnace, in 
 which the melting pig-iron is stirred or puddled by an iron rod, 
 usually moved by the hand of the puddler, but in some works 
 by mechanical means, until it attains a certain degree of con- 
 sistency. The quantity of pig-iron, known as " a charge " 
 placed in the furnace at one time, is about 5 J cwts., and the 
 time occupied in puddling it is from two to three hours, so that 
 five or six charges can be worked in twelve hours, the quantity 
 of pig-iron used in the puddling of a ton of puddled iron being 
 from 22 to 28 cwts. The charge is then conveyed in portions to 
 the steam hammer, which expels the slag or dross and beats it 
 into shape, the " shingler " turning it on the anvil between each 
 stroke. It is then passed into the rolling mill to be drawn into 
 bars. Thereafter it is cut into short lengths, and these are 
 transferred to the " re-heating furnace " in the proportionate 
 
THE MINING, IRON, AND STEEL INDUSTRIES 91 
 
 number required for the manufacture of a specific bar, heated to 
 the welding point, removed and rolled again, and finally cut by 
 a circular saw to the required length. In the case of the finer 
 quality of iron a second welding and rolling is added, gas fur- 
 naces of the Siemens type being now largely used in the re- 
 heating process. The work of the puddler and other skilled oper- 
 atives is a very exacting and exhausting one, demanding close 
 attention and great physical exertion. 
 
 The substitution of steel for iron has greatly limited the pur- 
 poses for which iron is used. Nevertheless the quantity produced 
 is still relatively large. In 1867 the number of puddling furnaces 
 in operation was about 400, that of rolling mills 50, which pro- 
 duced 143,800 tons of malleable iron. In 1900 there was about 
 the same number of furnaces at work at Coatbridge, Motherwell, 
 and Wishaw, and the produce was 147,904 tons. The number of 
 firms engaged in the industry was 22, owning 25 works. 
 
 " No new process having been introduced in the manufacture 
 of puddled iron," says Mr Wylie, " the fundamental principles 
 are just the same as have been in operation for the last 50 years 
 or more, so that the only means of lowering the costs, in order 
 to meet the keen competition of modem times, is by adopting 
 from time to time all the minor improvements in furnaces and 
 machinery, whereby the waste of material and consumption of 
 fuel is lessened and the output increased, while the general wages 
 and charges are reduced. In this respect the various works have 
 not been slow in adopting any means which they considered would 
 be a benefit to them in their respective branches." 
 
 The output of malleable iron is now far outdistanced by that 
 of steel. Several attempts were made in Scotland in 1857 and 
 the following years to manufacture steel by the Bessemer pro- 
 cess, but the results were not satisfactory, owing to the unsuit- 
 ability of Scottish pig-iron. In 1871 the Steel Company of 
 Scotland was formed for the manufacture of steel by the Siemens, 
 or acid open-hearth process, at Hallside, Newton, and up to the 
 year 1879 this Company was the sole manufacturer of steel in 
 Scotland. In 1878 its output had risen to about 42,000 tons, 
 and two years later (1880) it acquired the Blochaim Works at 
 St Rollox, Glasgow. In the previous year Mr Beardmore erected 
 
92 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 furnaces at the Parkhead Works in the same city. From this 
 date to the end of the century a considerable number of other 
 works were established in Glasgow and the west. Among the 
 largest are those of Beardmore & Co., the Steel Company of 
 Scotland, David Colville & Sons, Motherwell; the Lanarkshire 
 Steel Company, Flemington; the Glasgow Iron and Steel Com- 
 pany, Wishaw; the Glengamock Iron and Steel Company; the 
 Summerlee and Mossend Iron and Steel Company. In 1899 
 there were 115 open-hearth furnaces and the average number in 
 operation during this year was 90. Already in 1883, the output 
 had risen to 230,000 tons of ingots, yielding over 90,000 tons of 
 plates, 85,000 tons of angles and bars, and 20,000 tons of sundry 
 products. In 1900 the total of ingots was nearly 1 million tons, 
 yielding 360,589 tons of plates and angles, 199,859 of bars, etc., 
 and 56,839 tons of blooms and billets, — a total of 616,787 tons 
 of finished steel. In 1912 the total of finished steel had swelled 
 to nearly 1 million. 
 
 A corresponding advance has taken place in the equipment of 
 the industry. In 1885 the largest smelting furnaces had a 
 capacity of about from 15 to 20 tons. In 1900 it had risen to 
 from 50 to 60 tons with a corresponding improvement in the 
 appliances for handling such large quantities of molten steel. 
 The old coal-fired horizontal furnace has been superseded by the 
 vertical gas-fired regenerative furnace with cranes of various type 
 for charging and drawing the ingots. The steam hammer has 
 been displaced by the modem slab cogging mill, with the neces- 
 sary appliances, worked by hydraulic power, and capable of 
 turning out from 60 to 70 tons of steel per hour. The plate and 
 bar mills have been similarly equipped. Such appliances have 
 become a necessity in view of the largely increased size of steel 
 slabs and plates, with the result of lessening the strain of manual 
 labour and eilecting economy in production. 
 
 Some firms like the Messrs Beardmore and the Messrs Brown 
 combine steel production with shipbuilding, and are capable of 
 building and equipping the largest warships and other vessels 
 from their own resources. Many other firms are engaged in one 
 or other of the branches of mechanical engineering, such as iron 
 and brassfounding, boilermaking, machine toolmaking, the mak- 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 93 
 
 ing of sugar machinery, locomotives, motor cars, textile 
 machinery, sewing machines, agricultural implements and 
 machinery, electrical plant, sanitary, lighting, and heating appli- 
 ances. Not a few of them occupy a leading position in their 
 specific industry and send their products all over the world. The 
 North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow, for instance, 
 sends locomotives to India, Japan, South Africa, America, and 
 elsewhere, and formerly to Germany. It employs between 7,000 
 and 8,000 men, and turned out in 1911 7,346 locomotives. In 
 the same year the Caledonian Railway Company's Works at St 
 RoUox completed 2,758, the North British Railway Company's 
 Works at Cowlairs 2,351, and those of the Glasgow and South- 
 western Railway at Kilmarnock also 2,351. 
 
 4. Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering 
 
 The Clyde Valley is richly endowed with the mineral requisites 
 of the great development in shipbuilding and marine engineering, 
 which forms one of the most striking features of Scottish indus- 
 trial history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It 
 possesses or is within easy reach of vast stores of coal. Iron ore, 
 too, is at hand, and what nature has withheld — an adequate 
 waterway — has been provided by the deepening of the river which 
 affords easy access from the sea for the import of this ore and 
 also of copper ore from Sweden, Spain, and other countries. The 
 smelting and rolling works on or near its banks are there to 
 manufacture these raw products. This concentration of coal, 
 iron, and steel, backed by engineering skill and native energy, 
 has given the Clyde its pre-eminence in the shipbuilding indus- 
 try. These advantages do not, of course, apply to that part of 
 the nineteenth century when wood was used in ship construc- 
 tion, but even during this period the Clyde shipbuilders were 
 among the leaders of this industry, and the advantage of having 
 a waterway, which had been made accessible to deep sea vessels, 
 told in their favour when the use of wood ere long gave way to 
 that of iron and steel in shipbuilding and the internal resources 
 of the Clyde valley came into play with remarkable results. The 
 
94 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 enterprising spirit of the Clyde builders and engineers, which has 
 been quick to apply every advance in naval architecture and 
 engineering, has also played an important part in maintaining 
 their supremacy. " They have been associated," says Mr 
 Pollock, " with practically every scientific advance in naval 
 architecture for the last century. Through all the transitions — 
 wood to iron, iron to steel, paddle to single screw, single screw 
 to twin screw, twin screw to multiple screw, turbine engines — 
 Clyde shipbuilders have been to the front with exemplar ships." 
 It was not without good reason that the late Sir W. White de- 
 scribed the Clyde as " the premier shipbuilding river." 
 
 The Clyde is, of course, no longer exclusively the great ship- 
 building centre in Britain. The development of the industry 
 has been equally remarkable in the North of Ireland and the 
 North-East of England. But in variety of work it is supreme. 
 " Variety," says Mr Macintyre, " distinguishes the industry on 
 the Clyde above all others. The operations of its builders are 
 not restricted to the production of one or two or three types. 
 The building of everything that may be called a ship has been 
 undertaken at any cost, and when you speak of Clyde ship- 
 building, you speak of the whole range of naval architecture." 
 
 " It is impossible," says another writer in the Scottish 
 Bankers' Magazine of October 1912, " to estimate the capital 
 value of the Clyde shipbuilding yards with any degree of 
 accuracy, but the amount has been roughly stated at 
 £30,000,000. In point of equipment they are the finest in the 
 world, and their chiefs are the Gamaliels at whose feet all other 
 shipbuilders and engineers of the world sit and learn. All the 
 Cunarders were built at Glasgow; and with perhaps one excep- 
 tion the other great steamship companies patronise the Clyde, 
 while the Admiralty is a constant and most lucrative stand-by." 
 
 The development of the steamship in Scotland is traceable, as 
 we have noted, to the engineer Symington, who first applied 
 steam to ship propulsion in the Charlotte Dundas, and whose 
 experiments were made use of in the construction of the first 
 Clyde steamer in 1812. Bell began life as a stone mason, and in 
 1783 took up the trade of a millwright along with his uncle. 
 Some years later he worked as a ship modeller at Bo'ness and 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 95 
 
 thereafter migrated to London, where he served under Rennie, 
 the engineer. In 1790 he started business as a carpenter at 
 Glasgow, and in 1807 removed to Helensburgh, where his wife 
 carried on a hotel and where he devoted his leisure to the prob- 
 lem of applying steam to navigation, which had engaged his 
 attention since 1786. The lack of financial support long delayed 
 the exemplification of his ideas, and it was not till 1812 that they 
 at last took practical shape in the Comet. He was anticipated 
 by Robert Fulton, whose father had emigrated from Ayrshire to 
 America, and whose paddle boat, the Clermont, began to run 
 on the Hudson in 1807. Fulton as well as Bell was, however, 
 indebted to Symington, for both of them had inspected the 
 Charlotte Dundas. The Comet was built by John Wood, Port- 
 Glasgow, and engined by David Napier. It was 42 feet long, 11 
 feet broad, with a draught of 3j feet, and was driven by a three- 
 horse power engine. It plied between Glasgow, Helensburgh, 
 and Greenock, and even made the voyage up the west coast as 
 far as Oban. Her inventor did not derive much financial benefit 
 from his venture, and died in 1880, a poor man in receipt of an 
 annuity of £100 from the Clyde Trustees. 
 
 During the next 10 years 48 steamers, showing a steady in- 
 crease in size and horse power, had been constructed in Clyde 
 yards. One of these, the Marjory, built by W. Denny, Dum- 
 barton, in 1814, was the first steam vessel to ply on the Thames. 
 In the same year three were built at Dundee and engined by John 
 Robertson of Glasgow, and two of them were employed on the 
 Humber. In 1815 the Britannic, of 109 tons and 82 horse 
 power, ventured on the voyage to Campbelltown, and from 1818 
 plied between Glasgow and Londonderry. From the Clyde yards 
 came, too, the steamers which ere long traded between Glasgow 
 and Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool, Holyhead and Dublin, Leith 
 and London. For the last mentioned service, the United King- 
 dom was built by Steel & Co., of Greenock, in 1826, and with 
 her length of 160 feet, beam of 26J feet, and 200 horse power 
 Napier engines, was the marvel of the time. Fully ten years 
 later the Sirius, built by Menzies & Son, Leith, and engined by 
 Wingate & Co., Glasgow, though not much larger (170 feet in 
 length, 450 tons, and 270 horse power) was the first Scottish 
 
96 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 built vessel to cross the Atlantic, starting from Cork in 1838 and 
 doing the voyage in eighteen days. 
 
 The substitution of iron for wood in steamship construction 
 brought into play the natural resources of the Clyde. The first 
 boat to be constructed of this material in Scotland was the 
 Vvlcan, built by Thomas Wilson at Faskine on the Monkland 
 Canal in 1817-18 and used for passenger traffic by the Forth and 
 Clyde Canal Company from 1819 onwards. Its construction 
 exposed the builder to the jeers of the bargemen, on the assump- 
 tion that iron could not float, but the Vulcan ere long disarmed 
 their scepticism. It was not, however, till 1831 that Neilson 
 produced, in the Fairy Queen, the first iron steamer at the Oak- 
 bank Foundry, Glasgow, whence it was carted to the Clyde and 
 launched at the Broomielaw. It was followed by the Royal 
 Sovereign, built by Tod & MacGregor and launched in 1839 for 
 service between Glasgow and Liverpool. Tre Royal George and 
 the Princess Royal by the same builders followed soon after. 
 The iron steamer did not for long, however, displace the sailing 
 ship, and for a time the composite ship with inner iron frame 
 and wood sheathing was in favour, especially in the East India 
 and China trade, for which the famous tea clippers were con- 
 structed. The first to build this type of vessel on the Clyde 
 (1862) was Alexander Stephen, one of the foimders of the 
 famous Linthouse firm. One of the most remarkable of these 
 clippers was the Thermopylae, which was built by Hood & Co., 
 Aberdeen, in 1868, and in 1870 made the voyage from London to 
 Melbourne in sixty-one days. 
 
 The founding of the Cunard Company in 1840, for the purpose 
 of maintaining a regular steam service to America, gave a great 
 impulse to Clyde steamship building. The first of its fleet, the 
 Britannia, built by Robert Duncan, Port-Glasgow, and engined 
 by R. Napier, measured 207 feet by 84, with a tonnage of 1,154, 
 and a speed of 8J knots. It was followed by the Acadia, Cale- 
 donia, Columbia, of the same dimensions. These vessels were 
 still wood built, and were surpassed by the iron steamer Great 
 Britain, completed at Bristol in 1844 for the Great Western 
 Steamship Company, with a length of 825 feet and a tonnage 
 of S,433. The Great Britain was a screw steamer, and the sub- 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 97 
 
 stitution of the screw propeller for the paddle wheel marks 
 another great advance in steamship construction. The Inman 
 Company, established in 1850, as a rival of the Cunard for the 
 Atlantic trade, started with two screw-propelled iron steamers, 
 the City of Glasgow and the City of Manchester, each of 1,680 
 tons burden and 850 horse power. This competition led the 
 Cunard Company not only to adopt iron in the construction of 
 their new mail vessels from 1855 onwards, but in 1862 to discard 
 the paddle for the screw propeller in the China and four other 
 vessels built during the next two years. These vessels con- 
 clusively proved the superiority of screw over paddle propulsion 
 in speed and economy. " Situated as it is at the stem of the 
 vessel and fully immersed, the screw acts upon relatively a much 
 larger volume of water in a given time than paddle wheels, 
 and its efl&ciency is not impaired by the rolling and pitching 
 motions of the vessel or completely nullified by variations in 
 the ship's draught of water as with paddles." Twin screw pro- 
 pellers and duplicate engines followed in due course in deference 
 to the need for greater size and speed and also greater safety. 
 Among the earlier vessels to be fitted with these improvements 
 were the City of New York and the City of Paris, built at Clyde- 
 bank for the Inman Line and put on the Trans-Atlantic service 
 in 1889. The effect was speedily seen in the marked reduction 
 of the passage across the Atlantic. During the previous fifteen 
 years the duration of the passage had gradually been reduced 
 from between seven or eight days by the new and ever larger 
 vessels of the various Atlantic lines, many of them, like the 
 Cunarder Vmbria, Clyde-built. The lattej- had by the year 1888 
 reduced the time to 6 days 1 hour and 55 minutes for the out- 
 ward and 6 days 4 hours 36 minutes for the homeward voyage, 
 with an average speed of 19J knots. In the following year the 
 City of Paris attained the record of 5 days 19 hours 18 minutes 
 for the outward voyage, or an average of over 20 knots. The 
 Cunard Company took up the challenge, and in 1893 
 the record was further reduced by the Fairfield-built Canv- 
 pania and Lucania, each with a tonnage of 12,950 and an 
 indicated horse power of about 28,000; and these vessels ulti- 
 mately (1894-95) did the voyage between Queenstown and New 
 
98 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 York in 5 days 9 hours and 6 minutes and 5 days 7 hours and 23 
 minutes respectively. 
 
 By this time mild steel had largely displaced iron in steam- 
 ship building. Here again the Clyde took the lead, Messrs W. 
 Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, producing in 1879 the first 
 ocean-going steel steamer for the Union Steamship Company of 
 New Zealand, and a second for the Allan Line in the following 
 year. These were followed by the Parisian, built by R. Napier 
 & Sons, Govan, for the same Line, and a number of other com- 
 panies, including the Cunard, with the Servia in 1880, turned to 
 the Clyde yards with orders for steamers of this material. Pro- 
 gress was at first retarded by the greater cost of steel compared 
 with iron, but this drawback disappeared with the increase in 
 production and the progress in its manufacture, until it became 
 cheaper as well as much more conveniently obtained than iron. 
 Its use has now become almost universal in ship construction, 
 " nickel steel " (steel alloyed with a percentage of nickel) being 
 the favourite variety. 
 
 This growth in size and speed was only rendered possible by a 
 corresponding advance in marine engineering. In this connec- 
 tion the work of John Elder, the great marine engineer, and 
 the founder of what ultimately became the Fairfield Shipbuild- 
 ing and Engineering Company at Govan, is highly important. 
 Elder successfully applied in marine engineering the idea derived 
 from James Watt of using steam in two cylinders successively so 
 as to increase its motive power. He designed and constructed 
 in 1854 the first compound in place of the single acting engine, 
 which was effectively used in steam navigation in the case of the 
 screw steamer Brandon. He thereby reduced the consumption 
 of coal by from 80 to 40 per cent. By steam jacketting the 
 cylinders (an idea also derived from Watt) he further reduced 
 the coal consumption more than half. This reduction was a 
 convincing argument with shipowners in favour of the adoption 
 of this type of engine for long distance steamers, for some of 
 which it had hitherto proved impossible to provide sufficient coal 
 for the distance to be travelled. The reduction of the coal bill 
 was an equally forcible argument in its favour. The addition of 
 the surface condenser (which had also been suggested by Watt), 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 99 
 
 fitted into the Royal Bride in 1858, was another distinct advan- 
 tage, inasmuch as it did away with the use of sea water, which 
 had proved detrimental to the boilers. Mr Elder also took out 
 a patent for triple and quadruple expansion engines, but it was 
 only after his death in 1869 that this development took place as 
 the result of the combined efforts of Mr Taylor of Newcastle, 
 Dr Kirk of Napier & Sons, Govan, and Mr Brock of Denny & Co., 
 Dumbarton. The introduction of the triple expansion engine in 
 1886 and the quadruple in 1896 tended to reduce further the coal 
 consumption and made possible the adoption of the triple and 
 even the quadruple screw propeller. The water tube boiler, 
 whose successful use the substitution of mild steel for iron made 
 possible, came in due course, the Babcock & Wilcox and the 
 Yarrow types receiving the recommendation of the Boiler Com- 
 mittee of the Admiralty in 1904. The turbine or rotary engine, 
 as a substitute for the reciprocating engine, invented by the Hon. 
 C. A. Parsons and successfully applied in the Turbinia in 1894, 
 was described by Lord Kelvin as the greatest advance in steam 
 engine practice since the days of Watt. 
 
 As the result of the advantages in speed and economy exem- 
 plified by this vessel and two destroyers fitted with turbines, 
 W. Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, built two turbine steamers, 
 the King Edward in 1901 and the Queen Alexandra in the fol- 
 lowing year, for service on the Clyde estuary. The former de- 
 veloped a mean speed of 20J knots on the measured mile and of 
 19 knots on a coal consumption of only 18 tons per day on the 
 voyage to Campbelltown and back — a distance of 160 miles. 
 The Queen Alexandra improved on this with a mean speed of 
 21.63 knots. The same firm constructed a number of turbine 
 steamers for the cross-Channel service, and in 1904 completed 
 several others for the New Zealand Union Steamship Company 
 and the British India Steam Navigation Company. In the fol- 
 lowing year Messrs. Stephen & Sons launched the Virginian for 
 the Allan Line. After exhaustive investigation the Cunard Co. 
 decided to adopt the turbine for their new liner the Carmania, 
 of 21,000 tons, built by J. Brown & Co. at Clydebank in 1905. 
 This vessel was surpassed in size and speed by the Lusitania 
 and the Mauretania, — ^the former built at Clydebank — 
 
100 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 which in 1910 wrested from the North German Lloyd, Kaiser 
 Wilhelm II, the lost record for the Atlantic passage with the 
 astounding performance ol 4 days 10 hours 41 minutes from 
 Queenstown to New York. The Clyde record for size, if not for 
 speed, was produced by the same firm in the Aquitama, launched 
 in 1913 with a tonnage of over 60,000. In 1911 out of the Clyde- 
 bank total of 104,550 horse power, 71,000 consisted entirely of 
 turbines and 11,250 of combined turbines and reciprocating 
 engines. The figures for Fairfield were about 44,000, Dumbarton 
 about 80,000, Dalmuir 40,500, Govan 22,000, Scotstoun 28,000. 
 
 A still later development is the oil (internal combustion) 
 engine and the motor ship, not to speak of the airship, in which 
 Messrs Beardmore have specialised during the war with remark- 
 able results, such as the air leviathan which recently (summer of 
 1919) performed the voyage from Drem to America and back to 
 Norfolk without mishap. The substitution of oil for coal in 
 ship propulsion was applied in the Selandia, built at Copenhagen 
 in 1912 and supplied with Diesel engines. It was strenuously 
 advocated by the late Lord Fisher and promises to become 
 general, the cost of oil compared with coal being considerably 
 less. The latest motor ship, the Narragansett, has a displace- 
 ment of 14,000 tons, is fitted with two Diesel engines on the 
 standard four-stroke system, carries 700 tons of oil fuel, and 
 bums 11 tons per day. 
 
 These engineering improvements have revolutionised the art of 
 ship construction, which has attained a development and a 
 variety of type far beyond the dreams of our forefathers. " The 
 single screw cargo steamer, driven by reciprocating engines," 
 says a writer in the Glasgow Herald Supplement for December 
 81, 1912, " still predominates in numbers and in tonnage; but 
 with the adaptation of the turbine, by means of gearing, to low- 
 speed propellers, and with the coming of the oil engine as a serious 
 competitor in the propulsion of ships, it is difficult to say how 
 long it will be able to retain its present position. But the 
 variations in types of vessels built now extend much further than 
 the distinctions between types of propelling machinery. 
 Specialisation in the designs of hulls for different trades is being 
 carried to great lengths. There are far more kinds of ' screw 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 101 
 
 steamers ' than there used to be; special service vessels have 
 become floating workshops and laboratories, colliers have be- 
 come independent of quay equipment, oil tankers are coming to 
 be commonplace; the * clear hold ' boat is rapidly superseding 
 the vessel of pillars and stanchions, and — ^to come back to motive 
 power — there are now motor passenger ships, motor cargo ships, 
 motor coasters, barges, lighters, tugs, yachts, and laimches, as 
 well as motor gimboats and at least one motor destroyer. There 
 have never been so many types of vessels as at present, the 
 types have never been so well adapted for their particular pur- 
 poses, and — ^paradoxical though it may seem — there has never 
 been a time when shipbuilders and engineers were more capable 
 of turning out vessels that could be used profitably on any of 
 quite a number of different services or routes." 
 
 Size and speed, combined with safety, economy, and increasing 
 luxury have been the distinctive features of the remarkable 
 evolution of the passenger steamship during the last sixty years. 
 The paramount consideration of safety has led to the adoption 
 of the double bottom and the water-tight bulkhead and the in- 
 stallation of the Marconi wireless on all ocean liners. The 
 evolution has not even yet reached its limit in view of the possi- 
 bilities of liquid fuel, gas, and electricity in propulsion. In the 
 case of combined passenger and cargo steamers size rather than 
 great speed has been one of the dominating factors, and has 
 given rise to the " intermediate " steamer, of which the Clyde 
 has produced many magnificent examples in recent years for the 
 various steamship companies, and which combine large carrying 
 capacity with moderate pace. 
 
 The Clyde was long famous for its sailing ships ; but the pro- 
 portion of steam to sailing ship tonnage has gradually declined, 
 though there have been occasional revivals. Between 1890 and 
 1893, for instance, there was a burst of activity in this kind of 
 construction and in the four years ending in 1894 five of the 
 Clyde firms built 185 sailing ships aggregating 842,528 tons. 
 Since then, however, there has been a marked falling off and such 
 revivals are not likely to occur in the future. 
 
 Clyde shipbuilders have contributed many war vessels to the 
 British Navy, and to describe what they have accomplished in 
 
102 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 this department would be to write a very long chapter in the 
 history of British naval construction. John Brown & Co. con- 
 tributed a number of the larger battleships and cruisers in the 
 closing years of the nineteenth century, such as the Bamilies, the 
 Jupiter, the Terrible. In the opening years of the twentieth 
 they added to their list of battleships and cruisers the Hindustan, 
 Inflexible, Australia, Tiger, Repulse, and the Dreadnought 
 Barham. In 1919-20 they produced the largest and most power- 
 fully armed battleship in the world in the Hood, of 41,200 tons 
 and 31 knots, which cost £5,610,568 — ^perhaps the last of the 
 naval leviathans — in view of the probable change in naval policy 
 and construction as the result of the war. The Fairfield Company 
 has also attained prominence in warship building in recent years 
 with such battle cruisers as the Indomitable, which made the 
 warship record in crossing the Atlantic in 1908, the New Zealand, 
 and the battleships Valiant and the Renown of 28,200 tons in 
 1916 — a vast advance upon the Nelson of 6,000 tons, contributed 
 by the same yard in 1878. The record of Beardmore & Co. dur- 
 ing the same period, who took over the business of Napier 8e 
 Sons, Govan, in 1900 and added a new yard at Dalmuir, is also a 
 formidable one, with the Berwick and Carnarvon in 1902-08, 
 the Agamemnon in 1906, the Gloucester, Falmouth, Conqueror, 
 Benbow from 1909-18. During the years of the war these and 
 other firms completed large additions to the Navy, war work 
 largely taking the place of mercantile construction, which space 
 forbids to give in detail. The Clyde, it may be fairly said, 
 rendered yeoman service in winning the war as far as the exten- 
 sion and maintenance of the British fleet was concerned and the 
 provision of numerous Clyde-built vessels as transports or armed 
 cruisers for government service. 
 
 Besides the building of ships a number of Clyde firms have 
 large engineering works for the production of the boilers, engines, 
 etc., fitted into them. Brown & Co., Beardmore, Fairfield, 
 Denny, for instance. Details are impossible. Suffice to say 
 that in the last three years of the nineteenth century the engines 
 produced on the Clyde reached a total indicated horse power of 
 nearly 1^ millions. In 1912 Messrs Brown reached a record in 
 the total for the world and also by one finn in a single year with 
 
SHIPBUILDING AND MARINE ENGINEERING 103 
 
 178,500, and the figures for the whole Clyde, 878,000, also con- 
 stituted a record. In the following year the latter record was 
 broken with 1,111,400. During the four and a half war years the 
 same firm's total alone was well over 1| millions. 
 
 At present there are about 50 firms engaged in this industry 
 on the Clyde and its estuary, including Harland & Wolff of 
 Belfast, who have established works at Glasgow and Greenock, 
 and in total annual tonnage they lead not only the United King- 
 dom, but the world. The total fluctuates with the years, accord- 
 ing as the demand for new shipping rises or falls. Taking the 
 last five decades from 1862 to 1912 it shows, with one exception, 
 a steady rise, though there are ebbs and flows in the individual 
 years of each decade. From 1862 to 1872 the total rose from 
 69,967 tons to 230,847, in 1882 to 391,984, in 1892 it fell back 
 to 886,514 ; rose again in 1902 to 516,977, and in 1912 to 640,529. 
 In the following year, 1918, this total was surpassed with 692,600, 
 and including warships, 756,800. In 1920 it was 671,915. Of 
 the individual firms Russel & Co., Port-Glasgow, headed the list 
 with 71,224 tons in 1912, Scott following with 58,314, Connell 
 with 45,314, Barclay, Curie with 41,750, Hamilton with 40,029, 
 Fairfield with 86,626, Caird & Co. with 85,936, Denny with 
 33,925, whilst Stephen, Henderson, McMillan, Brown, and 
 Beardmore ranged between 29,000 and 20,000. It is noteworthy 
 that as long ago as 1890 Russel & Co. exceeded the 70,000 some- 
 what — the largest output for the world in that year. The firm 
 again held the world record in 1904 with nearly 74,000 and in 
 1914 it improved on this with over 78,000. The firm has re- 
 cently been reconstituted under the name of Lithgows and in 
 1920 appears third on the list of output, Harland & Wolff being 
 first with 69,905 tons, Barclay, Curie second with 60,182, Fair- 
 field fourth with 40,234, Brown fifth with a few tons less, whilst 
 Connell, Denny, Scott follow with 83,570, 30,499, and 80,000 
 respectively, and Henderson, Ayrshire Dockyard, Stephen, 
 Hamilton, Duncan, McMillan range between 80,000 and 20,000. 
 
 In the face of these figures the output in the east coast yards 
 is very modest. On the Forth, Tay, Dee and Moray Firth only 
 relatively small vessels are buUt, and the figures for 1912 were 
 respectively 19,054, 17,888, and 11,217 tons. 
 
104 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 " In busy times," remarks Mr Pollock, " the largest of the 
 combined ship and engine establishments of the Clyde employ 
 each from 5,000 to 6,000 workmen, a large proportion of whom 
 are skilled artisans. Altogether the shipbuilding and engineering 
 works of the Clyde — including various subsidiary, but closely 
 connected branches — afford employment to between 60,000 and 
 80,000 workpeople, the number varying of course between these 
 limits with the general condition of trade. The average annual 
 output of the Clyde shipyards (as measured by tonnage and in- 
 cluding warships) excels that of the whole of the United States, 
 and almost equals the total production of both Germany and 
 France ... Of the 60,000 or 80,000 workers, considerably over 
 three-fourths in the shipyards are journeymen and apprentices; 
 the remainder being artisan helpers and unskilled labourers. In 
 the engineering works, due to the growth of automatic devices, 
 the proportion of apprentices and youthful attendants of machine 
 tools to the skilled workers is very much higher. A score or more 
 of distinct trades, however, are involved in the building and 
 equipment of ships. Prominent among them are frame-setters, 
 platers, hole-borers, rivetters, caulkers, drillers (familiarly re- 
 ferred to as " the black squad "), shipwrights, joiners, cabinet- 
 makers, plumbers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, brass and copper 
 workers, painters and riggers (" the white squad "), pattern- 
 makers, and steam, electrical, and hydraulic engineers — ^the latter 
 further sub-divided into " machinists," " fitters," etc., accord- 
 ing to the particular line of occupation in the engine-shops." 
 
 5. The Textile Industry 
 
 As previously noted, homespun cloth was made in the homes 
 of the people throughout Scotland for centuries. In the course 
 of time Waulk mills were established for the purpose of fulling 
 the cloth, the process being done much better by beating wet, 
 soapy cloth mechanically than by tramping it by the feet. 
 Another stage in the process of woollen manufacture is marked 
 by the substitution about the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury for hand cards of machine cards driven by water power. 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 105 
 
 To meet the growing demand for yam, the hand mule was de- 
 vised; the power loom gradually displaced the hand loom, and 
 this revolution in the weaving industry reacted on the spinning 
 industry and led to the evolution of the self-acting mule. It is 
 on these and other improvements of machinery that the develop- 
 ment of the textile industry rests, and though Scotland cannot 
 claim their invention, its manufacturers have applied them with 
 remarkable results, and some of them, like Mr Melrose of 
 Hawick, who invented the piecing machine, and Mr Roberts, 
 who started the first successful feeding machine or condenser in 
 Scotland, have a share of the credit of them. 
 
 The famous tweed cloth derives its name from the inadvertent 
 reading of tweed for " tweel " by the clerk of a London mer- 
 chant in an invoice of goods, consigned by a Hawick manufac- 
 turer in 1826. By this happy mistake the name of the region, 
 which has long been the centre of the industry, passed to the 
 cloth manufactured in the towns on the Tweed and its tribu- 
 taries. That the woollen manufacture should have taken a 
 firm hold in this region is largely due to the fact that it rears a 
 large number of sheep and thus provides a supply of wool, which 
 in the earlier days of the industry was fairly adequate to the de- 
 mand, though it has long ceased to be so. Jedburgh claims the 
 distinction of being the first town to produce this cloth by the 
 simple expedient of twisting together two or more woollen yams 
 of difierent colours. But Galashiels early took the leading place 
 in the industry, with Hawick as a good second. From Galashiels 
 Mr Henry BaJlantyne transplanted it to Walkerbum, where there 
 was a plentiful supply of water power and cheap land. Another 
 motive for this extension was the fact that the Galashiels 
 weavers were an independent set of men, working only from 
 Tuesday or Wednesday to Saturday and drinking or fishing on 
 Monday and sometimes even on Tuesday. The sons of Henry 
 Ballantyne migrated to Innerleithen and later to Peebles, and 
 now nearly the whole industry in the Tweed valley is controlled 
 by his grandsons. Its rise in Selkirk was largely due to in- 
 comers from Galashiels during the " nineties." 
 
 The wool supply comes mostly from British Colonies and 
 South America. It is prepared for the carding machine by 
 
106 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 machinery invented and improved for the purpose, by which it is 
 scoured, dried, teased, and oiled. After carding it is spun into 
 yarn, dyed, woven, fulled, stretched, cropped, and pressed into 
 the finished article. This intricate process is accomplished by 
 appliances which have long displaced the primitive methods of 
 the days of the spinning wheel and the hand loom. 
 
 In the process of manufacture tweed retains the natural 
 strength of the material unimpaired and does not sacrifice this 
 quality to fineness of fabric or perfection of finish as in the case 
 of English or Continental cloths. The best testimony to its 
 excellence is the fact that the Scottish manufacturers have found 
 many imitators in England and on the Continent and have had 
 to face the competition of English made " Scotch tweeds." In 
 the best qualities they, nevertheless, taike the lead, and this 
 imitation was adduced by the jurors of the Exhibition of 1862 
 as a proof of the supremacy of this department of Scottish in- 
 dustry. " To the Scotch manufacturers belongs the credit of 
 having found out what the public like, and of having led for a 
 considerable period the public taste. So largely have their pro- 
 ductions been imitated on the Continent, that many of the 
 choicest fancy trouserings of France and other countries are 
 easily traceable in design and colouring to their Scotch 
 origin." 
 
 The tweed manufacture dates from the first quarter of the 
 nineteenth century, when the old Galashiels " tweels " (greys, 
 blues, and drabs) gave place before the demand for a more 
 varied cloth. Sir Walter Scott, when Sherifi of Selkirkshire, had 
 done something to foster this demand by wearing a pair of 
 trousers made of Scottish checked plaid, and the commercial 
 collapse of 1829 induced the manufacturers to attempt a new 
 departure in the woollen industry. In this year there were only 
 fifteen sets of carding machinery in operation. Fully twenty 
 years later, in 1851, the number had swelled to 225, while the 
 number of factories was 72, operating 829 power looms and pro- 
 ducing goods of an estimated value of £900,000. By 1869 there 
 were 85 factories with 340 sets of carding machines, 2,720 power 
 looms, giving employment to 18,600 persons, while the value of 
 the cloth produced had risen to over two millions. 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 107 
 
 The industry had then and still has its centre in the Border 
 towns — Galashiels, Hawick, Jedburgh, Earlston, Innerleithen, 
 Selkirk, Peebles, Langholm — but it has extended to other places, 
 such as Dumfries, Bannockbum, Pitlochry, Aberfeldy, Aberdeen, 
 Inverness, Elgin, Keith. To Aberdeen belongs the distinction of 
 possessing the largest tweed mill in Scotland — that of Messrs 
 Crombie at Woodside, which gives employment to over 1,500 
 hands in the highest class coating trade. At several places 
 where mills were established — Stirling, Cambusbarren, Menstrie, 
 Kinross, — the industry has died out. Highland tweeds enjoy a 
 well-merited reputation, and the industry still affords employ- 
 ment to the home worker in the Highlands and Islands, Harris 
 tweeds being the favourite garb of the sportsman. Galashiels 
 has maintained the leading position in the industry. In 1861 
 its population was about 6,000; in 1896 the total had grown to 
 19,000. In 1900 it had fallen, however, to 18,500, to rise again 
 •in 1911 to 15,000. The industry has thus its vicissitudes in 
 accordance with the law of supply and demand, though it has 
 on the whole been progressive. The same fluctuation is observ- 
 able in the case of Hawick, which about 1890 almost rivalled its 
 neighbour in production. Between 1895 and 1910, however, half 
 its weaving mills were closed and more than half its spinning 
 power disappeared. But, unlike Galashiels, it is not a " one 
 trade town " and has developed valuable knitting and dyeing in- 
 dustries. The total of carding machines and power looms em- 
 ployed in the Border towns was about 800 and 8,000 respectively 
 in any ordinary busy year previous to the war, with an output 
 valued at £8,000,000. 
 
 Besides tweed the Scottish woollen industry embraces the 
 manufacture of a large variety of woollen goods — yams, flannels, 
 blankets, hosiery, shawls, tartans, wincey, carpets, bonnets, etc. 
 In addition to the towns mentioned in connection with the tweed 
 manufacture, spinning or weaving mills for the production of 
 these articles, or some of them, were established at Alloa, Tilli- 
 coultry, Alva, Edinburgh, Dalkeith, Bonnyrig, Roslin, Glasgow, 
 Paisley, Kilmarnock, Ayr, and several other places, where the 
 industry has remained on a very limited scale or has died out. 
 Hawick acquired the lead in the hosiery industry, and Hawick 
 
108 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 underwear has a world-wide reputation. Erom 400 to 500 Cotton 
 patent frames, employing 8,500 workers, and each producing six 
 garments at once, of the finest quality and texture for the most 
 part, were at work in 1916. In carpet making the lead is still 
 taken by Kilmarnock, with Glasgow, Paisley, Ayr, Bannock- 
 bum, and Aberdeen as important competitors. At Edinbur^, 
 on the other hand, the industry has almost become extinct, 
 though patent tapestry was invented by Mr Richard Whytock, 
 who in the earlier part of the nineteenth century occupied a 
 leading position in the trade. About the same time Mr Newton 
 of Kilmarnock invented the three-ply Scottish carpet and also 
 improved the machinery for its manufacture. Another advance 
 was made by Mr Templeton of Glasgow with the Patent Axmin- 
 ster, and to him belongs the additional merit of being a pioneer 
 of artistic manufacture. He employed the best designers and 
 the most capable workmen available, and he persevered in the 
 face of old-fashioned prejudice till success, both artistic and 
 commercial, was attained. One of his triumphs was the win- 
 ning of one of the two gold medals awarded at the Paris Exhibi- 
 tion of 1868 to British carpet manufacturers. Brussels and 
 Wilton were also introduced, and ere long came the Jacquaid 
 machine. To this development the Board of Manufactures ren- 
 dered great service by fostering the inventive spirit by means of 
 premiums. 
 
 Kilmarnock and its neighbourhood are also the centre of the 
 bonnet making industry, and hosiery is extensively produced. 
 Paisley was once famous for its shawls, in the making of which 
 its hand loom weavers foimd at least a temporary remedy for the 
 long years of depression that supervened on the Napoleonic 
 wars, which forced many of them to emigrate. These products 
 were remarkable for their artistic design and workmanship. 
 " As craftsmen the Paisley weaver and his assistant * draw boy ' 
 of these early days have never been equalled in textile skill." 
 But their popularity passed with the change of fashion, and the 
 intervention of Queen Victoria, who used her influence in 1842 
 in a well-meant attempt to revive it, was only temporarily suc- 
 cessful. Hand loom weaving was doomed in the struggle with 
 the power loom and the factory system, though the hand loom 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 109 
 
 weaver lingered long in the district, and even yet lie is employed 
 in the making of certain fabrics. 
 
 In 1878 the total number of woollen factories in Scotland was 
 246, employing fully 22,500 workers of both sexes. In 1890 
 there were 85 spinning and 48 weaving factories, 118 in which 
 both spinning and weaving were carried on, and 31 described as 
 unenumerated, with a total of fully 81,000 employees. In addi- 
 tion there were 20 spinning and weaving factories engaged in the 
 worsted trade and employing about 6,000 hands. 
 
 The industry has been greatly benefitted by the establishment 
 of the South of Scotland Central Technical College at Galashiels 
 which, under the direction of Dr Oliver, serves the purpose of a 
 Woollen School for Scotland. It is the only institution in Great 
 Biitain devoted solely to instruction in the principles and prac- 
 tice of fancy woollen and worsted cloth manufacture, textile 
 testing, fibre analysis, dyeing, colour, mechanics, physics, 
 machine drawing, and in art, chemistry, and electricity as applied 
 to the industry. Attached to it is accommodation for 60 hand 
 looms for the use of the students in experimental weaving and 
 designing, 6 power looms, warping, warp and weft winding, a 
 set of woollen cards with the different feeds and condensers, 
 mule, twisting frame, knitting machines, and smaller apparatus. 
 The fimds for the scheme were raised by public subscription 
 supplemented by a grant of £10,000 from the Scottish Education 
 Department. 
 
 In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the linen industry 
 had its centre in the counties of Fife and Forfar. In 1822, the 
 last year in which the linen stamp law was in force, Forfarshire 
 produced fully 22^ million yards, Fifeshire nearly 8 million 
 yards out of a total of 86^ millions for the whole of Scotland. 
 Two other counties, Aberdeen and Perth, produced fully 4 
 millions of the remainder. The Board of Manufactures encour- 
 aged the industry by offering premiums for its improvement and 
 up to 1832 by granting bounties to the manufacturers. In 1807, 
 for instance, premiums were awarded for the best and second 
 best samples of plain linen, diaper, shirting, etc., three of them 
 going to Dunfermline and two to Edinburgh. Forfarshire owed 
 its early preeminence in the industry also to the fact that its soil 
 
110 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 was specially well suited for the production of flax, and its 
 spinners and weavers thus obtained a ready supply of the raw 
 material which is now imported from foreign countries. Be- 
 sides Dundee there are factories in all the considerable towns of 
 the county, including Forfar, Brechin, Montrose, Arbroath, 
 Kirriemuir. In 1822 there were already in Dundee and its 
 neighbourhood 49 flax spinning mills driven by steam power. 
 By the middle of the century the number had grown to nearly 
 40 in Dundee alone. The first power loom factory was erected 
 by Messrs Baxter in 1836 and others followed ere long. The 
 progress of the industry during the first half of the century may 
 be gauged from the fact that the quantity of flax, hemp, and 
 tow imported into Dundee rose from 2,187 tons in 1815 to 47,113 
 tons in 1853. The jute manufacture ere long displaced that of 
 linen from first place, and in 1892 the imported flax and hemp 
 had fallen to about 21,000 tons. In 1911 the total, including 
 tow, was slightly below 20,000. Dundee, in addition, produces 
 a large quantity of textile machinery valued at about £300,000 
 a year and giving employment to between 8,000 and 4,000 
 artisans. The cognate industries of bleaching, dyeing, and 
 calendering are also extensive. 
 
 Arbroath owed the rise of its linen industry to the accidental 
 discovery by one of its weavers of the Osnaburg linen cloth in 
 1738. The industry throve exceedingly and before the end of 
 the century its weavers produced over a million yards of linen, 
 besides sail-cloth of almost equal value. The introduction of 
 spinning machinery in the beginning of the nineteenth greatly 
 increased the output, and by 1832 there were 16 spinning mills 
 in the town and neighbourhood. Ten years later several more 
 had been added and the flax annually spun amounted to 7,000 
 tons. In 1875 the spinning and weaving mills numbered 34 mth 
 40,000 spindles and fully 1,100 power looms, with a weekly out- 
 put of almost 45,000 yards of linen. In 1907 the value of the 
 flax imported was nearly £150,000. 
 
 Steam driven flax spinning machinery was first introduced in 
 Ford's mill at Montrose in 1805, with (Jeorge Stephenson, of 
 subsequent locomotive fame, as engineman, and flax spinning 
 has remained its chief industry, the value of the flax imported 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY ill 
 
 in 1906 being £267,000. From Montrose Forfar obtains a large 
 part of the yarn for its weaving factories. Brechin has two spin- 
 ning mills as well as five weaving factories for the manufacture 
 of Osnaburgs, brown linens, and sailcloth. In the early part of 
 the century the industry was so extensively carried on at Kirrie- 
 muir that it was second only to Dundee in production, and its 
 output is still extensive. Hand loom weaving lingered long 
 here, and one of these weavers, David Sands, acquired notability 
 in the second half of the eighteenth century as the inventor of a 
 mode of weaving double cloth for the use of staymakers, and 
 for seamless shirts. The neighbouring Blairgowrie and Alyth, 
 though in Perthshire, and Coupar-Angus, have also a considerable 
 linen industry. 
 
 In Fife the industry is carried on at Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, 
 Dysart, Leslie, Leven, Auchtermuchty, Kingskettle, Ladybank, 
 Strathmiglo, Falkland, Cupar, Tayport, Newburgh, and several 
 other places. The damask of Dunfermline is unequalled in de- 
 sign and finish and its artistic fame is traceable to Mr Joseph 
 Paton, father of the celebrated painter. Its manufacture dates 
 from the early part of the eighteenth century, when it was intro- 
 duced by James Blake, who hiad learned the secret in a work- 
 shop at Drumsheugh, near Edinburgh, and started the first 
 damask loom in his native town. Improvements in the damask 
 loom were subsequently made by John Wilson and David Bonnar, 
 and a great impulse was given to the industry by the introduction 
 of the Jacquard machine in 1825. " The beautiful specimens of 
 damask made in Dunfermline, Belfast, and other places," says 
 Mr Warden in his History of the Linen Trade, " are now chiefly 
 produced by the Jacquard machine, invented by Joseph Marie 
 Jacquard, and first shown at the National Exhibition of Indus- 
 try, held at Paris in 1801. This very perfect, but simple machine 
 was at first received with much bad feeling by the artisans of 
 France, many machines having been destroyed and the inven- 
 tor's life threatened. Its merits were too valuable and too 
 apparent to be entirely kept back, even by such furious and 
 frenzied opposition, and when it did emerge it revolutionised the 
 trade. Previously figures, which could not be produced by com- 
 binations of twilling and colouring, were formed by the aid of the 
 
112 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 draw-boy, and such, or other appliances, or by the cumbrous 
 and tedious modes known in tapestry work as high and low warp, 
 but by neither mode were they so perfectly brought out as by 
 this beautiful machine. . . . This machine is used in the manu- 
 facture of silk, cotton, woollen, and linen, and is alike suitable 
 to all. Patterns of endless design and of wonderful beauty can 
 be produced by it by the mere change of the cards passed over 
 the surface of the perforated box, the particular pattern de- 
 pending wholly on them. Improvements have from time to time 
 been effected in this engine, and it has now been made so aston- 
 ishingly perfect for the various fabrics for which it is adapted 
 that it will be very difficult to supersede it by anything 
 more suitable." By means of it designs are produced with the 
 greatest distinctness of outline and delicacy of detail. 
 
 A growing demand for the Dunfermline product sprang up. 
 William IV was the first of many royal customers, and Queen 
 Victoria followed his example. For the famous " Crimean Hero 
 Tablecloth," designed by Mr Balfour and representing the chief 
 persons on the allied side associated with this war, the Queen 
 gave an order, whilst another came from the Emperor Napoleon 
 III. The ramifications of the Dunfermline trade extend over the 
 world, Americia, being the most extensive buyer. About the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century there were over 1,000 hand 
 looms at work. In 1836 the number had risen to about 8,500, 
 giving employment to 6,000 persons. The advent of the power 
 loom greatly increased the output and about thirty years later 
 there were four power loom factories. In 1890 the number had 
 risen to 10, employing about 6,000 persons, a large proportion of 
 whom were women. " The business done in linen in Scotland," 
 remarks Mr Steele in the Scottish Bankers Magazine, April 1912, 
 " may be estimated at about £3,000,000 per annum and Dun- 
 fermline alone produces more than one-third of this amount." 
 
 Kirkcaldy was the first town in Scotland to introduce the power 
 loom in 1821, and in the town and district over 3,000 persons are 
 now employed in the industry. It is, however, more famous as 
 the seat of the allied floorcloth and linoleum industry, which was 
 started in Scotland by Mr Michael Nairn in 1847 and ha§ attained 
 such large dimensions that it has made the " lang toon " the 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 113 
 
 rival of Dunfermline in size and affluence. Mr Nairn's experi- 
 ment in the making of floorcloth seemed so unpromising at first 
 that it was spoken of by his neighbours as " Nairn's Folly." 
 But the venture ere long turned out a complete success as the 
 result of the widespread demand for this serviceable and rela- 
 tively cheap form of floor covering. Several other firms took up 
 the manufacture, and in 1877 the Messrs Nairn added a linoleum 
 factory to their floorcloth works on the expiry of the patent held 
 by Mr Walton, the inventor of the process and the founder of 
 the Linoleum Manufacturing Company at Staines, Middlesex. 
 Other Kirkcaldy firms followed their example, and towards the 
 end of the century these were amalgamated under the name of 
 Barry, Ostlere, & Shepherd. Another, the Fife Linoleum Com- 
 pany, also engaged in the industry. In addition to these three 
 at Kirkcaldy, three others were started at Tayport, Newburgh, 
 and in the neighbourhood of Dundee. The employees at the 
 three Kirkcaldy works number between 3,600 and 4,000. 
 
 Besides Forfar and Fife, in most districts, with the exception 
 of Aberdeen and Perthshire, in which the linen industry was for- 
 merly carried on to a greater or less extent, it has either become 
 extinct or shrunk to small dimensions — in Edinburgh, for in- 
 stance, not to speak of towns like Inverness, Kinross, Inverary. 
 A similar fate has overtaken it in the west — in Lanarkshire, 
 Renfrew, and Ayr — where the making of linen cloth was super- 
 seded by the cotton manufacture. While it steadily rose in these 
 counties till well into the second half of the eighteenth century, 
 it showed an equally steady decline in the last decades of it and 
 the early part of the nineteenth, till in 1822 they were each 
 credited with only between 25,000 and 20,000 yards. In 1875 
 only 11 of the 159 linen factories in Scotland were situated in the 
 west. In 1890 the number had fallen to 6, though Paisley was 
 eminent in the linen thread manufacture. In the latter year the 
 total for Scotland was 186, in which about 85,000 persons were 
 employed, the large majority of whom were women. 
 
 The process of linen manufacture begins with heckling, for 
 
 which machines were invented, and by which the fibres of the 
 
 flax are sub-divided into filaments of a fineness suited to the 
 
 quality of the cloth to be made. It is then sent through the 
 
 H 
 
114 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 dressing machine several times until it is formed into an even 
 band an inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick. It is further 
 drawn out in the roving machine, slightly twisted, and wound on 
 large bobbins which are placed in the spinning machine and 
 drawn out to the necessary degree of fineness and firmly twisted. 
 The spinning is done by the wet or the dry process according 
 to the purpose for which the yam is destined. The full bobbins 
 from the spinning frames pass into the hands of the reelers, who 
 make the yam into the required lengths. The yam is generally 
 bleached before being warped. After warping it is coated with 
 paste, drawn through the heddles and the " reed," and placed 
 in the weaving loom. From the looms the webs are passed 
 through the rubbing machines, cropped, calendered, and pressed 
 by machines adapted for the purpose. 
 
 Floorcloth is made from flax-tow and yam in large looms, and 
 the canvas is subjected to a complex process of sizing, painting, 
 drying, and printing. Machinery for applying the paint and 
 printing the pattern ultimately took the place of hand labour 
 with very satisfactory results. In the making of linoleum the 
 Walton process is applied in the " drying " of the linseed oil, i.e. 
 the reduction of it to an elastic solid state. It next passes 
 through the " cementing " process, by which the oil is mixed 
 with proportions of kauri gum and resin and the preparation is 
 cooked and, after being cooled, cut into slabs. The cork to be 
 used with this cement is groimd into powder varying in fineness 
 according to the cloth to be made. The necessary proportions 
 of cement, powder, and colouring are then mixed by machinery 
 and the mixture passes between the calender rolls, where it is 
 keyed on to a foundation of jute canvas. The reverse side of the 
 cloth is then coated by the backing machine with a waterproof 
 mixture, and the linoleum thus produced is seasoned in the dry- 
 ing room where it is hung for from two to four weeks according 
 to the thickness of the fabric. The finished article is known as 
 plain linoleum. In the case of printed linoleum the pattern is 
 applied when the plain cloth is about half seasoned. Inlaid 
 linoleum differs from printed (in which the pattern is merely 
 printed on the surface, and therefore liable to suffer from wear) 
 in having the pattern carried right through the fabric. The 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 115 
 
 most serviceable means of effecting this is the machine invented 
 by Mr Walton for this purpose. 
 
 Dimdee is the centre of the allied jute manufacture. It took 
 its origin in one of those periods of depression to which the linen 
 industry has been subject. The depression was specially acute 
 in the decade between 1880 and 1840, and it was in these years 
 that Dundee manufacturers had recourse in tentative fashion to 
 the spinning and weaving of jute. In 1822 Mr Neish, a merchant 
 of the town, who had received a small consignment of the fibre 
 from London, had unsuccessfully endeavoured to get the local 
 spinners to give it a trial. Ten years later he received a second 
 consignment and on this occasion he succeeded in persuading a 
 firm of manufacturers to try the experiment. The initial diffi- 
 culty was the unsuitableness of the machinery then in use for its 
 manufacture. Another consisted in the dry and hard nature of 
 the fibre. The former was overcome by the introduction of im- 
 proved machinery, the latter by the expedient of moistening the 
 fibre with oil. This is done in the " batching room," where the 
 raw material is sprinkled with oil and water. The fibres are 
 dissevered by appropriate machinery and then pass through the 
 processes of spinning and weaving similar to those applicable in 
 the case of flax. Jute is one of the most easily dyed fabrics, 
 but it does not naturally retain the colour well. A complex pro- 
 cess is, therefore, needful in order to make the dye lasting, and 
 the better class of jute goods is so treated that the colours are 
 both bright and durable. 
 
 The products of the industry consist of sheetings, sackings, 
 carpets, rugs, and many other fabrics. For the finer goods 'a 
 combination of flax and jute, or cotton and jute, or cocoa fibre 
 and jute is used. The comparative cheapness of the raw 
 material enabled the manufacturers to sell them at a moderate 
 price and this, in conjunction with excellence of workmanship, 
 has made Dundee the centre of a world-wide trade, to which the 
 Crimean War and the American War, by adversely affecting the 
 supply of flax from Russia and raw cotton from the Southern 
 States, gave a great impulse. In spite of recurring periods of 
 depression and the growing competition of India, whence most of 
 the raw material is imported, Dundee has maintained its supre- 
 
116 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 macy and steadily increased its production. It has justly 
 merited the title of " Juteopolis," for its linen manufacture, 
 which in a number of factories is combined with it, is modest 
 in comparison with the staple industry. It is also carried on to 
 a considerable extent in some of the other Forfarshire towns 
 and at Perth, Aberdeen, Tayport, and Springfield, near Cupar. 
 In 1888 the number of tons imported was 1,136 ; in 1858 it had 
 grown to 80,000; in 1868 to over 58,000; in 1890 to 206,759. 
 In 1911 the number was 201,000. Dundee and district have had 
 little to fear from the competition of the West of Scotland, 
 though attempts were made at Glasgow and elsewhere to secure 
 a share of the industry. These, however, proved ultimate 
 failures or have remained on a very limited scale. In 1890 the 
 number of factories in Scotland was 108, and of these Glasgow 
 was credited with only 2. The number of persons employed 
 was over 40,000. Twenty years later the number had increased 
 to about 68,000, the large proportion, as in the case of the linen 
 manufacture, being women. 
 
 In the early years of the nineteenth century the cotton 
 industry had taken a firm hold in the west of Scotland, and the 
 west remained its centre. A recent writer on the geography of 
 Renfrewshire ascribes the fact to climatic conditions. " A 
 moist atmosphere," says Mr Mort, " is necessary for the manu- 
 facture of high-grade cotton goods, otherwise the material 
 becomes brittle and difficult to work. Now the average rain- 
 fall of many parts of the west coast is double that of the east 
 coast. Thus the west coast possesses the valuable attributes (at 
 least for the cotton worker) of a high rainfall and a humid 
 atmosphere, and therefore the industry, by a process of the 
 survival of the fittest, has come to be localised in the west." 
 The humid climate of Manchester accounts, in part at least, for 
 its pre-eminence in the cotton industry. Other factors contri- 
 buted, such as the facility with which workers could be obtained. 
 Improvements in the machinery, which Englishmen had invented 
 in the second half of the eighteenth century, were made by 
 Scottish manufacturers. In 1797 Mr Kelly of the New Lanark 
 Mills produced a self-acting mule, and Mr Buchanan of the 
 Catrine Mills also busied himself with the problem about the 
 
THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY 117 
 
 same time and, in cooperation with his nephew, Mr Deanston, 
 completed his invention in 1826. It was afterwards improved 
 by Mr Robertson, a foreman in the Crofthead Mill in Renfrew- 
 shire, in conjunction with Mr Smith, who also improved the 
 carding machine. With the self-acting spinning mule came the 
 power loom which immensely increased the output of the cotton 
 factories. The fabrics included plain calico, muslins, curtains, 
 ginghams, pullicates; but the making of muslin became the 
 speciality of the industry. The pioneer of this speciality was 
 Mr James Monteith, who about 1780 waiped the first muslin web 
 attempted in Scotland, and successfully imitated the fabrics of 
 Dacca and other Indian industrial centres. 
 
 In 1834 the number of cotton mills in Scotland had swelled 
 to 134, compared with 19 in 1787. Aberdeen had some large 
 factories, but the vast majority were located in Lanarkshire and 
 Renfrewshire — 74 in the former and 41 in the latter. In 1850 
 the number in these counties was 145. Ten years later the 
 figures were about the same. In 1890 there was a drop to 114, 
 the total for Scotland being 124, employing about 86,000 persons, 
 of whom the large majority were women. Since then the 
 decline has gone on increasing. This shrinkage has been due to 
 the competition of Lancashire and Yorkshire with their enormous 
 output, their more economical production, and their adoption 
 of more up-to-date machinery. In this respect Scottish enter- 
 prise has lagged behind that of England, and the vast industrial 
 development of the west in other directions has provided other 
 avenues for capital and labour. That the Scottish manufac- 
 turers might have forestalled this regrettable decline is proved 
 by the fact that the Glasgow Cotton Spinning Company has 
 developed a large trade, and has shown itself capable of meeting 
 its Lancashire rivals. In one branch, however — that of cotton 
 thread spinning — Paisley has maintained the leading position, 
 and practically controls the thread export trade. The develop- 
 ment of this trade is largely due to Mr Patrick Clark, the 
 founder of the firm of Clark & Co., and to Mr James Coats, the 
 founder of that of J. & P. Coats. Both firms have established 
 works in America and other countries. In 1890 the Messrs Coats 
 became a public company, with control of the business of Messrs 
 
118 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Clark, with an authorised capital of 5| millions, which was 
 subsequently increased to 10 millions, whose marketable value 
 in 1918 was estimated at close on 56 millions. The mills at 
 Paisley cover about 100 acres, and give employment to over 
 10,000 persons. " Half a million spindles are driven by engines 
 of 80,000 h.p., which require the daily consumption of some- 
 thing like 400 tons of coal, and 15,000 tons of wood are used 
 annually in the manufacture of about 250 millions of spools. 
 The demand for spool wood at one time practically threatened 
 the deforestation of various parts of Scotland, but the supply is 
 now chiefly obtained from Northern Europe and North America. 
 . . . The machines used in the making of the thread are of the 
 latest type, and are wonderful in their accuracy. The doubling 
 machine is so adjusted that it ceases to operate when one of the 
 ends breaks or is missing, whilst the testing and measuring of 
 the thread is carried out with the greatest exactness. The revolu- 
 tions of the spindles require also to be finely judged, as a proper 
 speed when the bobbin is empty becomes much too great when it 
 is almost full, and it is therefore necessary to confine the speed 
 of the spindles to a velocity which will not be excessive when 
 the winding is almost complete. Thirty years ago the spindles 
 made 8000 revolutions per minute, but they now make about 
 10,000, while the space occupied is less." 
 
 Not far oft, at Kilbowie, on the north side of the Clyde, is 
 the greatest sewing machine factory in the world, that of the 
 Singer Manufacturing Company. The works, removed here from 
 Bridgeton, Glasgow, in 1884, cover 46 acres, employ 6,000 
 persons, and turn out 18,000 machines per week, of which over 
 700 classes and varieties are catalogued. The sales in Great 
 Britain and Ireland amount to about 200,000 a year. The 
 sewing machine, it has been aptly said, has been the making of 
 the thread industry. Renfrewshire has also maintained a con- 
 siderable industry in the making of the lighter silk fabrics, such 
 as gauzes, gossamers, chiffons, handkerchiefs, and ties, though 
 the output is a stationary one. Mention should also be made of 
 the Glasgow Weaving College, which dates from 1877, and pro- 
 vides a technical training in textile manufacture for workmen 
 and designers. 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES ii9 
 
 In 1890 the total number of textile factories in Scotland was 
 747, and of persons employed in these industries 154,591, of 
 whom more than two-thirds were women. 
 
 6. Secondary IndustJiies 
 
 Modem chemistry has become an essential of many indus- 
 tries. It has not only revealed the marvellous substances and 
 forces inherent in solids, liquids, and gases, but has shown how 
 they can be practically utilised in connection with a large num- 
 ber of industries besides that specifically termed chemical. In 
 this wider sense it should be regarded as a primary industry. 
 But as a specific industry it is not so extensively carried on in 
 Scotland as any of the foregoing and may, therefore, compara- 
 tively be treated as a secondary one. 
 
 In the narrower sense, it was introduced at Glasgow towards 
 the end of the eighteenth century by Mr Charles Macintosh, who 
 began the manufacture of sugar of lead and chloride of lime, 
 and also of waterproof cloths. In the first year of the nineteenth 
 Messrs Tennant, Knox & Co. originated the factory at St RoUox 
 for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, chloride of lime, soda, 
 soap, etc., which prospered into one of the most extensive 
 chemical works in the world, whose monster chimney, 435J feet 
 high, is one of the prominent landmarks of the city. These 
 works now form part of the great combination known as the 
 United Alkali Company of Britain, and the more recent works 
 of the Eglinton Chemical Company and the Irvine Chemical 
 Company are also included in this combination. Its chief 
 products are sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, salt cake, 
 bleaching powder. Formerly the alkali works produced 
 large quantities of soda ash (carbonate of soda) and 
 caustic soda by the Leblanc process. In 1876, for in- 
 stance, about 50,000 tons of common salt were converted 
 in Scotland into these substances. This process was 
 gradually displaced by the Ammonia Soda process, which, 
 however, is now confined to England, and the Scottish works at 
 Glasgow, Irvine, Kirkintilloch, and other places are devoted to 
 
120 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the manufacture of acids of various kinds, as well as sulphites, 
 Epsom and other salts, sulphates, borax, phosphates, etc. 
 
 Ammonia is obtained mainly as a bye-product of other indus- 
 tries, such as gasworks, paraffin oil works, works for the recovery 
 of blast furnace gases, and in recent years the manufacture of 
 sulphate of ammonia has been extensively developed from these 
 sources. " Among the first to take up the subject of the recovery 
 of tar and ammonia from blast furnaces," says Mr Jones in a 
 paper dealing with the origin of the industry in the Journal of 
 the Iron and Steel Institute for 1885, " was Mr William Ferric, 
 of the Monkland Ironworks. . . . This important problem was 
 (also) taken up in 1879 by Mr John Alexander and Mr A. K. 
 M'Cosh, of the firm of William Baird & Co., and the condensa- 
 tion ideas or principles have been handled by them in a most 
 masterly fashion. The first large scrubber was erected by them 
 at Gartsherrie in 1881, and the second in 1883. Almost simul- 
 taneously the subject was attacked by other ironmasters, notably 
 by the Messrs Neilson of the Summerlee Ironworks, and the 
 Messrs Addie of Langloan. . . . Mention should also be made 
 of the names of Mr Henry Aitken, Mr J. Chapman, and Mr 
 Gorman. ... At the Gartsherrie Ironworks, Coatbridge, and 
 the Lugar Ironworks and Muirkirk Ironworks, Ayrshire, the 
 Messrs Baird have erected gigantic plant for carrying out the 
 above principle (the Alexander and M'Cosh process). They have 
 in fact been the pioneers of this industry, and the extraordinary 
 amount of courage and ability which they have shown in finally 
 bringing things to a complete practical success is worthy of the 
 highest admiration." 
 
 Fifteen years later the industry had made substantial pro- 
 gress. " In 1885," says Mr Henry Bumby writing in the same 
 journal for 1901, " the recovery of tar and ammonia from the 
 blast furnace was an infant industry just emerging from the 
 region of small scale experiment. At the present time, with one 
 exception, every works in Scotland either has a complete by- 
 product plant or is erecting one, and all the earlier plants have 
 been considerably enlarged and improved. ... In designing 
 these improvements no one has done more than Mr A. Gillespie, 
 of Glasgow, and the three by-product works recently erected to 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES 121 
 
 his designs are admittedly the ' show ' plants of the country. 
 . . . The amount of sulphate of ammonia recovered at the 
 different works varies from 20 to 25 lbs per ton of coal used in the 
 furnaces, and the pitch and oil from 160 to 200 lbs. — the varia- 
 tions depending largely on the nature of the coal used." 
 
 The progress of the industry may be measured from the fact 
 that during the decade 1889-99 the number of tons annually 
 produced rose from about 40,000 tons in the former year to 
 nearly 78,000 in the latter. In the same period the number of 
 works in which sulphate of ammonia was made increased from 
 61 to 63. Its value as a manure accounts in part for the growing 
 demand represented by these figures. 
 
 The manufacture of dichromates of potassium and sodium, so 
 largely used in the preparation of pigments, such as chrome 
 yellow, has also been carried on in Glasgow for nearly a century. 
 The cyanide process of gold extraction adopted in 1888-89 gave 
 a great impulse to the production of potassium cyanide, which 
 was previously used mainly in photography and electro-plating. 
 The Cassel (Jold Extracting Company, the owners of the patents 
 for the new process, built a factory in Glasgow to meet the 
 increasing demand for this salt, and large quantities were made 
 and exported to the Transvaal and other gold producing coun- 
 tries. The Company acquired the exclusive right to use the 
 process devised in 1890 by Mr Beilby, who became one of its 
 directors and its scientific expert, and built an additional factory 
 at Glasgow. The manufacture of ferro-eyanide, which is re- 
 covered from crude coal gas, displaced that of alum in the works 
 of the Hurlet and Campsie Alum Company at Lennoxtown, 
 Falkirk, and Hurlet, the supply of alum shtile, which had long 
 been the staple manufacture at Campsie, having become 
 exhausted about 1880. 
 
 The distillation of wood yields acetic acid, methyl alcohol, 
 acetone, wood tar, and other chemical products, and these pro- 
 ducts are manufactured at Camlachie Chemical Works, the Cart- 
 vale Chemical Works, Paisley, and elsewhere. Coal tar and blast 
 furnace tar are distilled into naphtha, light oil, creosote oil, heavy 
 oil, and by the end of the nineteenth century the number of tar 
 distilling works in Scotland had increased to 46. From naphtha 
 
122 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 and light oil, benzine, which is largely used in the manufacture 
 of aniline, and from creosote, carbolic acid, antiseptics, and sheep 
 dips are produced. 
 
 The discovery of nitro-glycerine by Sobrero in 1846 was 
 utilised some years later by Alfred Nobel as a liquid explosive 
 in mining. Its defects and dangers as an explosive led to the 
 prohibition of its manufacture in Great Britain, but after further 
 experiments Nobel succeeded in overcoming these drawbacks by 
 the invention of dynamite, the manufacture of which was taken 
 up by Nobel's Explosives Company at Ardeer in Ayrshire. 
 During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Company 
 grew into a vast concern. In 1876 its operations were confined 
 to the production of dynamite, nitric acid, and detonators ; since 
 then it has added the manufacture of blasting gelatine and its 
 modifications, gelatine dynamite and gelignite, ballistite or 
 smokeless powder and its modification, cordite, picric acid for 
 lyddite, guncotton for cordite, compressed guncotton for torpedo 
 charges, shells, military and naval guns, armour piercing pro- 
 jectiles, etc. Besides Ardeer it possesses three other factories in 
 Scotland — ^two near Polmont and one at Linlithgow, and the 
 growth of its operations may be gauged from the fact that its 
 scientific staff increased from 5 in 1876 to 53 in 1900, and the 
 number of its workmen from 102 to over 4000. 
 
 Compressed and liquified gases are manufactured by the Scot- 
 tish and Irish Oxygen Company established at Polmadie in 1888. 
 Compressed oxygen is used for the lime light, for brazing and 
 lead burning, for respiration in case of asphyxia, and in diseases 
 of the lungs and heart. Another product, compressed carbon 
 dioxide, is applied in refrigeration and in the preparation of 
 aerated waters. The production of iodine from kelp, imported 
 from the Hebrides, Ireland, and Norway, showed a marked de- 
 crease during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 
 1846 there were 20 factories in the West of Scotland; in 1900 
 the number had fallen to 4, which were situated at Falkirk, 
 Clydebank, Kilwinning, and Bonnybridge. The fall in the value 
 of potash salts, in consequence of the working of the deposits 
 at Stanfurt in Germany, and the growing importation of Peruvian 
 iodine were chiefly responsible for this decline. 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES 123 
 
 In Edinburgh several firms devote themselves to the manu- 
 facture of fine chemicals. Naturally in the city, which has long 
 been the seat of one of the greatest medical schools of the world, 
 medical chemicals occupy a foremost place. Among these 
 chloroform, which Sir James Simpson was the first practically to 
 apply, is largely produced. Other important products are mor- 
 phine, caffeine, cocaine, theobromine, strychnine, salicin, cap- 
 sicin, podophyllin. Surgical dressings, chemical manures 
 (super-phosphates), and fertilisers (fish manures) are also manu- 
 factured in considerable quantities. The manufacture of vul- 
 canite and other rubber goods is extensively carried on, whilst 
 gelatine and glue are manufactured at Gorgie and Cramond. 
 Medical chemicals in great variety and fertilisers (including basic 
 slag) are also produced at Glasgow, whilst Paisley takes the lead 
 in the production of starches. 
 
 In the last quarter of the nineteenth century a marked devel- 
 opment took place in the manufacture of paints and colours and 
 the preparation of varnishes. Coal tar dyes came to be largely 
 used in the making of colours ; liquid paints, enamels, prepared 
 distemper colours and stains were introduced, and the quality of 
 paints improved with the improvement of grinding machinery. 
 Colours which were formerly rare became more widely available 
 in consequence of the new processes which lowered their price. 
 A similar development is observable during the same period in 
 the soap and glycerine manufacture. Whilst formerly tallow 
 was almost the only fat used in soap making, the use of vegetable 
 and nut oUs resulted in the production of a superior quality of 
 soap (quick lathering or self-washing soaps). Another impor- 
 tant advance has been the recovery, by means of a simple pro- 
 cess, of glycerine as a bye-product of soap works, which is now 
 manufactured in the two forms of crude glycerine, and 
 chemically pure glycerine — ^the last being mainly used for 
 medical and pharmaceutical purposes. 
 
 The dyeing industry received a great impulse from the pro- 
 duction from coal tar by Mr W. N. Perkin of a violet colouring 
 matter to which the name of mauve was given. Mr Perkin 
 carried out his experiments in the dyeworks of Messrs Pullar at 
 Perth. A great demand sprang ud for this dye until it was 
 
124 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 superseded by a new violet of a brighter colour. Many other 
 aniline colours followed, all produced from coal tar, and the 
 Perth works of Messrs Pullar and Messrs Campbell were suc- 
 cessively enlarged to cope with the demand of this rapidly in- 
 creasing industry. Perth, with its railway facilities and its 
 abundant water supply from the Tay, was admirably fitted to 
 become the arena of the enterprise of the Pullars and the Camp- 
 bells, which furnished employment to several thousands of 
 workers. The Perth dyeworks are mainly devoted to job-dyeing 
 which embraces every kind of garment, household requisites 
 from lamp shades to carpets, boots, gloves, etc. Dyeing is a 
 process which requires considerable chemical knowledge and 
 great care in the use of the various acids and alkalis on the part 
 of the worker. Fibres belonging to the vegetable kingdom 
 (cotton, flax, hemp, jute, etc.) have to be treated difierently 
 from fibres belonging to the animal kingdom (wool, silks, etc.) 
 On the former acids act injuriously, while alkalis have the same 
 effect on the latter. 
 
 " A dye house," says a writer in the Bankers Magazine, in 
 describing the process as carried out in these works, " is divided 
 into sections, each controlled by a foreman, and in each of these 
 sections a separate colour is, generally speaking, dyed. It is 
 quite remarkable how perfectly the dyer strikes the exact shade 
 for each of the innumerable patterns put into his hands. ... It 
 is first of all immersed with other goods for the same colour, and 
 which have been similarly prepared, in a great vat, in which the 
 necessary dyestufi has been dissolved, and the goods are kept 
 constantly on the move for at least an hour and a half. They 
 ■are then taken out, washed up, if necessary, and the water ex- 
 tracted from them in a hydro-extractor, from where they are 
 conveyed to the stoves for drying thoroughly. From thence 
 they pass through the hands of the examiners, who, if they find 
 all correct, pass them to the finishers, who iron, press, or calen- 
 dar the goods, according to what they are, and they are then 
 sent to the warehouse for dispatch to the customer." 
 
 The technical training in bleaching and dyeing m Scotland was 
 greatly benefitted by the grant of £10,000 made in 1907 by the 
 Trustees of Mr T. Graham Young, to assist in making provision 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES 125 
 
 for the teaching of this subject in connection with the Chair of 
 Technical Chemistry in the Glasgow and West of Scotland 
 Technical College, 
 
 The manufacture of dyes received a great impulse from the 
 interruption of the import from Germany caused by the war. 
 Before 1914 the Germans had acquired a well-deserved supre- 
 macy in the production of aniline dyes, and even the strong 
 prejudice against everything German which the war evoked 
 could not contest this supremacy. The German has been quick 
 to apply scientific results and methods to industry, and this is 
 specially apparent in the chemical industry in general and the 
 dye industry in particular. The British Chemical Mission to 
 Germany after the war has frankly recognised the fact, and 
 nothing but harm can result from the fanatic tendency inspired 
 in prejudiced minds by national passion, masquerading in the 
 guise of patriotism, to ignore or belittle it. " Whilst," to quote 
 the summary of the report of the Mission, " preeminent as 
 manufacturers of the so-called heavy chemicals — sulphuric acid, 
 soda, soap, etc. — we hold but a minor position as regards the 
 manufacture of fine chemictds, intermediates and dye stuffs ; in 
 particular we have failed to hold and extend the dyestuff in- 
 dustry, although this industry was originated here." At the 
 same time the war quickened the scientific resource as well as the 
 energy of the nation, and one result of the war pressure was a 
 marked advance in the home manufacture of dyestuffs. " Before 
 the war," said the Chairman of the Bradford Dyers' Associa- 
 tion at the annual meeting of the Association on the 27th 
 February, 1920, " not 10 per cent, of the aniline dyes used in 
 the United Kingdom were made in this coimtry, and the total 
 weight manufactured would not exceed 2,000 tons a year. We 
 have it on the authority of the Board of Trade Journal of the 
 5th instant, that the production is now 26,000 tons a year, which 
 is more than 20 per cent, in excess of the total weight of aniline 
 dyes consumed in this country in the years immediately before 
 the war, and I think it may be safely said that the progress 
 made by the colour-making industry since 1914 has been greater 
 than those having real knowledge of the difficulties and the 
 problems involved would have thought possible ... It is true 
 
126 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 we have not the variety, and that we lack some of the best 
 colours, but, on the other hand, it is beyond question or doubt 
 that in the supply of dyes we in this country are in a much 
 better position than any other country in the world, not exclud- 
 ing Germany." It should be noted, however, that this opti- 
 mistic conclusion is hot altogether shared by the Chemical and 
 Dyestuft Traders' Association, which in a recent memorandum 
 to the Board of Trade (October, 1920) pointed out that the policy 
 of making the United Kingdom independent of external supplies 
 of chemicals and dyestuffs had not been successful in securing 
 either the range, quality, or quantity of the materials supplied by 
 State-aided home enterprise. 
 
 Sugar refining made great progress during the first three- 
 quarters of the nineteenth century. Greenock became the 
 centre of the industry, which was also started in Glasgow, Port- 
 Glasgow, Leith, and Dundee. In 1812 there were 5 refineries at 
 Greenock ; in 1860 the number had increased to 16. There were 
 three at Glasgow, two at Leith, and one at Port-Glasgow. The 
 growth of the industry, from about the middle of the century, is 
 apparent from the rapid rise of the tonnage of raw sugar refined 
 in the Clyde works. In 1857 the number of tons imported was 
 38,836; in 1862 it passed the 100,000, and in 1867 it stood at 
 178,013. During the last quarter of the century it showed a 
 marked tendency to decrease. In 1875 the number of refineries 
 in operation at Greenock had fallen to 13, whilst those at Glasgow 
 and Port-Glasgow ceased operations. In 1900 the number had 
 fallen to 5. The decrease was not due to lack of enterprise on the 
 part of the manufacturers, but in the main to the bounties 
 granted to foreign refiners who were thereby enabled to sell at a 
 cheaper rate in the British market. The consequence was that 
 whilst the consumption of refined sugar in Great Britain increased 
 from 860,000 tons in 1875, of which all but 100,000 was produced 
 in this country, to 1,489,000 in 1900, nearly one million of this 
 latter quantity was imported from abroad, chiefly from the 
 Continent, and the quantity refined in Britain had dropped by 
 150,000 tons. The refining process, generally described, consists 
 in the dissolution of the raw sugar in water, the filtration of the 
 liquid first through cotton cloth and then through charcoal, and 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES 127 
 
 its concentration into sugar ci-ystals. Various appliances have 
 been invented in the course of the century whereby the various 
 stages of the process have been improved. 
 
 Great progress has been made in the production of sweets and 
 the preserving of fruits, meat, and vegetables. Confectionery is 
 largely made in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee. Dundee 
 long took the lead in the manufacture of jams, of which Mr 
 James Keiller was the pioneer in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. The proximity to the orchards of the Carse of Gowrie 
 explains this early predominance in jam making, to which Mr 
 Keiller ere long added the making of marmalade. The demand 
 for this preserve spread from Dundee to other parts of Scotland 
 and ere long to England and ultimately to foreign lands. The 
 success of the enterprise led to the extension of the industry, not 
 only in Dundee and the adjacent region (Coupar-Angus, New- 
 tyle, and Blairgowrie), but to other centres in Scotland. Fruit 
 preserving led too to a great development of fruit growing in dis- 
 tricts suitable for fruit culture, notably in Clydesdale, the Strath- 
 earn and Blairgowrie districts of Perthshire, and parts of Stir- 
 lingshire. Crieff, Carluke, Glasgow, Edinburgh, as well as 
 Dundee, acquired prominence in the preserving industry, which 
 includes the production of jams and jellies made from a variety 
 of imported as well as home grown fruits. 
 
 The centre of the meat preserving industry in Scotland is 
 Aberdeen, where it was introduced by Mr John Moir in 1822 
 and whence it was extended to Peterhead, Glasgow, and Leith. 
 Nine establishments for preserving provisions were in operation 
 in Scotland about fifty years later, five of which belonged to 
 Aberdeen. In addition to these five there were three engaged 
 in salting meat, and the total output of preserved meat, fish, 
 game, vegetables, etc., from these Aberdeen factories was valued 
 at £221,000 per annum. 
 
 Papermaking, already of considerable extent towards the end 
 of the eighteenth century, made rapid progress in the first half 
 of the nineteenth. This progress was accelerated by the repeal 
 of the duty on paper in 1861. The twelve mills in the Edin- 
 burgh district in 1773 had increased to twenty-two in 1868 and 
 the total for Scotlsmd in the latter year was fifty-seven. The 
 
128 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 villages on the Esk and the Water of Leith are still the centre 
 of the industry, which is also carried on at Airdrie, Caldercruix, 
 Paisley, Milngavie, on Tayside at Guard Bridge and Dundee, at 
 Aberdeen, and elsewhere. Rags were long the raw material of 
 the manufacture, and it was not till past the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century that esparto grass and wood pulp were utilised. 
 Machinery for reducing the raw material to pulp was invented in 
 Holland about the middle of the eighteenth century and ere long 
 superseded the more primitive method of poimding the fermented 
 rags in large mortars. Many years elapsed, however, before Mr 
 Robert produced a machine for converting the pulp into paper in 
 place of the old tedious manual process. This machine was im- 
 proved by the Messrs Bertram of Edinburgh, and the machine 
 exhibited by Mr George Bertram in the exhibition of 1862 was 
 adjudged to be incomparably the best hitherto constructed. 
 Further improvements in the machinery for preparing the pulp 
 and producing the finished article have been made, and at Edin- 
 burgh several engineering firms are now employed in the pro- 
 duction of this machinery. 
 
 Edinburgh and district have also long had extensive milling, 
 baking, and brewing industries. There are large flour mills at 
 Haymarket, Stockbridge, and Leith, and the biscuit factcmes 
 are also a special feature of the city's industrial products. The 
 fact that Midlothian has long been a rich agricultural county 
 and takes first place among the Scottish counties in the produc- ■ 
 tion of wheat and barley, though only fifth in that of oats, ex- 
 plains the rise of the milling industry. Its development has, 
 however, depended on the large importation of grain into Leith, 
 which alone suffices to meet the demand of the millers. The 
 extensive brewing industry is due to the supply of water of a 
 specially appropriate quality derived from the strata of the Upper 
 Old Red Sandstone on the southern side of the city and at 
 Duddingston, where quite a cluster of breweries has sprung up 
 in recent years. Brewing is also extensively carried on in the 
 Wellpark Brewery at Glasgow, whose establishment dates from 
 the middle of the eighteenth century, and a speciality of the pro- 
 duction in the west is Tennent's Lager and Munich Beers. 
 Breweries are numerous throughout the country, but the ten- 
 
SECONDARY INDUSTRIES 129 
 
 dency during the last twenty years has been to diminish the 
 number of the smaller ones. The small brewery can no longer 
 compete with the large one. In Scotland the number in 1899 
 was 129; in 1912 it had fallen to 79. In the same period the 
 production fell from 240 million barrels per annum to about 200 
 millions. The export from Scotland was 136,000 barrels in 
 1912, or 7 per cent, of the total production. 
 
 There has been a marked advance in the distilling of whisky 
 since the middle of the eighteenth century, when about 50,000 
 bolls of barley produced 504,000 gallons, which at a duty of 7d. 
 per gallon yielded £14,700 revenue. In 1911 the production in 
 the United Kingdom had reached 27,093,197 gallons, which at 
 14s. 9d. per gallon yielded close on 20 millions of revenue. In 
 1786 the first distillery was established at Glasgow — ^the fourth 
 licensed in Scotland. The increased taxation on malt gave rise 
 to smuggling and the illicit still was in operation all over the 
 Highlands. In 1823 there were no less than 1400 prosecutions 
 for such contraventions of the law. Sixty years later the num- 
 ber had fallen to 22 in consequence not only of the enforcement 
 of the law, but of the lowering of the spirit duties. The whisky 
 distilled is of two kinds — malt and grain — according to the 
 method of distilling, and a blend of both is sold. The increase 
 of 8s. 9d. in the duty per gallon in 1909 affected the production 
 and consumption to a considerable extent and lessened the num- 
 ber of distilleries at work, which fell from 159 in 1900 to 124 in 
 1910. Eighty-eight of these were situated in the counties of 
 Banff and Elgin, Argyle and Inverness. In 1912 the export 
 from the United Kingdom was about 10 million gallons. 
 
 The glassmaking industry is carried on at Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow. Whilst in the earlier part of the nineteenth century 
 only bottle glass and flint glass, or crystal, were made in Scot- 
 land, the manufacture of plate or fine mirror glass and other 
 varieties was gradually introduced. Though the name flint glass 
 is still in use for crystal, flint has long been superseded by a fine 
 white sand obtained from the forest of Fontainebleau. The in- 
 dustry was much hampered by the heavy excise duties levied 
 on glass, which up to 1845 were 56s. per cwt. for flint glass and 
 7s. for bottle. With the repeal of these duties in this year it 
 I 
 
180 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 materially increased and the value of glass exported from Scot- 
 land, which was £62,140 in 1861, had risen to £106,555 in 1867. 
 Table ware formed the bulk of the articles produced and there 
 was comparatively little competition for the British trade from 
 abroad. But cheaper labour and superior facilities in the pro- 
 duction of table ware in France, Germany, and Sweden seriously 
 affected the British manufacture during the last quarter of the 
 nineteenth century. The Continental workmen, moreover, more 
 readily adopted labour saving appliances than their British 
 fellows, and where these have been introduced the latter have 
 not shown a disposition to take full advantage of them. The 
 Holyrood glass works, which were started by Mr Ford about the 
 beginning of the century, maintained a high reputation through- 
 out it. They have, however, recently ceased to exist, but the 
 industry is still carried on by the Messrs Jenkinson at the Norton 
 Park Glass Works, whilst Messrs Millar & Co. developed a far- 
 famed speciality in glass engraving and ornamentation. More 
 recently glass engraving has been largely superseded by etching 
 by means of hydro-fluoric acid, and many improvements in the 
 machines used in the process have been introduced. Mr Ballaa- 
 tine was a pioneer in another branch of the industry — ^that of 
 glass painting — and was selected by the Fine Arts Commission 
 to execute the windows for the House of Lords. The firm has 
 produced many of the finest specimens of stained glass in Scot- 
 tish churches and other public buildings. Glasgow has also 
 excelled in the various branches of the industry, especially in the 
 production of all kinds of globes and shades for gas lights, duplex 
 lamps, and electric light. The bevelling and silvering of plate 
 glass are also extensively carried on in the city. 
 
 The first pottery in Scotland was established at Glasgow about 
 the middle of the eighteenth century. Later in the century Mr 
 Jamieson discovered a rich bed of clay at Portobello and started 
 a brickwork and pottery, around which grew the village — the 
 nucleus of the widely-known modem watering place. In the 
 beginning of the nineteenth the VerreviUe Pottery was founded at 
 Glasgow and before the middle of it two more — the Glasgow and 
 the Britannic Potteries — had come into existence. By the year 
 1868 the number in Scotland was 14, employing fully 5,000 per- 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 131 
 
 sons. The materials used in the manufacture of earthenware 
 are imported from the south of England and consist of clays 
 from Dorset and Devonshire, china clay and Cornish stone from 
 Cornwall, and flints from the chalk cliffs, which aftei- being rolled 
 about in the Channel are thrown up on the French coast near 
 Dieppe and exported to this country in large quantities. These 
 ingredients are mixed in varying proportions according to the 
 ware to be made and reduced by grinding to a thick cream. 
 The mixture then passes through sieves, which retain the sand or 
 grit, and this is thereafter pumped into presses, lined with cloth, 
 which retain the clay whilst allowing the water to exude. It is 
 then put through the pug mill — an iron cylinder about 5 feet 
 long, in the centre of which is a shaft with knives attached in 
 spiral fashion — ^from which the clay emerges thoroughly solidi- 
 fied and of the same consistency. The introduction of the pug 
 mill has greatly lightened the potter's labour in the preparation 
 of the clay, and machinery has in many of the largest potteries 
 done away with the potter's wheel itself, though there are still 
 many articles which can only be made by hand. After being 
 shaped in moulds, according to the article to be made, the clay 
 undergoes the firing or burning process in the " biscuit " kiln. 
 The decoration of the ware is ordinarily done in the " biscuit " 
 state. The designs are first engraved on copper plates, from 
 which they are printed on tissue paper which is applied to the 
 ware and the colour rubbed firmly into the pores. It then under- 
 goes the glazing process, which is completed in the glost kiln. 
 Besides ordinary and ornamental ware a large quantity of sani- 
 tary ware is manufactured in the Glasgow potteries, whose output 
 finds an extensive market in America and the Colonies. Stone- 
 ware, fire bricks, and building bricks are also extensively manu- 
 factured at Gamkirk, Glenboig, Portobello, and other places. 
 
 7. Rise and Extension of Railways 
 
 The beginning of railway construction in Scotland goes back to 
 the eighteenth century. The first railways were waggon tracks 
 laid down for the purpose of facilitating local goods traffic con- 
 
132 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 sisting chiefly of coal and iron. In 1746, the year of the Battle 
 of Prestonpans, a trainway was in operation in the neighbour- 
 hood of the battlefield. It consisted of cast iron rails placed on 
 transverse planks and served to convey the coal waggons, drawn 
 by horses from the mines at Tranent, to the harbour of Cockenzie 
 on the Firth of Forth. Such a track was in use from the col- 
 lieries at Little Govan to the Clyde at Springfield as early as 1778, 
 horse haulage being used as in the case of canal traffic. Another 
 line connecting Kilmarnock and Troon Harbour, a distance of 
 fully ten miles — the nucleus of the later Glasgow and South- 
 Western — was opened in 1811. The iron rails were 4 feet apart 
 and 4 inches broad, rested on stone blocks, and crossed the Irvine 
 by a bridge of four arches, each of 40 feet span. Over this track 
 a horse could haul two loaded waggons at the rate of two miles 
 an hour. Passenger carriages were also run on it at a more 
 expeditious rate of speed and in this respect it was an anticipa- 
 tion of the later tramway system of cities. A few years later 
 George Stephenson successfully solved the problem of applying 
 steam to railway haulage and in 1825 the Stockton and Darling- 
 ton Railway was opened for the conveyance of passengers as well 
 as goods. In the following year the first Scottish railway, on 
 which the proprietors were authorised by Act of Parliament to 
 run " locomotives or moveable engines " — that between Monk- 
 land and Kirkintilloch on the Forth and Clyde Canal — was 
 completed and opened for traffic. Its length was ten miles and 
 at first horse haulage was used, one horse drawing four waggons 
 of coal or ironstone, equal to 12 tons, from Monkland to the 
 Canal at Kirkintilloch and returning with the empty waggons at 
 the rate of three journeys in two days. By 1882, however, two 
 locomotives were at work on the line with the result that the 
 cost of carriage was greatly reduced and the rent of the collieries 
 proportionately enhanced to the proprietors. Within ten years 
 the line was doubled and an extension, authorised by Parliament 
 in 1826, was carried out by another company in the Monkland 
 coalfield known as the Ballochney Railway. In 1885 powers 
 were obtained by a third company for a further extension, under 
 the name of the Slamannan Railway, from the termination of the 
 Ballochney line, through Slamannan and Avonbridge, to the 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 133 
 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal at Causewayend. In 1848 the 
 three companies were amalgamated as the Monkland Railways 
 and in 1865 were acquired by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Rail- 
 way, which, later in the same year, became part of the North 
 British system. The old Monkland-Kirkintilloch Railway may 
 thus be regarded as the nucleus of the North British. In the 
 same year that the Ballochney Railway was sanctioned. Parlia- 
 ment authorised an extension westwards from the Monkland 
 coalfield to Glasgow under the name of the Gamkirk Railway — 
 the nucleus of the Caledonian. The rapid industrial develop- 
 ment of Glasgow necessitated a cheaper and more expeditious 
 supply of coals than could be obtained by water carriage on the 
 Monkland Canal. The line, 8J miles long, cost £12,000 per mile 
 and followed the course of the Canal, It was opened in 1881, 
 the first train being drawn by a locomotive named the ** George 
 Stephenson " and driven by Stephenson himself. " The city 
 terminus was St RoUox," says Mr Eyre Todd. " Two loco- 
 motives, weighing 6^ tons each, were got from Stephenson's 
 works at Newcastle, and on an autumn day the railway was 
 opened with much ceremony and eclat. An engraving of the 
 time shows the two trains passing each other on the double line 
 of rails at the bottom of a shallow cutting. The squat, little, 
 low engines have tall chimney-stalks, and the driver stands on a 
 small open platform, while the train consists of four open trucks 
 filled with passengers, two covered carriages on the model of the 
 old mail-coaches, with the guards sitting on the roof, and a high 
 open char-a-banc in the rear occupied by ladies. . . . The train 
 weighed over 100 tons; nevertheless, it is recorded, the engine 
 ' advanced under this prodigious load, not only with perfect free- 
 dom, but at the speed of a stage coach.' " It proved a boon to 
 the Glasgow factories, the cost of the carriage of coal from the 
 Monkland collieries to Glasgow ere long falling rfom 8s. 6d. to 
 Is. 8d. per ton. Passengers as well as goods were carried, and on 
 the Glasgow Fast Day in October, 1884, when as many as six 
 trams were despatched from St RoUox, about 1,250 passengers 
 were forwarded. Three years later the system of collecting the 
 fares in transit gave place to that of purchasing tickets before 
 starting on the journey. The increase in the passenger traffic 
 
184 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 was even more substantial than in that of minerals. Whereas in 
 the first five years after the opening of the line the tonnage of 
 minerals carried rose from 114,000 to 140,000 tons, the number 
 of passengers increased from 62,000 to 145,000. 
 
 Another line running between Wishaw and Coltness, which may 
 also be regarded as a nucleus of the Caledonian, was opened in 
 1883. In 1887 powers were obtained by a company to con- 
 struct a line from Glasgow to Paisley, Kilmarnock, and Ayr — 
 another important step towards what became the Glasgow and 
 South-Westem Railway. 
 
 On the eastern side of the country railway extension may be 
 said to have started with the line which connected the capital 
 with Dalkeith, by way of Fisherrow, with a branch to Leith, and 
 which was authorised in 1826. This line, popularly known as 
 " the Innocent Railway," was 17j^ miles in length and was 
 opened in 1881, horse traction being used for the conveyance of 
 goods and passengers. Although the company was authorised to 
 use self-moving locomotives, these horse-drawn carriages were 
 run as late as 1845, a stationary engine being used to haul them 
 by means of ropes up the tunnelled incline from Duddingston to 
 St Leonard's station. During the next 30 years or so powers 
 were successively obtained by various companies and lines con- 
 structed to connect Edinburgh with Glasgow, Berwick, Hawick, 
 Carlisle, Dunfermline, Alloa, Stirling, Perth, Dundee. The com- 
 pany which constructed the line from Edinburgh to Berwick, 
 with a branch to Haddington, opened in 1846, took the name of 
 the North British, and this company gradually absorbed the 
 others operating in the south-eastern and eastern region from 
 Berwick and Carlisle to the Tay, and gradually added to its 
 mileage by the construction of branch lines within the area in 
 which it is practically supreme. It extended its radius north- 
 wards of the Tay to Arbroath, Montrose, and Bervie, with run- 
 ning powers from Montrose to Aberdeen. Westwards it carried 
 its connections by amalgamation or new construction to Bathgate, 
 Airdrie, Coatbridge, Hamilton, Bo'ness, Grangemouth, Larbert, 
 Aberfoyle, Helensburgh, and Balloch on Loch Lomond. In 
 1889 it took powers to penetrate the West Highlands by a line 
 running from Helensburgh to Fort William, a distance of 100 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 135 
 
 miles, which was opened in 1897 and subsequently extended 
 westwards to Mallaig and northwards to Fort Augustus. In 
 order to obviate the drawback of crossing the Forth and Tay by 
 ferry boat, it carried out two of the greatest feats in railway 
 construction by the bridging of these two firths. The first 
 bridge across the Tay, two miles in length, which was opened in 
 June 1878, was too slender and too badly constructed to bear the 
 weight of trafiic and the wind pressure, and was destroyed by a 
 furious gale on Sunday night, the 28th December, 1879, the 
 passenger train from Edinburgh to Dundee, which attempted to 
 cross it on the evening of that day being precipitated with its 
 living freight into the water below. It was replaced by a far 
 more substantial structure, which was opened in 1887. The 
 consequent increase by the East Coast trafiBc between north and 
 south made it necessary to bridge the Forth between North and 
 South Queensferry, and with the co-operation of the English 
 North-Eastem, Great Northern, and Midland Companies the Par- 
 liamentary sanction of this great undertaking was obtained in 
 1882. The bridge was designed by Sir John Fowler and Sir 
 Benjamin Baker on the cantilever principle and its construction, 
 which was carried out by the former, was completed in 1890. 
 Its opening, in turn, necessitated the enlargement of the Waverley 
 Station at Edinburgh, begun in 1895 and completed in 1900. 
 At the date of its opening it was, and probably still is, the largest 
 station in Great Britain, comprising over 23 acres, of which fully 
 the half are under roof. The two main line platforms are each 
 about 560 yards in, length, with four dock platforms at each end 
 of an average length of 180 yards. The total cost of the station 
 and the reconstruction of the Waverley Bridge was IJ million 
 pounds. The goods station at Portobello, one of the largest in 
 the United Kingdom, has also in recent years been greatly ex- 
 tended. Another great engineering work was the construction 
 of the " City and District " line, underneath the heart of Glas- 
 gow, to connect with the eastern line to Edinburgh via Bathgate 
 and the Helensburgh line along the north side of the Clyde. 
 
 Since the incorporation of the Company in 1844 for the con- 
 struction of the line between Edinburgh and Berwick, with a 
 branch to Haddington, its mileage has steadily increased until 
 
136 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 it is now the longest of all the Scottish railways. The Edin- 
 burgh and Berwick line was about 62 miles long. In 1864 the 
 mileage had swelled to 749. About fifty years later (1912) it had 
 nearly doubled with 1,889 miles. A corresponding increase had 
 taken place in the traJBRc. In 1864 the number of passengers 
 and the tonnage of goods and minerals carried were over 7 
 millions and 6J millions respectively, and the receipts were 
 £1,261,785. In 1912 the figures were 84,984,829 passengers and 
 29,867,262 tons of goods and minerals, and the income was over 
 5 million odds, whilst the paid up capital reached a total of 71 
 million odds. 
 
 The Caledonian Railway Company, like the North British, has 
 grown into the great dimensions of to-day by means of amal- 
 gamation as well as direct construction. Though the Company 
 bearing this name was incorporated in 1845, its genesis, as 
 already noted, may be found in the Glasgow and Gamkirk and 
 the Wishaw and Coltness Railways, which it amalgamated in 
 1846 and 1849. It was formed to construct a line from Carlisle 
 up the valley of the Annan, over the Beattock summit, into 
 Clydesdale to Edinburgh in the east, Glasgow in the west, and 
 Greenhill in the north. The great obstacle to the realisation of the 
 scheme was the sharp gradient to the Beattock summit, which 
 appeared at first to be insuperable. An alternative line with an 
 easier gradient from Lockerbie up the Nith to Kilmarnock and 
 Glasgow was proposed and debated. But ultimately the Annan- 
 dale route was selected, and the line as originally conceived was 
 completed in 1848, the total length being 144 miles. From 
 Greenhill northward the Scottish Central Railway, completed in 
 1848, ran to Perth. Another line, constructed by a separate 
 Company and opened in 1847, connected Perth with Dundee. 
 From Perth northward the Scottish Midland, completed in the 
 same year, extended to Forfar, whence the North-Eastem Rail- 
 way extended to Aberdeen. By a series of amalgamations car- 
 ried out in 1865-66 these companies were absorbed into the Cale- 
 donian, which then became the owner of the whole line from 
 Carlisle to Aberdeen. From this line a series of branches, as the 
 result of further amalgamations or new construction, diverge 
 east and west. The connections to the west extend to Dumfries, 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 137 
 
 Portpatrick, Glasgow, Greenock, Kilmarnock, Ayr, Wemyss 
 Bay, Oban, Ballachulish, Crieff, Blairgowrie, Kirriemuir, 
 Brechin; to the east, Peebles, Dolphinton, Edinburgh, Alloa, 
 Dundee, Arbroath, Montrose. Several of these connections, par- 
 ticularly the Castle Douglas-Portpatrick, and the Callander and 
 Oban lines — ^the latter completed in 1880 — are not owned, but 
 only worked by the Caledonian, and from Larbert to Edinburgh 
 it has only nmning powers over the North British. From Glas- 
 gow to the capital it maintains a through service by a line 
 which was completed in 1866. 
 
 The Caledonian has not been called on to face such engineer- 
 ing problems as the bridging of the Forth and Tay Firths. But 
 it has to its credit the construction of the longest tunnel in Scot- 
 land connecting Greenock and Gourock, which occupied five 
 years. Another work of vast difficulty was the construction of 
 the Glasgow Central Underground Railway, 7 miles in length, in 
 order to obtain direct access to the docks instead of nmning their 
 trains over the North British round the north of Glasgow. Up 
 to 1873 the Glasgow terminus was on the south side of the Clyde, 
 but in this year an Act was obtained to bridge the river and 
 construct the Central Station in Gordon Street. Both were 
 subsequently extended, and this extension, begun in 1901, was 
 completed in 1910. During the last fifty years its mileage has 
 steadily grown from 280 miles in 1864 to 900 in 1912, with a 
 corresponding increase in the number of passengers and the ton- 
 nage of goods and minerals carried from about 8 and 7J millions 
 to 81,684,886 and 26,893,166 respectively. Though the latter 
 numbers are less than in the case of the North British, the total 
 receipts were somewhat larger for the Caledonian than for its 
 . rival. In 1912 they amounted to £5,140,822 compared with 
 £1,660,983 in 1864, whilst its paid up capital rose from 18 
 million odds to nearly 74 millions. 
 
 In mileage the Glasgow and South-Western is somewhat 
 smaller than the Highland Railway. But it takes rank after the 
 North British and Caledonian in the extent and value of its 
 traflBc, whilst earlier in date than either. In 1811 the Kilmar- 
 nock and Troon Railway was only about ten miles long. In 
 1837 an Act was obtained to connect Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmar- 
 
138 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 nock, and Ayr, the 40 miles being completed in 1840, though, 
 owing to engineering difficulties, the line passed only within 5 
 miles of Kilmarnock. In 1846 another company, with the co- 
 operation of the Ayrshire Company, obtained permission to con- 
 struct a railway to connect these towns by way of Cumnock 
 and Nithsdale with the Border, and on the completion of the con- 
 nections in 1850 the two' companies were amalgamated as the 
 Glasgow and South-Western. In 1865 it absorbed the line from 
 Dumfries to Castle Douglas and Kirkcudbright. From the main 
 line through Renfrew and Ayr shires a number of branches 
 diverge to Greenock, Ardrossan, Largs, and other places. From 
 Ayr an extension southwards was made by a separate company 
 to Dalmellington in 1856 and amalgamated two years later. 
 Another extension by way of Maybole to Girvan was completed 
 in 1860 and absorbed in 1865, though the portion between Ayr 
 and Maybole is only leased to and worked by the company. A 
 further extension from Girvan to Portpatrick, opened in 1876, 
 was acquired in 1892. Besides the two main lines from Glasgow 
 to Dumfries and Carlisle, and to Ayr and Portpatrick respec- 
 tively, with their various branches, the company is joint owner 
 with the Caledonian of the Glasgow, Barrhead, and Kilmarnock 
 Railway and a direct route between Edinburgh and Ayr, via 
 Lanark and Carstairs, over part of its system, was created by the 
 extension of the Caledonian Lanark-Douglas branch to Muir- 
 kirk. Whilst the south-western region which it serves is largely 
 agricultural, it derives a large mineral and goods traffic from the 
 industrial and mining districts of Renfrew and Ayr shires. It 
 has a considerable share of the Clyde coast traffic by way of 
 Greenock, and of the express passenger traffic from Glasgow to 
 England, via Dumfries and Carlisle, and to Ireland, via Ardrossan 
 or Stranraer. In order to facilitate the through traffic with the 
 North British, the Glasgow Union Railway, whose shares are held 
 in equal portions by the two Companies and which unites their 
 lines, was constructed. As the result of this undertaking, its 
 terminus was transferred in 1876 from Bridge Street on the south 
 side of the Clyde to the large station at St Enoch's Square, on 
 the north side of the river. In 1912 its mileage had risen to 466 
 miles, the number of passengers and the tonnage of minerals and 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 139 
 
 goods carried to 16,328,321 and 8,842,452, and the receipts to 
 just over two millions. 
 
 The Great North of Scotland radiates from Aberdeen through- 
 out the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, Elgin, and part of Inverness. 
 The first portion of what ultimately became the Great North 
 system to be completed was, however, the line from Elgin to 
 Lossiemouth, which was opened in 1852. It was only in this 
 year that the construction of the main line northwestwards was 
 begun and four years elapsed before it was completed as far as 
 Keith. From Keith it was extended south-westwards for a 
 distance of 48 miles to Craigellachie and later along the Spey 
 valley to Boat of Garten — 101 miles from Aberdeen — which is the 
 terminus in this direction and where it comes into touch with 
 the Highland line. From Craigellachie the Morayshire line, 
 which was authorised in 1846 and amalgamated with the Great 
 North in 1880, provided a connection northwards to Elgin, from 
 which the coast route, finished in 1886 runs eastwards along the 
 Moray Firth to Portsoy and then sweeps inland by Tillynaught 
 to join the main line at Grange, between Keith and Huntly, with 
 a branch from Tillynaught to Banff. This coast line is now the 
 main through line by the Great North from Aberdeen to Inver- 
 ness. Within the limits of Aberdeenshire there are three main 
 branches from the main line — the Buohan branch from Dyce to 
 Fraserburgh, completed in 1865, with sub-branches from Ellon 
 to Cruden Bay, opened in 1897, and from Maud to Peterhead, 
 completed in 1865; the Don valley branch from Kintore up the 
 Don to Alford, completed in 1859 ; and the Turriff and Macduff 
 branch from Inveramsie, completed in 1860. From Aberdeen the 
 Deeside line runs westwards up the Dee valley to Banchory, 
 Aboyne, and Ballater, to which it was continued in three suc- 
 cessive instalments between 1852 and 1866. In the latter year it 
 was leased to the Great North, and ten years later amalgamated 
 with it. The whole system serves a rich agricultural country, 
 with many prosperous fishing towns and villages along the coast, 
 and its goods trafiic consists mainly of agricultural produce, 
 cattle, dead meat, and fish. On the Deeside and Speyside sec- 
 tions there is also a considerable tourist traffic to the summer 
 resorts in these beautiful Highland valleys. The station at 
 
140 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Aberdeen is jointly owned with the Caledonian and has been 
 greatly enlarged in recent years. 
 
 For long its passenger service was a vexation to the traveller. 
 In the early " eighties " it had no express trains, and many of 
 them carried both goods and passengers. The journey from 
 Aberdeen to Elgin, for instance — a distance of 80 miles — took 
 at least 4i hours. During the decade between 1880 and 1890 
 a marked improvement took place in the speed of its trains and 
 in its locomotives and carriages. " The new stock," says Mr 
 Acworth, " would do credit to any line in Great Britain." In 
 1912 its total mileage was 333 miles, the number of passengers 
 carried was over S\ millions, the goods and mineral traffic 
 amounted to over 1 million tons, and the receipts to £518,049. 
 The paid up capital stood at £7,661,823. 
 
 The fifth of the great Scottish railways — ^the Highland — origin- 
 ated with the opening of the line from Inverness to Nairn — a 
 distance of 15 miles — in 1855. Three years later it was extended 
 to Keith by the company bearing the name of the Inverness and 
 Aberdeen Junction Railway. Another extension was made 
 northwards from Inverness by the Inverness and Ross-shire Com- 
 pany to Dingwall and Invergordon between 1861 and 1868, the 
 two companies having been meanwhile amalgamated. A further 
 extension brought the line to Bonar Bridge, and thence to Gol- 
 spie, Helmsdale, Wick, and Thurso by various undertakings 
 which were amalgamated with the larger company in 1884. Four 
 years earlier the amalgamation of the Dingwall and Skye line 
 extended its jurisdiction to Strome Ferry and subsequently to 
 Kyleackin in the west. Meanwhile the Inverness and Perth 
 Junction Railway from Forres to Dunkeld, to connect with the 
 Perth and Dunkeld line, opened in 1856, had been sanctioned in 
 1861. The distance of 112 miles was completed in 1863 when 
 an amalgamation took place with the Perth and Dunkeld. Two 
 years later the whole of these northern lines so far constructed 
 were united under the name of the Highland Railway, which, in 
 consequence of the additions subsequently made, attained a 
 length of 607 miles. The most important of these additions was 
 the direct connection between Aviemore northwestwards across 
 the Findhom and Nairn valleys to Inverness, the viaduct across 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 141 
 
 the Nairn river being 600 yards long, that across the Findhom 
 390. The line from Dunkeld to Inverness, via Aviemore, runs 
 through some of the grandest scenery in the Highlands, and 
 attains at Drummochter, the pass into the upper Spey valley 
 (1,484 feet) the highest railway altitude in Great Britain. Owing 
 to the drifting snow in winter the snow plough is often requisi- 
 tioned to make a passage through the drifts off the moors and the 
 mountain sides on to the line in spite of the double walls of raised 
 sleepers by which it is guarded in many places. A considerable 
 proportion of its course, however, passes through the fertile 
 regions bounding the Moray Firth, with its adjuncts the Beauly 
 Firth and the Cromarty and Dornoch Firths. From Perth on- 
 wards its tourist traffic is very heavy in summer. Next to this 
 traffic, the carriage of sheep, cattle, fish, timber, and agricultural 
 produce is its mainstay. Though the number of passengers and 
 the tonnage of goods carried in 1912 were less than those on the 
 Great North (2 million odds and 600,000 tons odds respectively) 
 the receipts, £574,590, were considerably larger on a paid up 
 capital of just under 7 millions. 
 
 The statistics relative to each of the five main Scottish rail- 
 ways are very significant of the progress of railway enterprise in 
 Scotland during the last fifty years. This progress will appear 
 still more striking from a comparison of the figures for the whole 
 of them during this period. In 1864 the total mileage amounted 
 to 1720. In 1912 it had swelled (including the Portpatrick and 
 Wigtownshire joint line, 82 miles long), to 8,627. The total 
 capital similarly rose from about 47f millions to close on 185 
 millions, the number of passengers from over 20 millions to close 
 on 89 millions, the tonnage of goods and minerals from nearly 18 
 millions to nearly 67 millions, the receipts from all sources from 
 about 8| millions to nearly 18J millions. 
 
 A marked feature of Scottish railway history has been the keen 
 spirit of competition between the various companies for posses- 
 sion of the traffic in districts in which two or more lines operate, 
 especially in the central region, in which population and industry 
 are so largely concentrated. A large part of this history has been 
 concerned with the battle for predominance or monopoly, and 
 this has been especially the case with the North British and 
 
142 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Caledonian. Construction was long partly dominated by this 
 motive. Happily there is now a tendency to adopt a more 
 pacific policy, if only in virtue of self interest. The fierce and 
 reckless competition has proved to be a policy that does not pay, 
 and agreements of various kinds, such as interchange of railway 
 tickets where the railways serve the same towns, have been 
 adopted in order to mitigate it. Another noteworthy feature 
 has been the amalgamation of local lines by the larger com- 
 panies in order to facilitate through traffic between the larger 
 towns in Scotland itself and between Scotland and England. 
 Hence the development of the main lines by the eastern, central, 
 and western routes from the Border to Glasgow, Edinburgh, 
 Perth, to Dundee, Aberdeen, and Inverness. The result has been 
 a great advance in expeditious travelling and goods transit. For 
 instance, a passenger can travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow in 
 about an hour by the North British or the Caledonian, transact 
 business, and return within a single forenoon. Or, he can leave 
 Edinburgh in the morning, travel to Aberdeen by the Forth and 
 Tay bridges, in about three hours and twenty minutes, transact 
 business in the northern city, and be back in Edinburgh in the 
 late afternoon, or early evening. Still more wonderful, he can 
 travel to London by a train leaving Edinburgh at 7.45 m the 
 morning, arrive at 4.10 p.m., trsmsact business in the late after- 
 noon, and even go to the theatre in the evening, leave London 
 at 11.30, and be back in Edinburgh at 7.15 in the morning, with- 
 in the twenty-four hours. Equally noteworthy has been the 
 improvement in the rolling stock. In 1864 the largest loco- 
 motive in full working order weighed about 60 tons. In 1912 
 the weight had been doubled. Similarly the heaviest carriages 
 weighed 18 tons, were 24 feet long, and rested on four wheels- 
 To-day the dining cars are 66 feet long, weigh 44 tons, and have 
 six bogie wheels at each end. In the same interval goods 
 waggons have increased in weight from 5 tons with a carrying 
 capacity of 6 tons, and 16 feet in length, to 7 tons with a 
 capacity of 16 tons and a length of 20 feet. 
 
 Railway extension as well as the increase in shipping has given 
 a great impulse to the construction of docks and harbours. Both 
 the North British and the Caledonian own large docks in the 
 
RISE AND EXTENSION OF RAILWAYS 143 
 
 Firth of Forth — the Caledonian at Grangemouth and South 
 Alloa, the North British at Alloa, Bo'ness, Burntisland, and 
 Methil, which serve as outlets for the export of coal from the Fife 
 coalfields. The Methil docks are three in number and cover 27 
 acres. At Grangemouth the Caledonian built a new dock in 1876 
 several acres in extent and 24 feet deep, and in 1906 added a 
 second about 80 acres in extent and about 80 feet deep to cope 
 with the coaJ export trade from the Lanarkshire mines. On 
 the west coast there are railway docks of smaller extent at Ayr, 
 Troon, and Ardrossan. 
 
 The development of railway enterprise adversely affected canal 
 extension in Scotland, and only in the more inaccessible western 
 region has this form of communication proved of much service. 
 The Crinan Canal, constructed during the last years of the 
 eighteenth century at a cost of £100,000, provides expeditious 
 passenger transit by steamer from the Clyde to Oban. It has 
 long been an important highway for summer tourist traffic, but 
 is unsuited for the passage of cargo steamers of any size. For 
 this purpose it would require to be enlarged and the project of 
 improving it has been pressed in recent years in the interest of 
 trade between Glasgow and the Western Highlands. " The 
 Canal," urges the County Council of Argyll, " is situated on the 
 shortest, most direct, and most sheltered route between the Clyde 
 and Western Highlands ; but on account of its insufficiency that 
 route is not available for the larger vessels that provide modem 
 means of transit. . . . The construction of a Crinan Ship Canal, 
 available at all states of tide, and capable of passing expedi- 
 tiously the largest steamer trading to the Highlands, would be of 
 the very greatest benefit to the district by cheapening and accel- 
 erating communication with Clyde ports. And the bringing of 
 the entire district into closer touch with, and 85 miles nearer to, 
 its southern market, would do much to arrest the serious depopu- 
 lation now in progress, and would greatly help to develop new 
 industries." 
 
 In 1778 James Watt prepared plans for the construction of a 
 canal through Glenmore — the great strath that runs north- 
 eastwards from Loch Linnhe to the Moray Firth — ^to provide a 
 through passage for large vessels from the Atlantic to the North 
 
144 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Sea and vice versa. His estimate of £165,000 was deemed too 
 formidable to be faced by the projectors, and nearly thirty years 
 elapsed before the project was resumed. In 1803 the work was 
 begun under the direction of the engineers Telford and Jessop, 
 and in 1822 it was opened at a cost of £885,000. It was finally 
 completed in 1848-47 and cost £1,811,270. Though in ordinary 
 times it carries a considerable goods and tourist traffic and during 
 the war proved serviceable as a line of communication with the 
 American naval base at Inverness, it has failed to become a 
 highway for deep sea vessels between the eastern and the western 
 seas. The idea of providing such a waterway has recently taken 
 the form of a project to construct a new canal between the Forth 
 and the Clyde. The deepening of the present canal is deemed 
 impracticable on account of the 90 feet summit which would 
 involve the construction of at least six locks — ^three at either end 
 — by which to lift the largest battleships- and steamers. More- 
 over the deepening of the Clyde at Yoker, across the tide, to at 
 least 86 feet and the maintenance of the channel is regarded as 
 another insuperable objection. The advocates of the proposed 
 deep sea canal, therefore, prefer a new route from Grangemouth 
 via Stirling, Loch Lomond, and Loch Long, which would main- 
 tain the Loch Lomond level all through, and would require only 
 one 21 feet lock at either end. The estimated cost — ^20 millions 
 — ^is very formidable. But its supporters point to the fact that 
 Germany spent an equally large sum in the construction of the 
 canal between Kiel and the mouth of the Elbe, and that the 
 Manchester Ship Canal cost £17,000,000. In support of the ex- 
 penditure of this large sum they adduce the commercial and 
 strategical advantages which would accrue from such a water- 
 way. It would, they contend, greatly add to the mobility of 
 the Fleet by ensuring the rapid transfer of war vessels from the 
 North Sea to the Atlantic and vice versa, and would bring the 
 Naval Base at Rosyth into touch with the repairing yards on the 
 Clyde. It would thus materially add to the national safety. It 
 would, moreover, provide a much shorter route between the ports 
 of the east and the west coasts and between those of the north of 
 Europe and the north Atlantic. The canal would thus have the 
 double advantage of serving important strategical and commer- 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 145 
 
 cial ends, and they are confident that the traffic returns and the 
 impulse given to the trade of the ports affected by it would more 
 than compensate for the initial capital outlay. Despite these 
 sanguine deductions the scheme, like the Channel Tunnel, has 
 not yet got beyond the stage of discussion, though the arguments 
 in its favour appear to be worthy of serious consideration. 
 
 8. COMMEKCIAL EnTERPKISE 
 
 The progress of modem commerce has been enormously 
 facilitated by improved transport. The raw materials, imported 
 by steamship, are expeditiously distributed by railway to the 
 manufacturing centres. Coal, the first requisite of production, 
 can easily be carried to these centres in the large quantities 
 necessary to keep the factories working. The manufactured 
 goods, for home consumption and export, can be as easily trans- 
 ported to their inland destinations, or to the seaports for ship- 
 ment. Road transport has also been greatly developed in recent 
 years by the advent of steam and especially motor lorries and 
 vans. These advantages are palpable to everyone to-day. In 
 the days when railway enterprise was but a problematic experi- 
 ment, they were not so obvious. Mr Charles MacLaren wrote a 
 series of papers in The Scotsman of December, 1824, in which he 
 foretold the possibilities of railway locomotion and the social and 
 commercial effects of such locomotion, with remarkable foresight. 
 His forecast was received with scepticism, and he was regarded 
 as a presumptuous visionary by some of his critics. Time, 
 however, ere long proved him to be a true prophet. " We 
 cannot scan the future march of improvement; and it would be 
 rash to say that even a higher velocity than 20 miles an hour 
 may not be found applicable. Tiberius travelled 200 miles in 
 two days, and this was reckoned an extraordinary effort. But 
 in our times a shopkeeper or mechanic travels twice as fast as 
 the Roman emperor, and twenty years hence he may probably 
 travel with a speed that would leave the fleetest courser behind. 
 Such a new power of locomotion cannot be introduced without 
 working a vast change in the state of society. With so great a 
 
 K 
 
146 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 facility and celerity of communication, the provincial towns of 
 an empire would become so many suburbs of the metropolis — 
 or rather, the effect would be similar to that of collecting the 
 whole inhabitants into one city. Commodities, inventions, dis- 
 coveries, opinions would circulate with a rapidity hitherto 
 unknown, and, above all, the intercourse of man with man, 
 nation with nation, and province with province would be pro- 
 digiously increased." 
 
 Other factors besides the marvellous development of transport 
 facilities have contributed to the vast commercial advance of the 
 last 100 years. Among these, not the least effective was the 
 introduction of Rowland Hill's scheme of the penny postage in 
 1840, which reduced the cost of conveying an ordinary letter 
 within the United Kingdom to one penny, irrespective of the dis- 
 tance traversed. Still more effective was the introduction of 
 electric communication by means of the telegraph and the tele- 
 phone. The invention of the electric telegraph was the result 
 of many tentative efforts to communicate intelligence by electric 
 means, and the problem was at last practically solved by Messrs 
 Wheatstone and Cook in England, who improved the needle 
 telegraph between 1887 and 1845, and by Mr Morse in America, 
 who, in 1836, produced the electro-magnetic recorder. Both 
 systems subsequently underwent improvements and modifica- 
 tions, and the telegraph not only vastly facilitated intercourse 
 in individual lands and between adjacent countries, but by the 
 laying of undersea cables brought the old world into close touch 
 with the new, and finally interlinked all the nations of the world. 
 The laying of the first submarine cable — ^that between France 
 and England — was successfully accomplished in 1851, and in 
 1866, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the Great Eastern 
 at last accomplished the feat of connecting England and America 
 by cable telegraph laid on the bed of the Atlantic. Ten years 
 later, Mr Graham Bell, a Scotsman domiciled in America, suc- 
 ceeded in conveying speech by the invention of the telephone, 
 which was publicly exhibited for the first time at Philadelphia 
 in 1876, and before the British Association in England in the same 
 year. In this year an improvement of it was brought out by Mr 
 Edison. The most marvellous form of electric communication 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 147 
 
 — that of wireless telegraphy — was achieved by Signer Marconi 
 about twenty years later. The flying machine, in the form of the 
 airship and the aeroplane, whose wonderful advent belongs to 
 the twentieth century, has already become a mechanical com- 
 monplace. Its capabilities as a means of communication have 
 been brilliantly demonstrated by the achievements of the Flying 
 Forces of the belligerents of the great war, and by the airship and 
 aeroplane flights across the Atlantic, and the aeroplane voyage 
 from England to Australia successfully achieved at the end of 
 1919 by the brothers Ross and Keith Smith. Mail and passenger 
 services have followed the aerial operations of the war and the 
 commercial possibilities of the flying machine, though still 
 limited, are not to be gauged by what has actually been achieved 
 in this direction. 
 
 The organisation of commerce has undergone a marked develop- 
 ment in the course of the last 100 years. The old leisurely 
 methods of the eighteenth century, by which business was trans- 
 acted in the back shop of the dealer, or in the tavern near, has 
 long gone out of vogue. Competition has necessitated organis- 
 ing talent and pushful initiative in the successful trader, large 
 and small, to a degree undreamt of by our great-grandfathers. 
 Even the ordinary retailer finds it necessary to keep himself 
 within the purview of his customers, and in the case of the pro- 
 vision trade at least, it is not unusual to call for orders for the 
 day's supply. The goods ordered have to be delivered at the 
 customer's residence, and a vast system of transport between 
 shop and dwelling is maintained in the larger towns. The adver- 
 tisement or the printed catalogue has become an essential of 
 many branches of trade and a whole army of commercial 
 travellers is ever on the move throughout the land, whose special 
 business it is to obtain orders for the wholesale houses from the 
 retail merchants. Another feature is the growth of large estab- 
 lishments, which deal in certain classes of goods and absorb a 
 vast amount of the trade formerly in the hands of the small re- 
 tailer. These establishments are often run by limited liability 
 companies and the profits disbursed in the form of dividends to 
 their shareholders. Many of these have branches all over the 
 country, and the management of these large concerns is a task 
 
148 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 demanding great administrative ability. Their extensive over- 
 turn has militated seriously against the small trader, who finds 
 it ever more difficult to maintain himself against their powerful 
 competition. Another form of the same tendency is the com- 
 bination of merchants or manufacturers in the same line of busi- 
 ness with the object of fostering overturn and regulating prices, 
 by no means to the advantage of the consumer. The sinister 
 term " profiteering " has not xmjustly come to be applied to this 
 sort of tactics which during, and even after the war, has swelled 
 the dividends of too many of these concerns to an excessive 
 extent. 
 
 The development of industry has enormously added not only 
 to the quantity, but to the variety of marketable goods and has 
 given rise to a corresponding increase in the number of specific 
 wholesale and retail trades. 
 
 Another remarkable feature of the commercial history of the 
 nineteenth century has been the application of the co-operative 
 principle and the rise and extension of co-operative trading 
 societies all over the land. The movement in Scotland dates 
 from the later eighteenth century. The first store on the co- 
 operative principle, as far as our knowledge goes, seems to have 
 been started at Fenwick in Ayrshire in 1769 by the weavers of 
 the village, and dealt chiefly in oatmeal. Another was formed 
 by the weavers of Govan in 1777, and continued to exist till 
 1909; a third, which still survives, by the same craftsmen at 
 Lennoxtown, in Stirlingshire, in 1812. Others of these early 
 associations ere long collapsed, but the LarkhaJl Society, which 
 was started in 1821, also survived to the present time. During 
 the next thirty years societies came into existence at Glasgow, 
 Bannockbum, Cadder, Paisley, Muirkirk, Darvel, Leven, Leslie, 
 Kingskettle, Menstrie, Alva, Tillicoultry, Arbroath, Brechin, 
 Kirriemuir, Galashiels, Hawick, Selkirk. These early societies 
 aimed for the most part only at selling goods to their members 
 at cost price, plus the extra charge for expenses of manage- 
 ment, though some of them also divided the profits in propor- 
 tion to the number of shares held by the members. A great 
 impulse was given to the movement by the adoption of the 
 principle of dividing the profits among the members in accord- 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 149 
 
 ance with the amount of their purchases. The advocacy of this 
 idea is claimed for Mr Alexander Campbell, of Glasgow, who 
 was an ardent missionary of Robert Owen's scheme of social re- 
 form on communal lines. The movement received the sanction 
 of Parliament in 1852, in the Industrial and Provident Societies 
 Act, which was amended and extended by subsequent acts, that 
 of 1893 exempting them from income tax, provided the Society 
 does not seU to persons who are not members and that the 
 number of its shares is not limited. This exemption is resented 
 by the private trader as an unfair handicap, on the ground that 
 a trading concern which distributes profits that are not subject to 
 income tax has an advantage, in the matter of prices, over one 
 whose profits are subject to this charge. From 1857 to 1863 a 
 great extension of the movement took place. Among the more 
 notable of the new ventures were the Paisley Equitable, the 
 Paisley Provident, and the Paisley Manufacturing, the Glasgow 
 Co-operative which, however, collapsed in 1865, owing to a too 
 reckless extension of branches; St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh — ^now 
 the largest in Scotland, with a membership of nearly 40,000 in 
 1909; the St RoUox, Glasgow, the Glasgow Eastern, the Barr- 
 head Society, the Kilmarnock Equitable, the Dumbarton Equit- 
 able, the Lanark Provident, the Aberdeen Northern, the Edin- 
 burgh Northern District — later amalgamated with St Cuthbert's 
 — ^the Alloa, and Dunfermline Societies. By 1866 there were as 
 many as 120 societies on the list of the Registrar of Friendly 
 Societies in Scotland, and many more were in existence, though 
 not registered. The next important step was the establishment 
 of the Scottish Wholesale Society for the supply of the retail 
 conoperative trade throughout the country. It was started in 
 Glasgow in 1868 vmder a committee representing a number of 
 societies, which undertook to purchase their goods from it. 
 Thus was launched the policy of co-operative production, which 
 has grown to such large dimensions in the works at Shieldhall 
 for the manufacture of a large variety of goods, the Chancelot 
 Flour MiUs at Edinburgh, the Ettrick Tweed Mills at Selkirk, 
 and the Calderwood Estate for fruit growing. Its capital in 
 1909 was over 3^ millions, sales close on 7| millions, and the net 
 profit close on £280,000. 
 
150 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 The growth of the co-operative movement may be best gauged 
 by a comparison of the statistics relative to it in the years 1886 
 and 1909. In the former year the number of societies was 311, 
 including the Wholesale Society, with a total membership of 
 137,047, a total share capital of £854,839, and a total net profit 
 of £609,557. In the latter year the number of societies had 
 fallen to 294 (again including the Wholesale Society), but the 
 membership had swelled to 405,129, the total share capital to 
 nearly 5J millions, and the total net profit to £2,852,785. 
 
 A very significant indication of the commercial and industrial 
 progress of the country is the marked increase of population and 
 the growth of towns in the nineteenth century. The total popu- 
 lation of Scotland in 1801 was in round numbers 1,608,000. Fifty 
 years later it was close on 8 millions, with 2,888,000 in 1851. 
 The next fifty years saw it steadily rise to nearly 4|^ millions, 
 with 4,472,000 in 1901. At the end of the. first decade of the 
 twentieth century the total was 4| millions, with 4,760,000. At 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century (1801) no Scottish town 
 had a population of 100,000. The inhabitants of Glasgow, with 
 suburbs, totalled in round numbers 81,000. It was then sur- 
 passed by Edinburgh and Leith (practically one city, though 
 under separate administrations) with 83,000. Dundee had only 
 26,000, Aberdeen 18,000, Paisley and Greenock each 17,000, 
 Perth 15,000, and Dunfermline 10,000. All the others fell below 
 the last figure. In the middle of the century (1851) Glasgow, 
 with suburbs, had risen to 345,000, Edinburgh and Leith to 
 194,000, Dundee to 61,000, Aberdeen to 54,000, Paisley to 82,000, 
 Greenock to 87,000, whilst Perth remained stationary, and Dun- 
 fermline had fallen to 9,000. Kilmarnock, on the other hand, 
 had increased from below 10,000 to 19,000, and Hamilton and 
 Inverness had risen each to 10,000. Fifty years later (1901), 
 Glasgow, with suburbs, had reached a total of 910,000, Edin- 
 burgh-Leith 393,000, Dundee 161,000, Aberdeen 153,000, Paisley 
 79,000, Greenock 68,000. Coatbridge, Kilmarnock, Kirkcaldy, 
 Hamilton, Perth, Motherwell ranged between 87,000 and 80,000, 
 whilst seven more — Falkirk, Ayr, Dunfermline, Arbroath, 
 Airdrie, Inverness, Wishaw — were between 29,000 and 21,000. 
 The extension of the Glasgow city boundary in 1912 raised the 
 
COMMERCIAL E>fTERPB,ISE l5l 
 
 population to over a million, and in 1919 it was estimated to 
 have increased to 1,114,656. By the extension of the Edinburgh 
 boundary in 1920, so as to include, besides Leith, a large land- 
 ward district, that of the capital now approaches half a million. 
 The other burghs also showed substantial increases at the census 
 of 1911, Dundee, for instance, rising to fully 165,000 ; Aberdeen 
 to nearly 164,000 ; Paisley to 84,455 ; Greenock to fully 75,000 ; 
 Coatbridge to fully 43,000. The estimates for all these, as well 
 as other burghs, towards the end of the last decade show further 
 substantial advances. 
 
 A more direct indication of the growth of trade is afforded by 
 the increase in the tonnage of the vessels entering and sailing 
 from Scottish ports, and in the value of imported and exported 
 goods carried by them. In 1851 the total tonnage entering and 
 clearing from Scottish ports and engaged in the coasting, 
 colonial, and foreign trade was fully 5^ millions. In 1884 it had 
 risen to close on 20 millions. Thirty years later, in 1913, the last 
 pre-war year, the tonnage for Glasgow alone was close on 12^ 
 millions, for Leith nearly 4f millions, for Greenock (including 
 Pbrt-Glasgow) 8| millions, for Grangemouth over 3 millions, 
 Aberdeen 2^ millions, Burntisland close on 2 millions, Dundee 
 over IJ millions, and Ardrossan nearly IJ millions. 
 
 Equally significant is the rise in the value of imports and 
 exports. In 1801 the figures were over 2^ millions and nearly 3 
 milUons respectively; in 1851 nearly 9 millions and fully 5 
 millions; in 1883 nearly 88 millions and 21 millions. Thirty 
 years later the amount for Glasgow alone was nearly 18| millions 
 and over 86 millions, for Leith about 15| millions and 7J millions, 
 Grangemouth, fully 6 millions and 3 millions, Dundee over 8 
 millions and 1^ millions, whilst the value of combined imports 
 and exports was nearly 2 millions each in the case of Aberdeen 
 and Methil, and over IJ in the case of Burntisland. Another 
 striking testimony to the progress of the shipping trade is afforded 
 by the harbour revenue of the greatest of the Scottish ports. In 
 1808 this revenue amounted to about £5,500 ; from July, 1910 to 
 the 30th June, 1911, it was £577,822. 
 
 In addition there has to be reckoned the value of the goods 
 produced and distributed within the country for which no figures 
 
l52 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 are available, but which would greatly enhance the total value of 
 its commerce. Perhaps one may best realise this vast activity m 
 production and exchange, which go to the making of modem 
 commerce, by taking a railway journey which carries the 
 traveller past one or more large goods stations, with many miles 
 of rails and countless goods trains arriving or departing, or pass- 
 ing through. The work of transport to and from factory and 
 warehouse, field and miae, harbour and dock, goes on day and 
 night, with the partial exception of Sunday. And this work is 
 not confined to the large railway centres, though it is displayed 
 there on the grand scale. Every country station has its goods 
 siding, and the goods trafiic of these countless stations in the 
 aggregate represents an enormous additional commerce. In 1912 
 the total tonnage of goods and minerals carried on the Scottish 
 railways was nearly 67 millions. Go back 100 years to the days 
 of road transport — the days of the carrier and the hawker — 
 and what a vast and complex commercial advance does the con- 
 trast reveal I Even within the period of railway transport the 
 increase in the exchange of goods, represented by this transport, 
 has been colossal. In 1864 the tonnage of goods and minerals 
 carried was a little below 18 millions. In 1884 it was very 
 nearly double, with fully 85^ millions. In 1904 it was nearly 65 
 millions ; eight years later it was nearly 67 millions. 
 
 Commerce is liable to fluctuations between prosperity and de- 
 pression, as the London Bankers' Clearing House and the railway 
 returns, for instance, show. These fluctuations recur in cycles. 
 At a certain period prices begin to fall below those prevailing for 
 some time. This fall lasts for a longer or shorter period, when 
 they begin to rise in the case of certain commodities, and the 
 rise extends to others, until it becomes general. The ascending 
 movement lasts for a certain time, to be followed by the reverse 
 process. War, rash speculation, over-production, over-trading 
 tend to affect industry and commerce, imparting an artificial 
 stimulus to be followed by the inevitable retiction. To these 
 influences has to be added that ol strikes, which not only dis- 
 organise and diminish the particular industry affected, but 
 adversely react on the whole trade of the country. 
 
 Apart from the ordinary ebb and flow of trade there were in 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 153 
 
 the nineteenth century a series of commercial crises, with disas- 
 trous effects for the time being. In the years 1823-26 the crisis 
 was largely brought about by the mania for forming joint stock 
 companies of all kinds. " It was," says Lord Cockbum, " the 
 period of the most violent joint stock mania that ever seized this 
 kingdom, the newspapers of the day containing little else than 
 advertisements and recommendations of joint stock companies." 
 It was less disastrous in Scotland than in England. Whilst more 
 than eighty of the English banks suspended payment, only three 
 of the smaller Scottish banks — ^the Caithness Banking Company, 
 the Stirling Banking Company, and the Fife Banking Company 
 — collapsed. Several years of depression followed, and there were 
 not a few failures. " To such an extent was this depression felt 
 ia Dundee," notes Mr Mackenzie ia The Scottish Bankers Maga- 
 zine of April, 1909, '• that the banks in some cases were obliged 
 to receive payment in kind of their debts, the acceptors of bills 
 tendering cloth when they had no money wherewith to pay." 
 The crisis of 1847 was largely due to the railway mania. Schemes 
 for constructing hundreds of railways were launched in 1845-46 
 and a credulous public recklessly invested its money in these im- 
 possible ventures, only to realise too late that it had been 
 swindled for the most part. The ill effects of this rash railway 
 speculation were aggravated by the bad season of 1846, which 
 destroyed the crops in the United Kingdom and raised the price 
 of wheat to 120s. per quarter. Com merchants made large pur- 
 chases in foreign countries in the hope of selling with a large 
 profit. The arrival of these imports and the prospect of a good 
 harvest in the following season led to a fall in prices, wheat 
 dropping to about 60s. per quarter. The result was a large 
 number of failures, which seriously affected Scottish as well as 
 English trade, especially that of Glasgow. 
 
 Several years of prosperity preceded the crisis of 1857, which 
 embraced America as well as Europe. British exports had been 
 doubled between 1848 and 1857, rising from about 60 millions to 
 fully 122 millions. Over-trading produced the inevitable re- 
 action in America, which affected disastrously the trade of the 
 United Kingdom. " The first occurrence which caused alarm in 
 Scotland was the failure of the house of McDonald & Co., of 
 
154 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Glasgow, well-known merchants in that city, who had a large 
 connection. This failure was soon followed by that of Monteith 
 & Co., and Wallace & Co., two other Glasgow firms. It was 
 well known that all these houses were largely indebted to the 
 Western Bank, and this knowledge produced a feeling of distrust 
 in the management and soundness of that institution; This 
 uneasiness was evidenced by a rapid decline in the price of the 
 bank's stock, and a continuous withdrawal of deposits. On 
 account of the crisis in the United States, and the bank's con- 
 nections with business houses in that quarter, it was at the same 
 time greatly incommoded through the failure of remittances to 
 meet its acceptances under credits." On the 9th November, 
 1857, the bank, being unable to meet its liabilities, which 
 amounted to nearly lOf millions, suspended payment and after- 
 wards went into voluntary liquidation. On the following day the 
 City of Glasgow Bank was also forced to close its doors, though 
 in this case the suspension proved to- be only temporary. A 
 third bank — the Edinburgh and Glasgow — only escaped disaster 
 by amalgamating with the Clydesdale Bank. " Great depres- 
 sion existed in the country for some time in consequence of the 
 failure of the Western Bank. Much distress arose, especially in 
 Glasgow and other places in the west, owing to the failures which 
 took place and the number of people thrown out of employment," 
 The next serious crisis was that of 1878, which was occasioned 
 by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. In this case the 
 crash was not caused by inflation and over-trading, but by the 
 unsound and dishonest business methods of the directors of the 
 bank, who had not only made advances, amounting to nearly 6 
 millions to four firms, but some of whom fraudulently manipu- 
 lated the bank's accounts so as to conceal from the shareholders 
 and the public the actual state of affairs. After an inefiectual 
 attempt to obtain a loan from the other banks, it was forced to 
 suspend payment on the 2nd October, 1878, with liabilities, ex- 
 clusive of capital, of nearly 12J millions. As in the previous 
 case of the Western Bank, the unfortunate shareholders, in virtue 
 of their unlimited liability, were called on to make up the defi- 
 ciency in the assets, which amounted to £5,190,000. Only a 
 fraction of their number remained after the deficiency had been 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 155 
 
 met, the greater number were absolutely ruined, and so wide- 
 spread and crushing was the effect that a relief fund was opened, 
 which realised £40,000. Failures were numerous and a pro- 
 tracted period of trade depression followed. A number of the 
 directors were tried and imprisoned for fraud. In order to re- 
 store confidence, the Scottish Banks adopted the practice of 
 having their accounts and balance sheets audited by professional 
 accountants and registering under the Act of 1879 as limited 
 liability companies. 
 
 The operations of the banks afiord a good test of the com- 
 mercial enterprise of the country. " Commercial activity," says 
 Mr Milne in The Scottish Bankers Magazine, October, 1918, " is 
 reflected with a fair amount of accuracy in the mirror of banking 
 statistics. In 1901-2 the deposits in the Scottish banks 
 amounted to 107^ millions. In 1916-17 they reached the total 
 of 166^ millions, an increase of fully 59 millions. In 1901-2 
 acceptances and drafts totalled nearly 6J millions; in 1916-17 
 nearly 8J millions. Banking advances in 1901-2 were fully 74 
 millions ; in 1916-17 they had risen by fully 20 millions to over 
 95 milUons. Banking profits are another indication of the extent 
 of commercial transactions. In 1901-2 the net profits of all the 
 Scottish banks were £1,664,109; in 1916-17 they were fully 2 
 millions. The total for the period from 1865 to 1897 was over 39 
 millions, and for the next twelve years up to 1908 nearly 20 
 millions more, or well-nigh 60 millions for these 45 years." 
 
 Bank deposits represent only a certain proportion of the profits 
 of industry and commerce. Investments in joint stock com- 
 panies absorb a large amount of the available capital of any one 
 year of those who prefer a higher, though less safe interest to 
 that yielded by the banks for deposits. The paid up capital of 
 limited companies in Scotland, exclusive of railways and tram- 
 ways, rose, for instance, from about 127J millions in 1901 to 
 about 189f millions in 1911 — an increase of about 62 millions in 
 ten years. In the latter year, therefore, practically £40 per 
 head of the population of Scotland was employed in the trade of 
 the country by means of joint stock enterprises. 
 
 A more modest, but still significant indication of increasing 
 industrial and commercial activity is afforded by the savings of 
 
156 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the working classes as shown by the statistics of the Trustee 
 Saving Banks, established in 1817, and the Post Office Saving 
 Banks established in 1861. In 1864 the amount due to deposi- 
 tors in the Scottish Trustee Saving Banks was £2,221,001; in 
 1883, £7,859,586; in 1894, £11,890,491; in 1904, £17,754,669; 
 in 1914, £20,538,482, the number of depositors in the last men- 
 tioned year being 618,638. From 1894 to 1914 the amount in 
 the case of the Post Office Saving Banks rose from fully 2| 
 millions to nearly 8j millions. 
 
 The Scottish Fisheries constitute an important element in 
 Scottish industry and commerce. They received a great impulse 
 from the establishment of the Fishery Commissioners, who were 
 authorised by Act of Parliament in 1807 to grant bounties on all 
 fis.hing vessels from 50 to 100 tons and 2s. per barrel of fish 
 cured on shore and 2s. 8d. additional on each barrel exported, to 
 take measures for the improved gutting and packing of fish, and 
 to appoint officers at the fishing ports to supervise the industry. 
 These Commissioners were superseded in 1882 by the Fishery 
 Board of Scotland, with increased powers. During the next 
 twenty years, after the passing of the Act, the policy of granting 
 bounties was so effective that it was found imnecessary to con- 
 tinue the system after 1830. Whilst in 1807 the quantity of 
 herrings cured was 90,185 barrels, of which 85,848 were exported, 
 the number in 1820 had risen to 442,195 and 294,805 respectively. 
 The herring fishing is the most extensive. Originally it was 
 chiefly prosecuted on the West Coast, particularly the Firth of 
 Clyde, and in 1816, 510 of the 726 boats engaged in it belonged to 
 this region. Ten years later the lead had passed to the East 
 Coast, and Eyemouth, Newhaven, Anstruther, Montrose, Stone- 
 haven, Aberdeen, Peterhead, Fraserburgh, the Moray Firth 
 ports, Wick, and Orkney and Shetland became important centres 
 of the industry, Wick long taking the leading place. On the 
 West Coast, Stomoway, Lochbroom, Campbelltown, also devel- 
 oped into important centres of the industry. For the growing 
 yearly catch accruing from this development, Ireland and the 
 West Indies were the chief meirkets. The abolition of slavery in 
 the Indies proved adverse to the export thither, which fell from 
 67,000 barrels to less than 5,000, and the Scottish curers turned 
 
COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE 157 
 
 for a market to the Baltic ports, where Scottish cured herring 
 successfully competed with the Dutch. So considerable had the 
 industry become by the middle of the nineteenth century that 
 new harbours were constructed and the old ones enlarged, and 
 larger boats were built during the next twenty years. Already 
 in 1850 there were fully 66,000 persons employed in connection 
 with it, and though the season lasted only eight or ten weeks 
 (July-September), many of these found employment throughout 
 the year as carpenters and barrel-makers, rope, sail, and net- 
 makers, etc. Its progress may also be gauged by the increasing 
 size of the boats engaged in it. In the early part of the century 
 they were from 24 to 28 feet keel, were usually manned by five 
 men, and carried from twelve to fifteen nets. They were ere 
 long enlarged to from 32 to 86 feet, and carried from thirty to 
 thirty-five nets. Between 1860 and 1870 came the decked boat, 
 and the introduction of a winch to hoist the sails and masts and 
 haul the nets, and later of the steam capstan led to a further 
 increase in the size of the boats, many of which are now driven 
 by motor power, to from 60 to 65 feet keel. About 1880 the 
 steam trawler made its appearance, and in spite of the Act pro- 
 hibiting the trawlers from fishing within three miles of the shore 
 and the closing of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and the Moray 
 Firth, trawling has greatly increased. In 1890 there were 47 
 trawlers at work; in 1900 they had increased to 232, and in 1910 
 to 819. The steam drifter also made its appearance, and their 
 number rose from 70 in 1900 to 1,167 in 1910. In the latter 
 year the number of sailing boats had fallen to 8,296 from 14,284 
 in 1890, the total vessels of all kinds engaged in the industry 
 being about 10,000, valued at nearly 5| millions. 
 
 Next in importance to the herring fishing is the " white fish- 
 ing," embracing cod, ling, haddock, sole, halibut, etc., and 
 especially famous are the cured or " Finnan Haddies " of the 
 Aberdeenshire and Banffshire coasts. The old method of fishing 
 with baited lines for cod and other white fish has been largely 
 superseded by the beam trawl net. Shell fish are caught in 
 considerable quantities, and the salmon fisheries in the estuaries 
 of the Scottish rivers are very productive. Whale fishing, on the 
 other hand, which was formerly prosecuted from Dundee, Aber- 
 
158 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 deen, Peterhead, and other East Coast ports, has declined since 
 about the middle of the nineteenth century. 
 
 As showing the growth of the herring curing industry during 
 the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, it is significant 
 that the number of barrels of cured herrings rose from 111,519 
 in 1812 to over a million in 1874. In 1880 the number stood at 
 1,478,600, and though the catoh is liable to fluctuation, the in- 
 crease, taking the average, has been substantial. The export 
 trade shows a similar rise from 62,820 barrels in 1812 to nearly 
 three-quarters of a million in 1874 and fully a million in 1880, 
 the largest portion going to the Baltic ports for Germany and 
 Russia. In addition a vast quantity is sold fresh for home con- 
 sumption. The total catch of herrings and other kinds of fish 
 is given in hundredweights in the official statistics for later years. 
 From 1887 to 1913 the hundredweights of herring landed vary 
 annually from 3 millions to nearly 6 millions, and in 1907 the 
 number was fully 6J millions. In 1918 it was 4J millions. The 
 total for fish of all kinds (excluding shell fish) during the same 
 period varies from 5 to nearly 9 million hundredweights and in 
 1907 the 9 millions were overpassed. Similarly, the value of 
 herring sold during the period rose from £641,572 in 1887 to over, 
 2 millions in 1913, and the total value of fish of all kinds from 
 £1,330,894 to close on 4 millions, the highest total reached within 
 the period. The number of persons engaged in the industry is 
 about 90,000, of whom 40 per cent, are fishermen, 25 per cent, 
 curers and their employees, the remainder fishmongers, boat 
 builders, etc. In 1900 the total capital invested in boats, nets, 
 and other gear in Scotland amounted to about £1,605,900. In 
 1914 it had risen to over 8j millions. 
 
 9. The Scottish Trade Union Movement 
 
 The progress of industry led to the formation of associations or 
 combinations of workmen, for the protection of their interests. 
 Hence the rise of Trade Unions, which became so characteristic 
 a feature of the industrial life of the nineteenth century. The 
 movement dates from the previous century and was thus con- 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 159 
 
 temporaneous with the rise of the capitalist manufacturing class 
 and the factory system, which conjointly tended to transform the 
 small craftsman in many industries, who previously worked on 
 his own account, into a wage-earner pure and simple. " In all 
 cases," remark Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb in their History of 
 Trade Unionism, " in which Trade Unions arose, the great bulk 
 of the workers had ceased to be independent producers, them- 
 selves controlling the processes and owning the material and the 
 product of their labour, and had passed into the condition of life- 
 long wage-earners, possessing neither the instruments of pro- 
 duction nor the commodity in its finished state." Under the 
 old economic system laws had been made in the reigns of Eliza- 
 beth of England and James VI. of Scotland empowering the 
 magistrates to fix the wages of all craftsmen and regulate the 
 number of apprentices in each craft. Under the new system, by 
 which the control of industry was more and more passing into 
 the hands of the capitalist manufacturer and the workman was 
 more and more becoming a pure wage-earner, the employers 
 strove in their own interest to get rid of the old regulation of 
 wages and labour and vindicate their claim to fix wages and 
 employ labour irrespective of such statutory restrictions. They 
 found in the teaching of Adam Smith a theoretic vindication of 
 the principle of industrial liberty and were not slow to appeal 
 to it in support of the policy of unrestricted wages and free 
 labour. The effect of this policy was to cheapen labour, and it 
 accordingly gave rise to a long series of industrial disputes and 
 disturbances. The workmen naturally sought a remedy in com- 
 bination to secure by means of the intervention of Parliament, 
 or the Court of Session, or of strikes, better conditions of labour. 
 Already, in 1782, the Scottish cotton weavers had combined in 
 a union for this object. Cotton weaving and spinning required 
 no lengthy training or particular skill on the part of the worker, 
 and higher wages in this industry attracted a large number of 
 agricultural labourers. The manufacturers combined to take 
 advantage of the influx to reduce the " prices " or wage paid to 
 the weavers for certain kinds of piece-work. The weavers in self 
 defence combined to draw up a counter scale, and negotiations 
 with the masters having failed, refused to work for the more 
 
160 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 obnoxious of them. They thus adopted the expedient of the 
 strike in order to enforce the acceptance of their terms and com- 
 pelled those, who ultimately agreed to resume work at the mas- 
 ters' rates, to return or bum the cotton. Demonstrations in the 
 streets of Glasgow led to a riot and a collision with the soldiers 
 called out to maintain order, and several of the workmen were 
 killed. A number of prosecutions ensued and the movement 
 collapsed. 
 
 The growth of Trade Unionism among the textile workers of 
 Yorkshire and Lancashire led to the passing of the Acts of 1799- 
 1800, prohibiting combinations of both workmen and employers, 
 and, in particular, rendering workmen who resorted to this ex- 
 pedient liable to three months' hard labour. These Acts did 
 not, however, deprive the workmen of the right to use legal 
 means for the protection of their interests. It was still open to 
 them to combine for the purpose of presenting a case to the 
 proper authority, which was empowered, in virtue of the old 
 laws, to fix the scale of wages in industrial disputes. The Edin- 
 burgh compositors, for instance, are found adopting this expe- 
 dient in 1804, when they presented a memorial to the Court of 
 Session for an increase of wages in consequence of the rise of 
 prices, and secured an " interlocutor " in 1806 fixing a scale for 
 the printing trade of Edinburgh. Of this expedient the weavers 
 made use some years later in the course of another dispute with 
 the employers. In 1809 they joined those of Lancashire in an 
 application to Parliament to limit the number of apprentices and 
 fix a minimum wage. After investigation the Commons declined 
 to interfere and a second application (this time by the Scottish 
 weavers alone) was equally unsuccessful, the Select Committee 
 adopting the manufacturers' view of the question of free agree- 
 ment and declaring Parliamentary interference in such matters 
 to be pernicious to the general interest. With wages at the scale 
 of 8s. 6d. a week and the peck of meal at 8s., the weavers had, 
 however, a strong case for such interference, and acting on the 
 reminder of Lord President Hope that the magistrates possessed 
 statutory powers to fix wages, they next appealed to the Provost 
 and magistrates of the city. The municipal authorities also 
 declined to interfere on the ground of an opinion of counsel that 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 161 
 
 they had no such authority. Fortified by a counter opinion in 
 favour of their contention, the weavers next appealed to the Jus- 
 tices of the Peace for Lanarkshire, who required the employers to 
 take into consideration a scheme of wages submitted by the work- 
 men. The employers in turn appealed to the Court of Session, 
 which upheld the action of the Justices, and ultimately in 
 November, 1812, after an exhaustive examination of witnesses, 
 the Court decided to recommend a scale varying from £1 to 8s. 
 per week. But, with a few exceptions, the employers, who had 
 withdrawn from the case, paid no heed to a decision which it had 
 cost the weavers a large sum to obtain. 
 
 Thereupon the weavers decided on a general strike, which ere 
 long involved 40,000 men all over the country. A strike was, 
 however, a risky expedient in view of the Combination Acts, and 
 the Lord Advocate now intervened on the side of the employers 
 by arresting the leaders, in spite of the fact that the strikers in 
 this case refrained from violence. This rather biassed interven- 
 tion led to the collapse of the strike after a couple of months, and 
 the leaders were in March, 1813, convicted and sentenced to 
 various terms of imprisonment. A month later Parliament re- 
 pealed the " pernicious " law empowering Justices to fix wages, 
 and in the following year the statute empowering them to limit 
 the number of apprentices (Statute of Apprentices), thus 
 placing the workmen at the mercy of the employers. There was 
 doubtless force in the contention that these laws were no longer 
 in harmony with the principle of freedom of trade and labour 
 which the manufacturers and their champions adduced in support 
 of their abolition. But the impartial recognition of this prin- 
 ciple would also have involved the recognition of the right of the 
 workmen to combine to secure a reasonable remuneration for 
 their labour out of the profits, to which labour as well as capital 
 contributed. They were only too well justified in view of the 
 poverty and privation induced by the long war with France, 
 which hampered industry and raised prices, in demanding better 
 conditions of labour. Unfortunately, the anti-democratic spirit 
 of the governing classes throughout, and subsequent to the 
 French Revolutionary period, was not disposed to give a fair con- 
 sideration to the popular demands. Political prejudice, as well 
 
 L 
 
162 THE NINETEENIH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 as class interest, rendered it difficult for the working class to 
 obtain a sympathetic hearing in a Parliament in which it had no 
 representation, or even in the Courts of Justice, which were by no 
 means free from the dominant political and class influences. 
 Neither Parliament, nor law court, whilst ready enough to repress 
 popular combination, took any steps to put down combiaations 
 of masters against their employees. Lawlessness was apparently 
 deemed a monopoly of the working class, and a bitter sense of 
 grievance was the result. 
 
 This embittered spirit inevitably found expression in acts of 
 violence. In this spirit the Glasgow cotton spinners carried on 
 the agitation which the weavers had failed to render efiective by 
 legitimate methods. The spinners had combined in a union in 
 1806, and from 1816 onwards they sought to gain their ends by 
 terroristic methods. They not only made lavish use of threaten- . 
 ing letters to obnoxious masters ; they did not shrink from 
 attempts at assassination and incendiarism, and bound their 
 members on oath to make such attempts in the common interest. 
 Between the years 1816 and 1824 several objectionable masters 
 and workmen (the latter being known as " nobs ") were shot at. 
 One woman was murdered and several persons were dreadfully 
 injured by the vitriol thrown on them. The repressive policy 
 which produced such outrages, the numerous prosecutions to 
 which the combination laws gave rise, led Francis Place, a disciple 
 of Bentham and James Mill, to begin an agitation for their repeal. 
 He was joined by Joseph Hume and McCulloch, the editor of The 
 Scotsman, and at length in 1824 they secured the support of Peel 
 and Huskisson in carrying a repeal bill through Parliament. The 
 employers were taken by surprise by the clever parliamentary 
 tactics of the promoters of the bill and made an attempt to undo 
 it in the following year. The attempt was only partially success- 
 ful, for the Government, whilst repealing the Act of the previous 
 year and prohibiting all combination for the purpose of coercing 
 masters or workmen, explicitly excepted from prosecution asso- 
 ciations for the purpose of regulating wages or hours of labour. 
 In spite of this limitation the Act of 1825 constituted a real 
 advance in the industrial emancipation of the working class. 
 " The right of collective bargaining, involving the power to with- 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 163 
 
 hold labour from the market by concerted action," remark the 
 Messrs Webb, " was for the first time expressly established. 
 And although many struggles remained to be fought before the 
 legal freedom of Trade Unionism was fully secured, no overt 
 attempt has since been made to render illegal this first condition 
 of Trade Union action." 
 
 This legislation gave a great impulse to the spread of unionism 
 among the various trades, which organised themselves in unions. 
 Accordiag to the Glasgow Argus towards the end of 1833, 
 " scarcely a branch of trade exists in the West of Scotland that is 
 not now in a state of union." Attempts were even made to 
 organise all the trades of the United Kingdom in one vast asso- 
 ciation, and the organisation started by Robert Owen in 1834 was 
 on a Socialist basis. These attempts proved abortive, and the 
 activity of extremists like Owen tended to discredit the move- 
 ment. It suffered a distinct set back in Scotland at least 
 through the strike of the Glasgow spinners in 1837, which once 
 more provoked the intervention of the authorities and led to the 
 severe punishment of its leaders. The spinners had at intervals 
 resorted to the violent tactics which had characterised their 
 action before the repeal of the combination laws, and on this 
 occasion they indulged in riotous excesses in protest against the 
 resolution of the masters to reduce their wages. They attempted 
 to set fire to mills and attacked workmen who agreed to work at 
 the masters' rates. One man was shot with fatal effect. The 
 crime was followed by the discovery and the arrest of the mem- 
 bens of the Strike Committee and five of them were ultimately 
 convicted on rather dubious evidence and sentenced to seven 
 years' transportation. 
 
 For some years the movement for better conditions of labour 
 took a political turn. The Reform Bill of 1832, which had done 
 so much for the political emancipation of the middle class, had 
 done nothing for that of the people in the larger sense. A dozen 
 years before the passing of the Bill the workmen of Glasgow, 
 Paisley, and the western district had not only combined and 
 struck work for this purpose, but attempted in small bands to 
 enforce the demand for universal suffrage. The result was a 
 collision with the military at Bonnymuir, in which many of the 
 
164 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 insurgents were wounded and a number taken prisoner, three of 
 whom — ^among them Andrew Hardie, a forbear of J. Keir Hardie, 
 — suffered the death penalty (August, 1820). The Reform Bill 
 gave an impulse to the movement for the extension of the fran- 
 chise to the people in order to enable them to remedy their 
 grievances by legislative means. Popular reformers insisted with 
 no little force that the improvement of the condition of the work- 
 ing class depended on the possession of political power and em- 
 bodied their views in the People's Charter, which demanded man- 
 hood suffrage, vote by ballot, annual Parliaments, etc. These 
 demands were far in advance of the time, and the resort to 
 violence in support of them, in addition to their visionary char- 
 acter, deprived the movement of any practical effect. Though 
 the Charter did not receive the official recognition of the Trade 
 Unions, it aroused much enthusiasm among the people. A great 
 demonstration in its support was held at Glasgow in May, 1838, 
 and other Scottish towns testified in its favour, whilst refraining 
 from the popular disturbances which it excited at Birmingham 
 and other English centres. In December, 1839, a conference of 
 Scottish Chartists, held at Edinburgh, emphatically expressed its 
 preference for constitutional methods and denounced the resort 
 to physical force. The Trade Unions also preferred the saner 
 method of agitating on constitutional, not revolutionary, lines 
 for the redress of their grievances. " Laying aside all projects 
 of social revolution," remark Mr and Mrs Webb, " they set them- 
 selves resolutely to resist the worst of the legal and industrial 
 oppressions from which they suffered, and slowly built up for 
 this purpose organisations which have become integral parts of 
 the structure of a modem industrial state. This success we 
 attribute mainly to the spread of education among the rank and 
 file, and the more practical counsels which began, after 1842, to 
 influence the Trade Union world." 
 
 The growing sense of the importance of intelligent, informed 
 action in the decision of industrial questions is apparent in the 
 establishment of classes for mutual improvement and of trade 
 journals for the diffusion of technical knowledge. Such a class 
 was, for instance, started by the Glasgow Branch of the Scottish 
 United Operative Masons in 1845. Whilst the organised strike 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 165 
 
 appears as the oft recurring expedient for securing the increase, or 
 resisting the reduction of wages, or bringing about a diminution 
 of the hours of labour — especially during years of trade depres- 
 sion — there is also discernible a tendency to make trial of con- 
 ciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes. In the case of the 
 lock-out of the Clyde shipwrights, for instance, who demanded 
 an increase of wages in April, 1877, and agreed to submit to the 
 arbitration of Lord Moncrieff, who decided in favour of the em- 
 ployers. As a rule, however, the employers showed little dis- 
 position to encourage this pacific policy. They usually met pro- 
 posals of this kind by resolute resistance to any interference with 
 the right to regulate the hours and terms of labour and make 
 their own agreements with their employees. The expedient of 
 the strike was, therefore, not always the fruit of the unreasonable 
 discontent of the workers in times of depression. Nor had the 
 employers always the best of the dispute. In 1871-72 the English 
 engineering operatives of the north-eastern district struck for a 
 nine hours' day, and after a long struggle compelled this conces- 
 sion. The workers in the Clyde shipbuilding yards went one 
 better, and without a strike secured a 51 hours' working week, 
 though the hours were again raised during the disastrous years 
 1878-79, when the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank intensi- 
 fied the prevailing depression and ruined all but half-a-dozen of 
 the Scottish Unions. 
 
 The two men who from about the middle of the century did 
 most to organise Scottish labour were Alexander Campbell and 
 Alexander MacDonald. Campbell had been a disciple of Robert 
 Owen and secretary of the Glasgow Carpenters' Union in the 
 days of the Owenite agitation. He became editor of the Glasgow 
 Sentinel and one of the leaders of the movement to give the local 
 unions a corporate existence in the form of Trades Councils, 
 which resulted in the formation of these Councils in the large in- 
 dustrial centres of the United Kingdom between 1858 and 1867. 
 These were a sort of workmen's Parliaments for the discussion 
 and advocacy of matters bearing on the industrial and social 
 interests of the organised workers. Those of Glasgow and Edin- 
 burgh were among the first to be established. Campbell's friend 
 and fellow organiser, Alexander MacDonald, who was bom in 
 
166 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 1821, began to work in a Lanarkshire pit at the age of 8. In 
 1846 he became a student at Glasgow University and maintained 
 himself during the winter sessions by working as a miner in the 
 summer. In 1860 he became a teacher and seven years later 
 devoted himself wholly to agitation in the miners' interest. He 
 unsuccessfully stood for Kilmarnock Burghs in 1868, but was 
 elected for an English constituency in 1874. He was chosen 
 president of the Miners' National Union, whose foundation in 
 1868 was largely due to his exertions, and retained this post till 
 his death in 1881. 
 
 These Councils lent a powerful support to the policy of seek- 
 ing to secure, by means of Parliamentary action, the social and 
 industrial improvement of the working class, which the leaders 
 of Trade Unions adopted from about 1860 onwards. Under 
 Campbell's leadership the Glasgow Councils, along with those of 
 other towns, took an active part in helping to carry the Reform 
 Bill of 1867-68, which enfranchised the artisan in the towns. 
 Glasgow was again in the forefront of the agitation for the reform 
 of the Master and Servant Act, which favoured the master at the 
 expense of the servant, breach of contract on the part of the 
 latter being, under this Act, a crime punishable by imprison- 
 ment, whilst the former could only be sued for damages for the 
 same offence. Moreover, the law allowed the master, but not 
 the servant, to bear witness on his own behalf. Campbell and 
 MacDonald brought the question before the Glasgow Council, 
 and as the result of the combined action of those of Glasgow, 
 Edinburgh, London, and the English provincial towns, seconded 
 by the Trade Unions throughout the United Kingdom, the law 
 was amended in 1867. This amendment constituted " the first 
 positive success of the Trade Unions in the legislative field." 
 They also co-operated effectively in the passing of the Act of 1871 
 entitling Trade Unions to register as legal associations and thus 
 securing legal protection for their funds. The keen resentment 
 over the failure to prevent the passing of another Act restricting 
 strike action on their part intensified the determination to secure 
 direct labour representation in the House of Commons. Mac- 
 Donald had in 1868 become a candidate for the Kilmarnock 
 Burghs, but had retired before the election. At the General 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 167 
 
 Election of 1874 he and Thomas Burt, another leading ofBcial of 
 the Miners' National Union, were returned for Stafford and Mor- 
 peth respectively — the first two Labour members to enter Par- 
 liament. The result was the repeal of the Act restricting strike 
 action and the substitution for the Master and Servant Act of the 
 Employers and Workmen Act, which put employers and em- 
 ployees on an equal footing before the law and fully recognised 
 the right of collective bargaining after fifty years of organised 
 effort. There was ample reason in this legislation for the en- 
 thusiasm with which Mr G. Howell, at the Trade Union Congress 
 at Glasgow in 1875, eulogised Mr Cross, the Conservative Home 
 Secretary, who had been the sympathetic instrument of placing 
 on the Statute Book " the greatest boon ever given to the sons 
 of toil." 
 
 So far Trade Unionism had been confined to the skilled work- 
 man. Towards the end of the " eighties " a movement was 
 begun by John Bums, Tom Mann, Keir Hardie, and others, to 
 organise the unskilled workers. Connected with this movement 
 was the recrudescence of Socialist theories, which aimed at elimin- 
 ating capitalism and private profit from industry and nation- 
 alising production for the benefit of the workers and the com- 
 munity. The continuance of trade depression, the recurring 
 unemployment, poverty, and misery of large sections of the 
 working class as the result of alternating over-production and 
 commercial stagnation, social evils like bad housing and sweating 
 gave an impulse to the propaganda of the Social Democratic 
 Federation. Trade Unionism had effected much for the indus- 
 trial and political emancipation of the artisan class. But it had 
 failed to assure it a steady and adequate livelihood, and the 
 Socialist reformers sought the remedy in a complete transforma- 
 tion of the industrial system. To these reformers Unionism was 
 at best but a partial remedy for the evils of this system. Whilst 
 professing the new Socialist doctrine, men like Bums and Mann 
 were content to agitate for reform on Unionist lines, such as an 
 eight hours' day as a cure for unemployment, pending the trans- 
 formation to be attained by the nationalisation of industry. By 
 their energy and their enthusiasm they succeeded in infusing a 
 more aggressive spirit into the Trade Union movement, which 
 
168 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 gained a large accession of members as the result not only of the 
 organisation of unskilled labour, but of the swelling of the ranks 
 of the old Unions. A more doctrinaire section, led by Hyndman, 
 was, however, not content to infuse a new spirit into the old 
 methods. This section dreamed of an international social revolu- 
 tion by the concerted action of the workers on behalf of the new 
 teaching. They contemplated nothing less than the overthrow 
 of the dominant industrial system and Hyndman looked to the 
 centenary year of the French Revolution in 1889 to inaugurate 
 it. For such day dreams the mass of English and Scottish 
 workers had no taste. Bums and Mann left the Social Demo- 
 cratic Federation, and though the Socialist propaganda continued 
 to make progress in the next quarter of a century, the revolu- 
 tionary method failed to secure the adhesion of responsible 
 English and Scottish Socialist leaders, and formed no part of 
 practical Trade Union politics. 
 
 The Unions preferred instead to concentrate their energy on 
 the policy of extending Labour representation in Parliament and 
 organising a Labour party to further the interests of the working 
 class independently of the Liberal party, though they continued 
 to co-operate with this party in supporting Liberal measures to 
 this end. The first practical step in the organisation of an In- 
 dependent Labour Party was made by a group of Scottish Social- 
 ists, including Keir Hardie, Cunninghame Graham, and Robert 
 Smillie, shortly after Hardie's unsuccessful attempt to contest 
 Mid-Lanark in the Labour interest in opposition to both Liberals 
 and Conservatives in 1888. It adopted an extensive reform 
 programme and issued a manifesto emphasising the necessity for 
 the working class to organise itself in order to secure by its voting 
 power the realisation of these reforms. The Scottish movement 
 was extended to England, and resulted four years later in the for- 
 mation of the Independent Labour Party at a meeting at Brad- 
 ford in 1892. Besides Keir Hardie, two other Scotsmen, 
 Ramsay MacDonald and Bruce Glasier, became prominent among 
 its leaders. Its programme was Socialist, but it has co-operated 
 with the Trade Unions, which form the Labour Party in the more 
 general sense, in supporting legislation in the interest of the 
 working class. Under the leadership of men like Hardie, Bruce 
 
THE SCOTTISH TRADE UNION MOVEMENT 169 
 
 Glasier, Ramsay MacDonald, J. P. Clynes, Arthur Henderson, 
 it has opposed reform by way of revolution. Trade Unionism 
 has to a certain extent been penetrated by Socialist principles 
 and tendencies, as in the case of the Miners' Federation, which 
 now champions, for instance, the nationalisation of the mines. 
 But in its advocacy of reforms such as the eight hours and later 
 the six hours' day for miners, and shorter hours for all classes of 
 workmen, the Workmen's Compensation Act, the Workmen's 
 Insurance Act, Old Age Pensions, etc., it has remained steadfast 
 to the policy of constitutional action, in spite of extremist 
 clamour for direct action to secure political and social reform. 
 The growth of the Labour Party in and outside Parliament has 
 placed at its disposal the means of promoting such legislation 
 without recourse to the revolutionary methods which, favoured 
 by the great war, have produced such startling efiects in some 
 Continental coimtries. 
 
 The growth of the Trade Union movement during the last 
 quarter of a century in the United Kingdom has been 
 phenomenal. In 1892 the number of Trade Unionists in the 
 United Kingdom was estimated at over 1^ millions, of whom 
 about 150,000 were credited to Scotland. Of the Scottish trades 
 represented, by far the larger number belonged to the engineering 
 and metal industries with over 45,000 members. The building 
 trades came next with about 25,000, the miners next with over 
 21,000, the labourers and transport workers next with about the 
 same total, by far the larger proportion being confined to the 
 great industrial centre between the Clyde and the Forth. 
 Twenty-five years later the membership of the various unions in 
 the United Kingdom had swelled to between five and six mil- 
 lions, and the movement had spread to the remoter area pre- 
 viously untouched by it. It has, moreover, brought within its 
 range classes of workers, such as teachers, chemists, clerks, farm 
 servants, nurses, who had previoijsly stood outside or been little 
 affected by it. Another feature is the endeavour to obliterate the 
 distinction between skilled and unskilled workers in the same 
 industry and to organise all workmen in one industry in a single 
 union. Some of the Scottish Unions, such as the miners and 
 railwaymen, are amalgamated with those of England; but in a 
 
170 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 large number of cases they have a separate national organisa- 
 tion and have not even agreements with kindred English 
 Societies. 
 
 In spite of much criticism and opposition, the movement has 
 been of great service to the workers. It was the inevitable out- 
 come of the evils incident to the accentuated individualist com- 
 mercial and industrial system of the nineteenth century. During 
 a large part of this century the working class in Scotland suffered 
 from periodic trade depression, and the consequent fall in wages 
 and unemployment. In the intervals of trade revival employ- 
 ment and wages, indeed, improved, and destitution was corres- 
 pondingly reduced. But it was always there, more or less, and 
 terrible enough, in the annals of the century, was the misery 
 accruing from it, in spite of the all too meagre attempts at relief 
 by way of charity or the artificial provision of employment. 
 Fluctuations of trade, over which employers had no control, 
 doubtless operated in producing this state of things. But it can 
 hardly be doubted that the industrial and commercial system was 
 itself largely responsible. This system proceeded too much on 
 the policy of increasing profits as much as possible as the first 
 essential of business, without an adequate and general realisation 
 of the obligation to care for the interest of the workers equally 
 with those of the employer or the shareholders. Otherwise the 
 conditions of labour in factories, workshops, and mines would 
 not have been suffered to remain so long so deplorably lacking as 
 was the case till far into the century. What can only be de- 
 scribed as sweated labour was far too general in many industries, 
 in which large incomes and dividends were made at the expense 
 of the well-being of the workers. 
 
 10. Education 
 
 The condition of Scottish education at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century was far from satisfactory in two respects. 
 The parish schoolmasters were as a rule poorly paid, and the 
 number of schools was far from adequate. The economic pro- 
 gress of the country, which had raised prices and wages, had not 
 
EDUCATION 171 
 
 raised the schoolmasters' salaries, and the growth of population, 
 and, especially in the Highlands, the size of the parishes had in- 
 creased the deficiency of school accommodation. In the High- 
 lands, indeed, the lack of schools was still deplorable ia spite of 
 the efforts of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Know- 
 ledge to remedy the defect. Dr Shaw, writing in 1775, avers, 
 for instance, that from Speymouth to Lorn there was only one 
 school — ^that at Ruthven in Badenoch— and that it was unusual 
 to find in a parish three persons that could read and write. In 
 vain the Church had appealed in 1782 to the Government for 
 help. The opposition of the landowners would not be overborne 
 by the forcible arguments on the poor schoolmasters' behalf. 
 " Ninety years (counting from 1698, the date of the Educational 
 Act of the Scottish Parliament) have produced such a change and 
 so great improvements in the agriculture, navigation, commerce, 
 arts, and riches of this country that £15 sterling per annum at 
 the end of last century may be considered as a better income 
 than £45 sterling per annum at this present time. Suppose 
 then that in Scotland there are 900 parochial schoolmasters, 
 which is very near the truth, 800 of them will be found struggling 
 with indigence, inferior in point of income to 800 day labourers 
 in the best cultivated parts of this island, and receiving hardly 
 half the emoluments of the menial servants of country gentle- 
 men and wealthy citizens." The Act of 1803 was an all too be- 
 lated attempt to remedy these evils. It raised the school- 
 master's salary to a maximum of 400 merks and a minimum of 
 300 (100 merks=£5, lis. Ijd.) and provided for a revision every 
 twenty-five years. It compelled the heritors to provide a dwell- 
 ing house, consisting of not more than two apartments, including 
 the kitchen, and a garden, or its equivalent in money — an extra- 
 vagance which the lairds denounced as erecting " palaces for 
 the dominies." It further required the heritors, in the case of 
 parishes of large extent and population, to erect a second school 
 (or side school, as it was called), furnish a sum of 600 merks, 
 and divide it among the teachers. The act certainly did not err 
 on the side of generosity, and was only a makeshift. A Govern- 
 ment investigation in 1818 brought out the fact that 50,000 
 children of school age were still without instruction from lack of 
 
172 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 accommodation, while in the Highlands, where the lack was most 
 felt, half the population were unable to read. The General 
 Assembly took up the problem through its Education Committee, 
 which it established in 1824, and which raised subscriptions for 
 the establishment of schools chiefly in the Highlands and Islands 
 (" Assembly Schools.") In 1836 it appealed to the Govern- 
 ment to provide schools in connection with the 42 Government 
 churches in the Highlands {quoud sacra parishes), and two years 
 later an Act was passed to carry the proposal into effect (" Par- 
 liamentary Schools.") In 1839 it started a scheme to provide 
 schools in all the quoad sacra parishes of the country, in addi- 
 tion to the schools of the parishes from which these were detached 
 (" Sessional Schools.") To this end it availed itself of the 
 Grants in Aid sanctioned in the same year. 
 
 The Disruption in 1843 led to a great increase in school accom- 
 modation, the Free Church building its own schools as well as 
 churches for the education of children belonging to its com- 
 munion. It led, in fact, in many places, to the overlapping of 
 schools which owed their existence to ecclesiastical rivalry rather 
 than to real educational need. Within five years the Education 
 Committee of the Free Church had raised nearly £40,000 for this 
 object, and it spent this sum in establishing Normal Schools in 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow for the training of its teachers, and a 
 large number of schools throughout the country. In 1850 the 
 number of these schools was 626. In addition to these there 
 were other denominational schools belonging to the smaller re- 
 ligious bodies, besides those maintained by the Church of 
 Scotland and the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, 
 and a large number of private schools. 
 
 The national or parochial system had thus, by the middle of 
 the century, been materially supplemented by ecclesiastical or 
 private effort. The denominational element in education accen- 
 tuated the growing feeling against the exclusive control by the 
 Church of Scotland over the parish schools and in favour of a 
 national system under the control of the State. The next im- 
 portant Education Act — that of 1861 — not only substantially im- 
 proved teachers' salaries, making the minimum £35 and the 
 maximum £70, but provided larger dwelling houses. It relaxed 
 
EDUCATION 178 
 
 the obligation to sign the Confession of Faith and the Formula of 
 the Church of Scotland, and substituted a declaration not to teach 
 anything subversive of the Bible and the Shorter Catechism. It 
 thus opened the parish schools to at least all Presbyterians, 
 irrespective of denomination. It transferred to the Scottish 
 Universities the duty of examining the qualifications of teachers, 
 whilst vesting in the minister and heritors of each parish the 
 power of dismissing the parish teacher in case of neglect or ineflft- 
 ciency and in the Sherifi of the county in case of immorality or 
 cruelty. The State further sought to control education through 
 the Committee of Council, established m 1839 and subsequently 
 known as the Scotch Education Department, by means of Gov- 
 ernment inspection and grants in aid, and the issue of certificates 
 to properly qualified teachers. In 1850 there was only one 
 Government inspector; in 1860 the number had grown to eight. 
 The partial application to Scotland of the English Revised 
 Code of 1861, with its principle of payment by results, was 
 another step in the direction of State control. 
 
 Despite these successive improvements, education in Scotland 
 left much to be desired. The Commission of 1867 reported that 
 of about 500,000 children rather more than 90,000 attended no 
 school, and that of about 400,000 who did only about half were 
 in schools subject to inspection. The conviction had been 
 steadily growing that a thorough organisation of national edu- 
 cation, on the basis of State aid and control, was the only 
 remedy, and this remedy was forthcoming in the Education Act 
 of 1872. It set up a School Board in every parish and burgh 
 for the management of the school or schools within them, and 
 made the school independent of Church control. These Boards 
 were elected for three years by the ratepayers who were owners 
 or occupiers of an annual minimum value of £4, and each 
 elector possessed a cumulative vote which he could record in 
 favour of one or more candidates if so disposed. They were em- 
 powered to make an assessment through the Parochial Board 
 for the maintenance of education, and to enforce the attendance 
 at the " public " schools of all children between the ages of 5 
 and 13, though partial exemption was allowed in certain cases. 
 They were required to supply adequate school accommodation 
 
174 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 out of the local rates, and entitled to grants of public money 
 through the Scotch Education Department. They were respon- 
 sible for the management of the schools to this Department, 
 whose approval of the time table was requisite, and these 
 schools were subject to inspection by the Department's inspec- 
 tors. Only on the fulfilment of these conditions were they 
 entitled to share in the Parliamentary grant, and the amount of 
 the grant depended further on the examinations conducted by 
 these inspectors on the questionable principle of payment by 
 results. They were, however, free to adopt or not religious in- 
 struction, and to decide on the nature of this instruction, sub- 
 ject to a conscience clause. Moreover, the Department had no 
 power to compel them to use the compulsory powers as to attend- 
 ance invested in them, for whose exercise they were responsible 
 only to the electors. 
 
 The Act of 1872 was modified in important respects by sub- 
 sequent legislation. In 1878 the employment of children under 
 10 years of age was absolutely forbidden, and no child between 
 10 and 14 was to be employed, even for half time, who had not 
 passed a certain standard, subsequently fixed by the Department 
 as the third standard, while for full time employment the stan- 
 dard was the fifth. Another Act, that of 1883, strengthened the 
 compulsory powers of the Boards in dealing with parents who 
 neglected to send their children to school. Hitherto it had been 
 necessary for the Board to prove " gross " neglect, and refrac- 
 tory parents might evade conviction in the Courts by a merely 
 nominal attendance of their children. Such evasion was now 
 rendered impossible by the provision requiring attendance at 
 school on every occasion when the school was open, the penalty 
 for neglect being 20s., or imprisonment. In 1890 the system of 
 individual examination and payment by results based thereon, 
 on which the amount of the Government grant depended, was 
 abandoned in favour of a general report on the work of the pupils 
 and the average attendance. The abandonment of payment by 
 individual results was undoubtedly a step in the right direction. 
 The system was unfair to both teacher and pupil, and was bad 
 educationally. It made the grant dependent on the hazard of a 
 single annual examination by an official inspector, and took no 
 
EDUCATION 175 
 
 account of the strain on the pupil, who might not be at his best 
 on such an awesome occasion. It tempted the teacher to drill 
 his pupils for the examination rather than to educate them, to 
 concentrate on the dullards rather than on the more gifted chil- 
 dren. It ignored the record of the general work of the year, the 
 real test of ability and diligence, and mistook mere proficiency in 
 passing a test of what was liable to be crammed knowledge, for 
 education. 
 
 The logical consequence of compulsion is free education, and 
 the change was completed in 1893, when the payment of fees 
 was abandoned in the case of all children between 3 and 15. 
 
 In 1890 the Boards were made responsible for the education 
 of blind and deaf-mute children, and were empowered to pay, in 
 cases where the parent was unable to dO' so, for the education 
 and maintenance of these defective children in institutions such 
 as the Royal Blind Schools and the Deaf and Dumb Schools at 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow, which had been established for this 
 special purpose. By two subsequent Acts (1906 and 1908) the 
 Boards were themselves empowered to make provision for the 
 education of these children between the ages of 5 and 16, and 
 if such special provision was made, they were enabled to prose- 
 cute parents who neglected to take advantage of it. Besides 
 these defective children, provision was made for dealing with 
 neglected children by the Day Industrial Schools Act of 1893, 
 which enabled them to establish such schools and to contribute 
 to those established by private philanthropy. 
 
 The scope of the Act of 1872 was not limited to elementary 
 education, as was that of 1870 in England. It was meant to 
 provide education " for the whole people of Scotland," and not 
 merely for the children of the working classes. It contemplated 
 the continuation of the higher instruction given in many of the 
 parish schools which had prepared pupils for the Universities, and 
 it was applicable to the Burgh or Secondary Schools, which were 
 managed by Town Councils and were now placed under the juris- 
 diction of the School Boards. The class of higher schools which 
 remained outside their jurisdiction, though some were subse- 
 quently absorbed, were academies and institutions established by 
 subscription or endowment, and managed by their own gover- 
 
176 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 nors. The large number of schools originated and carried on by 
 private adventure, and the denominational schools maintained 
 by the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Churches, were also inde- 
 pendent of their control. 
 
 The secondary schools, though managed by the Boards, did 
 not at first share in the Parliamentary grants to any appreciable 
 extent. They were maintained, as before, by endowments or 
 contributions and by the pupils' fees, which, under the regime of 
 the Boards, were no longer paid to the individual master, but 
 were collected into a common fee fund and divided among the 
 teachers according as the Board might determine. Secondary 
 education in Edinburgh greatly benefitted by the reforms of the 
 Merchant Company, which abolished endowed Hospitals in 1869 
 and (with the exception of Gillespie's Hospital, which became a 
 primary school and later a higher grade school) transformed 
 them into secondary and fee paying educational institutions with 
 thousands, instead of hundreds, of pupils. A similar reform 
 was effected in the case of George Heriot's Hospital in 1885; 
 Allan Glen's School, Glasgow, in 1876; Robert Gordon's Hos- 
 pital, Aberdeen, in 1881. Improvements in the same direction 
 were effected in many endowed institutions in other places. The 
 Scottish Education Department, under the auspices of Sir Henry 
 Craik, energetically took up the question of higher education, 
 and inaugurated, in 1886, the inspection of secondary schools. 
 It was not, however, till 1892, that State aid, in addition to State 
 control, was materially extended to these higher public schools 
 in the form of a sum of £60,000 placed at the disposal of the De- 
 partment for this purpose. The distribution of this grant was, 
 however, entrusted, not to the Boards, but to Secondary Educa- 
 tion Committees for the counties and the larger burghs, these 
 committees being under obligation to furnish the Department 
 with satisfactory evidence as to the adequacy of the accommo- 
 dation and the teaching staff and the efficiency of the teaching, 
 as a condition of sharing in its benefit. Six years later (1898) 
 an additional sum of considerable amount became available for 
 this purpose, partly on the ground that further provision was 
 necessary in view of the advance of the teaching of science and 
 the heavy expense of providing specially qualified teachers and 
 
EDUCATION 177 
 
 apparatus. In 1906 the amount at the disposal of the Secondary 
 Education Committees was substantially increased from the 
 General Aid Grant. Grants had also been made since 1859 by 
 the Science and Art Department in aid of science teaching in 
 schools which specialised in this branch, and in 1897 these science 
 and art grants were transferred to the Scottish Education De- 
 partment, which devoted them to the development of the science 
 side of the instruction given in secondary schools, properly 
 equipped for the purpose, as well as in schools in which the in- 
 struction was more specifically modem and soientific, such as 
 George Heriot's, Edinburgh; Allan Glen's, Glasgow; and Gor- 
 don's College, Aberdeen. Encouragement was also given in 
 1890 to technical education by placing at the disposal of local 
 authorities a sum, which ten years later had risen to £15,000 
 (the Residue Grant) and which was applied to this object 
 through the Secondary Education Committees. 
 
 In addition to these grants, a great impulse was given to 
 secondary education by the introduction, after several tentative 
 steps in this direction, of the Leaving Certificate Examination 
 in 1888. By this scheme the Department furnished a means of 
 testing the instruction given in these schools and awarded a cer- 
 tificate to the successful pupils. At the same time the scheme 
 tended to foster a more uniform system of secondary education, 
 which had hitherto been conducted in too haphazard a fashion. 
 At first, however, the examination was confined to higher class 
 schools, and it was not till four years later (1892) that it was 
 extended to the Board Schools in which higher instruction was 
 given. The establishment of the entrance examination to the 
 Universities by the Universities Commission in the same year 
 gave an additional impetus to secondary education. Still 
 another was afforded by the policy of the Department, adopted 
 in 1889 and subsequently developed, of affording an avenue, 
 through the establishment of the Higher Grade School for further 
 study, to pupils of elementary schools over 14, who had reached 
 a certain standard of proficiency, and the more capable of whom 
 were ultimately enabled, by means of this higher course, to enter 
 the University. As a test of the instruction in the higher grade 
 and other schools which were unable to retain these pupils up to 
 
178 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the stage of the Leaving Certificate Examination, the Inter- 
 mediate Certificate was subsequently instituted. Both these certi- 
 ficates were designed to test the proficiency of the candidate, not 
 in any one subject or number of subjects combined at haphazard, 
 but in groups of subjects in accordance with a definite course of 
 school instruction or curriculum. The examination thus became 
 a test not merely of the knowledge, but of the real education of 
 the pupil, and to this end the school work of the candidates, as 
 adjudicated by the teachers, from 1906 was to be taken into 
 account in judging their merits. 
 
 As the result of the Act of 1872 and the legislation in supple- 
 ment of it, elementary education in Scotland had made remark- 
 able progress during the thirty years between the passing of the 
 Act and the beginning of the twentieth century. Under the 
 Boards, school accommodation had greatly increased all over the 
 country and the character of the accommodation had greatly 
 improved. One has only to think of the large and handsome 
 buildings erected during the period, not merely in the large 
 towns, but in every considerable centre of population. The 
 school attendance showed a corresponding rise, and the stafiing 
 of the schools had become more adequate and efficient. Salaries 
 had risen, though the average still left much to be desired. In 
 the 28 years from 1873 to 1896 the schools under inspection rose 
 from 2,000 to over 8,000, the number of school places from 
 800,000 to 789,000, the number of pupils on the rolls of inspected 
 schools from 280,000 to 708,000, and the average attendance from 
 220,000 to 587,000. Besides the day schools, a system of con- 
 tinuation classes bad come into existence, in which instruction 
 in specific as well as school subjects was provided. In 1897-98 
 over 96,000 pupils were enrolled, though the average attendance 
 was little more than half the number. Included in the special- 
 ised courses given in these classes was, besides literary and 
 commercial subjects, instruction in the various crafts and arts, 
 such as engineering, naval architecture, navigation, textile and 
 chemical industries, women's industries, agriculture, etc. 
 
 The Act of 1872 was further supplemented in the first decade 
 of the twentieth century by the Acts of 1901 and 1908, and by 
 special minutes of the Department. The former raised the school 
 
EDUCATION 179 
 
 age from 13 to 14 years, and that at which children might be 
 employed from 10 to 12, whilst allowing School Boards to grant 
 exemption from attendance for employed children between 12 
 and 14 on certain conditions. The latter was far more thorough- 
 going. It included the physical welfare of the children. It 
 empowered Boards to provide accommodation and apparatus and 
 service for the supply of meals to the children attending schools, 
 though not to pay for these meals out of the school funds, to 
 undertake their medical examination, to call the parents of filthy, 
 or verminous, or ill-clad and underfed children to account, and, 
 in case of insufficient or unsatisfactory explanation, to institute 
 proceedings against them for such neglect, unless unable by 
 reason of poverty or ill-health to provide a remedy. In this case 
 provision must be made out of the school fund, failing aid by 
 voluntary agency. Children between 14 and 16 were required to 
 attend further instruction in day or evening continuation classes, 
 and the Boards were required to provide such instruction in con- 
 tinuation classes with reference to the crafts and industries prac- 
 tised in the district (including agriculture and the domestic arts), 
 in the English language and literature, and in Gaelic speaking 
 districts the Gaelic language and literature, and also in the laws 
 of health and physical training. They might, moreover, make 
 bye-laws requiring attendance at such classes up to the age of 
 17, provided that the classes were not held beyond two miles 
 from the residence of the pupil. The restriction of the power 
 of School Boards to grant retiring allowances to teachers in the 
 Act of 1898 was repealed, and provision was made for such re- 
 tiring allowances out of a superannuation fund partly established 
 by the State, partly by the teacher, and partly by the School 
 Board, the allowance to be in proportion to salary and service. 
 The teacher was also granted the right of appeal to the Depart- 
 ment against dismissal by the Board, and his tenure of 
 ofiBce was thereby safeguarded against arbitrary local action. 
 Provision was likewise made in the form of grants (including 
 bursaries and travelling expenses of pupils) for higher education 
 in intermediate and secondary schools, training colleges, central 
 institutions, and Universities. 
 The Act of 1908 was not thoroughgoing enough for the more 
 
180 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 advanced educational reformers, who desired to enlarge the area 
 of the local school authority from the parish to the county, to 
 abolish cumulative voting, to correlate the various classes of 
 schools in a properly organised general system of education, 
 etc. For ten years they continued to agitate in favour of these 
 reforms, the Educational Institute of Scotland taking a leading 
 part in the movement, and the result of their efforts was the Act 
 of 1918, which may be described as marking in some respects an 
 educational revolution. In place of the 947 School Boards, the 
 Act substituted 38 local educational authorities, elected on the 
 principle of proportional representation, and consisting of five of 
 the largest burghs and thirty-three counties. It established 
 committees for the management of schools or groups of schools 
 within ea;ch area, consisting of members of the education 
 authority, parents of the children, and at least one teacher 
 of the schools concerned. To the education authority of the area 
 was, however, reserved the raising of money by rate or loan, 
 and the general control of expenditure, the acquisition or holding 
 of land, the appointment, transfer, remuneration, and dismissal 
 of teachers, and the recognition or establishment of intermediate, 
 secondary, and technical schools within the area. Power was 
 given them to mEike grants to capable pupils to enable them to 
 attend secondary schools, universities, training colleges, central 
 institutions, and continuation classes, and to provide books for 
 general reading not only to pupils, but to the adult population 
 of the area. They were required to submit to the Department, 
 henceforth to be known as the Scottish (not Scotch) Education 
 Department, a scheme for the adequate provision of free primary, 
 intermediate, and secondary education (including the teaching 
 of Gaelic in Gaelic-speaking districts), and were empowered to 
 maintain a limited number of fee-paying schools if deemed de- 
 sirable, and to establish day nursery schools for children be- 
 tween 2 and 5. They were further required to submit a scheme 
 of salaries which must not fall below a minimum national scale, 
 which superseded what was known as the Craik scale of 1917, and 
 which involved a substantial rise in the remuneration, and there- 
 fore gave promise of a corresponding rise in the status of the 
 teacher. Liberty was conceded to continue the custom of giving 
 
EDUCATION 181 
 
 religious instruction, subject to a conscience clause. The compul- 
 sory school age was raised to 15, and in the case of blind and 
 deaf-mute children to 18, the age for exemption to 13, that for 
 attendance on continuation classes to 18, the attendance to be 
 given between 8 in the morning and 7 in the evening, and medical 
 inspection was made applicable to the pupils in attendance. 
 Voluntary or denominational schools might be transferred to the 
 Education Authority on terms to be arranged* between the 
 parties, and the authorities were bound to accept such transfer on 
 agreement as to the terms being attained. These schools thus 
 obtained recognition as public schools and a share in education 
 grants through the authority, which has the right of regulating 
 their curriculum and appointing their teachers who, however, 
 must have the approval of the Church or denomination to which 
 they belong, and are empowered to give the specific religious in- 
 struction hitherto usual, under the supervision of a supervisor 
 appointed by the authority. Another new feature was the 
 Advisory Council for the purpose of advising the Department on 
 educational matters, and consisting, to the extent of two-thirds, of 
 persons qualified to represent the views of bodies interested in 
 education. Local Advisory Councils to advise the Education 
 Authority were also made available for each area. 
 
 The Act is the monumental completion of the long series deal- 
 ing with education in Scotland, and is fraught with great possi- 
 bilities for the social and industrial welfare of the Scottish people. 
 " It transfers," to quote its editor, Professor Strong, " the ad- 
 ministration of education to the county, and introduces a new 
 system of voting in elections ; it increases the powers and duties 
 of the new education authorities ; it makes possible a close 
 approximation to two ideals of democracy — 'an educated com- 
 munity and equal opportunity for all — ^by providing increased 
 facilities for the full educational development of the child and 
 the adolescent; it sets reasonable bounds to the employment of 
 young people in industrial and commercial work; it promotes 
 the education and self-improvement of the adult; it goes far 
 towards solving the voluntary or denominational school prob- 
 lem; and it deals with the vexed question of teachers' salaries 
 in a simple and satisfactory manner. ... It is a serious efiort to 
 
182 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 bring Scotland, in regard to educational facilities, in line with 
 current ideals in education. It recognises the fact that civilisa- 
 tion is progressive, and that no country, however distinguished 
 in the past, if it intends to keep in line with modem develop- 
 ment, can afford to rely merely on tradition." It is, however, 
 proving very expensive to work, and in the poorer and sparsely 
 populated areas the question of providing the huge additional 
 expense out of the rates is one of grave difi&culty. 
 
 The training of teachers is a supremely important part of any 
 national system of education. Up to 1905 this training was 
 almost entirely in the hands of the Churches. Six training or 
 Normal Colleges had been established by the Church of Scotland 
 and the Free Church — two by each at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and 
 Aberdeen. One belonged to the Episcopal Church, and in 1895 
 a training college for Roman Catholics was established at Dowan- 
 hill, Glasgow. St. George's College, Edinburgh, founded in 1886, 
 concerned itself with the training of secondary teachers. In the 
 Church Colleges the students consisted mainly of those who had 
 served a five years' apprenticeship as pupil teachers in the Board 
 Schools, and the standard of their preliminary and Normal 
 education underwent a gradual advance from 1873 onwards. 
 Many of the most meritorious of the elementary teachers were 
 trained under this system, and a growing proportion of these 
 managed to combine a University with their Normal course. In 
 1895 a new class of teacher students came into existence. These 
 were known as Queen's, subsequently King's, students, who re- 
 ceived an allowance from the Department to attend the Univer- 
 sity whilst undergoing their practical training tmder the super- 
 vision of local committees at the University seats. It was not 
 till 1905, however, that the Department (minute of 80th 
 January) directly undertook the training of teachers by taking 
 over the Colleges of the Church of Scotland and the United Free 
 Church, and transferring their management to committees known 
 as Provincial Committees, representing the education authorities 
 of the four University districts, with co-opted members from the 
 churches. To these committees was entrusted the training of 
 primary and secondary teachers and teachers of special sub- 
 jects. This training was to be taken in two stages — ^the pupil 
 
EDUCATION 183 
 
 teacher or Junior Student, and the Senior Student or Training 
 College stages. To enter on the first stage the Junior Student 
 must have obtained the Intermediate Certificate, and thereaiter 
 undergo a course of three years' advanced instruction in the 
 usual school subjects. During this course he must receive 
 systematic training in the art of teaching, and at the end of it 
 pass the Leaving Certificate examination. Having obtained, in 
 addition, the Junior Student Certificate, the student then enters 
 the Training College as a Senior Student to prosecute a further 
 course of education and professional training extending over two 
 years, attendance at University classes or those of a central in- 
 stitution, such as an agricultural or technical college, being per- 
 missible. Those in training as secondary teachers must, as a 
 rule, have graduated and show a special knowledge of the sub- 
 ject which they desire to teach (graduation with honours in a 
 specific subject), and must undergo a year's professional training 
 in the Training College. For teachers of special subjects, such 
 as Domestic Economy, Drawing, Educational Handwork, the pre- 
 liminary education was not so high, not exceeding, as a rule, the 
 Intermediate Certificate standard. They must, in addition, 
 possess the diploma of a recognised institution in the subject 
 to be taught, and must undergo a course of professional training 
 with particular reference to the special subject professed. 
 
 During the last fifteen years the curriculum for the various 
 classes of senior students has been considerably modified by the 
 Provincial Committees, in co-operation with the Department, in 
 the direction of combining University study with professional 
 training, whether with a view to graduation or not, and extend- 
 ing the duration of the course to three or four years accordingly, 
 while retaining the two years' course for those who are unfitted 
 to attend University classes. There is also a strongly marked 
 tendency to raise the standard of preliminary education, and to 
 require of entrants a preliminary standard equal to that for the 
 other professions. 
 
 During the last fifty years, and especially since the opening of 
 the twentieth century, a marked development of University 
 education has taken place. A number of Acts were passed, and 
 successive commissions appointed under them, to investigate and 
 
184 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 reform University teaching and administration throughout the 
 nineteenth century. The Act of 1858 invested the supreme 
 control of financial administration in a body called the Univer- 
 sity Court in each of the four Universities, and empowered it 
 to review the decisions of the Senatus. It instituted a General 
 Council, consisting of all graduates, with the right of electing the 
 Chancellor who presides over it and, subsequent to 1868, a joint 
 member of Parliament for Edinburgh and St Andrews, and 
 Glasgow and Aberdeen respectively, and of making representa- 
 tions to the Court on University affairs. It appointed a Com- 
 mission to carry out these and other reforms, and this Commis- 
 sion regulated the curriculum for degrees in Arts, Law, and 
 Medicine. It fixed the number of subjects for the M.A. degree 
 at 7 — Classics, English, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and 
 Mental and Moral Philosophy, and the attainment of this degree 
 was conditional on a pass in all these subjects. It did not, how- 
 ever, venture to propose the institution of a preliminary exam- 
 ination for all students as a condition of their entrance on Uni- 
 versity study in the Arts Faculty. The course of study for the 
 ordinary degree was four years, but exemption from the jimior 
 classes of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics was Etllowed to students 
 possessing a competent preliminary knowledge of these subjects, 
 and such students might complete their graduating course in 
 three years. It established an Honours degree in groups of 
 these subjects and in the department of Natural Science. For 
 graduation in Medicine the course also extended to four years, 
 to be completed by the degree of Bachelor of Medicine and, in the 
 case of surgeons, Master of Surgery, in place of that of Doctor of 
 Medicine, which was now only attainable, in the cases of Edin- 
 burgh, St Andrews, and Aberdeen, after the expiry of two years 
 from the date of the first degree. In the Faculty of Law it 
 instituted the degree of Bachelor of Laws, which could only be 
 taken by those who held the Arts degree, but declined to enter- 
 tain the proposal for a Bachelors degree in the Faculty of 
 Divinity. It made provision for the co-operation of outside 
 examiners with the professors in the degree examinations and for 
 the appointment of assistants to professors, and recommended 
 the establishment of a number of new chairs. 
 
EDUCATION 185 
 
 This reform served its purpose for the time being by improving 
 the administration of the Universities, organising the curriculum 
 for degrees, and giving an impulse to graduation in Arts, which 
 had been little taken advantage of, as the result of efficient work 
 up to a certain standard. It led to the founding of several new 
 chairs, notably at Edinburgh, where, up to 1876, chairs in 
 Engineering, Geology, Political Economy, and Education had 
 been established, and to the union of King's College and 
 Marischal College at Aberdeen into one flourishing University. 
 Splendid new buildings for Glasgow University were begun at 
 Gilmorehill in 1869, and ultimately completed at a cost of nearly 
 half a million. But the Commission left some defects for the 
 future to remedy. The retention of the junior classes in some of 
 the Arts subjects tended to keep down the standard of University 
 education, and burden the professors with work which properly 
 pertained to the secondary school. Secondary education in the 
 schools was, however, too inadequate, and the argument on this 
 ground for their continuance was too forcible to be overborne. 
 The same argument told against the institution of a preliminary 
 examination which is essential to the profitable pursuit of Univer- 
 sity studies. Another weakness was the lack of facilities and 
 stimulus for higher research work, the advancement of know- 
 ledge, which it is an important function of a University to 
 further. Moreover, the restriction of the degree curriculum in 
 Arts to certain subjects militated against the study of important 
 modem subjects like Political Economy, in which graduation was 
 impossible. Greater liberty and elasticity were desirable in the 
 interest of higher modem education, however valuable in itself 
 the training afforded by the favoured seven subjects. 
 
 These defects were remedied by the Commission of 1889 and 
 the following years. It instituted a preliminary examination in 
 1892, conducted by a Joint Board of Examiners for the four 
 Universities, from which the candidate might be exempted if he 
 had passed the Leaving Certificate of the Scottish Education 
 Department. It accorded liberty of choice in the selection of 
 subjects, including Science, to be studied for the ordinary 
 degree, whilst retaining seven as the number to be professed, and 
 including in the number certain of the older graduation subjects, 
 
186 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 which must be taken in any one combination. Thus History, 
 Political Economy, Modem Languages, Education, etc., obtained 
 a place as ordinary qualifying degree subjects, which had hitherto 
 been denied them. Special study was encouraged by the group- 
 ing of a wide range of subjects in which the Honours Degree 
 could be taken, and reducing the number of subjects in which 
 the Honours student must, in addition, pass on the ordinary 
 standard. Boards of Studies were instituted to advise the 
 Faculties of Arts and Science as to the instruction given in the 
 four departments into which the subjects qualifying for the Arts 
 degree were divided — one Board in each department. Another 
 step in advance was the institution of a Faculty of Science, with 
 the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor in Pure and Applied Science, 
 and a preliminary examination of the same standard as for those 
 entering on the Arts course, with the option of Modem Lan- 
 guages for Latin or Greek, and a higher standard in Mathe- 
 matics. Doctorates were also instituted in Philosophy and 
 Literature, which were attainable by those who had taken an 
 Honours degree in the relative subjects, and after a stated in- 
 terval ol further study produced a thesis adjudged to be an 
 original contribution. To encourage this higher study, the 
 Senatus was empowered to appoint Research Students and 
 Fellows, and the Court to provide stipends for the latter. The 
 Commission also opened the University to women students by 
 admitting women to every degree on the same terms as men, 
 though the Edinburgh Medical Faculty for about twenty years 
 longer declined to admit them to its classes, and they were under 
 the necessity of obtaining instruction in extra-mural institutions. 
 In Glasgow the foundation of Queen Margaret's College for 
 Women, through the generosity of Mrs Elder in 1883, which 
 was incorporated some years later into the University, provided 
 a separate establishment for their education, including the study 
 of Medicine. In the Medical Faculty the Commission instituted a 
 preliminary examination, extended the course from four to five 
 years, introduced four professional examinations during this 
 course in the various departments of Medicine, Surgery, and Mid- 
 wifery, made it obligatory on the candidate to obtain the 
 Bachelorship of Medicine and Surgery, and made that of Master 
 
EDUCATION 187 
 
 of Surgery a higher degree equivalent to the Doctorate of 
 Medicine. It made some changes relative to graduation in Law 
 and Divinity, and instituted a Faculty of Music in the University 
 of Edinburgh, and the Degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of 
 Music. It greatly increased the teaching power of the Univer- 
 sities by empowering the University Courts to appoint Lecturers 
 in subjects not already included in the instruction given in the 
 various Faculties, and established new chairs in some of these 
 subjects, such as Chairs of History at Edinburgh and Glasgow, 
 English Liteirature at St Andrews and Aberdeen, Political 
 Economy and Pathology at Glasgow, Public Health at Edin- 
 burgh, and several medical chairs at St Andrews. It consum- 
 mated the union of St Andrews and University College, Dundee, 
 between which there had been prolonged friction over the ques- 
 tion of affiliation, and made provision for the maintenance of 
 University laboratories, libraries, and museums. In addition, 
 large buildings have been erected to meet the needs of the 
 medical and scientific departments, and Edinburgh has contri- 
 buted the most recent and striking evidence of this kind of 
 advance by the purchase of 100 acres in the southern suburbs 
 for the erection of a grand suite of departmental laboratories. 
 It enlarged the membership and administrative powers of the 
 University Courts, whilst recognising the responsibility of the 
 Senatus for the purely educational side of University work, and 
 instituted a Students' Representative Council in each University, 
 with power to petition the Court and Senatus in matters affect- 
 ing their interests. 
 
 The Report of their long and arduous labours, presented to 
 Her Majesty in 1900, marks the beginning of a new epoch in 
 Scottish academic history. The development of University 
 education during the intervening twenty years since its publica- 
 tion can only be described as phenomenal. A large number of 
 additional ordinances promoted by the University Courts have 
 helped to bring their enactments to fruition, whilst modifying 
 them in important respects for the fuller realisation of this pur- 
 pose. The munificent liberality of Mr Carnegie in placing, in 
 1901, at the disposal of the Universities a large fund, adminis- 
 tered by the Carnegie Trust, has greatly facilitated this develop- 
 
188 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 ment. Additional professorships have been established in a 
 variety of subjects. Lectureships in great number have rein- 
 forced the professorial teaching. The study of Science and 
 Medicine, in particular, has been rendered more comprehensive 
 and efficient by the provision of laboratories and apparatus, and 
 increasing attention has been given to the bearing of University 
 instruction on industrial and commercial requirements. A 
 degree in commerce has been instituted, preparatory to the estab- 
 lishment of a Faculty of Commerce. Technical Colleges have 
 been affiliated to the Universities at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and 
 Aberdeen, and the influence of the Universities on secondary 
 education has made itself felt through the Provincial Committees 
 and the Joint Board of Examiners. The social life of the 
 students has been fostered by the Students' Unions or Clubs, 
 under the management of committees, composed largely of the 
 students themselves, at each of the University seats, and by the 
 movement to provide Hostels, in which they can obtain the 
 advantages of a common life. It may be said that since 1889 
 the Universities have experienced, in both the intellectual and 
 the social spheres, a renaissance which is at the same time a 
 revolution. 
 
 During the period of educational history under review there 
 has been a quickened sense of the importance of education in the 
 national life. This conviction has become a truism among all 
 enlightened people, whether specialists or not. Education is 
 almost universally, if all too tardily, recognised as one of the 
 greatest factors in the making or marring of both the individual 
 and the nation. The more elementary stage is, in some respects, 
 more important, from this point of view, than the more ad- 
 vanced, highly important as this, in its own place, is. It is at 
 this earlier stage that mind and heart are so susceptible to the 
 influences brought to bear on them — the stage when the making 
 of the man or the woman is being accomplished in the boy or the 
 girl. It is not merely a case of shaping the personal life; it is 
 also a case of the making of the citizen, the member of the com- 
 munity and the State. Hence the importance of education from 
 the political and the social point of view. We live in a demo- 
 cratic age — an age in which the democratic system of govern- 
 
EDUCATION 189 
 
 ment and the democratic spirit have swept with an irresistible 
 flood over the world — and under these conditions education be- 
 comes a prime requisite. When a people was governed by an 
 absolute ruler, or by an aristocracy, it counted for little or noth- 
 ing in legislation, or administration, or policy, and its education 
 was of less importance, though in the long run it invariably 
 proved a blunder and a crime to neglect it. Under a demo- 
 cratic system, where the people is practically sovereign in all 
 departments of the national life, education becomes an absolutely 
 essential condition of national well-being. The development of 
 modern history has been moving steadily in the direction of 
 government by the people for the people in the larger sense of the 
 whole body of the nation — the people in the national, not in the 
 class sense. This is, among the more mature peoples at least, the 
 inevitable, the only possible form of government. But on one 
 indispensable condition — that the people in the mass have the 
 benefit of a sound education in order to fit it to discharge its re- 
 sponsible functions with knowledge, judgment, and uprightness. 
 From this point of view the vocation of the teacher is one of the 
 highest worth, dignity, and utility. His influence is incalculable 
 in the forming of the future citizen. What the national life 
 shall be under such a system depends, in no inconsiderable 
 degree, on his work in imparting sound knowledge, in cultivat- 
 ing the higher qualities of soul and character, in inculcating the 
 ideals in which the true greatness, the real power of a people 
 consist. 
 
 Equally important is the part to be played by education in the 
 more strictly social sphere. Human society, apart from its 
 political aspect, stands in need of the directing and elevating 
 influence of education. In our own land, in particular, there 
 is ample need for the training of the public conscience in higher 
 things. There are blots like drunkenness and other social vices 
 to be wiped out. There is the all too prevalent low taste in 
 literature, art, music, to be elevated to a higher level of under- 
 standing and appreciation in things of the spirit. There is, too, 
 the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, to be nurtured 
 in young hearts. In these and other respects the teacher can 
 co-operate effectively with the social reformer, may indeed 
 
190 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 become the greatest of social reformers. He may have to 
 struggle with the adverse influences of what Dr Morgan in his 
 admirable work, Education and Social Progress, calls defective 
 heredity and defective environment. The inherited vicious 
 tendency is there to mar his work. There, too, are the adverse 
 influences of parental neglect, the squalid and overcrowded home, 
 the low tone of a certain section of the Press, the almost epi- 
 demic rage for trashy and sensational forms of popular amuse- 
 ment. Even so, the concerted effort of the great army of 
 teachers can, under the more favourable conditions which an 
 enlightened public opinion will more and more contribute, effect 
 much in counteracting the baneful influence of these demoral- 
 isers of our social life. 
 
 11. Culture 
 
 Besides the direct influence of education on Scottish intellectual 
 life, literature and the Press played in the nineteenth century 
 their distinctive part in moulding that larger domain of the spirit 
 which we may term the culture of a people. In literature there 
 is apparent a widening of the horizon. There is still Scottish 
 literature, and in Scott it produces a master in, say. The Heart 
 of Midlothian, or Waverley, or Bob Boy, and the Scottish lan- 
 guage, or, must we say, dialect, is made the vehicle of masterly 
 delineations of national character and history. But Scott roams 
 in wider scenes than the land of his sires, and in Ivanhoe, KenH- 
 worth, Quentin Durward, depicts the life and manners of a 
 larger world. Thomas Carlyle, the other great literary genius, 
 who wielded such an influence on the thought of his countrymen, 
 is frankly cosmopolitan in the subjects he treats. Stevenson, 
 sufficiently notable as a writer to merit mention after these elect 
 of literature, is also a cosmopolitan. These writers carry over 
 the expanding outlook of the eighteenth century into the nine- 
 teenth, and in them Scottish literature sheds its national shell 
 and merges in the great stream of English literature. Scottish 
 literature, strictly so called, survives, but only in minor writers, 
 who continue to represent national life and character in the 
 
CULTURE 191 
 
 homely language of the people, though there is no reason why 
 another great genius should not arise to depict these (in prose 
 or poetry) in what is still the language of common life among 
 the masses. Culture, as reflected in literature, becomes 
 " liberal," not only in the sense of the study of the 
 classics, which Scotland inherited from the Renaissance, but 
 in the increasing interest in the thought and life of the 
 modem world. 
 
 Literature in the more ephemeral form of the periodical and 
 daily press underwent a great development throughout the cen- 
 tury. In this department also we note the presence of a wider 
 outlook, a larger life. In The Edinburgh Review, in its rival 
 Blackwood's Magazine, and The Quarterly Review, which, 
 though published in London, was inspired from Edinburgh, the 
 Scottish capital held for long the leadership in the United King- 
 dom in literary criticism and political discussion, whilst the lead- 
 ing Scottish journals in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aber- 
 deen vied with those of London and some of the English provin- 
 cial towns as exponents of current opinion. 
 
 Scott's childhood was troubled by ill-health, which necessitated 
 frequent removals from Ediiiburgh, where he was bom in 1771, 
 to the Border region. It interfered with his studies at the High 
 School and the University, but contributed to the self-education 
 which consisted in wide reading and a widening knowledge of 
 men, and which he continued after his school and college days. 
 He adopted his father's profession of the law, and passed from 
 his father's office to the Bar, to which he was called in 1792. 
 He preferred literature to the practice of the law, and he was 
 fortunate in obtaining a couple of appointments, first, in 1798, as 
 Sherifi Depute of Selkirkshire, and some years later as principal 
 clerk of Session, which yielded him a substantial income and 
 gave him leisure for literary pursuits. 
 
 His first important compositions were poetic — The Lay of the 
 Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady oj the Lake, Rokeby, in 
 addition to the ballad collection. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border. He is the master story-teller, in verse as well as prose, 
 and these romantic epics took an astonished world by storm, 
 though by the time that Rokeby appeared (1812) Byron was 
 
192 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 emerging as a formidable rival for the popular favour, and the 
 enthusiasm was less effusive. 
 
 Two years after Bokeby, Waverley, the first of the long series 
 of novels, appeared (1814). In this precursor of the series, as 
 in those that followed — Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Bob Boy, 
 The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermaor, A Legend 
 of Montrose — ^to mention only some of those referring to Scot- 
 tish life and history, Scott showed himself the master craftsman 
 in depicting national character and national history, under the 
 form of the romantic-historical novel, as no one had done before, 
 and none has done since. His knowledge of Scottish human 
 nature and of Scottish history, and customs, and manners, was as 
 penetrating as it was extensive, and the skill, the vigour, with 
 which he unfolds both character and incident in the course of the 
 story, are inimitable. The humour and the pathos, the comedy 
 and the tragedy of Scottish life and history are so realistically 
 presented that the persons and the times live as if the reader 
 were in touch with the events and characters portrayed. So 
 living is the unfolding picture that, barring the introductions, 
 which the unlearned are apt to find tedious, the reader is held 
 and carried forward through the narrative with an impelling 
 interest and expectation to the end. Waverley, like the rest of 
 the series, was anonymous, and within six months after its publi- 
 cation in three volumes, on the 7th July, 1814, four editions, 
 totalling 5,000 copies, were called for. By 1829 about 40,000 
 copies had been sold. His mastery of the craft appears further 
 in the rapidity with which he poured forth out of the fullness of 
 his knowledge and his genius as a story-teller one after another 
 of these tales. The second half of Waverley was written in 
 , three weeks; the whole of Guy Mannering in six weeks. Seven 
 of the later ones were produced within the five years from 1821 
 to 1826 — among them The Fortunes of Nigel, Quentin Durward, 
 Bed Gauntlet. But this overstrenuous production, even for a 
 writer of Scott's facile powers, was telling on his health, and the 
 strain was intensified by the financial crisis which involved him 
 and his printers and publishers — the Ballantynes, in whose busi- 
 ness he was a partner — in bankruptcy in the beginning of 1826. 
 He had made the mistake of entering into partnership with the 
 
CULTURE 193 
 
 Ballantynes twenty years before and neglecting to control the 
 financial conduct of the business, which was radically amiss. It 
 was a bad example of a man with a genius for letters entangling 
 himself in a commercial venture for which he had neither time 
 nor aptitude, and he has been severely blamed for handicapping 
 himself by projects of mere moneymaking. But he nobly re- 
 deemed his fault by labouring titanically to pay the creditors of 
 the firm by the sweat of his brow throughout the few remaining 
 years of failing health, when he redoubled his output with such 
 productions as The Tales of a Grandfather, The Fair Maid of 
 Perth, The Life of Napoleon, etc., — ^the last mentioned a tour 
 de force of limited historical value. 
 
 In the year following the financial crash — only five years 
 before his death in 1832 — he publicly announced his authorship 
 of this marvellous literary creation. Critics like Stevenson have 
 found fault with his style, and one who wrote so much and with 
 so facile a pen could hardly escape such criticism. He was not 
 a master of English prose, for English was still somewhat of a 
 foreign language to the Scottish author of his time. Other critics 
 have dwelt on the imperfections of some of his character sketches, 
 the feebleness of the plots of some of the novels, and of most 
 of their conclusions, the too great liberties taken with history in 
 deference to the exigencies of story-telling. In such a vast array 
 of character and incident criticisms of this kind can legitimately 
 find scope enough, and Scott himself realised the fact better 
 than any of the critics. Like the great writer that he was, he 
 did not hesitate at times to give expression to it. But taking 
 his work as a whole, where is there another such achievement of 
 its kind in any language — an achievement in which national 
 character of such variety of type and national history in so many 
 of its phases are depicted with such masterly handling and with 
 such saving grace of humour? Even from Scott, however, one 
 must not expect more than he had to give. His mind moved 
 in the olden times, where manners, and customs, and conflicts, 
 and policies, and points of view seem in some respects alien to 
 OUT time. His love of those old feudal days, and his romantic 
 delineation of them have become somewhat of an anachronism to 
 us to whom war and the fighting man are relics of barbarism, 
 
 N 
 
194 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 over which, especially with our experience of the madness and 
 misery of brute force in the settlement of international disputes, 
 it is difficult to enthuse ourselves, and against which every cul- 
 tured man and woman must feel a deep reviilsion. We are now 
 intensely interested in things and causes that Scott could perhaps 
 little comprehend and even greatly disliked. He is somewhat 
 conventional, even commonplace in his likes and dislikes, his 
 principles and prejudices. But what is human in it all is pereimial 
 and this Scott has re-created in a literary gallery that is 
 immortal. 
 
 Carlyle's upbringing at Ecclefechan, in Annandale, was of the 
 simple, rigid type common in the Scottish Calvinist household of 
 the period. The Covenanting tradition and influence survived 
 in the home of James Carlyle, his father, and Margaret Aitken, 
 his mother, who had destined their son for the ministry. The 
 son's predilection was, however, for literature, and by way of a 
 period of schoolmastering at Annan and Kirkcaldy after the 
 close of his career at Edinburgh University (undistinguished 
 except in Mathematics), he ultimately found his true vocation. 
 It was a long struggle with himself, his hopes, and his circvmi- 
 stances. Literary work that was worth doing and would at the 
 same time bring him a living wage was difficult to find, and 
 Carlyle made it more difficult by his rather untractable ways, 
 his contentious, rather doctrinaire spirit, his strong antipathies, 
 and his extreme style of giving expression to them. He could 
 not harness himself to lany regular profession except the un- 
 salaried one of writing books, and in this he showed a really 
 gigantic energy and perseverance in doing and enduring. His 
 main study was history as a branch of literature and practical 
 philosophy, and great books in this branch can only be produced 
 by immense application and even drudgery, united with genius. 
 Even so they take years to write, and before the production of 
 the first of them, The French Revolution, which appeared in his 
 forty-third year, the problem of how to live w£is sometimes 
 well-nigh desperate. A Life of Schiller, translations from the 
 German, including Wilhelm Meister, and articles on German 
 literature had preceded it, and show his deep interest in and 
 admiration for this literature, which he shared with Scott. 
 
CULTURE 195 
 
 With Scott, too, he shared the merit of introducing it to British 
 readers. Merit it still is, in spite of the recent explosion of in- 
 discriminate and unjust abuse of everything German which the 
 war has provoked in ill-balanced minds, and the reviling of 
 those, who, like Carlyle, take the broad as opposed to the narrow 
 insular view of literature. 
 
 The French Revolution is a masterly drama of men and events, 
 though historic research has, of course, left it well behind. It is 
 a living presentation of character and action, with the ringing 
 refrain all through that rulers that sow the wind will perforce 
 reap the whirlwind, and that ill-regulated liberty must lead to 
 despotism. In Cromwell's Letters and Speeches he has depicted 
 a great personality, though the comments are at times obtrusive 
 and tiresome, and one could do with less of interpretation and 
 apostrophe. The determination to make la hero of him all 
 through, to gloss the forbidding features of the man and his 
 regime, especially in his later phase, is overdone. Too much is 
 made of the successful innovator, success of the strong and high- 
 handed type of man being for Carlyle all too extensively the 
 criterion of greatness. The History of Frederick the Second is 
 a masterpiece of word painting of personalities and events, and 
 especially of Frederick's battles. But Frederick is a different 
 type from Cromwell, the type of the beneficent despot so dear to 
 the writer, and his statecraft is not worthy of all the 
 glamour that Carlyle has thrown over it. He had difficulty in 
 keeping up the appearance, and bad at times more than a sus- 
 picion that he was wasting his power on him. His apology for 
 the Macht-politik is far from wholesome, and its influence has 
 been by no means an unmixed good. Macchiavelli in politics 
 has had far too long a sway in the government of the world, and 
 one would prefer that he had chosen Luther and the Reformation 
 instead of Frederick and the godless politics of the eighteenth 
 century as the type of German hero and the subject of his 
 magnum opus. 
 
 He had not many ideas, though he had a matchless power of 
 reiterating them in vivid language throughout these and other 
 works. He was a great literary artist, a painter in words, rather 
 than a great thinker. God, duty, work, sincerity, devotion to 
 
196 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 truth at all hazards as he conceived it, are the main contents of 
 his message, which, delivered with prophetic fire and earnestness, 
 wielded an ever widening influence. He braced the yoimger 
 generation in particular to effort in the practical realisation of 
 these verities. He believed, too, in great men as the formative 
 influence in the world — a belief to which he gave specific expres- 
 sion in his Heroes and Hero Worship, and there is inspiration to 
 high thinking and earnest living in the dramatic exposition of the 
 role of the great man in the various departments of life. But 
 he exaggerates this belief without duly taking accoimt of the 
 progressive growth of forces and ideas which the great man, to 
 whom this progressive growth affords his opportunity, helps 
 materially to translate into achievement. He forgot that with 
 the spread of education, and enlightenment, and power from the 
 few to the many, the great man in his sense becomes less and less 
 operative, and the effect of mass opinion and power becomes ever 
 more so. Unfortunately, too, in his over-emphasis on the right 
 of his " hero " to dominate, he strove to popularise the doctrine 
 that might is right, and however speciously he might clothe the 
 doctrine in the splendour of his rhetoric, he took his role of 
 moralist far too seriously in this respect. The success of the 
 " hero " is far too much the test of his divine right and mission, 
 though success in the vulgar sense is not his idea of it. He 
 swerved in his later years ever farther from the Liberalism of 
 his earlier period, and came to denounce much that Liberalism 
 stands for. He rightly exposed some of the weak points of the 
 individualism in industry and the national life of his day, with 
 its egotistic proneness to laissez faire, and its adherence to the 
 competitive system, which left too many millions in a state of 
 chronic poverty, whilst enriching the comparatively few at the 
 expense of the many. But many of his deliverances on current 
 progressive social and political movements are those of the pre- 
 judiced doctrinaire and can only be described as obscurantist 
 and reactionary. In particular, in his defence of the absolutist 
 autocratic system of government against democratic progress, he 
 would have put back the clock to the Middle Ages, or at least to 
 the so-called enlightened despotism of the eighteenth century, 
 which ended in the crash of the French Revolution, and which 
 
CULTURE 197 
 
 this crash had shown to be a complete failure. In spite of his 
 thunderings, democracy was the trend of the present and the 
 future. Had he lived to witness the awful catastrophe into 
 which the lingering autocratic absolutist system of government 
 helped to precipitate the world in the dawning years of the 
 twentieth century, he would have found ample reason to modify 
 his political gospel and his exaggerated estimate of the " hero " 
 in the form of the political and military super-man, with whom 
 the world, if it is wise, will henceforth have nothing to do. He 
 was, too, strangely reactionary in his prejudiced fulminations 
 against science, which he denounced in the spirit of the obscuran- 
 tist doctrinaire, though his protest against its overweening ten- 
 dency to dogmatise on matters outside its special sphere had no 
 little force. " Laws without a lawgiver, matter without spirit is 
 a gospel of dirt." 
 
 His characteristic command of language and mode of expres- 
 sion he seems to have inherited from his father; his irascible 
 nature, his prolixity, his dour opinionativeness are traceable to the 
 same source. His weak digestion and his excessive sensitiveness 
 contributed to his all too habitual ill-humour with himself and 
 his situation. With that consummate command of words and 
 that faculty of thinking pictorially he was, in such a humour, 
 a terrible censor of men and things — arrogant, ill-natured, mor- 
 dant, jealous, and often unfair and ungenerous. He was not 
 given to weighing the good points with the bad, or repressing 
 his prejudices, Ms likes and dislikes under the sense of his own 
 limitations, or of the demands of a tolerant charity. Yet this 
 is not the whole of Carlyle, who could be kind-hearted, generous, 
 and affectionate when his egotism and his dyspeptic imagination 
 left the better impulses of a deep, if somewhat rugged, soul their 
 due scope. 
 
 The childhood and boyhood of Robert Louis Stevenson, who 
 was bom in 1850, were victimised by chronic bronchitis, and his 
 education was largely a thing of hazard. Schools he intermit- 
 tently attended — among them the Edinburgh Academy — but he 
 had no love of regular school instruction, though a very bright 
 boy. His father before him had shared this carelessness of school 
 work, and was very indulgent. The University he also attended 
 
198 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 without any assiduity or distinction in his studies, and in due 
 course made trial of his father's profession of engineering — also 
 without appreciation. His bent was towards literature, and at 
 twenty-one he definitely- abandoned engineering for the law as an 
 avenue towards his prospective goal, rather than as a practical 
 means of livelihood. He was called to the Scottish Bar in 1875, 
 but he had really been serving his apprenticeship in letters by 
 reading in a wide range of literature. He was also learning to 
 write by the indefatigable efiort to express himself in the style of 
 the great writers he read. He made his dehut about 1874 as an 
 author with a number of articles for the magazines, especially the 
 Cornhill, whose editor, Mr Leslie Stephen, was a discerning 
 friend. He had been compelled by a serious attack of his old 
 malady, which clung to him through life, and at last brought his 
 days to a premature end in 1894 in far-off Samoa, to winter at 
 Mentone in 1874, and his frequent wanderings in search 
 of health in the ensuing years afforded him much material 
 for the works which henceforth came thick and fast from 
 his pen. 
 
 He was an attractive soul, and he made and retained many 
 friendships — in this respect a contrast to Carlyle. His fund of 
 cheerfulness was remarkable, considering that his life was for the 
 most part that of an invalid who spent a great portion of it in 
 bed or indoors when he would much rather have been outside. 
 He just managed to live till he was in his 45th year, and seldom 
 or for long experienced the happy feeling of being reaUy well. 
 Nevertheless, it is a buoyant, bracing spirit that breathes in his 
 letters and books, and made him such a companionable, lovable 
 friend. He was very responsive to life, a man who felt intensely 
 throughout its routine, and possessed the power of communi- 
 cating the vitalising quality to whatever he wrote. His range 
 was wide — the novel, history, biography, plays, essays, poetry, 
 the didactic — and he reached a high literary standard in all that 
 he essayed, though he did not work all with the same effect. 
 History, for instance, he could only treat in the lightest literary 
 vein, and his application for the chair of Constitutional History 
 at Edinburgh must be regarded -almost as a joke or a freak of 
 audacity. The recent establishment of a Stevenson Society 
 
CULTURE 199 
 
 proves the continuance of his influence as a literary force, though 
 the admiration of his disciples in this corporate form is perhaps 
 rather overdone. 
 
 For his Scottish tales he drew on the eighteenth century — ^not 
 a very inspiring one on the whole, but one which, with its inter- 
 mixture of Jacobite fervour and Whig " douceness," gave suffi- 
 cient scope for that facility in depicting the romantic and the 
 prosaic sides of life in which he excelled. Kidnapped is a 
 masterpiece of the adventure type of story. The succession of 
 incidents in the course of David Balfour's experiences in the 
 brig, with its crew of desperadoes, and with Alan Breac among . 
 the Highland mountains, moors, and glens, with the ubiquitous 
 redcoats on their track, arouses and maintains the breathless 
 interest of the reader. The atmosphere of the period of " The 
 Forty-Five " is there, and the dialogues fit the leading charac- 
 ters and reflect the times to the life. The plot is, however, 
 slight, and the grand creative power of a Scott is lacking. But 
 the story is thrilling from beginning to end, and Alan Breac is 
 the very incarnation of a fighting Highlander with a long pedigree 
 and the characteristic strain of Jacobite loyalty and dare devilry. 
 There is more body in its continuation, Catriona, the scene of 
 which is laid for the most part in Edinburgh and its environs. 
 It imravels and exposes the political and personal influence that 
 was allowed so flagrantly to interfere with the dispensation of 
 justice in eighteenth century Scotland, especially in the Jacobite 
 period. It hits oft the sMfts of Prestongrange, the Lord Advo- 
 cate of the time, to bring to trial and condemn innocent and 
 guilty alike, who happened to be obnoxious to the Duke of Argyll 
 as well as King George, and in David Balfour points the case for 
 conscientious honour and evenhanded justice against such shifts. 
 " This is a conspiracy, not a case," hits the nail on the head, as 
 a description of the method of the crown and its creatures of 
 applying the law against persons obnoxious to the government. 
 Weir of Hermiston — the unfinished work which he left behind 
 at his death — deals in part also with the administration of justice 
 in the closing years of the eighteenth century, though here the 
 theme is the harsh methods and the coarse personality of the 
 notorious hanging judge, Lord Braxfield, who is drawn with a 
 
200 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 vivid, yet discerning touch. The Master oj Ballantrae is a 
 weird tale of " The Forty-Five " period, in which he works the 
 sensational vein for all it is worth. Whilst the historical setting, 
 with its picture of pirates and smugglers and other rascaldom, is 
 real enough, the tale is too mucih of the melodramatic type. One 
 feels that the artist is laying on the colours with a reckless 
 hravoure in order to make the hair stand on end. Melodrama is 
 not tragedy. 
 
 The periodical literature represented by the reviews that sprang 
 up in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was largely in- 
 fluenced by the political currents of the time. Toryism had long 
 been supreme under the dictatorship of Henry Dundas, the first 
 Lord Melville, the colleague of Pitt, the dispenser of patronage, 
 and therefore the moulder of Scottish political opinion. The 
 franchise was exercised by a couple of thousand county voters 
 and the burgh councils in the Tory interest. But the advancing 
 prosperity of the country and the influence of the French Re- 
 volution were, at the opening of the century, bringing a stirring 
 of life into the body politic, and the rising Whig reaction was 
 acquiring a hold on the younger generation, as represented 
 especially by the younger spirits of the Parliament House. 
 Jeffrey, Homer, Brougham, with whom Sidney Smith was tem- 
 porarily associated, were winning their spurs as ardent party 
 men on the Whig side as well as able pleaders. This coterie of 
 daring young wits startled the drowsy Tory atmosphere with the 
 explosion of The Edinburgh Review, which, established in 1802, 
 ere long became the aggressive champion of Whig principles. 
 Under Jeffrey's editorship, which lasted till 1829, it became a 
 force to be reckoned with in both politics and literature, though 
 its editor and contributors yielded too much to the temptation, 
 then so strong, to judge of books and men from the party stand- 
 point. They adopted the slashing style which comes so natural 
 to those possessed of infallible opinions, both literary and poli- 
 tical. Everything must be good or bad as judged from this 
 standpoint — an essentially uncritical attitude. But in the 
 hands of Jeffrey and his able band of co-workers, it invested the 
 Review with an extraordinary power in the moulding of opinion, 
 and it unquestionably contributed to raise the standard in litera- 
 
CULTURE 201 
 
 ture. Naturally it produced a Tory rival in The Quarterly Re- 
 view, with Gifford as editor, which dates from 1809, and another 
 in Blackwood's Magazine, launched, under the name of The 
 Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, by the Edinburgh bookseller and 
 publisher and rival of Constable, the publisher of The Edinburgh. 
 Blackwood's Magazine was as lively and slashing on the Tory 
 side as Lockhart, Wilson, and Hogg, and other anonymous 
 contributors could make it. These three have survived into the 
 twentieth century. So has the more popular Chambers's 
 Journal, foimded by the brothers Chambers in 1832. But Tait's 
 Magazine, which was started in the same year and championed 
 more advanced Liberal views, only lived fourteen years. The 
 North British Review, which espoused the same cause and com- 
 bined with it a religious element, flourished from 1844 to 1871. 
 
 The nineteenth century also witnessed a marked extension of 
 the newspaper. Several of the older Edinburgh joum'als sur- 
 vived from the eighteenth century till far into the nineteenth, 
 among them being The Edinburgh Advertiser, whose proprietor, 
 James Donaldson, left his fortune to build and endow the Hos- 
 pital of this name; The Caledonian Mercury; The Edinburgh 
 Weekly Journal, of which Sir Walter Scott and Mr James 
 Ball9,ntyne became the proprietors ; and The Edinburgh Evening 
 Courant, which expired in 1886. Among the numerous new- 
 comers one of the most important was, and still is. The Scotsman, 
 started in 1817 by Mr Charles Maclaren and Mr William Ritchie 
 as the organ of the Reform party, to which it rendered yeoman 
 service in spite of the obloquy heaped upon it by Blackwood. 
 J. R. MoCuUoch acted for a couple of years as editor, when Mr 
 Maclaren took his place and continued his editorial function till 
 1845. He was followed by Mr Alexander Russell, among the 
 most hardhitting and facetious of editors, who greatly increased 
 its circulation after it became, in 1855, a daily. A kindred spirit 
 took his place as editor in 1876 in Robert Wallace, who had 
 previously occupied the chair of Ecclesiastical History in Edin- 
 burgh University, and ultimately became a barrister and member 
 of Parliament for East Edinburgh, and was succeeded by Dr 
 Charles A. Cooper, who in 1906 was followed by Mr J. P. Croal. 
 In addition to the ability of its editors, the enterprise of its pro- 
 
202 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 prietors, Mr John R. Findlay and Mr James Law, in the appli- 
 cation of improved methods for the production and distribution 
 of the paper materially contributed to its wide circulation. The 
 reduction of the price to a penny in 1855, the starting of The 
 Scotsman Express to Glasgow in 1872 and to Hawick in 1898, the 
 establishment of its own telegraphic communication with the 
 London office, the substitution for the middleman, in the shape 
 of the wholesale agent, of the local agent for the sale of the paper 
 were among the factors that built up the large circulation of 
 to-day. It has, consequently, become a great advertising 
 medium, the number of advertisements in a single issue rising at 
 times to 5,000, filling over 90 columns of the paper. In politics 
 it swerved, towards the end of the century, from the doughty 
 Liberalism of former days. Since the Home Rule controversy of 
 1886 it has flown the Unionist flag, and might now be described 
 as, to all intents and purposes, a Conservative organ, as the term 
 is understood nowadays. Its present more staid tone and its 
 more exclusively political character are among the fruits of this 
 transformation. It devotes less space to literature and to the 
 general interest type of article than was the case in the days of 
 its more exuberant period. It has, however, outlived all its 
 daily rivals — the venerable Courant, The Witness, which, under 
 the brilliant editorship of Hugh Millar, flourished in the period 
 of the Disruption controversy; The Daily Review, The Scottish 
 Leader — and still reigns supreme as the leading Edinburgh daily 
 paper. The Evening Dispatch, which issues from the same 
 office, has also a large circulation. The only other Edinburgh 
 daily, which succeeded in obtaining a large circulation and was 
 establisbed in 1873 by the Messrs Wilson, is the Liberal Evening 
 News. 
 
 Of the newspapers published in Glasgow at the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century the most important were The Herald, The 
 Courier, and The Chronicle. Of these The Herald has main- 
 tained a vigorous life up to the present, and vies with The Scots- 
 man as the leading Scottish daily. It is the older of the two, 
 having been founded in 1783, under the title of The Glasgow 
 Advertiser. Its founder was John Mennons, a printer who 
 migrated from Edinburgh to Glasgow, and assumed as partners, 
 
CULTURE 203 
 
 first Richard Cameron, then his son, Thomas Mennons, and, in 
 1803, Samuel Hunter. Mr Hunter acted as editor till 1837, and 
 his eflSgy as an anti-Reformer was on several occasions burned at 
 the Cross by his political opponents. It survived its unpopu- 
 larity over the Reform Bill, and under his successor, G. Outram, 
 who began life as a briefless member of the Scottish Bar and 
 occupied the editorial chair for nearly twenty years, it was again 
 in hot water owing, this time, to its support of Free Trade, 
 which alienated many of its Tory readers. In 1859 it expanded 
 from a tri-weekly into a daily paper, under the editorship of 
 James Pagan. From 1870 it passed under the direction of a 
 succession of men of eminent ability in W. Jack, afterwards 
 Professor of Mathematics in Glasgow University; Dr Stoddart, 
 Dr Russell, Dr Wallace, and its present editor. Sir Robert Bruce. 
 Under Dr Stoddart's auspices the Liberal tendency of its politics 
 became more marked. But, like The Scotsman, it took the 
 anti-Gladstonian side in the Home Rule controversy, though, 
 like it, it has come round to the Home Rule legislation of the 
 present Government, which its former Liberal opponents may 
 perhaps regard as a sign of grace I It has adopted the successive 
 improvements in machinery from the hand-worked press to the 
 Hoe press, electrically driven. In the collection, production, and 
 distribution of its material, it is second to none among the 
 British Press, having, like The Scotsman, its private wires from 
 London, and in addition to its large staff of sub-editors and re- 
 porters, its correspondents not only throughout the country, but 
 in many parts of the world. It, too, is an advertising medium of 
 the first rank. It has its special trains connectiag with the 
 south, east, and north of Scotland, and in virtue of the rapidity 
 of this communication, it is obtainable every day at Aberdeen 
 at 7.80 a.m. ; Inverness, 9.85; Stranraer, 6.10; Belfast, 8.55; 
 Carlisle, 8.18; Newcastle, 9.40; and London, 4.10 p.m. It 
 issues in The Evening Times a widely-read evening paper, whose 
 circulation on special occasions reaches a total of between 
 800,000 and 400,000, and in The Bulletin a daily picture paper. 
 Besides being a first-class organ of political opinion, which might 
 be described as moderately Conservative, it has long been a 
 weighty authority on industrial, shipping, and commercial ques- 
 
204 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 tions, and has also devoted considerable space to the discussion 
 of literary and historical subjects. 
 
 The leading Glasgow Liberal paper during the second half of 
 the nineteenth century was The North British Mail, founded in 
 1847. At its decease its place as the exponent of Liberal 
 opinion was taken, in 1901, and is still held, by The Daily Record. 
 The evening papers, The Citizen, a Conservative organ, and 
 The Evening News, which may be described as Independent, are 
 also important exponents of opinion. Dundee and Aberdeen, as 
 centres of a large population, also possess newspapers of more 
 than local importance in the direction of public opinion. The 
 Dundee Advertiser, which was established in 1801, deservedly 
 maintained a high reputation throughout the century as the 
 champion of advanced Liberalism, and has done much to diffuse 
 its political creed among the masses through The People's 
 Journal, largely read in the rural districts of Scotland. The 
 Dundee Courier, which was started in 1816 as a Conservative 
 organ, has also a considerable circulation in central Scotland. 
 To The Aberdeen Journal, founded in 1746, belongs the distinc- 
 tion of being the oldest existing Scottish daily. The first num- 
 ber contained an account of the Battle of Culloden, fought nearly 
 100 miles to the west of the city two days before its issue. In 
 politics it was neutral, and it was long without a rival in the 
 north-east until The Aberdeen Chronicle was started by John 
 Booth in 1806 to advocate advanced Liberal views. Sixteen 
 years later the latter was merged in The Aberdeen Herald, which 
 was later overshadowed and ultimately displaced by The Aberdeen 
 Free Press, founded by Mr McCombie in 1855 in the Liberal 
 interest, and, like the Journal, still maintaining a vigorous life. 
 It is not too much to say that intellectually The Free Press stands 
 in the forefront of Scottish journalism. Besides these outstand- 
 ing organs of public opinion all the Scottish provincial towns 
 have their local press, such as The Banffshire Journal, The Inver- 
 ness Courier, The Fife Herald, The Perthshire Advertiser, The 
 Perthshire Courier, The Ayr Advertiser, The Dumfries Standard, 
 The Gallmvav Advertiser. 
 
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING 203 
 
 12. Pkinting and Publishing 
 
 The rise of periodical literature and the newspaper press in 
 Scotland was contemporary with the development of the pub- 
 lishing, bookselling, and printing trades. In the eighteenth and 
 early nineteenth centuries publishing was combined with the re- 
 tailing and sometimes the printing of books. The most notable 
 of the Edinburgh booksellers and publishers in the second half 
 of the former century were Elliot, Creech, Bell & Bradfute, 
 Hamilton & Balfour, and James Donaldson. During the first 
 half of the nineteenth the advent of Scott gave scope to the 
 energies of James and John Ballantyne, Archibald Constable, 
 and William Blackwood in the same field. Scott was, in fact, a 
 partner in the printing and publishing business of the Ballan- 
 tynes. In James Ballantyne's printing house (Paul's Work in 
 the North Back of the Canongate, from which it was removed in 
 1870 to the Newington district), the Waverley novels were set up 
 and printed by the hundred thousand, in addition to an ever 
 increasing volume of miscellaneous literature. " In 1822 no 
 fewer than 145,000 volumes issued from the Ballantyne Press, 
 all from the pen of Scott — an extraordinary number of volumes 
 in those days of hand presses ; and this leaves out of reckoning 
 work done for other authors and publishers." Constable and 
 Blackwood also enjoyed the distinction of publishing some of the 
 anonymous works which were taking the world by storm, though 
 their author quarrelled with both of them. The disaster which 
 befell James Ballantyne and Archibald Constable in 1826 and 
 involved Scott in the tragic, but heroic task of the closing years 
 of his life of toiling to pay off Ballantyne's creditors, who, in 
 virtue of his partnership, were also his, left the house of Black- 
 wood supreme among the Edinburgh publishers for the time 
 being. About the same time the brothers Chambers founded the 
 publishing business which has done so much for the diffusion of 
 knowledge among the people. Another of the same type was 
 founded about the same time by Mr Nelson, who had started as a 
 bookseller in 1798. Other prominent firms maintained the earlier 
 reputation of the Scottish capital as a publishing centre, notably 
 
206 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 those of A. & C. Black, who in 1827 acquired from Constable's 
 Trustees the copyright of the Encyclopsedia Britannica — the 
 first edition of which had been published by William Smellie in 
 1771— and that of Scott's works in 1851 ; T. & T. Clark, who 
 started the famous series of translations of German theological 
 works ; Edmonston & Douglas, the latter editing, as well as pub- 
 lishing, Scott's Journal; Oliver & Boyd, Oliphant & Co. More 
 recently the Edinburgh publisliing trade has tended to migrate 
 to London, and while some of the leading publishers, like the 
 Messrs Black, have removed their business thither, others, like 
 the Blackwoods, have established branches in the British 
 metropolis. 
 
 Tlie abolition of the newspaper stamp duty ia 1855, the duty 
 on advertisements in 1854, and the duty on paper in 1861, by 
 cheapening the price and increasing the circulation of books and 
 journals, had a quickening efiect on the printing as well as the 
 publishing trade. In this industry Edinburgh took the lead, not 
 only in Scotland, but in Britain. " For many years," says Mr 
 Strachan in The Scottish Bankers Magazine (October 1911), 
 " Edinburgh has been looked upon as the seat of production of 
 the finest book printing in the world; and, in support of this 
 statement, it may be mentioned that a considerable portion of 
 Edinburgh's costly book-work comes from England. The great- 
 est London publishers have nearly all their best work printed in 
 the Northern capital ; and it is no exaggeration to say that to a 
 large majority of the reading public the fact that a book bears 
 the hallmark of a leading Edinburgh firm lends additional value 
 to its possession. Cheapness cannot explain the partiality of 
 London publishers to Scottish workmanship, although it must be 
 admitted that by employing female labour the Scottish firms gain 
 an advantage over their southern competitors. But the cost of 
 carriage and other items would certainly swallow up any saving 
 made on the printing expenses. Again in the case of many 
 publications it is impossible to estimate, even approximately, 
 what will be their ultimate cost. These things considered, it may 
 safely be assumed that the secret of our printers' renown lies 
 in the artistic beauty and accuracy of their productions." 
 
 The oldest of the existing firms is that of Neill & Co., which 
 
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING 207 
 
 dates back to 1749, and was at first known under the name of 
 Hamilton & Balfour. Those of Oliver & Boyd, and Pillans & 
 Wilson have also survived from the eighteenth century. Among 
 the more important of those established in the nineteenth are, 
 besides the Blackwoods, Ballantyne & Co., and T. & A. Constable, 
 R. & R. Clark, and Morrison & Gibb. The growth of the in- 
 dustry has also been greatly accelerated by the remarkable im- 
 provement in the machinery for printing newspapers and books. 
 The progress of newspaper printing is strikingly represented in 
 the case of the leading British newspaper, The Times. At the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century the hand press in use was 
 of cumbrous construction, and printing was a slow and laborious 
 process. Up to 1814 twelve hand presses, working at the highest 
 pressure, were required to print an edition of 10,000 copies of 
 The Times between 12 at midnight and 6 a.m. The application 
 of steam to the press greatly increased the output, and two steam 
 driven machines, contrived by Koenig in this year for Mr Walter, 
 proprietor of The Times, produced 1,100 impressions per hour. 
 The improvement is thus described in an article of the issue of 
 28th November, 1814. " After the letters are placed by the 
 compositors and enclosed in what is called the " forme," little 
 more remains for man to do than to attend upon and watch the 
 imconscious agent in its operations. The machine is then merely 
 supplied with paper, itself places the forme, inks it, adjusts the 
 paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it 
 forth to the hands of the attendant, at the same time withdraw- 
 ing the form for a fresh coat of ink, which itself again distributes, 
 to meet the ensuing sheet now advancing for impression, and the 
 whole of these complicated acts is performed with such a velocity 
 and simultaneousness of movement that no less than 1,100 sheets 
 are impressed in one hour." The Koenig machine was modified 
 and improved by Messrs Applegarth & Cowper in 1827 so as to 
 prmt from 4,000 to 5,000 copies per hour. The next improve- 
 ment was the substitution for the flat or plane " forme," con- 
 taining the type to be printed, of a curved or rotary form by 
 attaching the type to a cylindrical surface. The idea had 
 occurred to William Nicholson in 1790, but it was first success- 
 fully applied by Applegarth in 1848, who by this contrivance 
 
208 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 increased the output of The Times to from 10,000 to 12,000 per 
 hour. Further improvements, including the curved stereotype 
 plate of the type to be printed (stereotyping having been in- 
 vented by William Ged, a goldsmith of Edinburgh, in the 
 eighteenth century and perfected by Tilloch and Foulis of Glas- 
 gow), and the printing of both sides of the sheet simultaneously, 
 were made in 1868 for the Walter Press by Messrs MacDonald & 
 Calverley. Another improvement was the substitution for the 
 hand setting of type of the Kastenhein and the Wicks composing 
 machines, with their later developments, the Linotype, the 
 Monotype, and the Singertype. The Walter Press gave place in 
 1895 to the Hoe machine, and later the Goss machine, which are 
 capable of turning out 150,000 folded copies of The Times per 
 hour. 
 
 The large Scottish newspapers have not lagged behind The 
 Times in the adoption of modem machinery. In the composing 
 room of The Scotsmun, for instance, thirty-two Linotype 
 machines produce seventeen columns of type per hour. The 
 stereotype plate is made and printed within ten minutes aft^ 
 leaving the composing room. In the machinery hall five Hoe 
 presses of varying capacity, driven by electricity, are capable of 
 printing, cutting, folding, and counting 174,000 copies of a 
 twelve page paper in an hour. The proprietors of the Glasgow 
 Herald, who first adopted the Hoe machine in 1876, introduced 
 in 1911 a double sextuple Hoe press, capable of printing, cut- 
 ting, folding, and counting 120,000 copies of a twelve page paper, 
 and 60,000 copies of one of twenty-four pages, per hour. 
 
 A large variety of these fast printing machines have been con- 
 trived for book and general printing, as well as for the produc- 
 tion of newspapers, and the revolution which their invention and 
 application have wrought in the printing trade has been taken 
 advantage of by Scottish printers. In Scotland the first steam 
 printing machine was introduced in the establishment of Messrs 
 Ballantyne about 1817, and to Mr Thomas Nelson is due the 
 credit of inventing the model of a rotary stereo press, which was 
 exhibited by him in the International Exhibition of 1851. An 
 idea of the progress in the printing art in Edinburgh may be best 
 formed from a comparison between the daily routine in Ballan- 
 
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING 209 
 
 tyne's press in the early years of the nineteenth century and that 
 of a modern up-to-date Scottish printery. Entering the long 
 case room in Paul's Work in, say, the year of Waterloo, " one 
 would find," to quote from The Ballantyne Press, " about thirty 
 or forty compositors, busily dipping their fingers into cases of 
 types — spelling, capitalising, and punctuating line after line from 
 the manuscript or ' copy ' before them — amidst the joke and 
 chaff flying among themselves, and the noisy hammering of 
 wooden * mallets ' at the imposing tables or ' stones ' down the 
 centre of the room, on which the ' formes ' of type were being 
 corrected and got ' ready for press.' A second case room, with 
 about twenty men, was on another, higher flat; adjoining this, 
 in course of time, was the stereo room. 
 
 " Beyond the long case room, on a slightly different level, 
 was a fairly large room, partitioned off like so many sentry- 
 boxes, occupied by that much maligned, but indispensable class, 
 the printer's readers, each with his attendant satellite or ' devil.' 
 
 " While the formes were being prepared for the press, the 
 damping room below was caUed into operation. It was here that 
 the paper to be printed was damped, in order that it might take 
 on better the impression from the type. This process is now 
 almost abandoned, except in the case of some special make of 
 paper, as printing papers are now made with a texture that does 
 not require damping. In the early days of Paul's Work, how- 
 ever, it was very necessary. 
 
 " The formes of type and the paper being ready, the pressmen 
 put the formes on the press-bed, and after ' meiking ready ' the 
 pages of type to ensure a uniform impression and colour on the 
 printed sheet, proceeded to work off the formes. In the early 
 days of last century, before the advent of the steam printing 
 machine, the work of the hand pressmen must have been a con- 
 stant strain on their physical powers. A ' token ' of 250 sheets 
 per hour was the ordinary output; they had to lay the sheet of 
 paper on the tympan and roll it under the press, pull the bar to 
 take the impression, roll back, and lift off the printed sheet — 
 all this for 250 times an hour for ten or twelve hours each day 
 was no light task. In those days also, prior to the invention of 
 the hand roller, the ink had to be put on the formes of type by 
 
210 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 means of handballs or ' dabbers,' and this, too, took a much 
 longer time. The sheets of a book having been thus printed, 
 either by hand press or by machinei-y, were next sent to the 
 drying room, and hung over horizontal bars, one above the other, 
 being put up or taken down by means of long peels. When 
 thoroughly dried the sheets were subjected to a smoothing pro- 
 cess between highly glazed boards under great pressure, and were 
 then ready for the bookbinder." 
 
 Compare with this the marvellous daily output by means of the 
 most up-to-date machinery in a modem Scottish book factory, as 
 described by Mr Strachan in The Scottish Bankers Magazine for 
 October 1911. " Inside we find two great floors, the lower 
 mainly devoted to storage and packing. The upper floor forms 
 one long, well-lit, and well-ventilated workroom, filled, but not 
 crowded, with machinery. No means of propulsion is visible, 
 there being an absence of the usual belts and shafting. Elec- 
 tricity is the motive power. Below the under floor is a long 
 chamber entirely occupied with the motors, starting gear, and 
 suction pumps used to drive the machinery above. 
 
 " We next pass into a small room ofi the great hall. Here a 
 handful of men sit before seeming typewriters. By depressing 
 the keys the operators punch in rolls of paper two holes, which, 
 according to their position, represent the character required. 
 These perforated roUs then pass through the casting machines, 
 currents of air controlling the casting of the letters which the 
 holes represent. Long columns of new type are rapidly formed, 
 which are removed to be proved, corrected, and made up into 
 pages. The speed of these machines, as compared with hand 
 setting, is enormous and, in consequence, much more economical. 
 The pages then go into the stereotyping department, where casts 
 are taken from the type, and the printing ' plates ' made, which 
 are beat into semi-cylindrical shape. 
 
 " At one end of the upper floor room are ranged in line six 
 rotary machines of the type usually used for newspaper printing. 
 Behind these runs an overhead railway, which carries to each 
 press gigantic cartridges of paper. The plates having been 
 placed in position on the cylinders of the machine, a touch sets 
 the huge ' rotary ' in motion, and at one revolution of the two 
 
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING 211 
 
 cylinders a sheet of 96 pages is instantly printed on both sides. 
 This sheet is automatically cut from the roll, a set of blunt knives 
 descend, and the sheet is folded into those neat signatures the 
 size of the book to be. A signature, it may be explained, is a 
 section of 16 or 32 pages. A complete book consists of so many 
 of these sewn together. Each machine prints three signatures, 
 and each book consists of three to six workings, so that as many 
 machines are simultaneously producing the signatures of one 
 book. As the piles of these rapidly grow they are placed in long 
 troughs down which they are slowly carried on endless chains. 
 En route they dry, and the various signatures forming the com- 
 plete book are collected together in correct order and conveyed 
 to the sewing machines, which seize them and do the rest of the 
 work automatically. 
 
 " The work now begins to resemble a book, but the edges are 
 rough, and it has no cover. A guillotine trims the edges, another 
 machine rounds the back, and still another glues on a 
 lining of ' mull.' The coloured frontispieces are then pasted 
 in. . . . 
 
 " Meanwhile, in another comer of the building, the cloth cases 
 have been prepared. Case-making machines are marvels of 
 ingenuity. A roll of cloth passes over a gluing roller, strawboards 
 fall into their places on the glued cloth, the paper that lines the 
 back attaches itself; the cloth is cut, and the edges dexterously 
 folded over the edges of the boards. Gold-leaf is laid by hand 
 on the back of the cases, which are then rapidly struck with 
 their design and title. At the oasing-in machines book and 
 cover are swiftly attached, after which they are placed under 
 hydraulic pressure in order that any tendency to curl may be 
 overcome. Released from this, they are returned to the ever- 
 moving troughs and conveyed to ' chutes,' down which they fall 
 to the packing room below. 
 
 " A factory such as that described produces two volumes in 
 three seconds, or nearly 120,000 per week. About 850 miles of 
 paper, 15 miles of cloth, and 5 miles of strawboard are con- 
 sumed in the manufacture of this quantity." 
 
 Glasgow comes next to Edinburgh as a printing and publishing 
 centre. From the end of the eighteenth century printing de- 
 
212 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 veloped into a large industry. The University Press, started 
 by the brothers Foulis about the middle of this century, " in 
 the course of a few years," in the words of Dr Murray, " made 
 Glasgow printing famous throughout Europe." " I read 
 Homer," said Gibbon, " with most pleasure in the Glasgow 
 folio." " The work so auspiciously begun by the brothers 
 Foulis," continues Dr Murray, " has been carried on by a suc- 
 cession of excellent printers, and the Glasgow press is now no 
 inconsiderable factor in book production in the United Kingdom. 
 The printing and distributing of books in numbers was not com- 
 menced in Scotland until about 1796, but quickly developed, 
 especially in Glasgow, where at one time five-sixteenths of the 
 trade was carried on." Among the more notable of the Glasgow 
 printers in the nineteenth century were the Duncans, Blackie & 
 Son (formerly Kuhll, Blackie & Co.), Collins & Co., MacLehose & 
 Co. (the University Press), Wardlaw & Cunningham, 
 McCorquodale & Co., Hodge & Co., Chapman & Duncan, Orr & 
 Sons, Lumsden & Son, W. & D. Mackenzie. Blackie, Collins, 
 and MacLehose also developed an extensive publishing business, 
 and among other publishing firms may be mentioned those of 
 Fullarton & Co., Smith & Sons, Lumsden & Son. The practice 
 of selling books in numbers was first started in Glasgow by Ful- 
 larton, and was developed by the Messrs Blackie, and by W. 
 Mackenzie. It is significant of the extent of the Glasgow print- 
 ing and publishing trade that no fewer than five of the Lord 
 Provosts of the city during the nineteenth century were printers 
 and publishers, viz., James Lumsden, father and son; Andrew 
 Orr, John Blackie, and William Collins. 
 
 Type founding also became a considerable branch of industry 
 in Glasgow from about the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 when Alexander Wilson set up his type foundry in the village of 
 Camlachie, and cast the types which made the brothers Foulis 
 famous. In the nineteenth century, the firms of Hutchison & 
 Brookman (University printers). Prentice & Co., and D. Mac- 
 brayne & Stirling (Macbrayne of subsequent Clyde steamboat 
 fame) acquired prominence as type founders. The allied in- 
 dustry of engraving and lithography owed much to the fine work- 
 manship of Joseph Swan in the middle of the century, and the 
 
ART 218 
 
 firm of Maclure, MacDonald & Co. has long carried on an exten- 
 sive business as lithographers and lithographic printers. 
 
 13. Aet 
 
 Raebum's formative influence, in the domain of portraiture, 
 on the rising Scottish school, is apparent in the work of his con- 
 temporaries and successors — of George Watson, Watson Gordon, 
 Graham Gilbert, and Daniel Macnee. George Watson became 
 the first president of the Scottish Academy on its formation in 
 1826, and his portraiture has so much superficial resemblance to 
 Raebum's that in the judgment of Mr Caw, " the unscrupulous 
 will some day pass oH the best of his portraits (that of himself 
 and of Benjamin West, the President of the Royal Academy, for 
 instance) upon the unwary as examples of the greater painter." 
 " Workmanlike and worthy of respect," is the estimate of the 
 same critic. The finest of those of Watson Gordon, on the other 
 hand, are said to approach Raebum's in merit. He certainly 
 fell heir to Raebum's popularity and painted many of the not- 
 ables of his time up to his death in 1864. He reached his highest 
 level in his later period in his portraits of Lord Cockbum, Henry 
 Houldsworth, the Provost of Peterhead, David Cox. He was 
 elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1851 and became 
 President of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850 in succession to 
 Sir William Allan. Graham Gilbert, who, after his marriage to a 
 Glasgow heiress, settled in the western city, came near in his 
 " James Hamilton " and " John Gibson " to challenging Watson 
 Gordon's supremacy, and, as his " Love Letter " shows, ex- 
 celled him in the portrayd of feminine charm, in which the latter 
 was distinctly weak. Daniel Macnee long shared with Graham 
 Gilbert the patronage of the western city before becoming Presi- 
 dent of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1876, when he removed 
 to Edinburgh. He has been described as " an understudy of 
 Raebum," and his best work, of which his portraits of Dr Ward- 
 law, Charles Mackay as Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and " The Lady in 
 Grey " are the finest examples, deserves the description : " None 
 of them," says Dr McKay, in reference to the successors of 
 
214 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Raebum, " take equal rank with the founder of the school, but 
 three of the group may be said, by the addition of individual 
 qualities, to have widened the scope of native portraiture. If a 
 selection of the more notable works of Watson Gordon, Graham 
 Gilbert, and Macnee were aligned with an equal number of repre- 
 sentative Raebums, though the former would suffer by contact 
 with Sir Henry's masterly technique — the brilliant ensemble 
 that takes one by storm — ^there would nevertheless be found an 
 advance in that intimacy of observation and characterisation 
 which is a dominant note in the best production of recent times." 
 Like Raebum in portraiture, David Wilkie (1785-1841) exer- 
 cised a formative influence On Scottish painting in the department 
 of genre, i.e., in the depicting of scenes or subjects from life. 
 Bom in 1785 in the manse of Cults in Pifeshire, he became a 
 pupil of John Graham in 1799, when Raebum was already 
 famous. At the age of 19, after he bad finished his training 
 under Graham, he gave in " Pitlessie Fair " a foretaste of his 
 genius as a genre painter. In 1805 he went to London to study 
 in the schools of the Royal Academy, and in the following year 
 sprang into fame with his *' Village Politicians," which he sent 
 to the Academy's Exhibition. Three years later he was elected 
 an associate, and in 1812 a member of the Royal Academy. 
 These distinctions, to be followed later by the appointment of 
 Painter in Ordinary to George IV., and a Knighthood from 
 William IV., were richly merited by the developing mastery re- 
 vealed by " The Blind Fiddler," " The Rent Day," " The Vil- 
 lage Festival," which belong to the years between 1806 and 
 1812, and show the influence of Teniers and Ostade on his work. 
 In the following year the Exhibition contained what is perhaps 
 the most popular of all his creations — " Blind Man's Buff." In 
 the next ten years he produced most of his characteristic work, 
 including " The Penny Wedding," in 1819 ; " The Reading of 
 the Will " in 1820, and " The Chelsea Pensioners " reading the 
 news of Waterloo in 1822, for the Duke of Wellington. A 
 sojoum on the Continent for reasons of health, which lasted 
 several years, led him to essay the grander style of the Spanish 
 masters and to devote himself to portraiture and pictorial sub- 
 jects. The change of style is pronounced by the critics to be a 
 
ART 216 
 
 lapse into an atmosphere in which the real Wilkie is not in his 
 true element. " In those life-size portraits and illustrations of 
 long past or recent history," says Dr McKay, " one recognises 
 many admirable artistic qualities, but no longer the unique 
 Wilkie." Even in his true sphere — that of reflecting the homely 
 incidents of real life — he has his limitations. " Although," says 
 Mr Caw, " he drew his subjects from the life of the Scots peasan- 
 try, he only touched it at certain points." It may be said, 
 nevertheless, that he did for old Scottish life in the realm of art 
 what Scott did for it on a grander scale in that of fiction, and 
 Bums in a more restricted degree in that of poetry. He 
 depicted its characteristic features at a time when character and 
 custom were undergoing a transition in keeping with change in 
 the social and industrial life of the country. True, his settle- 
 ment in London enlarged the scope of the subjects treated, which 
 include characteristic scenes of English life. " The Village 
 Festival," for instance, is characteristically English, and the 
 settmg of " Blind Man's Buff " is also English. But there is 
 no mistaking the Scottish flavour of such productions as " The 
 Blind Fiddler," " The Penny Wedding," " The Rent Day." 
 They were and have continued to be extremely popular in Scot- 
 land, and exercised a marked influence on the work of Scottish 
 genre painters of his own and the immediately succeeding 
 generations, such as Alexander Eraser, John Burnet, and 
 William Kidd. Later in the century this influence was per- 
 petuated in the humorous scenes of Erskine Nicol (1825-1904), 
 and the pathetic presentations of Thomas Faed (1826-1900). 
 
 William Allan (1792-1850), the second President of the Scot- 
 tish Acadamy, may be described as the pioneer of the historical 
 genre in Scotland. In early life he spent some years in Russia, 
 and later, besides revisiting Russia, travelled in Italy, Greece, 
 Asia Minor, and Spain. He portrayed scenes of oriental life 
 suggested in the course of his travels. His intimacy with Scott 
 quickened his interest in the history and romance of his own 
 land, which found pictorial expression in a series of scenes from 
 the lives of Bruce, Knox, the Regent Murray, etc. " They are 
 not distinguished by any great artistic merit, and his work is 
 more interesting as inaugurating a new development in Scottish 
 
216 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 painting than on its own account." As the master of Harvey, 
 Duncan, and Scott Lauder, who studied under him in the 
 Trustees Academy, his influence in this respect was considerable. 
 All three drew largely on the Waverley Novels for their historic 
 material. Duncan, who died in 1845 at the age of 38, excelled 
 as a colourist in his dramatic representations of episodes in the 
 life of Prince Charles, which gained him the associateship of the 
 Royal Academy, and his " Martyrdom of John Brown of Priest- 
 hill.," Sir George Harvey (1806-76), who succeeded Watson 
 Gordon as fourth President of the Royal Scottish Academy, also 
 reached a high level in his most telling historic pictures (" Drum- 
 clog," " Quitting the Manse," " The Sabbath in the Glen "), 
 and, besides, treated genre subjects with remarkable spirit in 
 " The Schule Scailin'," " Sheep Shearing," etc, Lauder was 
 more distinguished as master of the Trustees Academy than as 
 a painter, but he scored one striking success in " The Trial of 
 Effle Deans." 
 
 As in the case of Thomas Duncan, David Scott's career (1806- 
 49) was cut short by a comparatively early death, and was, 
 besides, clouded by melancholy begotten of ill-health and ill- 
 deserved lack of recognition. A brilliant colourist with a power- 
 ful imagination, but defective draughtsmanship, he also may be 
 classed among the historical painters of the earlier nineteenth 
 century, though his predilection was for the abstract rather than 
 the concrete side of his historical material. Pictures like " The 
 Traitor's Gate " and " The Spirit of the Storm," of which the 
 Duke of Gloucester and Vasco da Gama are respectively the sub- 
 jects, are instinct with the meaning which it was his tnain pur- 
 pose to convey. It was the significance of action, rather than 
 the action itself that interested him, and in these pictures he 
 succeeded in giving expression to the thought and emotion under- 
 lying the scene with powerful effect. Later in the century the 
 historical or semi-historical subject found capable exponents in 
 Sir Noel Paton (1821-1901), Robert Herdman (1829-88), and Sir 
 W. Fettes Douglas (1822-91). " Luther at Erfurt " is one of 
 Paton's finest creations. But his main interest was in religious 
 allegory and in the realm of fancy, and the pictures in which 
 he gave expression to religious and moral verities, such as " The 
 
ART 217 
 
 Pursuit of Pleasure," or sought to visualise the fairy world 
 (" Oberon and Titania "), display an exuberant imagination 
 and a richly inventive faculty, and won an enormous popularity. 
 Herdman also successfully used history with a moral purpose in 
 such pieces as " A Conventicle Preacher before the Justices," 
 " After the Battle," and " St Columba Rescuing a Captive." 
 Fettes Douglas, who became President of the Academy in 1882, 
 had a predilection for the recondite realm of alchemy and 
 astrology, and his antiquarian interest appears most characteristi- 
 cally in " The Alchemist," " The Visit to the False Astrologer," 
 " The Rosicrucian." 
 
 Scottish landscape painting takes its rise with Alexander 
 Naysmyth and his pupil John Thomson (1778-1840), minister of 
 Duddingston, and the friend of Walter Scott. In spite of the 
 varied grandeur and beauty of Scottish scenery, the feeling for 
 nature was long dormant. English travellers in the seventeenth 
 and early eighteenth centuries were repelled by the wild vistas of 
 mountain and moor, and among the strange criticisms of things 
 Scottish in which they indulge none astonishes the modem reader 
 more than their obtuse judgments of the landscape north of the 
 Tweed. The treeless Lowlands in those days might ill compare 
 with the sylvan beauties of England. But even the magnificent 
 panoramas of the Highlands fail to impress the eye of Captain 
 Burt, for instance, who pronounces the mountains " disagree- 
 able " — ^the more so when the heather is in bloom and the day is 
 clear ! Scotsmen themselves for the most part had lost the 
 sense of nature, to which the Scottish poets of the Renaissance 
 period had given expression. In the later eighteenth and the 
 early nineteenth centuries there came a marked awakening of the 
 aesthetic sense, and the new feeling for nature found appreciative 
 expression in The Seasons of James Thomson, in Ossian, Allan 
 Ramsay, Bums, Scott, Hogg, and Byron. From literature this 
 appreciation passed into art in the landscapes of A. Naysmyth, 
 John Watson, and especially of the Duddingston minister. The 
 Rev. John Thomson, whilst failing to shake himself free from the 
 conventionsd manner, was " the first to seize and express fitly 
 the trae character of Scottish landscape." Horatio M'Culloch 
 (1805-67), who shows his influence, put on the canvas many 
 
218 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 striking studies of Highland landscape, though his art is still, like 
 that of Thomson, hampered by the conventional. The same may 
 be said of his less popular, but eminently deserving contemporary 
 Milne Donald. With Sir George Harvey, who in his later years 
 devoted himeslf to landscape, and J. C. Wintour, it became 
 more realistic, truer to nature, more intimate and personal. This 
 feature is increasingly apparent in the works of Sam Bough — 
 the most vivacious of men and artists — and his intimate associate 
 Alexander Fraser, who, " in determination to paint everything 
 from the thing itself," rivalled the most fervent of the Pre- 
 Raphaelites, and whose art is the outcome of how he saw nature, 
 and a record of what he most admired. 
 
 Compared generally with the painting of the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, that of the succeeding period becomes less 
 conventional, and more naturalistic and individualist. This 
 feature is already apparent to some extent in the work of some 
 of the painters already mentioned. It becomes more marked in 
 that of the pupils of Scott Lauder in the sixth decade of the 
 century, to whose teaching it owed much. This period saw, too, 
 the rise of the Glasgow School, which developed independently 
 on impressionist lines, and attained a European reputation and 
 influence. Lauder's pupils are distinguished by the feeling for 
 colour with which their master inspired them from the great 
 Venetian colourists. Brilliancy of colour and the pictorial sense 
 are distinctive features of the works of Orchardson, Pettie, 
 Chalmers, M'Taggart, Cameron, M'Whirter, Peter Graham, and 
 others, in the various branches in which they practised. Other 
 notable painters, though not belonging to this brilliant group, 
 such as Sir George Reid, Robert Gibb, William Hole, Martin 
 Hardie, Ogilvy Reid, J. R. Reid, J. E. Christie, Robert 
 M'Gregor, Robert Alexander, Denovan Adam, have lent distinc- 
 tion to Scottish art in recent times in the departments of 
 historic-domestic genre, landscape, portraiture, animal painting. 
 The Glasgow School was the result of a strongly realistic revolt 
 from artistic tradition, and was influenced by French realism. 
 It took definite shape in Scotland in the eighties, and among its 
 pioneers were James Guthrie, James Paterson, George Henry, 
 W. Y. M'Gregor, E. Ar Walton, John Lavery, Alexander Roche. 
 
ART 219 
 
 It fought its way to recognition with all the verve of ardent 
 conviction against the prejudice of the Academy, and succeeded 
 by force of merit in winning a leading place in art exhibitions 
 at home and abroad. 
 
 Scotland has thus within 100 years steadily developed an art 
 which is strong in the delineation of Scottish character, domestic 
 life, history, and landscape. It reflects the national tempera- 
 ment, and though foreign influences — Italian, Dutch, Spanish, or 
 French — are traceable throughout, the national element is un- 
 mistakeable. " No one familiar with the history of painting in 
 Scotland," says Mr Caw in the luminous resume which concludes 
 his highly competent and suggestive review of Scottish Painting 
 Past and Present, " since it became a living art in the pictures 
 of Raebum, Wilkie, and Thomson, will find it difficult to trace 
 a more or less connected development, and to find in its succes- 
 sive phases qualities, subjective, emotional, and technical, 
 eminently characteristic of the Scottish people." For a small 
 country to have produced so much in this domain of culture 
 within little more than a century is a remarkable achievement. 
 Still more remarkable that so much of it has attained a very high 
 level of excellence, and that in more recent times it has com- 
 manded the homage of Europe as " one of the few and original 
 manifestations in modem painting." 
 
 To the work of Raebum and Wilkie is mainly due the early 
 development of art in Scotland as a distinctive feature of Scot- 
 tish culture and an influence in the national life. Some share of 
 the merit belongs, however, to the Trustees Academy, and 
 especially to the teaching of John Graham, who became master 
 in 1798, and among whose pupils were David Wilkie, William 
 Allan, and John Watson Gordon. Originally a school of applied 
 art, it become under Graham also a school for the training of 
 artists, and under his successors Andrew Wilson and Sir W. 
 Allan, who was appointed master in 1826, when accommodation 
 was assigned to it in the Royal Institution, this feature of the 
 instruction was continued and developed. The appointment of 
 Scott Lauder in 1852 greatly increased its formative influence. 
 In 1808 a beginning was made in the direction of professional 
 organisation by the formation at Edinburgh of the Society of 
 
220 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Incorporated Artists. The Society held annual exhibitions for 
 several years, and these exhibitions tended to arouse a wider 
 interest in painting. Hitherto, according to Lord Cockbum, 
 there had been no public taste for art, and, except for Raebum's 
 works, no market for the productions of Scottish artists. A 
 marked change for the better now set in, and these exhibitions 
 were a distinct success. In five years' time a sum of £1800 had 
 been accumulated. Unfortunately, the majority of the members 
 resolved in 1813 to distribute this sum among themselves instead 
 of devoting it, as Raebum and others advised, for the purpose of 
 establishing a permanent body. The enterprise accordingly 
 lapsed, though the annual exhibition was continued till 1816. 
 Three years later another organisation took shape in the " Institu- 
 tion for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland," which 
 proposed to attain this end by holding annual exhibitions of 
 ancient masters, and devoting the proceeds to the relief of 
 deserving, but impecunious artists. The ancient masters in 
 Scotland were, however, too few to furnish an attractive exhibi- 
 tion, and ere long it was found necessary to include the works of 
 living artists. In 1826 it found a location in the Royal Institu- 
 tion which the Board of Manufactures had built on the Mound. 
 Unfortunately, friction arose between the management and the 
 resident artists, who were allowed no voice in the administration, 
 and in this year the latter determined to establish a separate 
 professional organisation or academy, and to apply for a royal 
 charter. The request was refused, and the boon accorded 
 instead to the Institution. The artists, nevertheless, persevered 
 in their undertaking, and for a couple of years rival exhibitions 
 were held by the two bodies. In this struggle the artists, backed 
 by the public support, emerged victorious. The Royal Institu- 
 tion agreed to confine its attention to the acquisition of 
 " ancient pictures as a nucleus of a national collection," and left 
 to their rivals the exhibition of contemporary works. It was 
 from this clash of rival organisations that the Royal Scottish 
 Academy, which received its charter in 1837, was evolved. The 
 Academy held its exhibitions in the Royal Institution, and there 
 was further friction with the Board of Manufactures until in 
 1856 it at Jast obtained, through Government intervention, the 
 
ART 221 
 
 benefit of a separate establishment in the National Gallery on 
 the Mound, which was erected from funds furnished by Parlia- 
 ment and the Board respectively. 
 
 Like Edinburgh, Glasgow also had its difficulties in promoting 
 the interests of art. The Diletante Society commenced a series of 
 exhibitions in 1888 which continued annually for about a decade. 
 An Art Union was started in 1841, and later the West of Scot- 
 land Academy came into a struggling existence. These attempts 
 proved, however, ultimate failures, and " it was not till the 
 Institute of the Fine Arts was founded in 1861 that the advan- 
 tages of well organised and representative annual exhibitions 
 were secured for ' the second city.' " Six years later the Glas- 
 gow Art Club was started, and ultimately became the centre of 
 art life in Glasgow with its own annual exhibition. The Royal 
 Scottish Water Colour Society, founded in 1878, has also its 
 headquarters in Glasgow. Other artist societies have come into 
 existence in both Edinburgh and Glasgow — the Society of Scot- 
 tish Artists, the Glasgow Society of Artists, the Society of Lady 
 Artists — and also at Aberdeen, Dundee, and other provincial 
 towns. 
 
 Art collections, so necessary for the cultivation of the public 
 taste as well as for the education of artists, are available for both 
 purposes in the National Gallery on the Mound, the National 
 Portrait Gallery in Queen Street, due to the enlightened 
 generosity of Mr Findlay of Aberlour ; in the Corporation Museum 
 of Art at Kelvingrove, Glasgow; and in the Art Galleries of 
 Dundee, Aberdeen, Stirling, and other towns. Art education 
 has also undergone a marked development. In 1858 the Trustees 
 Academy was afiftliated to the Science and Art Department in 
 London, the life class being transferred to the Royal Scottish 
 Academy. In 1899 the function of the Science and Art Depart- 
 ment in Scotland passed to the Scottish Education Department, 
 and with its co-operation the Edinburgh Town Council took the 
 lead in establishing a new and thoroughly equipped College of 
 Art by providing the site on which the new building was 
 erected from a fund derived from a large Government grant, 
 supplemented by public subscriptions. Glasgow has not been 
 behind Edinburgh in the provision of a first-class art school. 
 
222 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 which since 1890 has provided a comprehensive art training, 
 and, like the Edinburgh School, it is recognised by the Scottish 
 Education Department as a central institution for Glasgow and 
 the West. The well equipped Aberdeen School possesses the 
 same status, and performs the same function for the northern 
 district. Edinburgh is the only University which possesses a 
 chair of the Fine Arts, but art teaching is included in the curri- 
 culum of a considerable number of secondary schools. 
 
 14. Religious Life 
 
 Ecclesiastical contention and theological discussion have 
 entered very deeply into Scottish social life. Since the Reforma- 
 tion, Scots folk have shown a keen interest in and appetite for 
 questions of church polity and religious belief. The nineteenth 
 century had its fair share of this controversy and discussion, not 
 only in church courts and in the Press, but in the homes of the 
 people. At the beginning of the century the spirit of dissent 
 found renewed expression in the evangelical preaching of the 
 brothers Haldane — a revival of that of Wesley and Whitefield 
 in the preceding one — which resulted in the establishment of a 
 number of independent churches. In the middle of it took place 
 the Disruption of the national church over the questions of 
 patronage and the claim of spiritual independence, on which the 
 evangelical party, led by Chalmers, Gordon, Cunniagham, 
 Candlish, Buchanan, threw down the gauntlet to the State. For 
 ten years, from 1832 onwards, the land was convulsed by the 
 vehement contentions of the rival parties from the utmost south 
 to the distant north, and the courts both ecclesiastical and 
 secular were kept busy with case after case of popular opposition 
 to objectionable presentees. The Disruption was a convulsive 
 social as well as ecclesiastical event. It carried party passion 
 and religious bitterness into parishes and families all over the 
 land, as well as rent the church in twain. It led to the setting 
 up of a rival place of worship in many villages where the parish 
 church amply sufficed to accommodate the parishioners, and two 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 223 
 
 ministers were engaged in doing the work of one. So deep was 
 the cleavage that it affected business as well as social intercourse, 
 the Free Churchman lending his patronage to tradesmen of his 
 ecclesiastical way of thinking. It gave colour to party politics, 
 Free Churchmen being mostly Liberal or Radical, their opponents 
 largely Conservative. It intensified sectarian feeling, which 
 tends to confuse religion with particular views of it, and to 
 nurture intolerance towards those who do not share its intense or 
 doctrinaire opinions on the questions at issue. At the same time 
 it had its heroic side, and its beneficent effects. It was the out- 
 come of strong religious convictions as well as party passion, and 
 gave a powerful impulse to the religious life of Scotland as 
 embodied in the manifold and expanding activity of the Free 
 Church. Moreover, it reacted beneficially on the life of the 
 desolated national church. Under the direction of Dr Robertson 
 this church effectively continued the work of extension 
 inaugurated by Chalmers, and in a dozen years raised half a 
 million to erect and endow 150 new parishes. The personal 
 magnetism of Norman MacLeod, the pulpit eloquence of John 
 Caird, the varied learning of Robert Flint, the weighty personality 
 of John TuUoch, the zeal and ability of others of the rising 
 generation of ministers ere long contributed to make good the 
 loss which it had suffered from the secession of so many of its 
 outstanding men, from Dr Chalmers downwards. The abolition 
 of the Patronage Act in 1874, and the introduction of popular 
 election, gave it a stronger hold on the loyalty and affection of 
 the people. This liberal measure, if it went a long way towards 
 meeting the case of the seceders and seemed to justify their action, 
 showed at the same time that, with the exercise of patience and 
 forbearance, they would have attained their end without the 
 extreme expedient of disruption. 
 
 Despite the tendency to go asunder over ecclesiastical ques- 
 tions which perturbed the church between the middle of the 
 eighteenth and that of the nineteenth centuries, and culminated 
 in the catastrophe of 1843, a more irenic and less sectarian spirit 
 gradually asserted itself in the Scottish churches during the 
 second half of the latter century. This spirit has, happily, 
 become the dominant one during the first two decades of the 
 
224 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 present century. In 1820 a foretaste of it was already forth- 
 coming in the union of the Burghers and Anti-Burghers into the 
 United Secession. Twenty years later the Relief and the Seces- 
 sion Churches came together on the voluntary principle as the 
 United Presbyterian Church. From 1863 onwards a movement 
 to amalgamate this larger body with the Free Church was started, 
 and after long opposition on the part of Dr Begg and an anti- 
 voluntary party, came to fruition, under the leadership of Dr 
 Rainy, in 1900, in the United Free Church of Scotland. This 
 transaction gave rise, indeed, to another secession on a small 
 scale, and a protracted litigation to enforce the claim of the 
 seceders to the property of the Free Church, which was parti- 
 ally recognised by the House of Lords, to which the case was 
 appealed from the Court of Session. The " Wee Free " section, 
 as it was popularly called, was, however, but an insignificant 
 remnant, and did not materially affect the Union, though it gave 
 rise to a revival of the old bitter spirit on a limited scale. 
 
 For twenty years previously a crusade in favour of the dis- 
 establishment of the Church of Scotland had been actively pro- 
 moted by these churches, and for a time it looked as it disestab- 
 lishment was a sine qua non of Presbyterian reunion on a national 
 scale. Happily this disestablishment policy, which had tended 
 to keep alive the rancour of Disruption times, ultimately gave 
 place to a negotiation for a union on less radical lines towards 
 the close of the second decade of the twentieth century on the 
 basis of the national recognition of religion, the maintenance of 
 the independence of the Church in things spiritual, and the 
 retention of the endowments for its support. In virtue of the 
 spirit of mutual conciliation, this union is in process of being 
 realised, a series of articles having been drawn up and sanctioned 
 by the Presbyteries and the Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
 and an application made to Parliament to empower the Church 
 to enter into the Union on this basis. 
 
 A powerful influence in fostering the spirit of union has been 
 the growing sense of the importance for the churches of social, 
 compared with ecclesiastical, problems. In the presence of 
 rampant social vice, industrial unrest, slum life, bad housing, 
 the growing popular indifference or alienation, which such evils 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 225 
 
 tend to nurture, the Churches are learning to see ecclesiastical 
 contentions in a truer perspective, and are more and more 
 realising the paramount obligation of uniting their energies in 
 the cause of social betterment. Their home missions have been 
 too long influenced by the policy of strengthening rival ecclesias- 
 tical organisations by planting churches in the expanding cities 
 or the growing industrial districts. The spirit of competition 
 has multiplied these churches, with the result that in many 
 cases the wealthier suburban districts of cities have been over- 
 churched in the interest of ecclesiastical rivalry, whilst little 
 progress has been made in evangelising the masses, and raising 
 the standard of life and morality in the poor and slum districts. 
 In these the churches are but sparsely attended, while the 
 expedient of building mission halls for the poor has tended to 
 beget in their minds the assumption that the Church is merely 
 " the rich man's club," and has largely failed of its purpose. 
 Despite the vast organisation of the religious life represented by 
 the plethora of churches over the land, they have failed to 
 grapple effectively with the evils of drunkenness and impurity, 
 squalor, poverty, and crime, which still cast their dark shadow 
 over the large centres of population. More efiective work in 
 this direction has probably been done by the Salvation Army 
 and other popular organisations. A great deal is also being 
 accomplished in the cause of social betterment by philanthropic 
 agencies, which owe their existence and their activity to Chris- 
 tian teaching, it not directly connected with the Churches. 
 Societies and institutions exist by the hundred for the benefit of 
 the blind, the deaf and dumb, the inebriate, the orphan, the 
 aged and infirm, etc., as the lists of the Charity Organisation 
 Societies of Edinburgh and Glasgow, for instance, show. The 
 Churches have their own organisations for dealing with social 
 evils. To this end the Church of Scotland has introduced the 
 office of deaconess and parish sister, and there have arisen social 
 work committees, guilds, brotherhoods, in all the Churches. It 
 would be imf air to ignore or belittle 'all this organised effort, 
 directed and influenced by them. But the fact remains that it 
 has mitigated rather than remedied the evils that fester in the 
 body social, especially in the large cities. Mere church extension 
 P 
 
226 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 by rival organisations has not brought the remedy, and church 
 extension, which overchurches the residential districts of our 
 cities and persists in wasting money and energy in maintaining 
 four or even half-a-dozen denominational churches in thinly 
 populated parishes or villages, where one or two would sufl&ce, 
 never will. In the pursuit of this policy the Churches have 
 ignored too much the social mission of Christianity, and, partly 
 at least, on this account they have lost their grip on the sub- 
 merged masses. The fact is being increasingly recognised by 
 social workers, both inside and outside the Churches. " Many," 
 says the Rev. Dr Watson in his recent book on Social Advance, 
 " hold aloof from the Church from the conviction that she has 
 not done all she might have done for social amelioration; that 
 she has acquiesced, and so helped to stereotype, their environment 
 and those bad conditions under which they groan. That un- 
 doubtedly is a shortcoming for which the Church should now 
 stand in sackcloth. She has not preached sufficiently the Gospel 
 of the Kingdom, She has not applied Christian ethics to social, 
 economic, and industrial conditions. She has emphasised 
 charity more than justice." This conviction it is that has given 
 a powerful impulse to the Union movement as well as to the 
 application of new agencies and new methods of social work. 
 It is becoming ever more apparent even to the ecclesiastical 
 mind that it is only by co-operation and co-ordination of effort 
 through a powerful national Church that these agencies and 
 methods can be made more effective. 
 
 On the other hand, in their mission activity ia the foreign 
 field the Scottish Churches in the nineteenth century have had a 
 splendid record. The rise of this wider missionary movement, 
 which has resulted in the founding of Christian schools and 
 colleges, and the establishment of native Churches in India, 
 Africa, and China, dates from the beginning of the second quarter 
 of the century. In 1796, when the first foreign mission 
 societies were founded at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and other towns, 
 Dr Erskine, the leader of the Evangelical Party, appealed to the 
 General Assembly, New Testament in hand, to adopt an overture 
 in favour of foreign missions. But the motion seemed too 
 visionary to be taken seriously by the Moderate majority, and 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 227 
 
 was lost by 58 to 44 votes. About thirty years later a marked 
 change had come over the Assembly's attitude to the subject 
 in response to the more altruistic spirit of the age. In 1824 the 
 proposal was reintroduced — on this occasion by the leader of 
 the Moderate Party, Dr Inglis — and the Assembly now adopted 
 it unanimously. Money was collected and a scheme drawn up, 
 and in 1829 Dr Duff was sent forth to India to carry it out. 
 The travels of Dr Livingstone gave a great impulse to the mis- 
 sionary spirit, and both the Church of Scotland and the Free 
 Church extended their missionary enterprise to Africa and 
 China with remarkable results. What Scottish missionary enter- 
 prise has accomplished, in addition to the mission activity of the 
 Scottish Churches, may be best realised by the services 
 rendered by Scotsmen to the cause in connection with the London 
 Missionary Society. It was as agents of this Society that Dr 
 Livingstone and Dr Moffat laboured in Africa, Dr Legge in China, 
 Mr Milne in Malacca, and Chalmers in Papua. 
 
 A noteworthy improvement in Church architecture and public 
 worship is also discernible throughout the second half of the 
 nineteenth century. It has been an age of restoration and 
 church building, in which the skill of ecclesiastical architects like 
 Sir Rowand Anderson and Mr M'Gregor Chalmers has been 
 appUed with signal success. Too many of the great ancient 
 edifices, like St Andrews Cathedral, are unfortunately past 
 restoration. Some attempts, as in the case of the Holy Trinity 
 at Dunfermline, made before the advent of a true aesthetic feeling, 
 have been bad failures. Others have miscarried through fear of 
 spoiling a picturesque ruin. In the case of the Chapel Royal at 
 Holyrood, for instance, for whose restoration the late Earl of 
 Melville and Leven left a large sum, which was applied instead 
 to build a chapel for the Knights of the Thistle in St Giles. 
 But in the case of St Mungo's, Glasgow; St Giles, Edinburgh; 
 lona, Dunblane, and Lerwick Cathedrals, and of parochial 
 churches like St Michael's, Linlithgow, the architects have risen to 
 the occasion. Other projects of this kind (in the case of St John's, 
 Perth, for instance) are being matured. When the fabric has 
 been entirely or largely preserved, the problem has been com- 
 paratively simple. It has largely been a matter of removing 
 
228 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 the unsightly masonry and woodwork by which a large building 
 like St Giles was divided into two or three churches after the 
 Reformation. 
 
 With this revived interest in ecclesiastical architecture and 
 art there has come an improvement in the conduct of worship. 
 Organs and choirs and forms of service have successfully run 
 the gauntlet of popular prejudice and love of the old ways. The 
 Presbyterian service, when properly conducted, has a dignified 
 simplicity, natural devotion, and an intellectual solidity which 
 appeal to many accustomed to a more elaborate and formal 
 ritual, and it is dear to the hearts of Scots folk who have grown 
 old in its religious atmosphere. The late Queen Victoria, for 
 example, prized it highly. But fondness for its traditional 
 features is not necessarily incompatible with an appreciation of 
 good music and a judicious use of devotional forms, and in this 
 respect a widespread change of view has taken place in the 
 course of the last half century. This change has been due, 
 in the first place, to the innovating spirit of Dr Robert Lee 
 about the middle of the century, and, in the second place, to 
 the efforts of the Church Service Society to further the reform 
 of worship. The Reformed Church of Scotland had from the 
 outset possessed a simple liturgy in Knox's Book of Common 
 Order, which was adopted by the General Assembly as a devo- 
 tional guide to its members, though allowing liberty in the use 
 of it. The long struggle between Presbytery and Prelacy which 
 the arbitrary introduction of an alien Service Book into the 
 Church of Scotland by Charles I and Laud had brought to a 
 climax, had left a deep and not imnatural prejudice against the 
 reading of officially imposed prayers. For introducing an order 
 of public worship composed by himself into the service of Old 
 Greyfriars in Edinburgh, the church so intimately associated 
 with the Covenant of 1688, of which he was minister, Dr Lee was 
 arraigned by the Presbytery, and enjoined by the General 
 Assembly in 1859 to discontinue the innovation. Dr Lee 
 forcibly, though vainly, argued that the Reformed Church had 
 sanctioned and long used a liturgy, and had never formally 
 disallowed its use. He not only disobeyed the Assembly's injunc- 
 tion, but introduced instrumental music into the services of his 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 229 
 
 church. For four years he was left unmolested, but the bitter 
 feeling aroused by his persistence in flouting the injunction of 
 the Assembly found vent in 1864 in a motion to proceed against 
 him for contumacy. On this occasion, however, the more liberal- 
 minded party in the Assembly carried its contention, that as no 
 law had been violated, no offence had been committed, and that 
 such innovations should only be suppressed in cases where they 
 tended to disturb the harmony of congregations. The question 
 occupied the attention of the Assembly in the following two 
 years, and ultimately that of 1866 compromised the dispute by 
 empowering Presbyteries to intervene in cases where such 
 innovations were brought before them, and interdict them if 
 found contrary to law, or tending to strife and division. At 
 the same time it instructed the Presbytery of Edinburgh to 
 re-open the Greyfriars case, which had been the cause of all the 
 excitement, and proceedings were again instituted against Dr 
 Lee. His sudden illness and death intervened before the 
 renewed suit reached the Assembly, and the movement in favour 
 of a moderate reform of worship, for which he had battled and 
 suffered, and which the Church Service Society has carried on, 
 may be said to have triumphed with his death. Among the 
 reforms accomplished, it is questionable whether the introduction 
 of a Hymnal can in all respects be accounted a serviceable addi- 
 tion to the Psalms and Paraphrases. Too many of these 
 hymns are poor jingles of evangelical theology without elevation 
 of thought or expression. 
 
 Noteworthy also is the growth in recent years of a more liberal 
 spirit in theological discussion. What was popularly known in 
 the Scottish Churches as " heresy-hunting," long an almost 
 regularly recurring feature of Scottish ecclesiastical life, seems 
 to be becoming a relic of the past. The reason is, not that 
 Scotland has become more orthodox in the old sense of a strict 
 adherence to traditional creeds and confessions, but that it has 
 become more enlightened and more liberal-minded. What has 
 contributed to this saner attitude in theological controversy is 
 the fact that the sentences of the Church against heretics (so- 
 called) have usually appeared to a later generation ill-advised and 
 mistaken. The heresy of yesterday has tended to become the 
 
230 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 accepted belief of to-day. In 1881, for instance, Mr Campbell, 
 minister of Row, was arraigned and deposed by the Assembly 
 for teaching the universal love of God for man, and the possi- 
 bility of salvation for all. This was, of course, contrary to the 
 Calvinistic doctrine of predestination and election, and the con- 
 demnation was almost unanimous, both Moderates, who in the 
 previous century had favoured liberality of view, and Evan- 
 gelicals, who had usually been keen to harry the heretic, uniting 
 in casting out of the ministry one of its most estimable members. 
 To-day the Calvinist Churches are teaching Mr Campbell's 
 heresy, and modifying their confessions accordingly. The 
 United Presbyterian Church drove from its ministry David 
 M'Crae for questioning eternal punishment, and now the belief 
 in hell fire seems to have become at least optional. Less than 
 twenty years ago the Church of Scotland deposed Mr Robinson, 
 the scholarly young minister of Kilmun, for the heresy of freely 
 applying the higher criticism to the New Testament and publish- 
 ing the results of his critical studies. It was an obscurantist 
 attempt to limit the freedom of theological and historical re- 
 search by a corporate body, many of whose members, by their 
 lack of adequate expert knowledge, were incapable of judging 
 the merits of the work of the courageous and conscientious 
 young scholar. To seek to safeguard the faith by the repression 
 of free critical enquiry is, however, being widely recognised as 
 an untenable tactic which discourages scientific theological 
 study, and renders ill service to the Church itself. A far more 
 famous illustration of this short-sighted policy was afiorded by 
 the Free Church in its treatment of Dr Robertson Smith, the 
 occupant of the chair of Hebrew in the Free Church College at 
 Aberdeen. The young professor formulated and applied to the 
 study of the Old Testament Scriptures in Scotland the historic 
 critical method which seeks to discover their composition and 
 authorship, and freely discusses their contents apart from any 
 preconceived notion of an infallible mechanical revelation. For 
 so doing he was arraigned before two Assemblies, on the ground 
 that his teaching was subversive of faith in a divine revelation, 
 and after a long and stirring struggle (1877-81) deprived of his 
 chair, in spite of the strenuous support of a large minority. 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 231 
 
 The final sentence was a gross blunder, due in part to exigencies 
 of ecclesiastical policy, in part to the conservative bigotry that 
 would not look at historical and critical questions except 
 through the medium of traditional prejudice. To-day, it is 
 certain that no Robertson Smith case would be possible in the 
 Assembly of the Church that condemned him nearly forty years 
 ago. The scientific method in Biblical criticism and the liberal 
 tendency in theology have been steadily advancing in the 
 iaterval as the result, in part at least, of the pioneer work done 
 in Scotland by Robertson Smith. The chairs of Biblical studies 
 in the Universities and the Theological Colleges are now occupied 
 by scholars more or less imbued by the scientific spirit of modem 
 historic research. The same spirit is observable in the current 
 attitude towards dogmatic theology, and its outcome has been 
 a reaction from the metaphysical theology of the past in favour of 
 a modification of creed and confession, and a relaxing of the 
 terms of subscription to them. The emphasis has passed, or is 
 passing, from the dogmatic accretion of Church tradition to the 
 moral and spiritual verities of the Gospel itself. The change is 
 not merely of vast benefit to Biblical and theological study; it 
 is of the utmost value for the religious life. The problems smd 
 perplexities which the old theology had imposed on faith were 
 becoming, in the face of the advance of modem knowledge, a 
 serious stumbling block to many thoughtful men and women. 
 To these theology could have no message and no spiritual in- 
 spiration unless by a change in its method and outlook. 
 
 The Scottish pulpit has been a great force in the religious life 
 of the nineteenth century which produced a series of great 
 preachers in Chalmers, Guthrie, MacLeod, and Caird — ^to mention 
 only these more outstanding names. 
 
 The public career of Thomas Chalmers as preacher, professor, 
 churchman, and social reformer, covered the greater part of the 
 first half of the century. Bom in 1780, he studied at St 
 Andrews and Edinburgh Universities, where Mathematics, 
 Science, and Political Economy engrossed his interest. He 
 acted for a session as assistant to the professor of mathematics 
 at St Andrews, and after his settlement, in 1808, as minister of 
 Kilmany in Fife, conducted for a couple of sessions independent 
 
232 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 classes in this subject and in chemistry. At this period he was 
 a Moderate in religion, to whom the ministry was more a 
 stepping stone to a university chair than a life vocation. He 
 wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopsedia, and published An 
 Enquiry into the Extent and Stability of the National Resources. 
 A severe illness in 1810 and the reading of one of Wilberforce's 
 books led to " a very great transition of sentiment," as he after- 
 wards described this religious experience, which, several years 
 before he left Kilmany for the Tron Church in Glasgow in 1815, 
 transformed the Moderate into the Evangelical preacher and 
 earnest pastor. During the eight years of his Glasgow ministry 
 he attained the climax of his fame as a preacher of impassioned 
 intensity and spacious eloquence, which, however, seems to a 
 later age, laboured and turgid at times. His expansive oratory 
 appealed to an age whose taste for a stately rhetoric was much 
 keener than is the case to-day, and his power to draw and rivet 
 vast audiences of all classes, especially on public occasions, was 
 unequalled. His activity was by no means confined to the 
 pulpit. He put himself in close touch with the teeming life of 
 his parish, and laboured by means of a series of agencies to 
 leaven it by a practical Christianity. He gathered around him 
 a band of devoted parish workers. He organised Sunday and 
 day schools for the education of the children. He attacked the 
 problem of pauperism. He held strongly that the system of poor 
 relief out of the rates was detrimental to the well-being of the 
 people by sapping thrift and independence of character. He 
 worked his parish on the principle of voluntary relief out of the 
 Church collections, and by his organising talent made his scheme 
 a success. He published a quarterly journal entitled The Civic 
 and Christian Economy of Large Towns, in which he expounded 
 and advocated his scheme. The scheme was, however, not 
 widely adopted, and after his removal from Glasgow in 1828 to 
 fill the chair of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews, it did not prove 
 a permanent success even in his own parish. It was, neverthe- 
 less, a splendid tribute to his energy as a social reformer. 
 
 His removal to St Andrews withdrew him from his true sphere 
 as preacher and parish minister into one where his eloquence was 
 hardly in place, though the traditions of academic " eloquence," 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 233 
 
 inherited from the previous century, still prevailed. Moral 
 Philosophy had, however, an intimate relation to theology, and 
 his lectures interested his students. Original or profound they 
 could hardly be, inasmuch as he was no specialist in the subject, 
 as he might have claimed to be in mathematics, and there is no 
 evidence that he really attempted by special, independent study 
 to become a master of it. At all events, he took the opportunity 
 to abandon it on receiving the invitation to occupy the Chair 
 of Divinity in Edinburgh University in 1827. As Professor of 
 Divinity from 1828 to 1843 he interested and influenced a 
 generation of students in an evangelical direction. But his 
 reputation as a theologian has not outlived him, and theology has 
 travelled a long way in advance since his day. His knowledge 
 of even the advance of his own time was imperfect, and his 
 tenure of the chair was distinguished rather by the inspiring 
 effect of his personality on his students than by any appreciable 
 contribution to the theme he expounded. He retained his 
 interest in the question of pauperism, and lectured and wrote 
 against the project of an increase in poor relief, which culminated 
 in the Poor Law of 1844. He had taught Political Economy in 
 connection with Moral Philosophy at St Andrews, and in two 
 volumes on this subject, which he now published, he stressed the 
 importance of applying its principles to secure the moral as well 
 as the material welfare of the people. He adopted the Malthusian 
 expedient of seeking to regulate the growth of population by 
 discouraging early and improvident marriages, raising the 
 standard of living, and postponiug marriage till this standard 
 had been attained. 
 
 From 1834 church extension claimed a large part of his energy, 
 and in the succeeding six years over 200 churches were built at 
 a cost of nearly £800,000, subscribed largely in response to his 
 eloquent appeals throughout the country. This admirable 
 practical activity was hampered by the great controversy which 
 emerged out of the claim of the Church to veto the presentation 
 by the patron of a parish of a minister unacceptable to a majority 
 of the parishioners. The practical working of this claim brought 
 the Church into collision with the Court of Session, to which 
 aggrieved presentees appealed, and which upheld their right to 
 
234 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 induction. To the Evangelical party, led by Chalmers, this 
 appeared an unwarrantable encroachment by the State on the 
 liberty of the Church, and when its Claim of Right was refused, 
 he led this party out of the Church on the 18th May, 1843, to 
 form the Free Church of Scotland. It was a daring, if heroic, 
 step for a man who held so firmly the principle of establishment 
 to take. The controversy, if somewhat intransigeant on both 
 sides, had, however, a vitalising efiect on the religious life of the 
 country, though the rancorous spirit it engendered and main- 
 tained far too long was by no means an attractive spectacle 
 from the higher religious standpoint. 
 
 Thomas Guthrie, who was bom at Brechin in 1808, of which his 
 father was a prosperous merchant and provost, was presented to 
 the parish of Abirlot at the age of 27. He had been licensed five 
 years earlier, and had spent part of the interval of waiting for a 
 parish in renewing his studies at Edinburgh University, and 
 continuing them for a session at the University of Paris. These 
 post-licentiate studies were largely devoted to chemistry and 
 medicine, for the Edinburgh Divinity Faculty had not inspired 
 him with any special interest in theology. For some time before 
 his presentation he acted as agent for the Dundee Union Bank 
 at Brechin. As parish minister of the evangelical type, he threw 
 himself with the utmost zeal into the work of social reform as 
 well as preaching and visiting, establishing a parish lending 
 library and a savings bank, besides a Sunday School. He took 
 an active part on the evangelical side in the controversy in Pres- 
 bytery and Synod over the veto act, and his reputation both £is a 
 debater and a preacher brought him in 1837 a call to the 
 collegiate charge of New Greyfriars, Edinburgh, on the under- 
 standing that an additional church, that of St John's, was to be 
 erected, of which he should be the sole minister. This church 
 was opened three years later, and his gifts as a popular preacher 
 filled it from the outset. It was situated in close proximity to 
 the Cowgate and Grassmarket — the worst of Edinburgh slums. 
 Guthrie was keenly interested in the evangelisation of the 
 masses, and here was a sphere that called for all the ardour 
 bom of a zeal for the Gospel and a deep sympathy with human 
 misery. Crime, drunkenness, poverty, and squalor had their 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 235 
 
 abode among its wretched denizens. He relinquished his church 
 at the Disruption, in which he took a leading part, but hd 
 remained within the district as minister of Free St John's, which 
 was opened in 1845. His eloquence filled it to overflowing, and 
 kept it full. It was of that popular type which pictures, and 
 appeals, and persuades. He had a vivid imagination, though 
 not a profound intellect, and he possessed in a marked degree the 
 gift of illustrating from nature and life the evangelical message, 
 which he set forth with arresting pathos and power. It speaks 
 much for the high standard of his magnetic oratory that it was 
 popular in the sense of attracting all classes. But his influence 
 was far more than that of the popular preacher. He threw 
 himself into the task of grappling with the social evils of the 
 slum parish in which he worked. As a social reformer and 
 philanthropist, he erected a splendid monument to himself in the 
 Ragged Schools which he initiated in Edinburgh, and contri- 
 buted to found throughout the United Kingdom. He saw that 
 in order to make headway against the evil influences of slum life, 
 he must try to rescue the children, to educate them mentally, 
 morally, and industrially, and thus give them a chance to rise 
 above the degradation of home and environment. The object of 
 the association which, with the aid of a strong committee of his 
 fellow citizens, he founded in 1847, was to afford such children 
 a daily allowance of food, to instruct them in the three R's and 
 the Scriptures, and to teach them a trade. Dissension, unfortu- 
 nately, ere long arose in the committee over the question of 
 religious instruction, the association being undenominational, 
 and a split in the movement occurred. The dissentients formed 
 the " United Industrial Schools " in distinction from the 
 " Original Ragged Schools," as Dr Guthrie's were called. 
 Though the adoption of the title " Industrial " was preferable 
 to the objectionable term " Ragged," the split was unfortunate. 
 But the controversy tended to advertise the movement, which 
 was extended, largely by Dr Guthrie's exertions through the 
 Press and on the platform, not only in Scotland, but in England. 
 He strove to obtain the assistance of a Government grant on the 
 ground that the schools were rendering important national ser- 
 vice. As the mouthpiece of a deputation to Lord Lansdowne, 
 
236 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 President of the Privy Council, he showed that whilst each 
 criminal cost the country on an average £300, the cost of 
 rescuing a boy from the slums and preventing him from falling 
 into crime, clothing, feeding, and training him, and thus making 
 him a useful member of society, was only £25. A Parliamentary 
 Commission reported in favour of the scheme, and in consequence 
 of the passing of two acts dealing with criminal and vagrant 
 children respectively, the Privy Council in 1856 gave a capitation 
 grant of 50s. a year for every child being trained in a certified 
 Industrial School, whether the child was committed by a magis- 
 trate or not. Unfortunately, in the following year the grant was 
 reduced to 5s., and by the Industrial Schools Act of 1861, the 
 grant, though raised in amount, was limited to committed chil- 
 dren. Dr Guthrie sought to coimter this backward step by 
 agitating the question and appealing to the public, with substan- 
 tial effect, for funds, and in 1866 a new Act, by giving the 
 magistrates power to commit destitute as well as criminal children 
 to these schools, greatly increased the amount of State aid 
 received by them. 
 
 Drunkenness, he found by experience, to lie at the root of 
 much of the crime and destitution which he thus practically 
 laboured to remedy, and he sought to provide an additional 
 counteraction in the temperance and total abstinence movement, 
 of which he was one of the early advocates. He was a member 
 of the " Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunken- 
 ness," founded in 1850, which did so much to secure the passing 
 of the Forbes Mackenzie Act. One of his most effective contribu- 
 tions to the movement was a series of sermons on intemperance, 
 afterwards published under the title of The City — Its Sins and 
 Sorrows. 
 
 Norman MacLeod, who was bom in the manse of Campbel- 
 town, of which his father was minister, went through Glasgow 
 University between 1827 and 1881 without acquiring any learn- 
 ing worth speaking of. Under Chalmers in the Divinity Hall at 
 Edinburgh, from 1831 to 1884, he felt the inspiration of the 
 teacher. Thereafter he spent a year at Weimar as tutor to a 
 young Englishman, and returned to study at Glasgow University 
 before he was ordained to the parish of Loudoun in 1838. He 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 237 
 
 was at this period an evangelical of the school of Chalmers, but 
 without the zealous ecclesiastical temper that waxed hot over 
 the contentions of the day. He was conscientiously opposed to 
 the extreme course of disrupting the Church, rather than uniting 
 inside it for the reformation of what was amiss by the education 
 and pressure of public opinion. He remained in the old Zion, 
 though he actively sympathised with the policy of redressing the 
 evil of patronage by securing, in a legal way, for the people the 
 right to choose their minister. He felt that the Gospel consisted 
 ia something higher than war to the death between brethren 
 over ecclesiastical polity, and of this Gospel he was an enthusi- 
 astic preacher at Dalkeith after Loudoun, in the Barony Church, 
 Glasgow, after Dalkeith, rendering the while great practical ser- 
 vice ia the rebuilding of the shattered Establishment. Of sym- 
 pathy with humanity he had an overflowing fund. Genial and 
 big-hearted, he was in his element in every class of society. The 
 magnetic himianity of the man crowded his church, and set in 
 motion a band of devoted workers to evangelise his huge parish 
 through Sunday schools, day schools and evening classes, savings 
 banks, and refreshment rooms in competition with the public- 
 house. He talked in the pulpit in direct fashion, with nothing of 
 the studied orator, and little of the laborious thinker. He 
 grew more liberal with the years, and horrified the precisians 
 by his imconventional way of looking at men, things, and even 
 creeds — ^the most jovial of companions, showing a rare gusto for 
 life, tentatively humanising the Sabbath, and even proposing in 
 the General Assembly to abolish tests for theological professors. 
 He made his influence felt in the Broad Church movement for the 
 reform of worship and greater freedom of theological thought, 
 which owed much to the initiation of Dr Robert Lee and Prin- 
 cipal Tulloch. He had by this time outlived the old narrow 
 Evangelicalism. He made an outspoken plea before the Pres- 
 bytery of Glasgow for a freer Simday, which raised an awful 
 outcry among " the unco guid " throughout the land, for which 
 he was in danger of deposition. He survived this distinction, 
 and was instead deputed to visit India in 1867 in the interest of 
 missions. The expedition overtaxed his strength, of which he 
 had hitherto been all too prodigal. He had only five years 
 
288 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 more to live, and his death in 1872 was a national sorrow. 
 Good Works, the periodical which he edited, and the novels of 
 a quasi-religious character which he wrote, made him popularly 
 known throughout the land, and from the Queen, whose favourite 
 Scottish chaplain he was, to the peasant and the artisan, to whom 
 he was familiarly known as " Norman," his loss was that of a 
 friend as well as a spiritual guide. 
 
 John Caird, after a distinguished career as a student at Glas- 
 gow University, became in 1845 minister of Newtown^n-Ayr, 
 when he was transferred to Lady Yester's Church, Edinburgh, 
 eighteen months later. He at once took a foremost place among 
 the preachers of the day, and attracted overflowing audiences, 
 including a large number of students, to the unostentatious 
 church near the University. " Without manuscript or note 
 before him," says the late Dr Macmillan of Greenock, one of his 
 student hearers, " the preacher began by laying out his subject 
 in a manner so distinct and methodical that every one present 
 could grasp it as a whole; and then proceeded to unfold and 
 illustrate it with wonderful freshness and power. Carefully com- 
 posed and committed to memory as was his theme, he spoke, as 
 if with pure spontaneity, the thoughts that arose within him at 
 the moment. Profoundly impressed himself, his words rang out 
 strong and fervent, emphasised by the most appropriate 
 gestures. Standing back from the pulpit board, brushing his 
 long hair from his forehead, his eye kindling with a dusky yet 
 piercing light, * orb within orb,' he poured forth a succession of 
 impassioned sentences which fairly carried you away. There was 
 no pretence, no studied unnatural effect, but the fire and rap- 
 ture of native eloquence. . . . His sermons, which reached from 
 the first, and uniformly maintained, a high level — ^far above the 
 average — were more religious than theologicsd, more practical 
 than devotional. They were distinguished for their philosophic 
 breadth, and their intense sympathy with all the struggles and 
 sorrows and sins of humanity. They ranged over a wide and 
 varied field of subjects. Starting from the familiar evangelical 
 truth, they touched all the experiences of ordinary life, and 
 brought the Gospel into harmonious relation with all that is 
 beautiful in art, and ennobling in philosophy and history." 
 
RELIGIOUS LIFE 239 
 
 He left Edinburgh for the parish of Errol in Perthshire, where 
 he spent the next eight years, devoting himself to study as well 
 as to the work of his parish, which included the founding of a 
 school of domestic economy for the training of girls. Student 
 as he was by disposition, he had an open eye for common life 
 and an intense sympathy with human kind, and his striving to 
 bring religion to bear on practical life found magnificent expres- 
 sion in the famous sermon on Religion in Common Life, preached 
 before the Queen at Balmoral in 1855, which, in published form, 
 carried his fame over the length and breadth of Britain. The 
 result was his translation to the Park Church, Glasgow, in 1857. 
 In the Park pulpit the effect of the years of reading and reflection 
 spent in the manse of Errol appeared in the more profound 
 treatment of the subject matter, and the more restrained tone 
 of its presentation. His was the progressive type of mind which 
 leams from experience, and works its way through revision of old 
 behefs to new convictions. He had studied German at Errol, 
 and had taken a sympathetic interest in developments in 
 theology, and the thought of these sermons was fresher and more 
 independent, if less " sound " from the orthodox point of view. 
 " A certain change," says the late Principal Story, " had mean- 
 while passed on him. The old charm and power were there, 
 but the tremendous oratorical force was restrained. The sermons 
 were read. To the thoughtful hearer they were, no doubt, 
 better worth hearing. They were, as of old, eloquent, but the 
 eloquence was less exuberant, and the substance and the theo- 
 logical tone of the preaching were difierent from the earlier 
 type." 
 
 The ability as well as the power of these Park sermons pointed 
 him out as the fitting occupant of the Chair of Divinity in Glas- 
 gow University, to which he was unanimously appointed by the 
 University Court towards the close of 1862. In him the students 
 found a guide who was responsive to the new currents of thought 
 in philosophy and theology, and was not content, as the Divinity 
 professors had usually hitherto been, to expound to them the 
 confessional doctrine in the conventional manner. He was sus- 
 pect of heresy in " religious circles." He had his own views, 
 as every serious thinker and teacher is entitled to have. But 
 
240 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 no one had a more profound belief in the superiority of Chris- 
 tianity as a creed and a life, provided the creed is a living one 
 and not a mere echo of the conceptions of the past. He held 
 the chair ten years, until he became principal in 1873. As a 
 professor he interested and stimulated his students because he 
 made a fresh start in its interpretation, and thus contributed to" 
 the advance made in Scotland in theological thought during the 
 last fifty years — an advance represented in the Free Church by 
 men like Bruce and Denny. Personally, he was the most attrac- 
 tive of men — sympathetic, whole-hearted, simple, and winning; 
 one whom to know was to love as well as admire. There was 
 only one man in the Church of Scotland in the second half of the 
 nineteenth century who could be compared with him in spirit and 
 thought — the late beloved Robert Flint— ^his superior in the wide 
 sweep of his learning, though less gifted as a pulpit orator; his 
 peer in simplicity and sterling worth of character, and in his 
 inspiration as a teacher. 
 
 15. Poor Relief 
 
 By the beginning of the nineteenth century the right of assess- 
 ment for the relief of the poor, which the Act of 1579 had con- 
 ferred on magistrates in burghs and justices in rural parishes — 
 later transferred to heritors and kirk sessions — was exercised in 
 less than 100 parishes. Relief was given from voluntary church 
 contributions and begging, within certain limitations, was widely 
 recognised as a legitimate means of supplementing these doles. 
 Unlike in England, assessment was the exception, not the rule in 
 Scotland, and the professional beggar was a characteristic figure 
 of social life. The voluntary system which encouraged this state 
 of things was far from ideal. It did not provide adequately for 
 the incapable poor, or for what were termed the " occasional 
 poor," who through lack of employment were, especially in times 
 of distress, unable, though willing, to maintain themselves. For 
 the latter, in fact, there was no legal obligation at all to provide 
 relief. It tended to perpetuate a low standard of life in the 
 begging class, to put a premium on squalor, immorality, and 
 
POOR RELIEF 241 
 
 crime. It might be made a success in the hands of a Chalmers, 
 though, as we have noted, it was not a permanent one even in 
 his own parish. It was a palliative rather than a remedy, and 
 the tendency in the first half of the nineteenth century was to 
 substitute for it in an ever increasing number of parishes a 
 compulsory assessment. In 1817 the number of such parishes 
 had risen to 152, in 1839 to 236, the total amount of the assess- 
 ment being £77,000 odds, whilst the number of persons in receipt 
 of relief, both assessed and voluntary, was 79,429, or about 
 three per cent, of the population. The steady growth of popula- 
 tion during this period, the increase in the number of dissenters, 
 who were disqualified from relief from the State Church collec- 
 tions, and the all too frequent distress of the industrial classes 
 resulting from the recurring industrial and commercial depres- 
 sion, forced upon the Government the question of a revision of 
 the Scottish Poor Law, imder which heritors and kirk sessions 
 were not legally bound to provide for the relief of able-bodied 
 persons in distress, though they might afford such relief at their 
 own discretion. It was, however, but rarely exercised in favour 
 of such applicants. The Commission found that the funds raised 
 for poor-relief and the amount of relief afforded were in many 
 parishes insufficient. It did not, however, go the length of 
 recommending compulsory assessment in those parishes in which 
 it was not in practice, being evidently reluctant to interfere with 
 use and wont. But it advised the establishment of a Board of 
 Supervision at Edinburgh, to which all parochial authorities 
 should be bound to report the numbers and condition of the poor, 
 and the amount of relief given in each parish, and which should 
 have the power to receive complaints and the right of investiga- 
 tion and remonstrance. For the purpose of making these reports 
 and conducting the correspondence with the Board, the authori- 
 ties of each parish should appoint a salaried clerk. In assessed 
 parishes the ratepayers should receive representation on the 
 parish board, in addition to the heritors and kirk sessions. In 
 burghs containing several parishes, it recommended their union 
 for the purpose of poor-relief under a body of managers elected 
 by the ratepayers. It recommended, but did not render com- 
 pulsory, the establishment of poorhouses in every parish, or 
 Q 
 
242 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 union of parishes containing 6000 or 8000 inhabitants, whilst 
 advising the continuance of outdoor relief in cases in which the 
 recipients could be properly cared for. It dealt with the pro- 
 vision of medical relief to the poor, the improved treatment of 
 the insane poor, the maintenance and the education of illegitimate 
 pauper children, the abuse of issuing passes to stranger paupers 
 to enable them to obtain subsistence in the parishes through 
 which they might pass on their way homeward, which encouraged 
 imposition and vagrancy. On the question of applying funds 
 raised by assessment to the relief of the able-bodied poor in 
 times of depression, it decided that this was " neither necessary 
 nor expedient." Finally, it deplored the prevalence of mendicity, 
 and emphasised the necessity of dealing more effectively with 
 this demoralising evil. 
 
 These recommendations were embodied in the Act of 1845 for 
 the amendment and better administration of the poor laws in 
 Scotland. As far as it provided an organised machinery in the 
 Board of General Supervision and the elected Parochial Boards, 
 the Act was a distinct advance on the old system. The powers 
 of the Board of Supervision were, however, too limited, and the 
 lack of compulsory assessment for all parishes as well as the 
 limitation of relief to the aged and infirm poor seemed to err on 
 the side of caution. The necessity of a compulsory assessment 
 for the proper working of the Act tended, however, to acclerate 
 the remedy of this defect, and at the end of the first year of its 
 operation the number of assessed parishes had risen to about 
 450, or more than one-half of the total number in the country. 
 At the end of the second the number had risen to 558, in 1853 to 
 680, and by 1884 to 827. In 1892 the number of unassessed 
 parishes had fallen to 49, and in 1911 to 4. In 1847 the expen- 
 diture for relief and management was £488,915 ; in 1887 it had 
 risen to £899,135; in 1917 to £1,567,621. In 1884 the number 
 of poorhouses was 64. Whilst the expense of relief has thus 
 tended to rise, the niunber of paupers, exclusive of dependents, 
 has tended to decrease. F^om 77,759 in 1871 it fell to about 
 60,000 in 1891. In 1917 the number was about the same. The 
 average between 1871 and 1917 is, however, from 60,000 to 
 70,000, and in 1909 it rose as high as 76,428 — the highest since 
 
POOR RELIEF 248 
 
 1871. During the war years there was a marked decrease, due 
 to the exigencies of military service and the abundance of 
 employment — the number falling from 66,000 odds in 1914 to 
 67,000 odds in 1918. 
 
 The Act of 1845 was modified by the Local Government Act 
 of 1894, which superseded the Parochial Boards by the Parish 
 Councils, and the Board of Supervision by the Local Govern- 
 ment Board. The Parish Council is elected every three years, 
 and the basis of its administration is still the Act of 1845, with 
 certain modifications in detail. The provision that no able-bodied 
 person, though destitute and unable to find employment, is 
 entitled to relief, still holds. The Old Age Pension Acts (1908 
 and 1911), by granting a small weekly allowance, recently 
 increased owing to the increased cost of living, has tended, in 
 some measure, to remedy this defect in the case of those whose 
 age renders it difficult or impossible to maintain themselves by 
 their labour. The establishment of Labour Exchanges (1909) 
 to facilitate employment, the Employers' Liability Act (1880), 
 the Workmen's Compensation Act (1906), and the National 
 Insurance Acts against sickness and unemployment (1911-1914), 
 the out of work donation and the superannuation allowance of the 
 Trade Unions have materially contributed to mitigate the desti- 
 tution resulting from lack of work. The problem cannot, how- 
 ever, be regarded as having attained an adequate solution in 
 virtue of these mitigations, and the demand is being raised for 
 more systematic and adequate State support for the unemployed 
 worker. The Unemployment Insurance Act of 1920 is, in part, 
 the outcome of pressure in this direction. Another sign of 
 dissatisfaction was the appointment of a Royal Commission to 
 investigate once more the working of the Poor Laws and the 
 Relief of Distress. The Commission, which reported in 1909, 
 was unable to come to an unanimous decision. The majority 
 recommended the maintenance of the present system, with modi- 
 fications intended to remedy what they considered its defects. 
 The minority, on the other hand, advocated its abandonment, 
 and the transference of its powers and functions to other autho- 
 rities — the care of children to the Education Department, of the 
 sick to the Health Authorities, of the aged to Old Age Com- 
 
244 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 mittees, etc. In view of this discrepancy, the Government took 
 no special action on their findings, preferring to await the efiect 
 of the Old Age Pensions Act, and other relative legislation on 
 pauperism and its incidental evils. 
 
 The most effective remedy is to seek to eradicate rather than 
 ameliorate poverty — to attack its causes in order to forestall its 
 effects. The dictum of Dr Chalmers still holds, after all the 
 legislative effort to uproot the evil. " If you wish to combat 
 poverty, combat it in its first elements. If you confine your 
 beneficence to the relief of actual poverty, you do nothing. Dry 
 up, if possible, the springs of poverty, for every attempt to 
 intercept the running stream has totally failed." To do this 
 effectively there must come a change in the present industrial 
 system in the direction of more systematic technical education, 
 and of the principle of co-operation, co-partnership, which would 
 lead not only to greater efficiency and greater production, but 
 to the elimination of the hand-to-mouth system on which too 
 many of the workers are doomed to labour and live. This 
 method is less risky and less problematic than the full-fledged 
 nationalisation of industry, which is the Socialist panacea, but 
 which would involve a financial and social revolution which no 
 war-exhausted country is likely to face, in this generation at least. 
 
 However much controversy there may be on the method of 
 dealing with poverty, there is general agreement that prevention, 
 rather than relief, is the only effective remdy. Mere charity, 
 whilst no doubt serviceable if discriminately given, is a system 
 objectionable economically and morally. It tends in far too 
 many cases to sap self-respect and the will to work. Work, not 
 charity, is what the self-respecting and able-bodied man or 
 woman claims, and rightly claims. Every citizen who has 
 fitted himself or herself for a legitimate occupation ought to have 
 the opportunity of earning a living by this occupation, and not 
 be left to the tender mercies of supply and demand. No indus- 
 trial system, taking the word industrial in the widest sense of all 
 work necessary for the maintenance of a complex society, can be 
 deemed satisfactory which does not tend to serve this end, and 
 mere charity, however well organised, can be no substitute for 
 this social obligation. There are over two million people in the 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 245 
 
 United Kingdom in receipt of poor-relief, costing the nation 
 between 16 and 17 million poimds annually. In Scotland the 
 amount is well over 1^ millions. About another 10 millions are 
 devoted to the same object by public and private charity. In 
 Edinburgh alone the sum distributed in charity is nearly 
 £300,000, whilst the sum derived from the poor rate is £95,000. 
 In the United Kingdom there are ordinarily between three and 
 four million people on the verge of destitution. Fully three 
 times this number are estimated to be near, if not below " the 
 poverty line." There is surely something very much at fault 
 with an industrial system that makes this state of things possible, 
 even making allowance for such factors as improvidence and 
 incompetence. 
 
 The workhouse system of relief is also now generally con- 
 demned. " These institutions," in the judgment of the Royal 
 Commission of 1909, " have a depressing, degrading, and posi- 
 tively injurious effect on the character of all classes of their 
 inmates, tending to unfit them for a life of respectable and 
 independent citizenship. Life in the workhouse does not build 
 character up, it breaks down what little independence and alert- 
 ness of mind is left. It is too good for the bad, and too bad for 
 the good." 
 
 16. Municipal Entekprise and Social Pkogbess 
 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Scottish Town 
 Councils were close Corporations, whose members chose the new 
 councillors in place of those retiring by rotation. Only if the 
 elections proved to be invalid were the burgesses entitled to 
 exercise this right, subject to a warrant from the Crown sanc- 
 tioning their meeting for this purpose. In 1817 the burgesses of 
 Montrose elected their council in virtue of this right, and of the 
 warrant of the Crown sanctioning the poll. This was the begin- 
 ning of a movement on behalf of mimicipal reform, which went 
 hand m hand with that for parliamentary reform. The need for 
 such reform was accentuated by the bankruptcy of the Aberdeen 
 Town Council in 1817, as the result of scandalous mismanage- 
 
246 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 ment and corruption. Nearly half of the Royal Burghs them- 
 selves voted resolutions in its favour. The question was agitated 
 in Parliament by the Whigs, and pressed on the Grovemment by 
 Lord Archibald Hamilton. The case for reform was urgent 
 enough, the Town Councils being practically responsible only to 
 themselves. There was no effective outside control over the 
 spending of the public money, which seems to have been of a hap- 
 hazard, in some cases, even a corrupt, character, whilst the 
 sanitary conditions were very primitive, and the police super- 
 vision very inefficient. It was not till 1812-18 that the Edin- 
 burgh Police Commissioners, for instance, who were created by 
 the Police Act of 1805, first undertook the scavenging of the 
 city, and though there must have been some method of cleansing 
 the streets, which were formerly used as common sewers, there 
 is no record before this date of public expenditure for this pur- 
 pose. Glasgow seems to have been equally backward. " It 
 was not till the passing of the Police Act of 1800 that the removal 
 of refuse and the sweeping of the streets was looked upon as a 
 public duty. The cleansing of the city was added to the duties 
 of the master of police or chief constable. No separate stafi 
 was set aside for the work, however, the night watchmen or 
 policemen being entrusted with the cleansing as well as the 
 watching of the streets of the city. Their first attempt in the 
 way of cleansing was to devote two hours twice a week to the 
 sweeping of the street." It was not till 1815 that a separate 
 cleansing stafi existed. 
 
 The demand for municipal reform encountered the strenuous 
 opposition of the Tories, who realised that municipal was a step 
 in the direction of parliamentary reform. It came at last as the 
 logical sequence of the Reform Bill of 1882, in the Scottish 
 Municipal Reform Act of 1888, which empowered the qualified 
 burgesses (the municipal franchise being the same as the parlia- 
 mentary) to elect the Town Councils of the burghs. The Act 
 was the initial condition of the improved and increasingly com- 
 plicate municipal administration of the nineteenth century. It 
 was the forerunner of many others enlarging the powers of the 
 municipal authority and the scope of its activity, such as the 
 series of Burgh Police Acts (whether local or general). Improve- 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 247 
 
 ment Acts, Acts bearing on the water supply, public health, 
 housing, town planning, etc. In the counties the administration 
 up to 1889, when it was transferred to elected County Councils, 
 was in the hands of Commissioners of Supply and the Parochial 
 Boards. 
 
 Improvements in sanitation and housing in burghs were at 
 first entrusted by local Police Acts to local bodies of Police Com- 
 missioners, and not to the Town Councils. It was not till 1833 
 that the first general Burgh Police Act was passed, and not till 
 1900 that the Police Commissioners were generally merged in 
 the Town Councils, though in the case of a number of towns this 
 union had taken place earlier. The Act of 1833 was amended 
 and supplemented by others, notably that of 1862, which made 
 provision for lighting, cleansing, paving, draining, water supply, 
 and public health in burghs, and for the appointment of an 
 of&cer of health to deal with the causes and prevention of disease 
 within the burgh area. Five years later the Public Health Act 
 (1867) established the Board of Supervision as the central autho- 
 rity for administering the Act, and placed the responsibility for 
 its local application on the local authority — the Town Council 
 or the Police Commissioners. It empowered the appointment 
 of a sanitary inspector or inspectors, and a medical ofiicer or 
 officers for carrying out the purposes of the Act. Thirty years 
 later it was replaced by the more comprehensive Public Health 
 Act of 1897, which made it obligatory on the authority to 
 appoint health and sanitary officials. 
 
 In consequence of the application of this complicated legisla- 
 tion, the history of the Scottish burghs since 1833 has been one of 
 expanding municipal enterprise and social advance. We can only 
 attempt to illustrate this advance by some characteristic data in 
 the case of the larger cities, particularly of Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow, which afford an object lesson on the largest scale in 
 municipal social enterprise. Large schemes, for instance, have 
 been carried out for improving the water supply, housing, and 
 public health of these cities. Up to the sixties the water supply of 
 Edinburgh was in the hands of a Water Company, whose concern 
 was rather the interests of its shareholders than the needs of the 
 citizens. After a great deal of contention, the Town Council 
 
248 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 in 1869 bought out the Company at a cost of considerably over 
 half a million, and established the Edinburgh and District Water 
 Trust, consisting of members of the Councils of Edinburgh and 
 Leith. In 1874 the Trustees promoted a scheme for increasing 
 the supply by bringing water from the Moorfoot Hills to the 
 city, which raised the available supply by nearly 9 million 
 gallons per day, the capital expenditure being about £400,000. 
 Twenty years later the growth of the population necessitated 
 another addition, and this was ultimately provided in the Talla 
 Water Scheme which, at a cost of about £1,000,000, gave a 
 further supply from the Tweedsmuir region of 10 million gallons 
 per day, raising the amount to 45 gallons a day per head 
 of the population. The expenditure on the waterworks from 
 1869 to 1919 amounted to a total of £2,882,683. In 1855 the 
 Glasgow Town Council acquired the works of the Glasgow and 
 the Gorbals Water Companies, and obtained powers to draw a 
 supply from Loch Katrine, 34^ miles distant. For this purpose 
 the level of the loch was raised four feet, and an aqueduct, 
 capable of carrying 40 million gallons per day, constructed 
 to a reservoir at Milngavie. Thirty years later another Act 
 empowered the Corporation to raise the level by five additional 
 feet, to raise that of Loch Arklet by twenty-five feet, and carry 
 the water from this loch by a tunnel to Loch Katrine, and to lay 
 a second aqueduct to the reservoir at Milngavie capable of carry- 
 ing 70 million gallons per day. Adding the supply from 
 the Gorbals Works, which is derived from the White Cart, and 
 yields about 4^ millions per day, the city thus com- 
 mands a daily supply of 1141 millions, besides another 2| 
 millions from the Clyde Supply Works for commercial purposes. 
 The total capital expenditure on these works amounted to nearly 
 four million pounds. Subsequent expenditure has increased the 
 amount to nearly five millions. In 1916 the Corporation pur- 
 chased the land in Glenfinlas with a view to ultimately diverting 
 the water of the river Turk by tunnel to Loch Katrine, so as to 
 yield a further daily supply of 14J million gallons. A Provi- 
 sional Order of 1919 empowered it to raise the level of the loch 
 by an additional five feet, and thus proportionately increase the 
 supply. In addition to acquiring the Loch Katrine water supply, 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 249 
 
 it recently purchased the watershed area north and south of the 
 loch, extending to 24,000 acres, at a cost of about £72,000. 
 
 As in the case of the water supply, the gas lighting of the 
 larger burghs was originally a private concern. Since 1888 in 
 Edinburgh and 1869 in Glasgow, it became a municipal enterprise. 
 In the former year the Corporations of Edinburgh and Leith 
 purchased the works of the two local Gas Companies, and placed 
 their management in the hands of a joint Gas Commission. 
 About twenty years ago the Commission obtained authority to 
 construct extensive new works at Granton, which were com- 
 pleted in 1903. The removal of the Edinburgh works from the 
 site in New Street, east of the Waverley Station, at the same 
 time, did away with what was an ugly defacement of one of the 
 finest prospects in the city. Glasgow possesses three works in 
 addition to the two originally acquired by the Corporation — the 
 latest and most extensive being situated at Provan, and capable 
 of producing 16 million cubic feet per day. Exclusive of the 
 Provan works, which are expected to be completed in 1921 at 
 a cost of half a million, the total capital expenditure up to the 
 year 1900 was close on 2 J millions, and has now risen to double 
 this figure. The quantity of coals used per annum was 666,769 
 tons, the number of men employed 8121, and the revenue — in 
 part contributed by the sale of coke, tar, and other by-products 
 — £770,000. In 1920 it had risen to nearly double this sum. 
 Towards the end of the nineteenth century electricity began to 
 supplement, and now bids fair to supersede gas for both public 
 and private lighting in the large cities. Glasgow Corporation 
 led the way by obtaining an Electric Lighting Act in 1890. 
 Edinburgh followed a year later, and in 1895 completed the power 
 station at Dewar Place, to which some years later the M'Donald 
 Road station was added. The total expenditure on these under- 
 takings up to 1920, including a projected station at Portobello 
 which has not yet been completed, amounted to £1,318,629, and 
 the annual revenue, which was only £16,822 in 1896, had risen 
 to £142,735 in 1914. Electric lighting was first supplied in 
 Glasgow by a private company in 1879 for St Enoch Station, and 
 soon afterwards by another company for the Queen Street 
 Station, and in 1884 by a third company for the Glasgow General 
 
250 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Post Ofldce — the first in the United Kingdom to be so lighted. 
 In February, 1893, some of the main streets were electrically 
 lighted for the first time from the Waterloo Street Generating 
 Station of the Corporation, and the demand became so great that 
 it was found necessary in 1897 to erect two new works — one, 
 extending to 4J acres, at Port Dundas, the other, covering about 
 two acres, in Pollokshaws Road. Another indication of the 
 rapid extension of the undertaking is the rise of the number of 
 consumers from 108 in 1893 to over 4000 in 1901, and of the 
 revenue from nearly £7000 to nearly £80,000, whilst the total 
 capital expenditure verged on a million. In 1920 an additional 
 station was opened at Dalmarnock at a total cost of over two 
 millions. The number of consumers had risen to 45,000, the 
 revenue to nearly one million, and the capital expenditure to 
 nearly 4 J millions. 
 
 Communication within the larger burghs was greatly facili- 
 tated by the introduction of street tramways, the running of 
 which was at first leased to private companies. The first trsun- 
 way ia Glasgow was opened in 1872, and in 1876 thirty-one miles 
 of single track lines had been completed. In 1894, when the 
 Corporation took over the undertaking, the length of the lines 
 had increased to eighty miles. By the Corporation Act of 1899 
 powers were taken to extend the system to Paisley, Cathcart, 
 Rutherglen, Tollcross, and Shettleston, and subsequently it was 
 carried to Bishopbriggs, Clydebank, Renfrew, and Cambuslang, 
 raising the total length to 137 miles. In 1898 overhead electric 
 was substituted, as an experiment, for horse traction on the 
 Springbum route, and the experiment was so satisfactory that 
 it was decided to adopt it for the whole system. To this end a 
 high tension generating station — the largest of its kind in Europe 
 — ^was erected at Pinkston, with five sub-stations at the existiog 
 horse-car depots. The total length of single track is now 198^ 
 miles, the total capital expenditure nearly 4 millions, and the 
 gross revenue reached nearly If millions in 1920. 
 
 In Edinburgh a company obtained power to construct tram- 
 ways in 1871, and the system, which was subsequently extended, 
 was opened for traffic two years later. A second company was 
 authorised to lay down cable tramways in the northern district 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 251 
 
 of the city, where the steep gradients rendered horse traction im- 
 possible. Both systems were acquired by the Corporation, the 
 former in 1892, the latter in 1898. Whilst other large burghs 
 decided to discard horse for electric traction, the Edinburgh Cor- 
 poration preferred for reasons of amenity and cheaper mainten- 
 ance to adopt the antiquated cable system, at the same time 
 leasing the service to a company. The total expenditure (in- 
 cluding the purchase of the original undertakings) on this recon- 
 struction amounted, up to 1920, to fully £1,600,000. The 
 system has proved unsatisfactory, and the breakdown of the 
 Edinburgh cable cars has been in recent years a chronic occur- 
 rence. The inefficiency of the system has, in fact, become a 
 byword of reproach to the city, and the Corporation recently 
 took over its working with a view to its ultimate conversion, 
 meanwhUe substituting motor 'buses on certain parts of it. 
 Motor traction by private company is also available on the main 
 routes from the Capital to the towns and villages in the more 
 immediate neighbourhood. 
 
 Sanitation and cleansing, which are closely related, are among 
 the most important of modem municipal enterprises. Under the 
 Burgh Police Acts, the Public Health Acts, the Housing Acts, 
 and, directly or indirectly, many others, the Town Councils are 
 invested with wide powers relative to the erection of buildings, 
 drainage, sanitary conveniences, cleansing, insanitary houses and 
 areas, etc. Five of them — Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aber- 
 deen, Greenock — ^have special police acts regulating these 
 matters. The Dean of Guild Court, consisting of the Dean and 
 two other Councillors, has jurisdiction over the construction of 
 new buildings and the alteration of existing buildings and streets. 
 Other important officials unler this legislation are the Medical 
 Officer, the Sanitary Inspector, the Inspector of Cleansing and 
 Lighting, the Burgh Engineer, the Master of Works. In a large 
 city like Glasgow a number of subordinate officials — assistant 
 medical officers and inspectors of various kinds — is necessary to 
 carry out the work of these departments. The chief medical 
 officer and the chief sanitary inspector are responsible for that 
 of the sanitary department, which has a central staff of 75, and a 
 divisional, which works the five administrative areas of the city. 
 
252 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 of 181. This department deals with the detection and preven- 
 tion of epidemic disease, for which special hospitals are provided, 
 the testing of drains, the sanitary condition of common lodging- 
 houses, of the houses of the poor, workshops, and common 
 stairs, the fumigation of infected buildings and infected articles, 
 overcrowding, the inspection of shops, dairies, markets, slaugh- 
 ter houses, the detection of adulterated food and drugs, the pro- 
 vision of public baths and wash-houses, the supervision of 
 children's playgrounds, etc. The Cleansing Department is con- 
 cerned with the scavenging of streets, closes, and courts, and the 
 removal and disposal of all refuse. The sweeping of the streets 
 is done at night by horse machines introduced at Glasgow in 
 1870, and motor driven machines, and during the day by hand 
 sweeping, the refuse in the principal thoroughfares being lodged 
 in iron bins, sunk at intervals in the pavement. This refuse, 
 along with that collected from shops and dwellings, is removed 
 daily to the dispatch stations. The street sweepings are emptied 
 into trucks owned by the Corporation and dispatched to the 
 country to be utilised as manure. Domestic and shop refuse, 
 after treatment, is also utilised for this purpose, whilst the rub- 
 bish is consumed in destructor furnaces, and the clinker, or fur- 
 nace ash, is sold as material for making concrete. The revenue 
 derived from manure and various kinds of refuse amounted in 
 1919 to over £21,000. The Glasgow Corporation, besides 
 supplying farmers over a radius of fifteen counties, uses a large 
 proportion of the city refuse for fertilising its own farms, extend- 
 ing to about 1,500 acres. This method of disposing of this 
 material, which aggregates nearly 450,000 tons per annum, is a 
 vast improvement on the old system obtaining up to the 
 " eighties " of last century, of carting it to open depots within 
 the city boundaries, where its accumulation formed a grave sani- 
 tary danger. The total cost of cleansing the city, after deduc- 
 tion of revenue, is £262,000. 
 
 The Cleansing Department of Edinburgh employs a stafi of 
 nearly 600. In several " tooms " in the country it disposed of 
 over 100,000 tons of refuse in 1919, including about 4,000 tons of 
 manure to farmers and allotment holders. The salvable refuse, 
 such as waste paper, rags, etc., was sold for about £6,500. The 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 253 
 
 expenditure of the department in the same year amounted to 
 about £95,000. 
 
 Closely connected with the sanitary improvement of the large 
 towns is the problem of dealing with slum property. The 
 problem has engaged the attention of the municipal authorities 
 during the last fifty years, and improvement schemes, more or 
 less extensive, have been initiated with the object of lessening, if 
 not eradicating this blot on urban life. All the large Scottish 
 cities, and even some of the smaller ones, like Perth and Inver- 
 ness, have undergone a transformation in this respect by the re- 
 construction, in part at least, of slum districts. Edinburgh took 
 action immediately after the passing of the Public Health Act of 
 1867 when its first improvement scheme — that of Lord Provost 
 Chambers — was put in operation. The net cost of this scheme 
 was £285,621. Under the Housing of the working Classes Acts 
 of 1890 and 1909 further improvements were carried out at a 
 cost of £215,198, whilst under the Housing and Town Planning 
 Act of 1919 an additional £92,291 had been expended up till May 
 1920 — in all nearly £600,000. Another notable improvement has 
 been the purification of the Water of Leith — ^the stream of this 
 name running through Edinburgh and Leith — which was carried 
 through by a Commission under the Acts of 1889 and 1893 at a 
 cost of £275,945. This- undertaking consists of a trunk sewer, 
 commencing at Malleny in the County of Midlothian, traversing 
 the valley of the stream, and falling into the sea at Seafield, a 
 distance of about 12 miles. It receives the discharges of numer- 
 ous contributing sewers in Edinburgh and Leith, and from the 
 industrial works in the valley. 
 
 Glasgow again affords an object lesson on the largest scale. It 
 was, in fact, the pioneer of the slum improvement movement in 
 the United Kingdom, its City Improvements Act having provided 
 Lord Cross with the model for his Improved Dwellings Act. The 
 Glasgow Act, which called into being the City Improvements 
 Trust of the Corporation, was obtained in 1866. Its objects 
 were expressed in the preamble, which states that " various 
 portions of the city of Glasgow are so built and the buildings 
 thereon are so densely inhabited a.s to be highly injurious to the 
 moral and physical welfare of the inhabitants, and many of the 
 
254 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 thoroughfares are narrow, circuitous, and inconvenient, and it 
 would be of public and local advantage if various houses and 
 buildings were taken down, and those portions of the said city 
 reconstituted, and new streets were constructed in and through 
 various parts of said city, and several of the existing streets 
 altered and widened and diverted, and that in connection with 
 the reconstitution of those portions of the city provision was 
 made for dwellings for the labouring classes who may be dis- 
 placed in consequence thereof." The congested and highly in- 
 sanitary " portions " included in the Act consisted mainly of 
 the Gallowgate, High Street, Trongate, and Saltmarket, and 
 covered about 90 acres. The Act empowered the Corporation to 
 construct new and alter existing streets in this area, to purchase 
 the ground, to demolish old and erect new buildings for the poorer 
 classes, and sell or lease it for this purpose, to borrow 1^ millions, 
 increased by the Act of 1880 to Ij millions, and levy an assess- 
 ment on occupiers for carrying the scheme into operation. The 
 Corporation proceeded with the work of clearing away dilapi- 
 dated and insanitary buildings and forming new and altering 
 existing streets. Whilst erecting two model tenements and 
 several model lodging-houses in place of the wretched private 
 lodging4iouses that abounded in the locality, it preferred to sell 
 the ground and leave the construction of dwelling-houses and 
 commercial premises to private enterprise, and up to 1876 the 
 policy was put in operation with considerable success. But the 
 commercial crisis of the following years practically brought the 
 scheme to a standstill. It was not till 1889 that it took upon 
 itself the task of rebuilding in earnest, and up to 1901 it had 
 erected 46 tenement blocks, containing 200 shops and 1,456 
 dwelling houses, reconstructed old properties containing 842 addi- 
 tional dwellings, formed 80 new streets, and improved 26 old 
 ones, and transformed a portion of the lands in the north-eastern 
 quarter of the city, acquired under the 1866 Act, into a public 
 park (the Alexandra Park, opened in 1872). Not one public 
 house is allowed in these properties. Under the 1897 Act powers 
 were obtained to deal similarly with other congested areas, to 
 purchase a maximum of twenty-five acres within or near the 
 boundaries of the city for the construction of houses for the 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 255 
 
 poorest class, and impose a new assessment on landlord and 
 occupier for this purpose. The realisation of the extended 
 scheme, which resulted in the provision of 520 additional houses 
 for the poorest class, constitutes another landmark in the work 
 of slum improvement and the provision of hygienic dwellings, 
 which has deservedly placed Glasgow in the front rank as a pro- 
 gressive city. " As a type of the modem city," says Mr Shaw, 
 a recent American writer on Municipal Government in Great 
 Britain, " with highly developed and vigorous municipal life, 
 and with complex, yet imified, industrial and social activities . . . 
 Glasgow may well repay study. It combines in itself most re- 
 markably all that is significant in the history of city government 
 among peoples of British origin — that is to say, to study Glasgow 
 is to study the progress of municipal institutions in every stage." 
 Under the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, and the 
 Housing (Scotland) Act of 1919, a grand scheme, drawn up by 
 the Town Clerk, Sir John Lindsay, and a Special Committee of the 
 Corporation, has been developed for the ultimate provision of 
 57,000 houses suitable for various grades of the working classes. 
 Edinburgh and other cities have also put in operation similar 
 schemes. The progress of municipal enterprise on its social 
 side, which we have illustrated chiefly from the cases of Edin- 
 burgh and Glasgow, has also been exemplified by the application, 
 if on a more limited scale, of general or special Acts in the case 
 of the other large burghs. The scope of this enterprise was en- 
 larged by the Housing Acts of 1890, 1900, and 1903, and the 
 Town Planning Acts of 1909 and 1919. Other phases of it is the 
 provision of public parks, of recreation grounds, such as bowl- 
 ing greens, golf courses, and lawn tennis courts, of museums, 
 galleries, and public libraries, of music for the people, etc. In 
 the rural districts much has also been done to improve the con- 
 ditions of life, especially since the establishment of County Coun- 
 cils and their District Committees in 1889, and of the Local 
 Government Board in 1894, recently transformed into the Board 
 of Health. 
 
 The effect of improved sanitary conditions is observable in the 
 diminution of the death rate. In the case of Edinburgh, for 
 example, the rate per 1000 of population fell from 25.88 in 1868 
 
256 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 to 14.39 in 1918. Among children under five years of age the 
 reduction was from 93.29 to 33.6. There is apparent, however, 
 a serious falling oft in the birth rate during these fifty years. In 
 1861 it was 83.4 ; in 1918 it was only 20.0. In the case of Glas- 
 gow the death rate diminished from 29.6 per 1000 of population 
 in 1870 to 16.4 in 1919. Between 1914 and 1919 the infant 
 death rate fell from 133 to 114 per 1000 births. A great deal is 
 being done, under the Notification of Births Acts, 1907 and 1915, 
 to counteract the ravages of disease among children by means of 
 Maternity and Child Welfare Schemes. Edinburgh, for instance, 
 possesses a number of establishments, such as the Royal Mater- 
 nity Hospital, the Hospital for Women and Children, several 
 Child Health and Day Nurseries, which devote themselves to this 
 object in co-operation with the Medical Officer of Health, and 
 with financial aid from the Corporation. Five Child Welfare 
 Centres or Day Nurseries have been established in Glasgow, and 
 two Country Homes have been opened for the treatment of 
 children suffering from malnutrition, rickets, and other infantile 
 diseases. A third at Dalmuir is in course of construction, while 
 there are thirteen centres in the city for infant consultations by 
 four lady medical assistants. For the treatment of tuberculosis, 
 Edinburgh has provided accommodation in the City Hospital, 
 the Victoria Tuberculosis Dispensary, the Victoria Hospital, and 
 the Polton Farm Colony with a special staff under Dr William- 
 son as Chief Tuberculosis Officer, and Sir Robert Philip as Con- 
 sulting Tuberculosis Officer. Glasgow has six Tuberculosis Dis- 
 pensaries, and provides 842 beds in hospitals and 155 in sana- 
 toria, besides defraying the cost of treatment of a large number 
 of patients elsewhere. 
 
 There is still, unfortunately, room enough for farther improve- 
 ment in the matter of housing in both town and coimtry, as 
 appears from the Report of the Royal Commission on Housing, 
 issued in 1917. The congested area in the large towns is still too 
 common. Here is one of the examples in the Report taken from 
 the Anderston District of Glasgow, " in which a whole street of 
 high tenements, with dark and damp simk flats below the level 
 of the street (which is only 19 feet wide) has been wedged into a 
 V-shaped space between two important converging thoroughfares. 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 257 
 
 One witness described this area as follows : — * The sunk flat 
 houses even in a hot dry summer remain damp and unwhole- 
 some. The stairs down to these houses are almost invariably 
 dark and dirty, the passages pitch dark on the brightest day, so 
 that only by feeling along the walls can one discover the doors. 
 The bulk of the houses are of the made-down type, very dark 
 lobbies (now lighter by night than day owing to the Corpora- 
 tion's recommendation that incandescent burners be put on the 
 stairhead lamps). In all these closes the stairs are filthy and 
 evil smelling, water closets constantly choked, and foul water 
 running down the stairs, sickly cats everywhere spreading disease. 
 One street is known as ' The Coffin Close,' so bad is its repute — 
 narrow stairs and dark twisting lobbies, with no light and abso- 
 lutely no air.' " 
 
 The following shows the deplorable state of things in some of 
 the mining districts : — " The ' Miners' Row ' of inferior class is 
 often a dreary and featureless place, with houses dismal in them- 
 selves, arranged in monotonous lines or in squares. The open 
 spaces are encumbered with wash-houses, privies, etc., often out 
 of repair, and in wet weather get churned up into a morass of 
 semi-Uquid mud, with little in the way of solidly constructed road 
 or footpath — a fact which greatly adds to the burdens of the 
 over-wrought housewife. The houses vary greatly in construc- 
 tion, but a large number are of two types. The older is either 
 a ' single end ' or ' but and ben,' according as it has one or two 
 rooms. It has only one door, and the solid back wall is pierced 
 only by the smallest of windows, if by any, so that through ven- 
 tilation does not exist. Many of the older houses show the 
 faults of their class — ^leaky roofs, damp walls, and uneven and 
 broken floors — the last a source of particularly bitter complaint. 
 In addition there are faults not found outside mining communi- 
 ties, the chief being broken plaster and fissures in the walls, 
 where ' subsidence ' has been serious ; while in the worst houses 
 in the West of Scotland, the only place for the storage of coals is 
 below the bed. The impossibility of domestic cleanliness and 
 order where this is the case needs no enforcement. If the 
 workers in a house are on different shifts, the task of the house- 
 wife is complicated by irregular meals and sleeping hours. If the 
 
 K 
 
258 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 pit is a wet one, the miners' soaking clothes must be left at 
 night by the kitchen fire ; and as the kitchen is a sleeping apart- 
 ment, even where there are one or two other rooms, the steam 
 and the gas which are given off as the pit clothes dry are highly 
 injurious to the children, who may be in one of the two large beds 
 near by. In the absence of baths at the pithead, or in any save 
 the newest houses, the miner on his return must take his bath in 
 the scullery (if there is one), or in the inevitable publicity of the 
 kitchen. With this accumulation of difficulties to contend with, 
 the standard of cleanliness and neatness attained in many houses 
 (though by no means in all) is a matter for genuine surprise and 
 admiration. In the numerous cases, however, in which water 
 has not been introduced into the houses, but must be fetched 
 from a standpipe at the end of the row, a high standard of clean- 
 liness cannot be looked for. 
 
 " The dreary and unkempt surroundings of many rows have 
 been already referred to, but a word must be said as to the nature 
 of the outhouses which fill the intervals between the rows. 
 Occasionally there is a properly constructed common wash- 
 house, but in the older villages more often only such makeshift 
 and ramshackle wash-houses and coal-sheds as the miners have 
 run up for themselves. But the chief of these unsightly struc- 
 tures are the privies. In the West of Scotland this often is the 
 ' privy midden,' which has only in comparatively recent times 
 been expelled from the cities, and still unhappily retains its 
 place in the mining villages. It is a large erection, open on one 
 side, where ashes and all other household refuse are thrown in, 
 and closed (though often not adequately closed) on the side which 
 serves as latrine. It is the only sanitary convenience in many 
 rows ; and it is so impossible to keep clean, so foul smelling, and 
 so littered with filth of all sorts, that no decent woman can use 
 it, while, if the children do so, it is at grave risk to their health 
 of body and mind. Another case, one degree less bad, is that of 
 the range of separate privies — one for each three or four houses 
 in the row. Here things may be better if they are well 
 kept, but the difiiculty of keeping them well is enormous; 
 and often locks are forced, and doors may even be 
 wrenched off. These abominations are gradually being re- 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 259 
 
 placed by better sanitary appliances, but in some districts 
 they are still the rule." 
 
 The general housing statistics given are very significant of the 
 widespread shortage of sanitary houses in both town and coun- 
 try, and of the urgent need for amendment. The number of 
 occupied houses in Scotland, according to the Report, is 
 1,041,591. Of these 88,577 are estimated to be uninhabitable, 
 of which 25,908 are regarded as repairable, and 57,669 as unre- 
 pairable and requiring demolition : 55,761 new houses are re- 
 quired in respect of overcrowding and sub-letting. Adding these 
 to the total of those needing demolition, the shortage works out 
 at 113,430. The Commissioners are, however, of opinion that 
 this number is short by 8,000 in the agricultural areas, making 
 the total number of houses required 121,430. Of the million 
 odd houses occupied in 1911, 129,730 consisted of one room, 
 and 409,354 of two rooms, and a large percentage of these houses 
 were not provided with proper sanitary conveniences. The 
 need for improvement is most urgent in the large industrial 
 centres, particularly in those of the Clyde and the West of Scot- 
 land — Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Dumbartonshire, and Renfrew- 
 shire; in the mining districts, especially Lanarkshire and Ayr- 
 shire, and, in a less degree, the Lothians and Fif eshire ; and the 
 crofting communities of the north and west. In the large towns 
 the lack of adequate accommodation has a serious effect on the 
 shrinking birth rate. In the selection of tenants landlords prefer 
 small to large families, and this tends to discourage child rearing. 
 
 In summarising the conditions revealed by the mass of evidence 
 adduced and demanding redress, the Majority Report, with 
 which that of the Minority agrees in many essentials, emphasises 
 the " tmsatisfactory sites of houses and villages, insufficient 
 supphes of water, unsatisfactory provision for drainage, grossly 
 inadequate provision for the removal of refuse, widespread 
 absence of decent sanitary conveniences, the persistence of the 
 unspeakably filthy privy-^midden in many of the mining areas, 
 badly constructed, incurably damp labourers' cottages on farms, 
 whole townships unfit for human occupation in the crofting 
 counties and islands, primitive and casual provision for many of 
 the seasonal workers, gross overcrowding and huddling of the 
 
260 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 sexes together in the congested industrial villages and towns, 
 occupation of one room houses by large families, groups of light- 
 less and unventilated houses in the older burghs, clotted masses 
 of slums in the great cities. To these, add the special problems 
 symbolised by the farmed-out houses, the model lodging-houses, 
 congested back lands, and ancient closes. To these, again, add 
 the cottages a hundred years old in some of the rural villages, 
 ramshackle brick survivals of the mining outbursts of seventy 
 years ago in the mining fields, monotonous miners' rows flung 
 down without a vestige of town plan or any efiort to secure 
 modem conditions of sanitation, ill-planned houses that must 
 become slums in a few years, old houses, converted without 
 necessary sanitary appliances and proper adaptation, into tene- 
 ments for many families, thus intensifying existing evils, streets 
 of new tenements ui the towns developed with the minimum of 
 regard for amenity." 
 
 This summary forms a grave indictment of the failure of pre- 
 vious legislation and the ameliorative efforts following on it to 
 secure adequate social reform in the matter of housing in town 
 and country alike. The Commissioners adduce among the 
 obstacles to such reform " the failure of commercial enterprise 
 to keep pace with housing needs, the failure of the Local Authori- 
 ties, both of town and country, to appreciate the full value of 
 their powers, the rapacity of property owners in their claims for 
 compensation, the persistence of antiquated methods of arbitra- 
 tion, the absence of any definite basis for the assessment of com- 
 pensation, the impotence of the arbiters to check speculative 
 claims, the consequent enormous and deterrent expense of im- 
 provement schemes and reconstructive schemes, the impotence of 
 the Local Authorities to control the prices of building sites within 
 the city or of potential building land in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood, the absence of a direct obligation on any authority to 
 see that adequate housing is provided for the whole community, 
 the inadequate size, area, and resources of many Local Authori- 
 ties, the absence of powers to require combination of authorities, 
 the consequent impossibility of effective enforcement of statutes 
 by the Central Authority, the insufficiency of the Central 
 Authority's equipment, the unsatisfactory status of the Central 
 
MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 261 
 
 Authority itself . . . Both commercial enterprise and municipal 
 enterprise have failed to keep pace with the steadily rising demand 
 for more and better house-room." 
 
 They emphasise the importance of the relation of land to hous- 
 ing. " The question of the land is fundamental. If nothing is 
 done to make it possible either for individuals or for public 
 authorities to obtain building land at more reasonable prices than 
 hitherto, housing reform will be paralysed at the outset. If the 
 methods of compulsory requisition of lands, including land and 
 other property, are not simplified, the exorbitant claims that 
 have already stopped building schemes in the cities will continue 
 to be raised." An adequate remedy is, they believe, only pos- 
 sible with the aid of the State, lacting through the Local Authori- 
 ties. " The State itself, through the Local Authorities, is alone 
 in a position to assume responsibility. . . . Hitherto the Local 
 Authorities, though their powers for the provision of houses are 
 extensive, have, for various reasons, been restrained or have re- 
 frained from using them to any appreciable extent. We are 
 satisfied that it those powers are to be exercised on the scale 
 necessary to realise the programme we have set forth, the Local 
 Authorities must be placed imder an unmistakeable obligation to 
 maintain a continuous and systematic survey of their housing 
 accommodation, to ascertain how far private enterprise can meet 
 the demands, but, failing provision of houses by other agencies, 
 to undertake themselves — ^with financial assistance from the 
 State — the necessary building schemes. Without such a definite 
 obligation, exercised under direction of the Central Authority, we 
 are satisfied that by no administrative machinery known to us 
 can the necessary houses be provided." At the same time they 
 condemn the proposal of the Minority that the State should 
 subsidise employers of labour, landowners, and speculative 
 builders. Whilst assuming full responsibility for housing, the 
 State should place on the Local Authorities that of seeing to the 
 provision of building. They recommend the strengthening of the 
 Local Government Board as the Central Authority by an increase 
 of its direct executive powers, as well as its membership and 
 staff, and emphasise the paramount importance of empowering 
 it to require the combination of existing authorities for all pur- 
 
262 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 poses of public health and housing. They propose to transfonn 
 it into a principal department of State under the designation of 
 the Scottish Ministry of Health — a proposal which has taken 
 effect in the Scottish Board of Health. Another radical condi- 
 tion of housing and health reform is the sweeping away of the 
 one-room house, which is " incompatible with decent or whole- 
 some family life." 
 
 17. Shadows of Social Life 
 
 Inadequate housing is not the only shadow of social life in 
 Scotland. Drunkenness has long been a social evil of very grave 
 magnitude. The poverty, squalor, vice, and crime of the slum 
 districts of the large towns are largely traceable to this evil. But 
 the drink demon lurks in every comer of the land and among all 
 classes, and its shadow is a blot on the fair name of Scotland. 
 Men and even women, boys and even girls, staggering along the 
 streets, shouting, using foul language, quarrelling and fighting, 
 are too common sights — an outrage on public decency, a disgrace 
 to themselves and their country. There has, happily, been a 
 gradual improvement in the general attitude towards this vice. 
 In all classes drunkenness is now regarded as a degradation of 
 both the individual and society. The excess in drinking at dinner 
 parties and other social functions, characteristic of the eighteenth 
 century and even the early nineteenth, is no longer tolerated. 
 The upper classes, which so long set a flagrantly bad example to 
 the lower in this respect, have learned better. What our grand- 
 fathers and great-grandfathers called drinking under the table 
 has gone out of fashion. The drinking bout, in which former 
 generations habitually indulged, is out of date. The public taste 
 no longer provides the atmosphere in which the drinking songs of 
 Burns found their natural expression. Even genius would fail 
 to evoke a genuine response to the glorification of toping and 
 topers. To every self-respecting person drunkenness is simply a 
 form of beastliness. Its injurious physical effects are widely re- 
 cognised and more and more emphasised by medical men, philan- 
 thropists, employers of labour, and the working classes them- 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 263 
 
 selves. Health statistics reveal it as a potent cause of disease 
 and degeneration. The criminal statistics prove conclusively 
 that it is one of the most fertile causes of crime, and that sobriety 
 is the best adjunct of law-abiding. Its baneful economic effects 
 are equally appreciated. It is responsible for a great deal of in- 
 efficiency and absence from work. According to the Report of 
 the Inter-Departmental Committee, if the habit of excessive 
 drinking were eradicated, three-fourths of the distress, poverty, 
 and deterioration in the nation would disappear along with it. 
 The tendency of such facts has been to excite a widespread sense 
 of the gravity of the evil, to discredit the old excessive drinking 
 habit, and to beget a strong public sense of the virtue of tem- 
 perance, and the necessity of temperance reform on moral, 
 physical, and economic grounds. 
 
 Temperance legislation, in its mildest form, in Scotland may 
 be said to date from the Home-Drummond Act of 1828, which 
 conferred on Justices of the Peace in counties and Magistrates in 
 burghs the granting of certificates for the sale of liquor, with 
 appeal to Quarter Sessions, and enacted penalties for breach of 
 certificate. Twenty-five years later (1853) the Forbes Mackenzie 
 Act reduced the hours of sale (8 a.m. to 11 p.m.), closed the 
 public-houses on Sundays, prohibited the sale of drink in toll- 
 houses situated within six miles of a licensed house, and restricted 
 the licensed grocer to selling drink for consumption off the 
 premises only. Subsequent legislation augmented the power of 
 police supervision, restricted the granting of new licenses, em- 
 powered the Magistrates in burghs of less than 50,000 inhabitants 
 to fix the closing hour at 10 p.m., prohibited the sale to children 
 under 14, with certain exceptions, and dealt with the inebriate 
 class. 
 
 In 1896 a Royal Commission was appointed to review the 
 operation of the licensing laws. It reported in 1899, but failed 
 to cpme to an unanimous decision, and the Act of 1903 incor- 
 porated a large proportion of the recommendations of both the 
 Majority and the Minority Reports. It consolidated the licen- 
 sing laws, adding new provisions and superseding old ones, and 
 sought to check, by penalising more severely, immoderate 
 drinking. It constituted a Licensing Court in burghs of 4,000 
 
264 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 and over, and in counties, or districts of counties, as the County- 
 Council might determine. In burghs the Licensing Court con- 
 sists of the Magistrates, in counties of members of the County 
 Council and Justices of the Peace in equal proportions, the num- 
 ber of members varying with the population of the coimty. In 
 both burghs and counties there is a Court of Appeal. Certifi- 
 cates are granted for a year or six months, and are renewable. 
 But new certificates are subject to certain conditions as to the 
 character of the applicant and the suitability of the premises for 
 the purpose. Objection may be taken to the granting or renewal 
 of a certificate by interested parties, and if the objection is 
 sustained, the certificate shall not be granted or renewed. 
 Breaches of certificate are punishable by fine, and involve 
 liability to the forfeiture of the certificate. A third offence 
 entails such forfeiture, in addition to an increased fine. 
 Shebeening, or selling liquor in unlicensed premises, is punish- 
 able by heavy penalties, and persons found drinking on such 
 premises are liable to a fine. Hawking exciseable liquors is also 
 a punishable offence, and the prohibition to sell drink by a 
 licensed grocer to be consumed on the premises is made more 
 stringent. Disorderly conduct on licensed premises is punish- 
 able by fine, and drunkenness by fine or imprisonment, whilst 
 it is illegal to sell liquor for a period of three years to those con- 
 victed four times for drunkenness. The authorities in the large 
 towns were empowered to close the public-houses at 10 p.m. 
 During the war the hours were drastically reduced by special 
 legislation, still in force, with very beneficial results. 
 
 This legislation was due in part to the growing influence of the 
 temperance movement in Scotland. This movement may be said 
 to have started in 1825 with the agitation, on the part of the 
 Scottish brewers, against the use of " ardent spirits," which con- 
 tributed to the passing of the Home-Drummond Act in 1828. In 
 the year following the passing of this Act, Mr Dunlop formed 
 the Greenock Temperance Society. The Glasgow and West of 
 Scotland Temperance Society, in whose formation William 
 Collins, the bookseller, took an active part, followed within a 
 couple of months. Other pioneers were Stewart Morris, Robert 
 Kettle, Robert Smith, Professor James Miller, Dr A. Wallace, 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 265 
 
 and Dr Thomas Guthrie. In 1844 the Scottish Temperance 
 League was founded at Falkirk on the total abstinence principle, 
 and, by means of agitation by paid agents and publication, has 
 carried on an active crusade against intemperance during the last 
 three-quarters of a century. By and bye the churches took up 
 the question by means of their Temperance Committees, and 
 other associations, such as the Independent Order of Good 
 Templars, the Independent Order of Rechabites, the Scottish 
 Temperance and Permissive Bill Association, the Scottish Band 
 of Hope, widened the movement, which has long been a force 
 to be reckoned with in both political and social life. 
 
 A large section of the public, though not adhering to the prin- 
 ciple of total abstinence professed by these societies, sympathises 
 with their efiorts to combat the drink evil, and it was due to the 
 pressure of public opinion that the Scottish Temperance Act of 
 1913 was placed on the Statute Book. A time limit of seven 
 years was fixed before the principle of local option could be put in 
 operation, and it was not till the autumn of 1920 that the voting 
 took place in all burgh and county areas in Scotland. It was not 
 strictly a question between prohibition and non-prohibition, for 
 the electors were given the choice of three alternatives — ^no 
 change, no license, and the limitation of licenses. Practically, 
 however, it proved to be a trial of strength between no change 
 and no license, since the number of voters who preferred limita- 
 tion was comparatively small. Judged by areas, those in favour 
 of no change were in an overwhelming majority — 504 out of a 
 total of 586. For limitation the number was 35, for no license 
 47, or, deducting Dornoch, which subsequently, in a second vote, 
 reversed its decision and voted no change, 46. Judged by the 
 numbers voting, the majority was far less formidable, the total 
 vote for no license being equal to nearly two-thirds of the total 
 vote for no change. Moreover, for the carrying of any alterna- 
 tive it was essential, first, that thirty-five per cent, of the total 
 voters on the roll in any given area should take part in the vote, 
 and, second, that fifty-five per cent, of those voting should record 
 their votes in its favour before no license could be carried. If a 
 simple majority had been the test, the proportion of areas in 
 favour of no license would have been considerably larger. 
 
266 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Counting by individual votes, the result sufficiently shows that 
 widespread dissatisfaction with the present system prevails. Nor 
 can the substantial majority in favour of no change be inter- 
 preted as a vote against reform. It only shows that a large 
 number of voters regarded the alternative, no license, as an 
 impracticable one, and the vote for no change thus did not 
 necessarily imply that no change was in itself desirable. The 
 extreme temperance party in insisting so uncompromisingly on no 
 license, as the only cure for the evil, has itself to blame, to a 
 certain extent at least, for its defeat. 
 
 Meanwhile the problem of drunkenness remains with us. 
 Whilst the temperance party is closing its ranks for a fresh 
 assault in due time, moderate people have suggested various ex- 
 pedients, such as a system of rationing, the substitution of the 
 restaurant for the dram-shop, the elimination of self-interest by 
 the nationalisation or municipalisation of the trade. The trade 
 itself has drafted a bill for the reform of the public-house. The 
 Bill is at least an evidence of the conviction, on its part, of the 
 necessity of reform in the national interest. The chairman of 
 the trade, however, can hardly be said to have made friends for 
 the proposed measure by attacking the churches for the stand 
 they have made in favour of local option. Surely this is a social 
 as well as a political question, and the tragic effects of the drink 
 evil with which every minister, elder, and member of the 
 churches makes acquaintance, in greater or less degree, afiord 
 reason enough for organised action to counter it, though there 
 may be difference of opinion as to methods. 
 
 Connected with drunkenness is sexual impurity, with the re- 
 sultant evils of illegitimacy, divorce, prostitution, venereal 
 disease, and relative crime. Bad housing, which renders decent 
 family life an impossibility in the overcrowded areas of the towns, 
 runs a neek-and-neck race with excessive drinking in nurturing 
 this vice. In Scotland the percentage of illegitimate children has 
 varied during the last sixty years from about 7 per cent, to 10 
 per cent. In 1855 it was 7.88, 10.27 in 1866, 6.21 in 1903. 
 Since then it has averaged about 7.0. It has varied with the 
 district, being highest in the counties of Banff, Elgin, and Wig- 
 town, where in 1914 it was respectively 14.61, 14.27, and 18.41. 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 267 
 
 In the county of Dumbarton it was as low as 4.49. It was 
 larger in the eastern districts, with a more extensively arable 
 soil, than in the western. In the principal towns the highest was 
 9.79 in Edinburgh, the lowest 8.96 in (Jovan and Coatbridge. 
 Taking Scotland as a whole the percentage of 7.29 compares un- 
 favourably with England with 4.8, Wales with 5.4, and Ireland 
 with 2.8. This .unfavourable position is probably due to some 
 extent to the fact that the law of Scotland rightly legitimates 
 children bom before marriage, should the parties afterward 
 marry. The housing of unmarried farm servants of both sexes 
 on the " bothy " system is another source of illegitimacy. 
 Illegitimacy is, however, not a gauge of the extent of sexual 
 immorality. In the towns, where the percentage of illegitimacy 
 is generally less than in the counties, sexual immorality is far 
 more prevalent in virtue of the fact not only that the opportunity 
 of gratifying it is far more abundant, but the means of prevent- 
 ing pregnancy are more easily available. 
 
 Prostitution is one of the saddest features of town life. One 
 cause of it is the bad housing of overcrowded areas, which makes 
 a decent home environment for the girls of the family impossible, 
 and predisposes them to become the prey of the seducer. Another 
 is the inadequate earnings of working girls in many occupations. 
 Alcoholism is an invariable concomitant as well as a cause. In 
 Scotland establishments for this purpose are illegal, and the 
 police are active in the crusade against them. The employment 
 ol women police, started during the war, is a step in the right 
 direction. But prostitution in itself is not a crime. Known 
 prostitutes can only be arrested if found importuning, and proof 
 in the case of immoral houses is not easy. Whilst concerted pros- 
 titution is liable to prosecution, the individual prostitute who 
 lives apart may practice her low vocation with impunity. Fines 
 and imprisonment are not adequate deterrents, and the task of 
 either reforming the prostitute or providing her with a new 
 start in life is a very difficult one. The rescue home is at most 
 but a palliative of what is an inveterate social disease, and the 
 hope of anything like an effective remedy lies in the betterment 
 of the social conditions that tend to feed this social malady, 
 especially of home life and family upbringing in the poor quar- 
 
268 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 ters of our cities, though the evil is by no means confined to any 
 one class. 
 
 Among the evils inseparable from this vice is the widespread 
 propagation of venereal disease, which first appeared in Scotland 
 at the close of the fifteenth century. According to the evidence 
 of the late Sir W. Osier, given in the Report of the Commission, 
 which was appointed in 1918 to investigate the subject, and 
 reported in 1916, " the number of persons who have been infected 
 with syphilis, acquired or congenital, cannot fall below 10 per 
 cent, in the large cities, and the percentage affected with 
 gonorrhoea must greatly exceed this proportion." Besides the 
 horrible physical suffering and misery caused by the disease in 
 its worst forms, the economic loss is very serious. It unfits its 
 victims permanently, or for longer or shorter periods, for work. 
 In the Navy in 1912, for instance, with a strength of 119,540 
 men, it was responsible for a total loss of 269,210 days. In the 
 case of the home Army with a strength of 107,582 men, the loss 
 in days was 216,445. In the case of the civil population, for 
 which exact statistics are not available, the Commissioners were 
 of opinion that the loss would be found to be " extremely 
 large," the civil population not having, at the date of the Report, 
 the easy access to the best modem treatment provided for the 
 Navy and Army. According to the same evidence, the disease 
 is the cause of an enormous loss of child life and of a large pro- 
 portion of sterility among men and women, and consequently 
 materially contributes to the declining birth rate. It is respon- 
 sible for more than half the percentage of blindness in children. 
 Its ravages among the forces at home and abroad during the war 
 were appalling. It can only be described as a plague, and the 
 statistics constitute a terrible indictment of the demoralising 
 effect of military service on the morals of hundreds of thousands 
 of our young manhood. It undoubtedly constitutes a grave 
 national danger, to eradicate which the most resolute measures 
 are urgently needed. The Commissioners recommend that infec- 
 tious venereal disease should form a bar to marriage, and that, 
 if acquired after marriage, it should be a valid ground for divorce. 
 They emphasise the necessity for the judicious and timely educa- 
 tion of the young in the subject, and the extension of free medical 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 269 
 
 and hospital treatment for those afflicted with the disease. The 
 latter recommendation has been put in force by the Local Grovern- 
 ment Board, which, in October 1916, issued an Order requiring 
 Local Authorities to prepare schemes for the prevention, diag- 
 nosis, and treatment of venereal disease. Under this Order free 
 treatment is provided to all persons suffering from any form of 
 this disease. Special agencies of a voluntary character, like the 
 Alliance of Honour, are also engaged in educating public opinion 
 and combating the evil by means of religious and educational 
 influences. 
 
 Divorce is an all too frequent result of sexual immorality. In 
 proportion to population the percentage of divorces for adultery 
 or desertion remained practically stationary for a considerable 
 period before the war. The percentage was one divorce for every 
 170 marriages. The cases tried do not, however, represent the 
 actual amount of misconduct of this kind, since casual cases of 
 adultery are often condoned by the aggrieved party. Irregular 
 marriages far more frequently end in divorce than regular, and 
 those of young persons than those of couples of more mature age. 
 The war has unfortunately led to a marked increase of these 
 cases in both England and Scotland, and the increasing evidence 
 of this unsound condition of family life is very disquieting. Little 
 wonder that it has been the subject of unfavourable comment by 
 some of the Judges, like Lord Sands, whose special duties bring 
 them into touch with this form of social wreckage. 
 
 Another social evil which has become alarmingly prevalent is 
 gambling, — ^the result partly of the lure of the excitement inherent 
 in transactions which have the element of hazard, partly of the 
 desire to make money by fictitious means. Of its extent the 
 Report of the House of Lords Committee in 1902 bears explicit 
 evidence. Betting, the Committee reported, is much more wide- 
 spread, especially among the working classes, than it used to be. 
 The increase has mostly taken place during the last thirty or 
 forty years, and is due in large measure to the growing popu- 
 larity of certain sports, cheap communication by post and tele- 
 graph, the rise of the popular press, and the decay of the spirit of 
 thrift. Statistics of prosecutions for offences against the Betting 
 and Gaming Acts confirm the conclusion of the Lords' Com- 
 
270 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 mittee. In 1914 the number of convictions on this ground in 
 Scotland was 764, whilst statisticians have estimated the present 
 number of bookmakers in the United Kingdom at 30,000, com- 
 pared with 20 at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A 
 large number of crimes of dishonesty and of bankruptcies is due 
 to losses through gambling. The amount of space devoted in 
 the newspapers to betting news is another indication of what has 
 become a sort of mania. It is only necessary to observe the eager 
 hunt for the evening papers, with their detailed reports of horse 
 racing or football matches, to realise that a large proportion of 
 their readers are mercenarily mterested in these, above all other 
 items. It is rampant among all classes, but especially among 
 the working classes, who stand to lose a large part of their earn- 
 ings in its pursuit. Since the war it is said to have greatly spread 
 among women workers. According to Mr Arthur Henderson, 
 " gambling is a greater foe to labour than all the forces of 
 capitalism." Other Labour leaders have spoken to the same 
 effect, and its injurious tendency has been emphasised by compe- 
 tent representatives of other classes. Besides the material loss, 
 betting has lowered legitimate sport, with the exception of cricket 
 and Rugby football, which have escaped the contagion, into a 
 scramble for gain. Other forms of gambling, like card playing, 
 are also all too prevalent, though games of chance, like roulette, 
 are illegal, and in Scotland the law against these and also lotteries 
 is strictly enforced. The Stock Exchange is likewise too much 
 dominated by the gambling spirit in the form of transactions 
 which cannot be called genuine buying and selling, but are mere 
 manipulations for gain at the expense of somebody else. 
 
 The physique of the nation, as tested by the medical examina- 
 tion of recruits during the year November 1917-October 1918, 
 leaves much to be desired. Of every nine men of military age 
 examined in Great Britain, three only were perfectly fit; two 
 were able to undergo physical exertion which does not involve 
 severe strain ; three were fit for only a very moderate degree of 
 exertion, and one was a chronic invalid. In the case of the 
 industrial areas of Scotland physical condition was found to 
 depend less on industrial than social conditions, such as housing 
 and feeding. A very large number was graded low, not because 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 271 
 
 of actual disease, but because of disability arising from some 
 physical defect which was preventable. A general feature was 
 the large number of low graded men in unproductive occupa- 
 tions, such as clerks and grocers. Another was the disappointing 
 physique of boys. Again, the percentage was higher for artisans, 
 agricultural workers, and miners than for factory workers. The 
 Report brings out the urgency of social reform and the import- 
 ance of physical training in schools, and of healthy recreation in 
 the hours of relaxation from work, which are far too apt to be 
 devoted to unhealthy pastimes, such as habitual attendance at 
 picture houses and football matches in place of regular 
 participation in outdoor games. 
 
 SOURCES. 
 
 2. Agriculture. — Statistical Abstracts of the United Kingdom (Statistical 
 Department of the Board of Trade); Transactions of the Highland and 
 Agricultural Society; Ramsay, History of the Highland and Agricultural 
 Society (1879); Reports of the Board of Agriculture for Scotland; Wallace, 
 British Agriculture During the Nineteenth Century (1906), and Farm Live 
 Stock of Great Britain (4th edition, 1907) ; Ritchie, Animal Life in Scotland 
 (1920); C. N. Johnston (Lord Sands), The Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) 
 Acts, 1S83-1900, and The Small Landholders' Act, 1911; Connell, The Agri- 
 cultural Holdings (Scotland) Acts; Landells, "Agriculture in Scotland," 
 Ordnance Gazetteer, VI. (1885); Day, Public Administration in the High- 
 lands and Islands (1918) ; Symon, " Agriculture in Scotland," Scottish 
 Bankers Magazine (July, 1914). 
 
 3. The Mining, Iron, and Steel Industries. — Redmayne, Modem Prac- 
 tice in Mining (1908-11); Dron, The Coal Fields of Scotland (1912); Bone, 
 Coal and Its Scientific Uses (1918) ; Bald, General View of the Coal Trade of 
 Scotland (1808); Galloway, " Review of the Progressive Improvement of 
 Mining in Scotland," Scottish Mining Institute, VII. (1886); Kerr, "The 
 Coal Mining Industry," Scottish Bankers Magazine (April, 1910); Cadell, 
 The Story of the Forth (1913); Bremner, The Industries of Scotland 
 (1869); Lloyd, "Report on the Resources and Production of Iron Ores, 
 etc., used in the Iron and Steel Industry of the United Kingdom," Depart- 
 ment of Scientific and Industrial Research (1917); Journal of the Iron and 
 Steel Institute (1885 and 1901) ; Angus M'Lean, Local Industries of Glasgow 
 and the West of Scotland (1901); Glasgow Herald Supplement (December 
 31, 1912); " The Iron and Steel Industries," Scottish Bankers Magazine 
 (July, 1909) ; " The Scottish Mineral Oil Trade," Scottish Bankers Maga- 
 zine (January, 1913). 
 
 4. Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering.— Pollock, The Shipbuilding In- 
 dustry (1905); article, " Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering," in Scot- 
 tish Bankers Magazine (October, 1909); Macintyre, Marine Engineering and 
 Shipbuilding in Local Industries of Glasgow, edited by A. M'Lean (1901); 
 Carozzi, British Shipbuilding, 2nd edition (1919), published by Syren and 
 Shipping, London; Supplement to the Glasgow Herald, December 31, 
 1912, and other years; " Marine Engineering on the Clyde," Scottish 
 Bankers Magazine (October, 1912). 
 
272 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 5. The Textile Industries. — Dr T. Oliver, MS. communciation to the 
 author, and articles in The Times Textile Number (August, 1913), 
 The Glasgow Herald Supplement (December 1914 and 1915), The Daily Mail 
 Textile Number (August 12, 1916), The Textile Mercury of Manchester ; 
 Hall, History of Galashiels; Pringle, Peebles and Selkirk (1914) in Cam- 
 bridge University Press County Geographies; Valentine, Forfarshire (1912), 
 and Pifeshire (1910); Mort, Renfrewshire (1912) in the same series; Warden, 
 The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modem, 2nd edition (1867); " The Floor- 
 cloth and Linoleum Industry," Scottish Bankers Magazine (July, 1913); 
 British Association Handbook and Guide to Dundee and District (1912); 
 Mackenzie, " The Jute Industry," Scottish Bankers Magazine (July, 1910); 
 Bremner, The Industries of Scotland (1869); M'Lean, Local Industries of 
 Glasgow and the West of Scotland (1901); Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, 
 edited by Groome (1882 seq.); The Statistical Abstracts of the United King- 
 dom, published by the Board of Trade do not give separate statistics of the 
 textile industry for Scotland. 
 
 6. Secondary Industries. — Angus M'Lean, Local Industries of Glasgow 
 and the West of Scotland (1901); Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 
 No. II. (1885), and No. II. (1901); Bremner, The Industries of Scotland 
 (1869); Articles in the Scottish Bankers Magazine on the " Dyeing In- 
 dustry " (July, 1912), and on the " Whisky and Brewing Industries " 
 (April, 1913, and January, 1914); Report of the British Chemical Mission to 
 Germany (1920); Craig, A Century of Paper Making (1920). 
 
 7. Rise and Extension of Railways. — ^Articles on the various Railways in 
 Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland; Bradshaw's Railway Manuel, older editions 
 and edition of 1908 ; Acworth, " Scottish Railways " in Murray's Magazine 
 (July-December, 1899); Hall Blyth, Engineering Work in Scotland, 1864- 
 1914," Preceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1914-15, Part I. ; 
 G. Eyre-Todd, Glasgow To-day ; " The Railway System of Scotland," 
 Scottish Bankers Magazine (January, 1910); Groves, The Proposed Crinan 
 Ship Canal {Ibid, January, 1913); Admiral Sir Charles Campbell, The 
 Forth and Clyde Canal Scheme (Ibid, October, 1909). 
 
 8. Commercial Enterprise The Statistical Abstracts for the United 
 
 Kingdom, annually presented to Parliament; Bremner, Industries of Scot- 
 land (1869); Webster, article on " Industries, Shipping, Trade, and Com- 
 merce " in Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, VI. (1885) ; Bertram, article on 
 Fisheries (Ibid) ; Chisholm, Stanford's Compendium of Geography , II. 
 (1902); Maxwell, History of Co-operation in Scotland (1910), and First Fifty 
 Years of St Cuthbert's Co-operative Association, 1859-1909 (1909); Milne, 
 " Scottish Banking During the Last Ten Years," Scottish Bankers Magazine 
 (October, 1913) ; Barclay, " Trustee Savings Banks " (Ibid, October, 1909) ; 
 "The Fishing Industry" (Ibid, April, 1911); "The Clyde and the 
 Shipping Trade " (Ibid, January, 1912) ; Kerr, History of Banking 
 in Scotland, 3rd edition (1918); " Banking Profits in Scotland," Scottish 
 Bankers Magazine (January, 1910); " Scottish Bank Crises of the Nine- 
 teenth Century " (Ibid, April and July, 1909). 
 
 9. The Scottish Trade Union Movement — Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 
 The History of Trade Unionism (1894), and Industrial Democracy (1897); 
 Howell, The Conflicts of Capital and Labour (1878); Cole, An Introduction 
 to Trade Unionism (1918); Hutchins and Harrison, A History of Factory 
 Legislation (1907); J. L. and B. Hammond, The Skilled Labourer, 1760- 
 1832 (1919); Beer, History of British Socialism (1919-20); Johnston, History 
 of the Working Classes in Scotland (1920). The undue partisan spirit of 
 this work detracts from its value as a history. 
 
 10. Education. — Universities of Scotland Acts, 1858-89; Report of the 
 Commissioners under the Universities Act of 1858 (1863); Report of the 
 Commissioners under the Universities Act, 1889 (1900); Public General 
 
SHADOWS OF SOCIAL LIFE 273 
 
 Statutes; Craik, The State and Its Relation to Education (1896); Kerr, 
 Scottish Education (1910), and Memories Grave and Gay (1902); Strong, 
 History of Secondary Education in Scotland (1909) ; Strong and others, The 
 Education Act, 1918 (1919); Morgan, Education and Social Reform (1916); 
 Grant, History of the University of Edinburgh, (1883); Coutts, History of 
 the University of Glasgow (1909); Maitland Anderson, Matriculation Roll 
 of St Andrews University ; Votiva Tabella in commemoration of St Andrews 
 Qnin-centenary, by various writers (1911); Rait, The University of Aberdeen. 
 11 and 12. Culture and Printing and Publishing. — Scott's Works ; 
 Saintsbury, Sir Walter Scott (1897) ; R. H. Hutton, Sir W. Scott (1878) ; 
 Carlyle's Works; Nichol, Thomas Carlyle (1892); Stevenson's Works; 
 Graham Balfour, Life of Stevenson (1901); Cornford, R. L. Stevenson 
 (1899); Masson, Edinburgh Sketches and Memories (1892); Hepburn Miller, 
 A Literary History of Scotland (1903) ; Gregory Smith, Scottish Literature 
 (1919); James Grant, The Newspaper Press, III. (1872); Norrie, Edin- 
 burgh Newspapers Past and Present (1891); Cowper, The Edinburgh 
 Periodical Press up to 1800 (1908); Dobson, The Ballantyne Press and its 
 Founders, 1796-1908 (1909); Centenary of The Scotsman, 1817-1917; The 
 Glasgow Herald, 1783-1911; The Times Printing Number (1912); T. Con- 
 stable, Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873); Rout- 
 ledge, Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century (1901); D. 
 Murray, Robert and Andrew Foulis (1918); Bibliography — Its Scope and 
 Methods (1917), and Some Letters of Robert Foulis (1917). The author 
 also owes to Dr Murray valuable information on Glasgow printers and 
 publishers, communicated by letter. 
 
 13. Art. — M'Kay, The Scottish School of Painting; Caw, Scottish Paint- 
 ing Past and Present. 
 
 14. Religious Life. — Cunningham, Church History of Scotland, II. 
 (1882); Mathieson, Church and Reform in Scotland (1916); Watson, Social 
 Advance (1911); Kerr, The Renaissance of Worship (1909); Black and 
 Chrystal, Life of William Robertson Smith (1912); Debilius, Das Kirchliche 
 Leben Schottlands (1911); Hanna, Life of Chalmers; Blaikie, Thomas 
 Chalmers (1896) ; Guthrie, Life of Thomas Guthrie ; Smeaton, Thomas 
 Guthrie (1900); Donald MacLeod, Memoir of Norman MacLeod; Wellwood, 
 Norman MacLeod (1897) ; Ed. Caird, Memoir of John Caird, prefixed to his 
 posthumous Giffiord Lectures on The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity 
 (1899); Jones, Principal Caird (1898). 
 
 15. Poor Relief. — Report of the Royal Commission on Relief of the Poor 
 in Scotland (1844); Report of the Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief 
 of Distress (1909); Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, annually 
 presented to Parliament, which contains statistics as to the number of 
 paupers in any given year; NichoIIs, History of the Scotch Poor Law (1856); 
 Erskine, Principles of the Law of Scotland, 21st edition, edited by Prof. 
 Rankine; S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy (1897); Social Evils and 
 Problems, Church of Scotland Commission on the War, edited by Prof. 
 Paterson and Dr D. Watson (1918). 
 
 16. Municipal Enterprise and Social Progress. — Mathieson, Church and 
 Reform in Scotland (1916) ; Hall Blyth, Presidential Address to the Institu- 
 tion of Civil Engineers, Minutes of Proceedings, vol. 199 (1915); " Municipal 
 Enterprises of Glasgow Corporation " in Local Industries of Glasgow and the 
 West of Scotland, edited by Angus M'Lean (1901); Young, Report on the 
 Evolution and Development of Public Health Administration in the City 
 of Edinburgh from 1865 to 1919 ; Brief for Counsel for the Edinburgh Cor- 
 poration in Connection with the Amalgamation with Leith (1920); Sir John 
 Lindsay, Glasgow — Its Municipal Undertakings and Enterprises (1920); 
 Municipal Glasgoio, ofScial publication (1915); Report of the Royal Com- 
 mission on the Housing of the Industrial Population of Scotland (1917); 
 
274 THE NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURIES 
 
 Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (1895); Erskine, Principles 
 of the Law of Scotland; The Year Book of Social Progress, published by 
 T. Nelson & Sons. 
 
 17. Shadows of Social Life. — Report of the Inter-Departmental Com- 
 mittee; Gillies, The Scottish Temperance League, and other publications of 
 the League; Purves, The Scottish Licensing Laws (1903); Chisholm, 
 Green's Encyclopsedia of the Law of Scotland, VII, 2nd edition* (1912); 
 Ileid, The Temperance (Scotland) Act, 1918 (1920); Reports of the 
 Registrar-General for Scotland; Report of the Commission on Venereal 
 Disease (1916); Report of the House of Lords' Committee on Gambling 
 (1902); Social Evils and Problems, issued by the Church of Scotland Com- 
 mission on the War (1918); Report by the National Service Medical Boards 
 (1920). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aberdeen, 13, 14, 20, 24, 87, 89, 69, 
 71, 89, 96, 107, 108, 109, 113, 
 116, 117, 127, 128, 134, 186, 189, 
 140, 142, 150, 151, 156, 157, 204, 
 221, 281, 245, 251. 
 Aberdeen Chronicle, The, 204. 
 Aberdeen Free Frets, The, 204. 
 Aberdeen Herald, The, 204. 
 Aberdeen Journal, The, 16, 204. 
 Aberfeldy, 107. 
 Aberfoyle, 184. 
 Aberlour, 221. 
 Aboyne, 189. 
 Academy, Royal Scottish, 213, 216, 
 
 219. 
 Academy, The Trustees, 52, 216, 
 
 219, 221. 
 Academy, West of Scotland, 221. 
 Acadia, Steamship, 96. 
 Acworth, Mr, on Railways, 140. 
 Adam, Architect, 88. 
 Adam, Denovan, Artist, 218. 
 Addie, Messrs, Ironmasters, 120. 
 Addiewell, 85. 
 Admiralty, The, 99. 
 Advisory Council, Educational, 181. 
 Advocates' Library, 70. 
 
 275 
 
 Aeroplane, 147. 
 
 Africa, 227. 
 
 Agamemnon, Warship, 102. 
 
 Agricultural Holdings Acts, 60-61. 
 
 Agricultural Workers (19th century), 
 
 74-78. 
 Agriculture (18th Century), 3/, 
 
 (19th century), 59/. 
 Agriculture, Board of, 61, 69, 70, 
 
 71, 72. 
 Agriculture, Chairs of, 69. 
 Aikman, W., Artist, 49. 
 Airdrie, 128, 134, 150. 
 Airlie, Earl of, 65. 
 Airship, 147. 
 
 Aitken, Henry, Ironmaster, 120. 
 Aitken, Margaret, 194. 
 Alexander, John, Ironmaster, 120. 
 Alexander, Robert, Artist, 218. 
 Alford, 139. ■ 
 Allan, David, Artist, 51, 52. 
 Allan Glen's School, Glasgow, 176, 
 
 177. 
 Allan, W., Artist, 52, 213, 215, 216, 
 
 219, 
 Allan Steamship Line, 98, 99. 
 Alloa, 14, 107, 134, 137, 143. 
 Alliance of Honour, 269. 
 Alva, 107, 148. 
 
276 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Myth, 111. 
 
 America, 100, 112, 117, 118, 146. 
 Ammonia Soda Process, 119. 
 Anderson, John, Painter, 48. 
 Anderson, Sir Rowand, 227. 
 Anderston, Glasgow, 256. 
 Annan, 194. 
 Anstruther, 156. 
 Anti-Burghers, 48, 224. 
 Applegarth and Cowper, 207. 
 Aquitania, S.S., 100. 
 Arboricultural Society, The, 70. 
 Arbroath, 110, 184, 187, 148, 150. 
 Archery, 88. 
 Ardeer, 87, 88, 122. 
 Ardrossan 89, 148, 151. 
 Argut, The, Glasgow, 163. 
 Argyll, County of, 129. 
 Argyll, Duke of (Srd), 50, 199. 
 Arkwright, 14. 
 Army, Salvation, 225. 
 Art Club, Glasgow, 221. 
 Art Galleries, 221. 
 Art, Scottish, 48/, 213/. 
 Art Union (Glasgow), 221. 
 Ashley, Lord (Shaftesbury), 82. 
 Atholl, Duke of, 10. 
 Atlantic, The, 96, 97, 144, 146, 147. 
 Auchterarder, 68. 
 Auchtermuchty, 111. 
 Auld, Mr, of Bridgend, 65. 
 Australia, 147. 
 Australia, Warship, 102. 
 Aviemore, 140, 141. 
 Avonbridge, 182. 
 Axminster Carpet, 108. 
 Ayr, 14, 19, 20, 82, 88, 87, 107, 
 108, 118, 184, 187, 188, 148, 150. 
 Ayr Advertiser, The, 204. 
 Ayrshire Dockyard Shipbuilding 
 Coy., 108. 
 
 Babcock & Wilcox, 99. 
 
 Badenoch, 171. 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, 39. 
 
 Baird & Co., 87, 120. 
 
 Baker, Sir Benjamin, Engineer, 185. 
 
 Bald, Mr, on Mining, 81. 
 
 Balfour, Mr, Designer, 112. 
 
 Ballachulish, 137. 
 
 Ballantine, Mr, Glass Painter, 180. 
 
 Ballantyne, H., Manufacturer, 105. 
 
 Ballantyne Press, The, 209. 
 
 Ballantynes, The, Printers, 192, 193, 
 
 201, 205, 208. 
 Ballater, 139. 
 Balloch, 184. 
 Ballochney Railway, 132. 
 Baltic Trade, 19, 20, 157, 158. 
 Banchory, 139. 
 Banff, 18, 65, 129, 139, 266. 
 Banffshire Journal, The, 204. 
 Bank, Ayr, 21. 
 Bank, British Linen, 21. 
 Bank, City of Glasgow, 154, 155, 165. 
 Bank, Edinburgh and Glasgow, 154. 
 Bank, Glasgow Arms, 21. 
 Bank of Scotland, 21. 
 Bank, Royal, 21. 
 Bank, The Western, 154. 
 Bankers, Scottish, Magazine, 86, 
 
 153, 155. 
 Banking Company, Caithness, 153. 
 Banking Company, Fife, 158. 
 Banking Company, Perth, 21. 
 Banking Company, Stirling, 153. 
 Banking, Scottish, Statistics, 155- 
 
 156. 
 Banks, Post Office Saving, 156. 
 Banks, Saving, 156. 
 Bannockburn, 107, 108, 148. 
 
INDEX 
 
 277 
 
 Barclay, Capt., of Ury, 64. 
 
 Barclay, Curie & Co., Shipbuilders, 
 103. 
 
 Barham, Warship, 102. 
 
 Barony Church, Glasgow, 237. 
 
 Barry, Ostlere & Shepherd, Lino- 
 leum Makers, 118. 
 
 Bathgate, 85, 184. 
 
 Baxter, Messrs, Dundee, 110. 
 
 Beardmore & Co., 92) 100, 102, 108. 
 
 Beardmore, Mr, Engineer, 91. 
 
 Beattock, 136. 
 
 Begg, Dr, 224. 
 
 Begging, 54-56. 
 
 Beilby, Mr, Chemist, 121. 
 
 Belfast, 95, 103, 111. 
 
 Bell and Bradfute, Booksellers, 205. 
 
 Bell, Builder of Comet, 95. 
 
 Bell, Graham, 146. 
 
 Bell, Mr, Glasgow, Inventor, 15. 
 
 Bell, Rev. Patrick, Inventor, 67. 
 
 Beltane, S3. 
 
 Benbow, Warship, 102. 
 
 Bentham, J., 162. 
 
 Berthollet, French Chemist, 13. 
 
 Bertram, Messrs, Engineers, 128. 
 
 Bervie, 134. 
 
 Berwick, 134, 135, 136. 
 
 Berwick, Warship, 102. 
 
 Berwickshire, 75. 
 
 Bessemer Steel Process, 91. 
 
 Birmingham, 19, 27. 
 
 Bishopbriggs, 250. 
 
 Black, A. & C, Publishers, 206. 
 
 Black, Joseph, Chemist, 25-27, 38. 
 
 Blackie & Son, Publishers, 212. 
 
 Blackie, John, Lord Provost of 
 Glasgow, 212. 
 
 Blackwood, W., 205, 207. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 191, 201. 
 
 Blair, Hugh, 88, 40. 
 
 Blairgowrie, 68, 111, 127, 187. 
 
 Blake, James, Weaver, 111. 
 
 Blochaim Steel Works, 91. 
 
 Board of Trade Journal, 125. 
 
 Boat of Garten, 139. 
 
 Boghead, 85. 
 
 Bonar Bridge, 140. 
 
 " Bondage," " Bonnage," 5. 
 
 Bo'ness, 17, 20, 27, 88, 94, 184, 143. 
 
 Bonnar, D., Linen Weaver, 111. 
 
 Bonnybridge, 122. 
 
 Bonnymuir, 163. 
 
 Bonnyrig, 107. 
 
 Book of Common Order, The, 228. 
 
 Booth, John, 204. 
 
 Boston's Fourfold State, 40. 
 
 Bough, Sam, Artist, 218. 
 
 Boulton, M., 27-28. 
 
 Bowling, near Glasgow, 19. 
 
 Bradford Dyers' Association, 125. 
 
 Brandon, S.S., 98. 
 
 Braxfield, Lord, 199. 
 
 Brechin, 110, 111, 187, 148, 234. 
 
 Brewing Industry, 128-129. 
 
 Bridgeton, Glasgow, 118. 
 
 Britannia, Steamship, 96. 
 
 Britannic, The, Steamship, 95. 
 
 British Association, The, 146. 
 
 British Chemical Mission, Report, 
 
 125. 
 British India Steam Navigation Co., 
 
 99. 
 British Linen Company, 12. 
 Brock, Mr, Marine Engineer, 99. 
 Broomielaw, The, 20, 96. 
 Brougham, Lord, 200. 
 Brown, Crum, Prof., 84. 
 Brown, The Messrs, Shipbuilders, 
 
 92, 99, 101-102, 103. 
 Broxburn, 84, 85. 
 Bruce, Dr, 240. 
 
278 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bruce, King R., Portrait of, 215. 
 
 Bruce, Mrs, of Arnot, 50. 
 
 Bruce, Sir Robert, Editor, 203. 
 
 Brussells Carpet, 108. 
 
 Bryson, James, 66. 
 
 Buchan, 139. 
 
 Buchanan, Dr, 222. 
 
 Buchanan, Mr, Manufacturer, 116. 
 
 Buckle, Mr, 89. 
 
 Bulletin, The, 203. 
 
 Bumby, Henry, on Bye-Products, 
 
 120. 
 Burghers, The, 48, 224. 
 ^ Burnet, John, Artist, 215. 
 Burnet, Mrs, 51. 
 Burns, John, 167, 168. 
 Burns, R., 83, 39, 40, 43-44, 45, 51. 
 
 217. 
 Burntisland, 83, 84, 148, 151. 
 Burt, Capt., 217. 
 Burt, Th., 167. 
 Byron, Lord, 217. 
 
 Cadder, 148. 
 
 Cadell, Mr, Carron Works, 87. 
 Cadell, Mr, on Oil Shale, 84-86. 
 Caird & Co., Shipbuilders, 108. 
 Caird, John, 228, 288-240. 
 Caldercruix, 128. 
 Calder Ironworks, 86, 87. 
 Calderwood Estate, 149. 
 Caledonia, Steamship, 96. 
 Caledonian Canal, 148-144. 
 Caledonian Mercury, The, 6, 201. 
 Caledonian Railway Works, St Rol- 
 
 lox, 93. 
 Cambusbarren, 107. 
 Cambuslang, 250. 
 
 Cameron, Mr, Artist, 218. 
 Cameron, Richard, Printer, 203. 
 Cameronians, The, 47. 
 Camlachie, 212. 
 
 Camlachie Chemical Works, 121. 
 Campania, S.S., 97. 
 Campbell, Alex., 149, 165, 166. 
 Campbell, Messrs, Dyers, 124. 
 Campbell, Mrs Jas., Portrait of, 53. 
 Campbell, Mr, Minister of Row, 
 
 230. 
 Campbelltown, 12, 95, 99, 156, 236. 
 Campsie, 121. 
 Candlish, Dr, 222. 
 Carlisle, 184, 186, 138. 
 Carluke, 127. 
 
 Carlyle, Dr, Inveresk, 33, 39, 46-47. 
 Carlyle, James, 194. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 190, 194/. 
 Carmania, S.S., 99. 
 Carnarvon, Warship, 102. 
 Carnbroe, 87. 
 Carnegie Trust Universities, 187, 
 
 188. 
 Carriden, 17. 
 
 Carrington, Lord, Portrait of, 49. 
 Carron Iron Works, 18-19, 23, 89-90. 
 Cartvale Chemical Works, 121. 
 Cartwright, 14. 
 
 Cassel Gold Extracting Co., 121. 
 Castle-Douglas, 138. 
 Cathcart, 250. 
 Catrine Cotton Mills, 116. 
 Cattle-Breeding, 64-65. 
 Caw, Mr, 48, 51, 58, 218, 219. 
 Central Station, Glasgow, 187. 
 Chalmers, Dr, 222, 223, 281-234, 236, 
 
 241, 244. 
 Chalmers, McGregor, 227. 
 Chalmers, Mr, Artist, 218. 
 Chalmers, Mr, Missionary, 227. 
 
INDEX 
 
 279 
 
 Chambers Brothers, 205. 
 
 Chambers's Journal, 201. 
 
 Chambers, Lord Provost, 253. 
 
 Chancelot Flour Mills, 149. 
 
 Charlotte Dundas, The, 28, 94, 95. 
 
 Chapman & Duncan, Printers, 212. 
 
 Chapman, J., Ironmaster, 120. 
 
 Charles I., 228. 
 
 Chemical and Dyestuffs Traders' 
 Association, 126. 
 
 Chemical Industry, 119/. 
 
 China, 227. 
 
 China, Screw Steamship, 97. 
 
 Christie, J. S., Artist, 218. 
 
 Church of Scotland, 222/. 
 
 Church Service Society, 228, 229. 
 
 Citizen, The, 204. 
 
 City of Glasgow, Steamship, 97. 
 
 City of New York, S.S., 97. 
 
 City of Paris, S.S., 97. 
 
 City of Manchester, Steamship, 97. 
 
 Clackmannan, 83. 
 
 Clark & Co., Messrs, Thread Manu- 
 facturers, 117. 
 
 Clark, Patrick, Thread Manufac- 
 turer, 117. 
 
 Clark, R. & R., Printers, 207. 
 
 Clark, T. & T., Publishers, 206. 
 
 Clerk, Sir John, Patron of Art, 51. 
 
 Clerk, Sir John, Portrait of, 49, 50. 
 
 Clermont, The, 95. 
 
 Clippens Oil Company, 84. 
 
 Clydebank, 99, 122, 250. 
 
 Clyde Ironworks, 87. 
 
 Clyde, The, 20, 23, 93/, 182, 144, 
 156, 165. 
 
 Clyde Trustees, 95. 
 
 Clyde Water Works, 248. 
 
 Clynes, J. L., 169. 
 
 Coal Miners, Condition of, 18. 
 
 Coal Mines Regulation Act, 79. 
 
 Coal Mining (18th century), 17-18, 
 {19th century), 79-83. 
 
 Coatbridge, 87, 90, 91, 120, 184, 150, 
 151, 267. 
 
 Coats, James, Thread Manufacturer, 
 117. 
 
 Coats, J. & P., Thread Manufac- 
 turers, 117. 
 
 Cockburn, Adam, 3, 4, 9. 
 
 Cockbum, John, 3, 4. 
 
 Cockburn, Lord, 153, 213, 220. 
 
 Cockburn, Mrs, 39. 
 
 Cockenzie, 182. 
 
 Collins & Company, Publishers, 
 212. 
 
 Collins, W., Lord Provost of Glas- 
 gow, 212. 
 
 Colquhoun, Sir James, 70. 
 
 Coltness, 87, 184. 
 
 Columbia, Steamship, 96, 97. 
 
 Colville, David, & Co., 92. 
 
 Combination Acts, 161. 
 
 Commerce (18th century), 12-13, 
 (19th), 145/. 
 
 Commercial Crises, 152-155. 
 
 Commercial Enterprise, 145/. 
 
 Commissioners of Supply, 247. 
 
 Communion, Celebration of, 45-46. 
 
 Confession of Faith, 178. 
 
 Congested Districts Board, 74. 
 
 Connell, Messrs, Printers, 103. 
 
 Connell, Sir Isaac, 60-61. 
 
 Conqueror, Warship, 102. 
 
 Conservative Party, 168. 
 
 Constable, A., 201, 205, 206. 
 
 Constable, T. & A., Printers, 207. 
 
 Cooper, C. A., Editor, 201. 
 
 Co-operative Movement, 148-150. 
 
 Corn Law, 59. 
 
 Cornish Stone, 131. 
 
 Cotton Industry (18th century), 15, 
 
280 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cotton Industry, The (19th cen- 
 tury), 116-118. 
 
 Cotton Patent Frames, 108. 
 
 County Councils, 247, 255, 264. 
 
 Coupar-Angus, 111, 12'!'. 
 
 Coutts & Co., Bankers, 21. 
 
 Cox, David, Portrait of, 218. 
 
 Craig, James, Architect, 22. 
 
 Craigellachie, 139. 
 
 Craik Scale, The, 180. 
 
 Craik, Sir Henry, 176. 
 
 Cramond, 123. 
 
 Crawfordsdyke, 24. 
 
 Creech, Mr, Bookseller, 205. 
 
 Crieff, 31, 63, 127, 137. 
 
 Crime (18th century), 55-57. 
 
 " Crimean Hero Table Cloth," 112. 
 
 Crinan Canal, 143. 
 
 Croal, J. P., Editor, 201. 
 
 Crofters' Act, 73. 
 
 Crofters' Commission, The, 73-74. 
 
 Crofthead Cotton Mill, 117. 
 
 Crombie, Messrs, Manufacturers, 
 107. 
 
 Crompton, 14. 
 
 Cross, Mr, Home Secretary, 167, 
 253. 
 
 Cruden Bay, 139. 
 
 Cruickshank, Mr, of Sittyton, 64. 
 
 CuUen, W., 88. 
 
 CuUoden, Battle of, I, 204. 
 
 Cults. 214. 
 
 Cumnock, 138. 
 
 Curling (18th century), 183. 
 
 Cunard Steamship Co., 96, 97, 98, 
 99. 
 
 Cunningham, Dr, 222. 
 
 Cunningham, Mr, Correspondent of 
 Burns, 44. 
 
 Cupar-Fife, 111, 116. 
 
 Currency Act (1765), 21. 
 
 D 
 
 Daily Review, The, 202. 
 
 Dale, David, 15. 
 
 Dalkeith, 14, 47, 89, 107, 134, 237. 
 
 Dalmamock, 250. 
 
 Dalmellington, 87, 138. 
 
 Dalmeny, 86. 
 
 Dalmuir, 100, 102, 256. 
 
 Dalyell, Sir John G., 67. 
 
 Darvel, 148. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphrey, 80. 
 
 Day Industrial Schools Act (1893), 
 
 175. 
 Deaf and Dumb Schools, 175. 
 Dean of Guild Court, 251. 
 Deanston, Mr, Inventor, 117. 
 Dee, Shipbuilding on, 103. 
 Denny, Principal, 240. 
 Denny, W., 95, 98, 99, 102, 103. 
 Destitution Boards, 73. 
 Deuchar, David, Etcher, 53. 
 De Wett, Artist, 49. 
 Dick, Dr, Physicist, 24. 
 Dick Veterinary College, 71. 
 Dieppe, 181. 
 Diesel Engine, 100. 
 Dilettante Society, 221. 
 Dingwall, 140. 
 Disruption, The (1843), 172, 222-223, 
 
 233-284. 
 Distilling Industry, 129. 
 Divorce, 269. 
 " Dixon's Blazes," 88. 
 Dolphinton, 137. 
 Donald, Milne, Artist, 218. 
 Donaldson, Alex., 16. 
 Donaldson, James, 16, 201, 205. 
 Donaldson's Hospital, 16. 
 Dornoch, 55. 
 Dorset Clay, 181. 
 
INDEX 
 
 281 
 
 Douglas, Sir Fettes, Artist, 216, 217. 
 Dowanhill R.C. Training College, 
 
 182. 
 Drem, 100. 
 Drummochter, 141. 
 Drumsheugh, 111. 
 Drunkenness, 262/. 
 Dublin, 95. 
 
 Duddingston, 128, 184, 217. 
 Dumbarton, 83, 95, 98, 99, 100. 
 Dumfries, 14, 68, 107, 186, 138. 
 Dumfries Standard, The, 204. 
 Dunbar, 14. 
 
 Dunblane Cathedral, 227. 
 Duncan, Messrs, Printers, 212. 
 
 Duncan, Mr, Secretary, Farm Ser- 
 vants' Union, 77-78. 
 
 Duncan, R., Shipbuilder, 96, 103. 
 
 Duncan, Th., Artist, 216. 
 
 Dundas, Henry, 2, 200. 
 
 Dundas, Lord, 28. 
 
 Dundas, Port, 250. 
 
 Dundee, 20, 23, 71, 89, 95, 110, 111, 
 118, 115, 126, 127, 128, 184, 135, 
 136, 187, 142, 150, 151, 157, 204, 
 221, 251. 
 
 Dundee Advertiser, The, 204. 
 
 Dundee Courier, The, 204. 
 
 Dunfermline, 17, 109, 111-112, 118, 
 134, 150, 227. 
 
 Dunkeld, 140, 141. 
 
 Dunlop, Mr, Temperance Reformer, 
 264. 
 
 Dyce, 139. 
 
 Dyeing Industry, The, 123/. 
 
 Dysart, 20, 111. 
 
 E 
 
 Earlston, 107. 
 Ecclefechan, 194. 
 
 Edinburgh, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 
 30. 31, 87, 38, 39, 48, 49/, 55, 
 67, 69, 70, 84, 89, 107, 108, 109, 
 111, 113, 123, 127, 128, 129, 134, 
 135, 136, 137, 188, 142, 150, 151, 
 165, 166, 176, 202, 211, 219, 221, 
 222, 225, 226, 227, 231, 234, 235, 
 241, 247/. 
 Edinburgh Advertiser, The, 16, 201. 
 Edinburgh and Leith Gas Com- 
 mission, 249. 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow Canal, 138. 
 Edinburgh Cleansing Organisation, 
 
 252-253. 
 Edinburgh College of Art, 221. 
 Edinburgh Electric Lighting, 249. 
 Edinburgh Gazette, The, 16. 
 Edinburgh Improvement Schemes, 
 
 258. 
 Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, 201. 
 Edinburgh Review, The, 191, 200, 
 
 201. 
 Edinburgh Town Council, 221, 247/. 
 Edinburgh Tramways, 250-251. 
 Edinburgh Water Trust, 247-248. 
 Edinburgh Weekly Journal, The, 
 
 16, 201. 
 Edison, Mr, 146. 
 Edmondston & Douglas, Publishers, 
 
 206. 
 Education {18th century), 35-38, 
 
 (19th century), 170/. 
 Education Act (1698), 171. 
 Education Act (1861), 173, 174. 
 Education Act (1872), 173/. 
 Education Acts (1901, 1908, 1918), 
 
 178/. 
 Education Authorities, 180, 181. 
 Education Commission (1867), 173. 
 Education Committee, Church of 
 Scotland, 172. 
 
282 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Education Committee, Free Church 
 
 o£ Scotland, 172. 
 Educational Institute, 180. 
 Education, Value of, 188-190. 
 Eglinton Ironworks, 87. 
 Eglinton Chemical Coy., 119. 
 Eglinton, Countess of, 9. 
 Elder, John, Marine Engineer, 98, 
 
 99. 
 Elder, Mrs, 186. 
 
 Elgin, 14, 107, 129, 139, 140, 266. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 159. 
 Elliot, Mr, Bookseller, 205. 
 Elliot, Mrs, 89. 
 Ellon, 189. 
 Employers and Workmen Acts, 167, 
 
 248. 
 Encyclopasdia Britannica, 206. 
 Encyclopaedia, Edinburgh, 282. 
 England, 146, 147, 153. 
 English Revised Code (1861), 178. 
 Episcopalians, 44-45. 
 Errol, 289. 
 Erskine, Dr, 226. 
 Erskine, Henry, 39, 58. 
 Erskine, John, 89. 
 Erskines, The, Dissenters, 47. 
 Ettrick Tweed Mills, 149. 
 Evangelical Party, 47. 
 Evening Courant, The, 16, 201, 
 
 202. 
 Evening Dispatch, The, 202. 
 Evening Newt, The (Edinburgh), 
 
 202. 
 Evening Newi, The (Glasgow), 
 
 204. 
 Evening Times, The, 208. 
 Exhibition (1862), 106. 
 Exhibition (1851), 208. 
 Exhibition, Paris (1868), 108; (1801), 
 
 111. 
 
 Exports (18th century), 20-21, (19th), 
 
 151. 
 Eyemouth, 156. 
 
 Faed, Th., Artist, 215. 
 
 Fairfield Shipbuilding Co., 98, 100, 
 
 102, 103. 
 Fairy Queen, The, 96. 
 Falkland, 111. 
 Falkirk, 19, 121, 122, 150. 
 Falkirk Ironworks, 89-90. 
 Falmouth, Warship, 102. 
 Farm Servants' Union, 77-78. 
 Faskine, 96. 
 Eastern's E'en, 37. 
 Fen wick, 148. 
 Fergusson, Adam, 46. 
 Fergusson, Robert, 89. 
 Ferrie, W., Monkland Ironworks, 
 
 120. 
 Fife, 15, 19, 82, 83, 87, 109, 111, 113. 
 Fife Herald, The, 204. 
 Fife Linoleum Company, 113. 
 Findlater, Lord, 10. 
 Findlay, J. R., 202, 221. 
 Fine Arts, Chair of, Edinburgh, 222. 
 Fine Arts Commission, 180. 
 " Finnan Haddies," 157. 
 Fisher, Lord, 100. 
 Fisherrow, 184. 
 Fishery Board, 156. 
 Fishery Commissioners, 156. 
 Fishing Industry (18th century), 
 
 12, 88; (19th century), 156-158. 
 Fisken, Messrs, 68. 
 Fletcher of Saltoun, 54. 
 Flint, Robert, 223, 240. 
 Flour Milling, 128. 
 Fontainebleau, 129. 
 
INDEX 
 
 288 
 
 Forbes Mackenzie Act, 236, 263. 
 
 Forbes, W., Professor of Law, 55. 
 
 Ford, Mr, Glassmaker, 180. 
 
 Ford, Mr, Manufacturer, 110. 
 
 Forestry, 70-71. 
 
 Forfar, 18, 109, 110, 111, 113, 186. 
 
 Forres, 140. 
 
 Fort-Augustus, 135. 
 
 Fort-William, 184. 
 
 Forth and Clyde Canal, 19, 28, 28- 
 
 29, 96, 182. 
 Forth Shipbuilding, 108. 
 Foulis, Brothers, Glasgow, 16, 50, 
 
 212. 
 Fowler, Mr, Inventor, 68. 
 Fowler, Sir John, Engineer, 185. 
 France, 104, 106, 111, 180, 146. 
 Fraser, Alex., Artist, 215, 218. 
 Fraserburgh, 139, 156. 
 Free Church of Scotland, 223, 224, 
 
 234. 
 FuUarton & Co., Publishers, 212. 
 Fulton, Robert, 95. 
 Funeral Customs, 84. 
 
 Galashiels, 12, 14, 105, 106, 107, 148. 
 Galashiels Technical College, 109. 
 Galloway Advertiser, The, 204. 
 Galloway, Mr, on Mining, 80. 
 Gama, Vasco Da, Portrait of, 216. 
 Gambling, 269-270. 
 Gardening {18th century), 10; (19th 
 
 century), 63. 
 Gamkirk. 181. 
 Gartsherrie, 87. 
 Gartsherrie Ironworks, 120. 
 Ged, William, Inventor, 208. 
 General Aid Grant, 177. 
 
 General Assembly, The, 226, 227, 
 228, 229. 
 
 General Councils (University), 184. 
 
 George IV., 214. 
 
 Germany, 93, 104, 130. 
 
 German Dyeing Industry, 125-126. 
 
 German Literature, 194-195. 
 
 Gibb, Robert, 218. 
 
 Gibbon, Historian, 212. 
 
 Giffiord, Mr, Editor, 201. 
 
 Gilbert, Graham, Artist, 218, 214. 
 
 Gillespie, Dissenter, 47. 
 
 Gillespie, Mr, Inventor, 120. 
 
 Gillespie's Hospital, Edinburgh, 176. 
 
 Gilmorehill, 185. 
 
 Girvan, 138. 
 
 Gladstones, John, Castle-Douglas, 
 67. 
 
 Glamis Castle, 49. 
 
 Glasgow, 12-15, 16, 17, 20, 22-28, 25, 
 31, 37-38, 39, 50, 52, 55, 69, 71, 
 88, 89, 92, 93, 95/, 107, 108, 
 116, 119, 121, 126, 127, 129, 
 ISO/, 134, 186, 187, 138, 142, 148, 
 150, 151, 153, 160, 168, 165, 166, 
 176, 202, 211, 212, 221, 222, 225, 
 326, 227, 232, 236, 239, 246, 247/. 
 
 Glasgow Advertiser, The, 16, 202. 
 
 Glasgow and Britannic Potteries, 130 
 
 Glasgow Carpenters' Union, 165. 
 
 Glasgow Chronicle, 202. 
 
 Glasgow City Improvements Trust, 
 253. 
 
 Glasgow Cleansing Organisation, 252. 
 
 Glasgow Co-operative Societies, 149. 
 
 Glasgow Cotton Spinning Co., 117. 
 
 Glasgow Courier, The, 16, 202. 
 
 Glasgow Electric Lighting, 249-250. 
 
 Glasgow Gas Works, 249. 
 
 Glasgow Herald, The, 16, 100, 202- 
 204, 208. 
 
284 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Glasgow Improvement Schemes, 
 253-255. 
 
 Glasgow Journal, The, 16. 
 
 Glasgow School of Artists, 218-219. 
 
 Glasgow Sentinel, The, 165. 
 
 Glasgow and South-Western Rail- 
 way, 132. 
 
 Glasgow and South-Western Rail- 
 way Works, 93. 
 
 Glasgow Town Council, 248/. 
 
 Glasgow Tramways, 250. 
 
 Glasgow Water Company, 248. 
 
 Glasgow Weaving College, 118. 
 
 Glasgow and West of Scotland Tech- 
 nical College, 125. 
 
 Glasier, Bruce, 168, 169. 
 
 Glassmaking Industry, 129-130. 
 
 Glenboig, 131. 
 
 Glengarnock Ironworks, 87. 
 
 Glenmore, 143. 
 
 Glenorchy, 45. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of. Portrait of, 
 216. 
 
 Gloucester, Warship, 102. 
 
 Golborne, Engineer, 20. 
 
 Golf (18th century), 83. 
 
 Golspie, 140. 
 
 Gorbals Water Co., 248. 
 
 Gordon, Duchess of, 9. 
 
 Gordon, Dr, 222. 
 
 Gordon, Watson, Artist, 52, 213, 
 214, 216, 219. 
 
 Gordon's Hospital, Aberdeen, 176, 
 177. 
 
 Gorgie, 128. 
 
 Gorman, Mr, Ironmaster, 120. 
 
 Goss Printing Machine, 208. 
 
 Govan, 87, 98, 99, 100, 102, 148, 
 267. 
 
 Gowrie, Carse of, 127. 
 
 Graham, Cunninghame, 168. 
 
 Graham, Dugal, 40. 
 Graham, John, Artist, 52, 214, 219. 
 Graham, Peter, Artist, 218. 
 Graham, Professor, 84. 
 Grangemouth, 19-20, 83, 134, 143, 
 
 144, 151. 
 Grant, of Monymusk, 10. 
 Granton, 88. 
 
 Grassmarket, Edinburgh, 284. 
 Great Britain, Steamship, 9S. 
 Great Eastern, The, 146. 
 Great Western Steamship, Co., 96. 
 Gregory, James, 38. 
 Gregory, John, 38. 
 Greenhill, 136. 
 Greenock, 12, 17, 20, 24, 95, 103, 
 
 126, 138, 150, 151, 251. 
 Greenock Advertiser, The, 16, 13T. 
 Greyfriars, New, Edinburgh, 234. 
 Greyfriars, Old, Edinburgh, 228, 
 
 229. 
 Ground Game Act, 62. 
 Guard Bridge, 128. 
 Guthrie, Dr Thomas, 231, 234-236, 
 
 265. 
 Guthrie, James, Artist, 218. 
 
 H 
 
 Haddington, 14, 184, 135. 
 
 Haddington, Earl of, 8, 9. 
 
 Haldane, The Brothers, 222. 
 
 Hallowe'en, 88. 
 
 Hallside Steel Works, 91. 
 
 Hamilton, 184, 150. 
 
 Hamilton & Balfour, Booksellers, 
 
 205, 207. 
 Hamilton, Lord Arch., 246. 
 Hamilton, Messrs, Shipbuilders, 103. 
 Harcarse, Lord, Portrait of, 49. 
 
INDEX 
 
 285 
 
 Hardie, Andrew, 164. 
 Hardie, J. Keir, 164, 167, 168. 
 Hardie, Martin, Artist, 218. 
 Hargreaves, 14. 
 
 Harland & WolfiB, 103. 
 
 Harvey, Sir George, Artist, 216, 218. 
 
 Hawick, 12, 14, 105, 107, 134, 148, 
 202. 
 
 Haymarket, 128. 
 
 Health, Board of, 255, 262. 
 
 Health Statistics, 270-271. 
 
 Heathcot, Mr, Inventor, 67. 
 
 Heathfield, 28. 
 
 Hebrides, The, 122. 
 
 Hegel, 41. 
 
 Helensburgh, 95, 134, 135. 
 
 Heknsdale, 140. 
 
 Henderson, Arthur, 169, 270. 
 
 Henderson, Messrs, Shipbuilders, 
 103. 
 
 Henry, George, Artist, 218. 
 
 Herdman, Robert, Artist, 216, 217. 
 
 Hereditary Jurisdictions, 56. 
 
 Heresy Hunting, 228-231. 
 
 Heriot, George, 17. 
 
 Heriot's Hospital, 17, 58, 176, 177. 
 
 Higher Grade Schools, 177. 
 
 Highland and Agricultural Society, 
 63, 67, 69-71. 
 
 Highland Tweeds, 107. 
 
 Highlands, Condition of, 8-9, 72-75, 
 172. 
 
 Highlands, W., 134, 143. 
 
 Hill, Rowland, 146. 
 
 Hindustan, Warship, 102. 
 
 Hoddam, 70. 
 
 Hodge & Co., Printers and Publish- 
 ers, 212. 
 
 Hoe Printing Machine, 208. 
 
 Hogg, Ettrick Shepherd, 201, 217. 
 
 Hood & Co., Shipbuilders, 96. 
 
 Hood, Warship, 102. 
 
 Hole, William, Artist, 218. 
 
 Holland, 128. 
 
 Holyhead, 95. 
 
 Holyrood, 17, 49. 227. 
 
 Home-Drummond Act, 263, 264. 
 
 Home, John, 46. 
 
 Hope, Band of, 265. 
 
 Hope, Lord President, 160. 
 
 Hopetoun, Earl, Portrait of, 50. 
 
 Home, Dr, Improver of Bleaching, 
 13. 
 
 Home, Mr, Coachbuilder, 16. 
 
 Homer, Mr, 200. 
 
 Horse Breeding, 63-64. 
 
 Hospital, City, Edinburgh, 256. 
 
 Hospitals, Educational, 176. 
 
 Hospital, Royal Maternity, Edin- 
 burgh, 256. 
 
 Hospitalj Victoria, Edinburgh, 256. 
 
 Hospital for Women and Children, 
 Edinburgh, 256. 
 
 Houldsworth, Henry, Portrait of, 
 213. 
 
 Housing Acts, 251, 253, 255. 
 
 Plousing Commission, 75, 256, 262. 
 
 Housing Statistics, 259. 
 
 Howard, John, 57. 
 
 Howell, G., 167. 
 
 Hume, David, 39-41, 50. 
 
 Hume, Joseph, 162. 
 
 Hunter, S., Editor, 203. 
 
 Huntly, 139. 
 
 Hurlet and Campsie Alum Co., 
 121. 
 
 Huskisson, Mr, 162. 
 
 Hutcheson, Francis, 38, 46. 
 
 Hutchison and Brookman, 212. 
 
 Hutton, Geologist, 89. 
 
 Hyndman, Mr, Socialist, 168. 
 
 Hypothec, Law of, 60-61. 
 
286 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Illegitimacy, 266-267. 
 
 Imports (18th century), 20-21 ; (19th 
 
 century), 151. 
 Improvements Acts, 246, 253. 
 Incorporated Artists, Society of, 
 
 220. 
 Independent Labour Party, 168. 
 Indomitable, Warship, 102. 
 Industrial Disputes, 159/. 
 Industrial and Provident Societies 
 
 Act, 149. 
 Industrial Schools Act (1861), 286. 
 Inflexible, Warship, 102. 
 Inglis, Dr, 227. 
 Inman Steamship Co., 97, 98. 
 Innerleithen, 105, 107. 
 Insurance Acts, 243. 
 Institution of Fine Arts, 220. 
 Institute of Fine Arts (Glasgow), 
 
 221. 
 Inter-Departmental Committee, 268, 
 Intermediate Certificate, 178. 
 Inveramsie, 189. 
 Inverary, 118. 
 Inverness, 13, 14, 31, 107, 113, 129, 
 
 139, 140, 142, 144, 150, 253. 
 Inverness Courier, The, 204. 
 lona Cathedral, 227. 
 Ireland, 118, 122, 156. 
 Iron Industry (18th century), 18-19; 
 
 (19th century), 86/. 
 Irvine, 20. 
 Irvine Chemical Ck)., 119. 
 
 Jack, W., Professor, 203. 
 Jacobites, 80, 199. 
 
 Jacquard Weaving Machine, 111-112. 
 Jam Industry, 127. 
 James VI., 17, 20, 159. 
 Jamesone, George, 48, 51. 
 Jamieson, Mr, Potter, 130. 
 Jedburgh, 14, 105, 107. 
 Jeffrey, Francis, 200. 
 Jenkinson, Messrs, Manufacturers, 
 
 130. 
 Jessop, Mr, Engineer, 144. 
 Jevons, Stanley, 83-84. 
 Johnson, Dr, 9-10, 40, 50. 
 Johnston, Sir C. N. (Lord Sands), 
 
 62. 
 Johnstone, Mr (Sir W. Pulteney), 
 
 69. 
 Joint Board of Examiners, 185, 188. 
 Jones, Mr, on Bye-Products, 120. 
 Jupiter, Warship, 102. 
 Jute Industry, The, 115-116. 
 " JuteopoHs," 116. 
 
 K 
 
 Kaiser Wilhelm II., S.S., 100. 
 
 Kames, Lord, 39. 
 
 Kant, E., 41. 
 
 Kastenbein (Composing Machine, 208. 
 
 Keiller, James, Jam Manufacturer, 
 
 127. 
 Keith, 107, 139, 140. 
 Kelly, Mr, Manufacturer, 116. 
 Kelp Industry, 122. 
 Kelso, 14. 
 
 Kelso Mail, The, 16. 
 Kelvin, Lord, 99. 
 Kennard, Messrs, 90. 
 Kerogen, 84. 
 Kerr, Alexander, 67. 
 Kerr, Mr, of Harvieston, 65. 
 
INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Kettle, Rob., Temperance Reformer, 
 
 264. 
 Kidd, W., Artist, 215. 
 Kiel Canal, 144. 
 Kilbowie, 118. 
 Kilmany, 281, 232. 
 Kilmarnock, 12, 14, 93, 107, 108, 
 
 132, 134, 136, 137, 138, 150, 166. 
 Kilwinning, 122. 
 Kincardine-on-Forth, 20. 
 King Edward, Turbine Steamer, 99. 
 King's College, Aberdeen, 185. 
 Kingskettle, 111, 148. 
 Kinnear, Mrs G., Portrait of, 53. 
 Kinross, 107, 113. 
 Kintore, 189, 
 
 Kirk, Dr, Marine Engineer, 99. 
 Kirkcaldy, 20, 89, 111, 112, 118, 
 
 150, 194. 
 Kirkcudbright, 138. 
 Kirkintilloch, 119. 
 Kirkliston, 85. 
 
 Kirriemuir, 110, 111, 137, 148. 
 Knights of the Thistle, 227. 
 Knox, John, Portrait of, 215, 228. 
 Koenig, Mr, Inventor, 207. 
 Kyleackin, 140. 
 
 Labour Exchanges, 243. 
 
 Labour Party, 168, 169. 
 
 Ladybank, 111. 
 
 Lady Yester's Church, Edinburgh, 
 
 238. 
 Lanark, 13, 15, 19, 63, 82, 83, 87, 
 
 113, 117, 138, 166. 
 Lancashire, 117. 
 Land, Enhanced Value of (18th 
 
 century), 8. 
 
 Land Settlement Bill (1919), 72. 
 
 Langholm, 107. 
 
 Langloan Ironworks, 87. 
 
 Lansdowne, Lord, 235. 
 
 Larbert, 137. 
 
 Larkhall Co-operative Society, 148. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 228. 
 
 Lauder, Scott, Artist, 216, 218, 219. 
 
 Lauderdale, Countess, Portrait of, 
 
 49. 
 Lavery, John, Artist, 218. 
 Law, James, 202. 
 Leaving Certificate Examination, 
 
 177, 178, 185. 
 Leblanc Chemical Process, 119. 
 Lee, Dr Robert, 228, 229, 287. 
 Legge, Dr, 227. 
 Leith, 17, 19, 21, 28, 88, 71, 83, 89, 
 
 95, 126, 128, 184, 253. 
 Lennoxtown, 148. 
 Lerwick Cathedral, 227. 
 Leslie, 111, 148. 
 Leven, 111, 148. 
 Lewis, Island of, 78, 75. 
 Liberal Party, 168, 201, 204, 228. 
 Liberton, 84. 
 
 Licensing Act (1903), 263-264. 
 Licensing Laws, Commission on, 
 
 263-264. 
 Lindsay, Lady, 39. 
 Lindsay, Patrick, Lord Provost of 
 
 Edinburgh, 14. 
 Lindsay, Sir John, Town Clerk, 
 
 Glasgow, 255. 
 Linen Industry, 109/. 
 Linen Industry (18th century), 
 
 11-12, 13-14. 
 Linlithgow, 14. 122. 
 Linoleum Industry, 112/. 
 Linotype, The, 208. 
 Linton, East, 14. 
 
288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lithgows, Messrs, Shipbuilders, 103. 
 
 Little Govan, Colliery, 132. 
 
 Liverpool, 95, 96. 
 
 Livingstone, Dr, 227. 
 
 Local Government Act (1894), 243. 
 
 Local Government Board, 255, 261, 
 
 269. 
 Loch Arklet, 248. 
 Lochbroora, 156. 
 Loch Katrine, 248. 
 Lochar Moss, 68. 
 Lock, Essays on Trade, 14. 
 Lockhart, Mr, 201. 
 London, 81, 39, 49, 95, 96, 142, 166. 
 London Bankers' Clearing House, 
 
 152. 
 London Missionary Society, 227. 
 Londonderry, 95. 
 Lorn, 171. 
 Lossiemouth, 139. 
 Lothians, The, 82, 83. 
 Loudon, Earl of, 9. 
 Loudoun, 236. 
 Louis, Professor, 89. 
 Lovat, Lord, 31, 75. 
 Lncania, S.S., 97. 
 Lugar, 87, 120. 
 Lumsden, James, Lord Provost of 
 
 Glasgow, 212. 
 Lumsden & Son, Printers, 212. 
 Lusitaniq, S.S., 99. 
 
 M 
 
 MacBrayne & Stirling, Typefound- 
 ers, 212. 
 MacDonald, Alex., 165, 166. 
 MacDonald & Co., Glasgow, 153-154. 
 MacDonald, Lord, 78. 
 MacDonald, Ramsay, 168, 169. 
 
 MacDonell of Glengarry, 53. 
 Macduff, 189. 
 
 Macintosh, Charles, Chemist, 119. 
 Macintyre, Mr, on Shipbuilding, 94. 
 Mackay, Charles, Portrait of, 213. 
 Mackenzie, Mr, of Kilcoy, 70. 
 Mackenzie, W. & D., Printers, 212. 
 MacLaren, Charles, 145, 201. 
 MacLehose & Co., Publishers, 212. 
 MacLeod of MacLeod, 73. 
 MacLeod of MacLeod, Portrait of, 
 
 50. 
 MacLeod, Norman, 223, 231, 236- 
 
 238. 
 Maclure, MacDonald & Co., Litho- 
 graphers, 213. 
 MacMillan, Dr, Greenock, 288. 
 Macnee, Daniel, Artist, 218, 214. 
 
 Macpherson, James, Annals of Com- 
 merce, 21-23. 
 
 Macpherson, James, Ossian, 89-40. 
 
 Malacca, 227. 
 
 Mallaig, 185. 
 
 Malleny, 253. 
 
 Malt Tax, The, 17. 
 
 Mann, Tom, 167, 168. 
 
 Manchester, 116. 
 
 Manchester Ship Canal, 144. 
 
 Manufactures, Board of, 11, 51, 108, 
 109, 220, 221. 
 
 Marconi, Mr, 101, 147. 
 
 Marischal College, Aberdeen, 185. 
 
 Marjory, The, 95. 
 
 Marriage Customs, 83-34. 
 
 Martin, Artist, 58. 
 
 Masons, United Operative, 164. 
 
 Master and Servant Act, 166. 
 
 Maternity and Child Welfare 
 Schemes, 256. 
 
 Maud, 139. 
 
 Mauretania, S.S., 99. 
 
INDEX 
 
 289 
 
 Maybole, 38. 
 
 McCombie, Mr, of Tillyfour, 65, 204. 
 McCorquodale & Co., Printers, 212. 
 McCosh, A. K., Ironmaster, 120. 
 McCrae, David, 230. 
 McCuUoch, Horatio, Artist, 217, 
 
 218. 
 McCuUoch, J. R., Economist, 162, 
 
 201. 
 McDonald & Calverley, 208. 
 McGregor, Robert, Artist, 218. 
 McGregor, W. Y., Artist, 218. 
 McKay, Mr, Artist, 49, 50, 213, 215. 
 McLehose, Mrs, 44. 
 McLaurin, Colin, 38. 
 McMillan, Messrs, Shipbuilders, 103. 
 McTaggart.. Mr, Artist, 218. 
 McWhirter, Mr, Artist, 218. 
 Meat Preserving, 127. 
 Medina, Sir John, Artist, 49. 
 Meikle, Andrew, 7. 
 Meikle, James, 7. 
 Melbourne, 96. 
 Meldrum & Binney, 85. 
 Melrose, 14. 
 
 Melrose, Mr, Inventor, 105. 
 Melville and Leven, Earl of, 227. 
 Mennons, John, Printer, 202. 
 Mennons, Thomas, Printer, 203. 
 Menstrie, 107, 148. 
 Mentone, 198. 
 
 Menzies & Co., Shipbuilders, 95. 
 Mercantile System, 41-42. 
 Merchant Company, Edinburgh, 176. 
 Methil, 83, 143, 151. 
 Mid-Calder, 85. 
 Midlothian, 15, 83, 128, 253. 
 Mill, James, 162. 
 
 Millar, Messrs, Glass Engravers, 130. 
 Millar, Mr, Dalswinton, 28. 
 Miller, Hugh, 202. 
 
 T 
 
 Miller, Mr, Glasgow, Inventor, 15. 
 Miller, Professor, 264. 
 Milne, Mr, Missionary, 227. 
 Milngavie, 128. 248. 
 Miners' Federation, 169. 
 Miners' National Union, 166, 167. 
 Missions, Scottish Foreign, 226, 227. 
 Moderates, The, 46-47, 56, 226, 227, 
 
 230. 
 Moffat, 14. 
 Moffat, Dr, 227. 
 
 Moir, John, Meat Preserver, 127. 
 Monboddo, Lord, 39. 
 Moncrieff, Lord, 165. 
 Moncrieff, Mr Scott, Portrait of, 53. 
 Monk, Gen., 23. 
 
 Monkland Canal, 96, 133. 
 
 Monkland Coalfield, 132-133. 
 
 Monkland-Kirkintilloch Railway, 
 132, 183. 
 
 Monotype, The, 208. 
 
 Monteith & Co., Glasgow, 154. 
 
 Monteith, James, Weaver, 117. 
 
 Montgomery Act (1770), 8. 
 
 Montrose, 14, 20, 33, 110, 111, 134, 
 137, 156, 245. 
 
 Moorfoot Hills, 248. 
 
 Moray Firth Ports, 156, 157. 
 
 Moray Firth Shipbuilding, 103. 
 
 Moray House, Edinburgh, 70. 
 
 Morgan, Dr, on Education, 190. 
 
 Morgan, Mr, Instrument Maker, 
 24-25. 
 
 Morpeth, 167. 
 
 Morris, Stewart, Temperance Refor- 
 mer, 264. 
 
 Morrison & Gibb, Printers, 207. 
 
 Morse, Mr, 146. 
 
 Mort, Mr, on Cotton Industry, 116. 
 
 Mortality Statistics, 255-256. 
 
 Motherwell, 90, 91, 150. 
 
290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Muirhead, Agnes, 24. 
 Muirkirk, 87, 138, 148. 
 Muirkirk Ironworks, 120. 
 Municipal Enterprise, 245/. 
 Municipal Reform Act (1833), 246. 
 Munros, The, Anatomists, 38. 
 Murray, Dr David, 212. 
 Murray, Lord, 10. 
 Murray, The Regent, Portrait of, 
 
 215. 
 Museum of Art, Glasgow, 221. 
 Mushet, David, 87. 
 Music, 40, 47. 
 Musselburgh, 14, 38. 
 Mylne, W., Engineer, 21. 
 
 N 
 
 Nairn, 140. 
 
 Nairn, Michael, Manufacturer, 112. 
 
 Naime, Lady, 39. 
 
 Napier, David, Engineer, 95. 
 
 Napier, Robert, Engineer, 96, 98, 
 99, 102. 
 
 Napoleon III., 112, 
 
 Narragansett, S.S., 100. 
 
 National Gallery, Edinburgh, 221. 
 
 National Portrait Gallery, Edin- 
 burgh, 221. 
 
 Naysmyth, A., Artist, 51, 52, 217. 
 
 Naysmyth, James, Engineer, 90. 
 
 Neill & Co., Printers, 206, 207. 
 Neilson, Messrs, Ironmasters, 120. 
 Neilson, Mr, Inventor, 86, 87, 96. 
 Neish, Mr, Dundee, Merchant, 115. 
 Nelson, Mr, Publisher, 205, 208. 
 Nelson, Warship, 102. 
 Newbattle, 17. 
 Newburgh, 111, 118. 
 Newcastle, 188. 
 
 Newcomen's Engine, 25, 28, 79. 
 
 New Lanark, 15, 116. 
 
 Newton, Mr, Manufacturer, 108. 
 
 Newtyle, 127. 
 
 New York, 97, 100. 
 
 New Year, Celebration of, 33. 
 
 New Zealand, Warship, 102. 
 
 Nicol, Erskine, Artist, 215. 
 
 Nicholson, W., Inventor, 207. 
 
 Niddrie Colliery, 80. 
 
 Nitshill Colliery, 79. 
 
 Nobel, Alfred, 122. 
 
 Nobel Explosives Company, 122. 
 
 Normal Schools, 172, 182, 183. 
 
 North British Locomotive Co., 93. 
 
 North British Mail, 204. 
 
 North British Railway Works, 93. 
 
 North British Review, 201. 
 
 North German Lloyd S.S. Co., 100. 
 
 Norton Park Glass Works, 130. 
 
 Norway, 122. 
 
 Notification of Births Acts, 256. 
 
 O 
 
 Oakbank, 85. 
 
 Oakbank Foundry, 96. 
 
 Oban, 95, 137, 143. 
 
 Oilfields — Caspian, Galicia, Burma, 
 85. 
 
 Oil-Shale Mining, 84. 
 
 Old Age Pensions Acts, 169, 248, 
 244. 
 
 Old Monkland, 87. 
 
 Oliphant & Co., Publishers, 206. 
 
 Oliver & Boyd, Publishers, 206, 207. 
 
 Oliver, Dr, Technical College, Gala- 
 shiels, 109. 
 
 Orchardson, Mr, Artist, 218. 
 
 Orkney, 156. 
 
INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 Orr, Andrew, Lord Provost of Glas- 
 gow, 212. 
 Orr & Sons, Printers, 212. 
 Osier, Sir W., 268. 
 Ossian, 39-40, 51, 69, 21T. 
 Osnaburg Linen, 110, 111. 
 Outram, G., Editor, 203. 
 Owen, Robert, 15, 149, 163, 165. 
 
 Pagan, James, Editor, 203. 
 Paisley, 13, 23, 55, 107, 108, 113, 
 
 121, 123, 184, 187, 148, 149, 151, 
 
 163, 250. 
 Papermaking (18th century), 16. 
 Papermaking Industry, 127-12S. 
 Papua, 227. 
 Parish Councils, 243. 
 Parisian, S.S., 98. 
 Park Church, Glasgow, 239. 
 Parkhead Steel Works, 92. 
 Parochial Board, 173, 242-243. 
 Parsons, C. A., Inventor, 99. 
 Paterson, James, Artist, 218. 
 Paton, David, Artist, 49. 
 Paton, Joseph, Designer, 111. 
 Paton, Sir Noel, Artist, 216-217. 
 Patronage Act (1874), 223. 
 Paul's Work, 205, 209. 
 Peebles, 14, 105, 107, 137. 
 Peden's Prophecies, 40. 
 Peel. Sir Robert, 162. 
 Penicuick, 16. 
 People's Charter, The, 164. 
 People's Journal, The, 204. 
 Perkin, W. N., Chemist, 123. 
 Perth, 13, 14, 15, 24, 63, 109, 111, 
 
 116, 123, 124, 134, 136, 141, 142, 
 
 150, 258. 
 Perthshire Advertiser, The, 204. 
 
 Perthshire Courier, The, 204. 
 
 Peterhead, 14, 127, 139, 156, 158. 
 
 Pettie, Mr, Artist, 218. 
 
 Philadelphia, 146. 
 
 Philip, Sir Robert, 256. 
 
 Philipstoun, 85. 
 
 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, 11. 
 
 Pig-Breeding, 66. 
 
 Pinkston, 250. 
 
 Pitlochry, 107. 
 
 Pittencrief, 17. 
 
 Place, Francis, 162. 
 
 Plantations, The, 8. 
 
 Playfair, Lyon, 84. 
 
 Police Acts, 246, 247, 251. 
 
 Police Commissioners, 246, 247. 
 
 Pollock, Mr, on Shipbuilding, 94, 
 104. 
 
 Polmadie, 122. 
 
 Polmont, 122. 
 
 Polton Farm Colony, 256. 
 
 Poor Law (1579) 240, (1845) 241. 
 
 Poor Law, Commission on, 241-242, 
 243, 245. 
 
 Poor Relief (18th century), 54-55; 
 (19th century), 240/. 
 
 Population (18th century), 24; (19th 
 century), 150-151. 
 
 Port-Glasgow, 20, 95, 103, 126, 151. 
 
 Portobello, 180-131. 
 
 Portpatrick, 137, 188. 
 
 Portsoy, 189. 
 
 Potteries, Scottish, 180-131. 
 
 Poultry-Farming, 66. 
 
 Presbyterians, 44-45, 47, 173, 228, 
 229. 
 
 Prestongrange, Lord Advocate, 199. 
 
 Prestonpans, 19. 
 
 Prestonpans, Battle of, 182. 
 
 Prices (18th century), 82; (19th cen- 
 tury), 59. 
 
292 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Princess Royal, Steamship, 96. 
 Pringle, Mr, on Agricultural Con- 
 ditions, 76-77. 
 Printing, 205/. 
 Prostitution, 267-268. 
 Provan, 249. 
 
 Provincial Committees, 182, 183, 188. 
 Public Health Acts, 247, 251, 253. 
 Publishing, 205/. 
 PuUar, Messrs, 123, 124. 
 Pumpherston, 85. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quarterly Review, The, 191, 201. 
 Queen Alexandra, Turbine Steamer, 
 
 99. 
 Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, 
 
 186. 
 Queen Victoria, 108, 112, 228, 239. 
 Queensferry, North and South, 135. 
 Queenstown, 97, 100. 
 
 R 
 
 Raasay, Island of, 89. 
 
 Raeburn, Henry, Artist, 51-53, 213, 
 
 214, 219, 220. 
 Ragged Schools, 235-286. 
 Railway, Caledonian, 133, 134, 136- 
 
 137, 142. 
 Railway, Callander and Oban, 137. 
 Railway, Castle Douglas-Portpat- 
 
 rick, 137, 141. 
 Railway, City and District, 135. 
 Railway, Edinburgh and Glasgow, 
 
 183. 
 Railway, Garnkirk, 188. 
 
 Railway, Glasgow, Barrhead and Kil- 
 marnock, 138. 
 
 Railway, Glasgow Central Under- 
 ground, 137. 
 
 Railway, Glasgow and South-West- 
 ern, 132, 134, 137-139. 
 
 Railway, Glasgow Union, 138. 
 
 Railway, Great North of Scotland, 
 139-140. 
 
 Railway, Great Northern, 135. 
 
 Railway Highland, 137, 139, 140-141. 
 
 Railway, Inverness and Aberdeen 
 Junction, 140. 
 
 Railway, Inverness and Perth Junc- 
 tion, 140. 
 
 Railway, Inverness and Ross-shire, 
 140. 
 
 Railway, Kilmarnock and Troon, 
 187. 
 
 Railway, Midland, 135. 
 
 Railway, Monkland and Kirkintil- 
 loch, 132-133. 
 
 Railway, North British, 133/, 141. 
 
 Railway, North Eastern, 135. 
 
 Railways, Scottish, 181/. 
 
 Railway Scottish Central, 136. 
 
 Railway, Scottish Midland, 136. 
 
 Railway, Scottish North-Eastem, 
 136. 
 
 Railway, " The Innocent," 134. 
 
 Railway, Wishaw and Coltness, 136. 
 
 Rainy, Principal, 224. 
 
 Ramilies, Warship, 102. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan, 39, 40, 217. 
 
 Ramsay, Allan (son of former), 50, 
 53. 
 
 Rechabites, Order of, 265. 
 
 Record, The Daily, 204. 
 
 Reform Bill, 168, 164, 246. 
 
 Reid, J. R., Artist, 218. 
 
 Reid, Ogilvie, Artist, 218. 
 
INDEX 
 
 298 
 
 Reid, Sir George, Artist, 218. 
 
 Reid, Tliomas, 38, 46. 
 
 Religious Life, 44/, 222/. 
 
 Renfrew, 13, 15, 83, 113, 116, 117, 
 118, 138, 250. 
 
 Rennie, Mr, of Phantassie, 64. 
 
 Renown, Warship, 102. 
 
 Repulse, Warship, 102. 
 
 Right, Claim of, 233-234. 
 
 Ritchie, William, 201. 
 
 Roberts, Mr, Woollen Manufactu- 
 rer, 105. 
 
 Robertson, Dr, 223. 
 
 Robertson, John, Engineer, 95. 
 
 Robertson, Mr, Inventor, 117. 
 
 Robertson, Mr, of Ladykirk, 64. 
 
 Robertson, Principal, 38, 50. 
 
 Robison, John, 38. 
 
 Robinson, Mr, Kilmun, 230. 
 
 Roche, Alex., Artist, 218. 
 
 Roebuck, Dr, 19, 27. 
 
 Royal Blind Schools, 175. 
 
 Royal Bride, S.S., 99. 
 
 Royal Burghs, 246. 
 
 Royal George, The, Steamship, 96. 
 
 Royal Institution, 219, 220. 
 
 Royal Scottish Water Colour Society 
 221. 
 
 Royal Sovereign, The, Steamship, 
 96. 
 
 Rosyth, 144. 
 
 Rothesay, 15. 
 
 Rousseau, 50. 
 
 Roxburgh, 75. 
 
 Ruddiman, Thomas, 37. 
 
 Ruddiman, Walter, 16. 
 
 Runciman, Alex., Artist, 51. 
 
 Runciman, John, Artist, 51. 
 
 Russell & Co., Shipbuilders, 103. 
 
 Russell, Dr, Editor, 203. 
 
 Russell, Mr, Editor, 201. 
 
 Russia, 115, 215. 
 Rutherford's (S.) Letters, 40. 
 Rutherglen, 250. 
 Ruthven, 171. 
 
 Sands, David, Weaver, 111. 
 
 Sands, Lord, 269. 
 
 Sanitation, 251-253. 
 
 Sanquhar, 14. 
 
 School Boards, 173/. 
 
 Schools (18th century), 35-37; (19th 
 
 century), 170/. 
 Schools, Denominational, 176. 
 Schools, Secondary, 175/. 
 Science and Art -Department, 177. 
 Scots Magazine, The, 16. 
 Scotsman, The, 145, 201, 202, 203, 
 
 208. 
 Scotstoun, 100. 
 Scott, David, Artist, 216. 
 Scott, Messrs, Shipbuilders, 103. 
 Scott, Professor, 38. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 106, 190/, 205, 
 
 217. 
 Scottish Bankers Magazine, 94, 112, 
 
 124, 206, 210. 
 Scottish Education Department, 109, 
 
 173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 182, 183, 
 
 222. 
 Scottish and Irish Oxygen Co., 122. 
 Scottish Leader, The, 202. 
 Scottish Wholesale Co-operative 
 
 Society, 149-150. 
 Scougal, John, Artist, 48. 
 Seafield, 253. 
 Secondary Education Committees, 
 
 176, 177. 
 Selandia, S.S., 100. 
 
294 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Select Society, The, 50. 
 
 Selkirk, 14, 81, 105, 107, 148, 149. 
 
 Servia, S.S., 98. 
 
 Session, Court of, 159, 160, 161, 224, 
 238. 
 
 Seth, Professor, 41. 
 
 Shaw, Dr, 171. 
 
 Shaw, Mr, on Municipal Govern- 
 ment, 255. 
 
 Sheep-Breeding, 65-66. 
 
 Sheffield, 19. 
 
 Shetland, 156. 
 
 Shettleston, 250. 
 
 Shipbuilding (18th century), 19-20; 
 (19th century), 98/. 
 
 Shipping Trade, 20, 151. 
 
 Shorter Catechism, 173. 
 
 Shotts Ironworks, 87. 
 
 Shrove Tuesday, Celebration of, 33. 
 
 Siddons, Mrs, 47. 
 
 Siemens, Steel Manufacture, 91. 
 
 Simson, R., 38. 
 
 Simpson, Sir James, 128. 
 
 Sinclair, Sir John, 66. 
 
 Sinclair, Sir John, Portrait of, 53. 
 
 Singer Manufacturing Ck)., 118. 
 
 Singertype, 208. 
 
 Sirius, The, Steamship, 95. 
 
 Skye, 73, 75, 89, 140. 
 
 Slamannan, 132. 
 
 Small, John, 7, 68. 
 
 Small Holdings Acts, 72, 73, 77. 
 
 Smeaton, Engineer, 19. 
 
 Smellie, W., 206. 
 
 Smillie, Robert, 168. 
 
 Smith, Adam, 25, 38, 39, 40-48, 46, 
 50, 159. 
 
 Smith, Dr Robertson, 230-281. 
 
 Smith, James, 67. 
 
 Smith, Keith, Aviator, 147. 
 
 Smith, Mr, Inventor, 117. 
 
 Smith, Robert, Temperance Refor- 
 mer, 264. 
 Smith, Ross, Aviator, 147. 
 Smith, Sidney, 200. 
 Smith & Sons, Publishers, 212. 
 Sobrero, Chemist, 122. 
 Social Conditions (18th century), 29/. 
 Social Democratic Federation, 167, 
 
 168. 
 Socialism, 163, 167, 168, 169. 
 Societies, Charity Organisation, 225. 
 Society of Artists, Glasgow, 221. 
 Society of Lady Artists, 221. 
 Society of Scottish Artists, 221. 
 S.P.C.K., 36, 171, 172. 
 Spens, Dr, Portrait of, 53. 
 Speymouth, 171. 
 Springburn, 250. 
 Springfield (Clyde), 132. 
 Springfield (Fife), 116. 
 St Andrews, 33, 37, 227, 231, 232, 
 
 283. 
 St Cecilia's Hall, 40, 47. 
 St Columba, 85. 
 St Cuthbert's Co-operative Society, 
 
 149. 
 St Enoch's Station, 138. 
 St Fillan, 35. 
 St George's College, Edinburgh, 
 
 182. 
 St Giles, 227, 228. 
 
 St John's Church, Edinburgh, 284. 
 St John's Church, Perth, 227. 
 St Leonard's, 184. 
 St Luke, School of, Edinburgh, 49, 
 
 50. 
 St Margaret, Paintings from Life 
 
 of, 51. 
 St Michael's ChurcJi, Linlithgow, 
 
 227. 
 St Mungo's Cathedral, 227. 
 
INDEX 
 
 295 
 
 St RoUox Station, 183. 
 St RoUox Works, 91. 
 Stafford, 167. 
 
 Staines, Middlesex, Linoleum Manu- 
 facture, 113. 
 Stanfurt, Germany, 122. 
 Statistical Account of Scotland, 31- 
 
 82. 
 Statute of Apprentices, 161. 
 Steel Company of Scotland, 91-92. 
 Steel Company, The Glasgow, 92. 
 Steel Company, The Glengarnock, 
 
 92. 
 Steel Company, The Mossend, 92. 
 Steel Company, The Lanarkshire, 
 
 92. 
 Steel Industry, The, 91-92. 
 Steel & Co., Shipbuilders, 95. 
 Steele, Mr, on Linen Industry, 112. 
 Stephen, Alex., Shipbuilder, 96, 99, 
 
 103. 
 Stephen, Leslie, 198. 
 Stephenson, George, 110, 132, 133. 
 Stevenson, R. L., 191, 198, 197/. 
 Stewart, Dugald, 88. 
 Stewart, Mrs, of Millhills, 65. 
 Stirling, 12, 14, 68, 83, 134, 144, 
 
 14«, 221. 
 Stock Exchange, 270. 
 Stockbridge, 128. 
 Stockton and Darlington Railway, 
 
 132. 
 Stoddart, Dr, Editor, 203. 
 Stonehaven, 156. 
 Stomoway, 12, 156. 
 Story, Principal, 239. 
 Strachan, Mr, on Printing, 206, 
 
 210-211. 
 Stranraer, 138. 
 Stratheam, 127. 
 Strathmiglo, 111. 
 
 Strome Ferry, 140. 
 Strong, Professor, 180-181. 
 Students' Representative Council, 
 
 187. 
 Students' Unions, 188. 
 Sugar Refining, 126-127. 
 Summerlee Ironworks, 87-92. 
 Sunday Observance (18th century), 
 
 80, 45, 46. 
 Superstitions, 34-35. 
 Supervision, Board of, 241-243, 247. 
 Sweden, 180. 
 Symington, W., Engineer, 28-29, 
 
 94-95. 
 
 Tait's Magazine, 201. 
 Talla Water Scheme, 248. 
 Tarbrax, 85. 
 Tay Bridge, 135. 
 Tay Shipbuilding, 103. 
 Taylor, James, 28. 
 Taylor, Marine Engineer, 99. 
 Tayport, 111, 113, 116. 
 Technical Colleges, 188. 
 Telford, Mr, Engineer, 144. 
 Temperance Act (1918), 265-266. 
 Temperance Association, Scottish, 
 
 265. 
 Temperance League, Scottish, 265. 
 Temperance Legislation, 268/. 
 Temperance Society, Glasgow, 264. 
 Temperance Society, Greenock, 264. 
 Templars, Good, 265. 
 Templeton, Mr, Manufacturer, 108, 
 Tennant, Mr, Glasgow, 14. 
 Tennant, Knox & Co., Chemical 
 
 Manufacturers, 119. 
 Tennant's Chemical Works, 84. 
 
296 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Tennent, Messrs, Brewers, 128. 
 Terrible, Warship, 102. 
 Textile Industry, The, 10*/. 
 " Thirlage," 5. 
 
 Theology, Progress of, 230-231. 
 Thermopylae, The, Clipper, 96. 
 Thomson, James, 217. 
 Thomson, John, of Duddingston, 
 
 Artist, 52, 53, 217. 
 Thurso, 31, 140. 
 Tiger, Warship, 102. 
 Tillicoultry, 148. 
 Tilloch & Foulis, Glasgow, 208. 
 Tillynaught, 139. 
 Times, The, 207, 208. 
 Tobacco Trade, 13. 
 Tod & MacGregor, Shipbuilders, 96. 
 Todd, Mr Eyre, 133. 
 ToUcross, 250. 
 Tories, The, 200-201. 
 Town Councils, Scottish, 245/. 
 Town Planning Acts, 253, 255. 
 Towns, Growth of (18th century), 
 
 21-24. 
 Trade Union Act (1871), 166. 
 Trade Union Movement, 158/. 
 Trade Union Statistics, 169. 
 Trade Unionism, 77, 243. 
 Trades Councils, 165, 166. 
 Tranent, 14., 17, 132. 
 Travelling (18th century), 29-30, 31. 
 Tree-Planting (18th century), 9-10. 
 Tron Church, Glasgow, 232. 
 Troon, 132, 143. 
 Turhinia, Turbine Steamer, 99. 
 Turk, River, 248. 
 Turnips, Early Cultivation of, 5. 
 Turnpike Act (1751), 7. 
 Turriff, 139. 
 
 Tweed Manufacture, 104/. 
 Tweeddale, Marquess of, 67. 
 
 Tweedsmuir, 248. 
 Tulloch, John, 223, 237. 
 
 U 
 
 Umbria, S.S., 97. 
 
 Union, Economic Effects of, 1-2, 
 
 10-12, 22. 
 Union Steamship Co., New Zea- 
 land, 98, 99. 
 Union, The, 49. 
 United Alkali Co., The, 119. 
 United Free Church of Scotland, 
 
 224. 
 United Industrial Schools, 235. 
 United Kingdom, The, 103, 135, 
 
 146, 153, 163, 165, 169, 235, 245, 
 
 250, 253, 270, 
 United Kingdom, The, Steamship, 
 
 95. 
 United Presbyterian Church, 224, 
 
 230. 
 United Secession, The, 224. 
 United States, The, 104, 119, 154. 
 Universities (18th century), 37-38, 
 
 (19th century) 173, 175, 177, 
 
 179, 183/. 
 Universities Commissions, 177, 183/. 
 University College, Dundee, 187. 
 University Courts, Institution of, 
 
 184, 187. 
 University Hostels, 188. 
 University Press, Glasgow, 212. 
 Uphall, 85. 
 Usher, James, 68. 
 
 Valiant, Warship, 102. 
 Venereal Disease, 268-269. 
 
INDEX 
 
 297 
 
 Verreville Pottery, Glasgow, 130. 
 Victoria Tuberculosis Dispensary, 
 
 Edinburgh, 256. 
 Virginian, S.S., 99. 
 Virtue, Art Historian, 49. 
 Voltaire, 50. 
 Vulcan, The, First Iron Ship, 96. 
 
 W 
 
 " Wadset," 4. 
 
 Wages, Agricultural, (18th century) 
 9, (19th century) 76-77. 
 
 Wages (18th century), 82. 
 
 Wales, 267. 
 
 Walkerbum, 105. 
 
 Wallace & Co., Glasgow, 154. 
 
 Wallace, Dr A., 264. 
 
 Wallace, Dr, Editor, 203. 
 
 Wallace, Robert, 201. 
 
 Wallace, Robert, Clergyman, 39. 
 
 Walter, Mr, Times, 207, 208. 
 
 Walton, E. A., Artist, 218. 
 
 Walton, Mr, Linoleum Manufactu- 
 rer, 113, 115. 
 
 Warden, Mr, Historian, 111. 
 
 Wardlaw & Cunningham, Printers, 
 212. 
 
 Wardlaw, Dr, Portrait of, 213. 
 
 Water of Leith, Purification of, 253. 
 
 Water Trust, Edinburgh, 84. 
 
 Waterloo, 214. 
 
 Watson, George, Artist, 213. 
 
 Watson, John, Artist, 21-7. 
 
 Watson, Mr, of Keillor, 65. 
 
 Watson, Rev Dr, 226. 
 
 Watt, James, 2, 19, 24-28, 90, 98, 
 99, 14S. 
 
 Waulk Mills, 104. 
 
 Waverley Station, 135. 
 
 Webb, Mr and Mrs, 159, 164. 
 
 Webster, Alex., Clergyman, 39. 
 
 Weekly Magazine, The, 16. 
 
 Weimar, 236. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 214. 
 
 Wellpark Brewery, 128. 
 
 Wemyss Bay, 137. 
 
 Wemyss Collieries, 80. 
 
 Wesley, John, 222. 
 
 West, Benjamin, 213. 
 
 West Calder, 85. 
 
 Wheatstone & Cook, Messrs, 146. 
 
 Whigs, The, 30, 199, 200, 246. 
 
 Whisky Distilling, 17. 
 
 White Cart, The, 248. 
 
 White, Sir W., 94. 
 
 Whitehaven, 13. 
 
 Whitefield, Mr, 222. 
 
 Whytock, Richard, Manufacturer, 
 
 108. 
 Wick, 12, 140, 156. 
 Wicks Composing Machine, 208. 
 Wigton, 266. 
 Wilberforce, S., 232. 
 Wilkie, Sir David, 51, 52, 214, 215, 
 
 219. 
 William IV., 112, 214. 
 Williamson, Dr, Medical Officer, 
 
 Edinburgh, 256. 
 Wilson, Alex., Typefounder, 212. 
 Wilson, Andrew, Artist, 219. 
 Wilson, John, 201. 
 Wilson, John, Linen Weaver, 111. 
 Wilson, Th., Shipbuilder, 96. 
 Wilton Carpet, 108. 
 Wingate & Co., Engineers, 95. 
 Wintour, J. C, Artist, 218. 
 Wishaw, 87, 90, 91, 92, 134, 150. 
 Witchcraft (18th century), 55-56. 
 Witness, The, 202. 
 
298 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wood, John, Shipbuilder, 95. 
 
 Woodside, 107. 
 
 Woollen Industry, (18th century) 12, 
 
 14-15, {19th century) 104/. 
 Workmen's Compensation Act, 169. 
 Workmen's Insurance Act, 169. 
 Wright, J. M., Artist, 48. 
 Wylie, Mr, Engineer, 91. 
 
 Yarrow, Water Tube Boiler, 99. 
 Yoker, 144. 
 Yorkshire, 117. 
 Young, James, 84-85. 
 Young, T. Graham, 124-125. 
 Yule, 33. 
 

 ' ',1 ' <'■ '111, 
 
 I 11 1 1 M I I'll 
 
 "i ! 
 II' 
 
 1 I 
 
 I 
 
 ■ M, I 
 
 11,1 'i \< 
 
 I ■ n\ lit 
 
 ' ii 1' 
 
 1 
 
 i I 1 1 1 1 II 
 J' ' ! 1 
 
 Pill 
 
 i ' ' I I I ' 1 I '4 
 
 I 1 ' I ' I ' ( I I ( ' 
 
 I I ' 1 I 1 1 , 
 
 iji i^r I' i' 
 
 t 
 
 I ' I I ' 
 
 ' ', > 't ''ll 'I'i 
 
 ' ' I ! ill ii 'I 
 
 'khJiL 
 
 u 
 
 • ' 'nil 
 ("I / i|ii 
 
 Ijl .M, 1 ' 
 
 Jl I I I , 
 
 'i|i:i:;': ,