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Kitabı oku: «Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910», sayfa 7

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The Water Committee

In the 'seventies I joined the Water Committee, at a time when further supplies of water for Liverpool had become a pressing necessity. We had opened the Beloe "dry dock" at Rivington (so called because many people believed when this reservoir was being made it would never be filled), and it was felt that no further supply could be obtained from this source; nor could we rely upon any further local supply from the red sandstone, although Mr. Alderman Bennett made long speeches in his endeavour to prove that the supply from the red sandstone was far from being exhausted.

When it was decided to seek for a new watershed our attention was first directed to the moors round about Bleasdale, some ten miles north of Preston, but the prospective supply was not sufficiently large. We then turned our attention to Hawes Water, in Cumberland, the property of Lord Lonsdale, and appointed a deputation to inspect this lake. We dined and stayed all night at Lowther Castle, and drove to the lake next morning. We came away much impressed with the quality of the water and the cleanness of the watershed, as there were no peat mosses or boggy lands to discolour the water.

Mr. Deacon, our young water engineer, had however a more ambitious scheme in view; he proposed to impound the head waters of the Severn in the valley of the Vyrnwy. The battle of the watersheds, Hawes Water versus the Vyrnwy, was waged furiously for several years. The committee made many visits to the Vyrnwy, taking up its abode at the Eynant Shooting Lodge, a very picturesque spot (now submerged) standing at the western end of the lake. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Anthony Bower, the chairman and deputy-chairman of the committee, were strongly in favour of the Vyrnwy scheme.

Alderman Bennett continued to be the persistent advocate of obtaining additional supplies from the wells, and his opposition to every other scheme was only set at rest by the Council authorising Mather and Platt to put a bore-hole down at Bootle at a point which he selected; with the result that no water was found. During all this period Mr. J. H. Wilson had a very arduous task, demanding great patience and endurance, and to him and to Mr. Deacon belong the credit of ultimately securing the adoption of the Vyrnwy scheme.

I led the section of the committee in favour of the Hawes Water scheme. There was no question as to the Vyrnwy yielding an abundant supply, but the opposition contended that it was brown peaty water, and would remain brownish after being treated by filtration, and the cost would greatly exceed that of Hawes Water. I spent days on the moors at Vyrnwy collecting samples of water. My samples were brown and bad; the samples collected by Mr. Deacon, on the contrary, were clear and translucent. The committee were divided as to the relative merits of the two schemes, and the Council were equally divided.

When the question came for the ultimate decision of the Council the debate lasted two days, and I spoke for one hour and a half. We thought the Hawes Water scheme was winning, when the Mayor, Mr. Thomas Royden, rose and spoke for half an hour all in favour of the Vyrnwy. His speech turned many waverers, and the Council voted in favour of the Vyrnwy by a small majority of three.

It was a great debate, perhaps the most important we have had in the Council, certainly in my time. Mr. Royden (now Sir Thomas Royden, Bart.) was an effective speaker, both in the Council and on the platform; his voice and his genial smile were a valuable asset of the Conservative party.

I was greatly assisted in drawing up a pamphlet in favour of Hawes Water, and in conducting the opposition, by the town clerk, Mr. Joseph Rayner. Mr. Rayner was an exceedingly able man, but unfortunately died comparatively young.

It fell to my lot, as Mayor in 1881, to take the Council to lay the foundation stone of the great Vyrnwy dam. It was on a very hot day in July; the stone was laid by the Earl of Powis, who made a very eloquent and poetical address, comparing the Vyrnwy with the fountain of Arethusa which would spring up and fructify the valley, and convey untold blessings to the great community in the far-off city of Liverpool.

The building of the dam, and the laying out of the banks of the lake, called for many charming visits to the Vyrnwy; and although I was not in favour of the adoption of this scheme I now believe on the whole the Council did the wisest thing, as there can be no question of the abundance of the supplies secured by the city.

Parliamentary Committee

For twelve years I was chairman of this committee, and had much interesting work to carry through Parliament. The widening of St. Nicholas' Place and the throwing of part of St. Nicholas' churchyard into the street was a great improvement, relieving the congestion of traffic at this point.

We also endeavoured, during my term of office, to extend the boundaries of the city. We had a fierce fight in the House of Commons. The local boards of the districts we intended to absorb assailed us with a perfect torrent of abuse, and criticised severely our system of local government. We failed to carry our bill, the chairman of the committee remarking that Parliament would not grant any extension of city boundaries when it was objected to by the districts to be absorbed; but he added, "We are quite satisfied from the evidence you have given that Liverpool is excellently governed in every department." We made a mistake in pushing forward this bill on "merits" only, we should have done some missionary work beforehand, and arranged terms and conditions with our neighbours. My successor in the chair of this committee, Sir Thomas Hughes, profited by our experience, and succeeded where we failed.

We were greatly assisted in our Parliamentary work by Mr. Harcourt E. Clare, who was most able and diplomatic, and an excellent negotiator. His appointment as Clerk of the County Council, though a gain to the county, was a serious loss to Liverpool.

Manchester Ship Canal

With the attitude of Liverpool in regard to the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal I was very prominently identified. I had to conduct the opposition to the Canal Bill through three sessions of Parliament, six enquiries in all. The Dock Board took the labouring oar, but it fell to me to work up the commercial case, to prove from a commercial point of view that the canal was not wanted, and would never pay. I prepared a great mass of figures, and was under examination during the six enquiries altogether about thirty hours. Mr. Pember, Q.C., who led the case for the promoters, paid me the compliment of saying I was the only witness he had ever had who had compelled him to get up early in the morning to prepare his cross-examination.

We defeated the bill in the first two enquiries. At the close of the second enquiry Mr. Lyster, the engineer to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, completely gave the Dock Board case away. Mr. Pember remarked: "Mr. Lyster, you have told us that if we make our canal through the centre of the estuary of the Mersey we shall cause the estuary to silt up and destroy the bar. What would you do if you had to make a canal to Manchester?" Mr. Lyster jumped at the bait, and replied, "I should enter at Eastham and carry the canal along the shore until I reached Runcorn, and then I would strike inland." Next year the Manchester Corporation brought in a new bill carrying out Mr. Lyster's suggestion, and as Liverpool had no answer they succeeded in getting their bill.

There can be no doubt that the railways had for long years greatly overcharged their Liverpool traffic. The rate of 12s 6d per ton for Manchester goods for the thirty-two miles' carriage from Manchester to Liverpool was a gross overcharge. I had headed deputation after deputation to the London and North-Western Railway to represent this; Mr. Moon (afterwards Sir Richard Moon) always received us with much civility, but nothing was done. The Dock Board had the remedy in their own hands; they could have bought the Bridgewater Canal, and made a competitive route; but the prosperity of Liverpool was great, and they altogether failed to see that Manchester, with its Ship Canal, might one day be a serious competitor to Liverpool.

The promoters of the Ship Canal secured an option over the Bridgewater Canal, and this was really the backbone of their scheme. At the close of the first parliamentary enquiry, when the Canal Bill was thrown out, Mr. Wakefield Cropper, the chairman of the Bridgewater Canal, came to me and said, "The option given to the Ship Canal people has expired; can you not persuade the Dock Board to buy up the Bridgewater Canal, and this will put an end to the Ship Canal project?" I walked across the Green Park with Mr. T. D. Hornby, the chairman of the Dock Board, and Mr. Squarey, the solicitor, and told them of this conversation, and they both agreed with me that the Dock Board ought to make the purchase, but, unfortunately, nothing was done. In the following year the Ship Canal Bill was again thrown out, and Mr. Cropper again urged that we should secure the Bridgewater Canal. I called at the Liverpool Dock office in London and saw Mr. Hornby and Mr. Squarey; they both agreed that the purchase of the Bridgewater Canal ought to be made, but again no step was taken, and the Ship Canal made their third application to Parliament, and succeeded. I have always felt that the Dock Board thus missed a great opportunity, which in years to come may prove to have been the golden chance of securing the prosperity of the port.

Corporation Leaseholds

One of the most important enquiries in which I engaged was into our system of fines on renewals of the leases of the property belonging to the Corporation.

The Corporation owns a very large estate within the city. The first important purchase was made by the Corporation in 1674, when a lease for 1,000 years was obtained from Sir Caryl Molyneux, of the Liverpool Heath, which bounded the then town of Liverpool on its eastern side. This land had been sold on seventy-five years' leases, and as the leases ran out the lessees had the option of renewal on the payment of a fine; and in order to encourage the frequent renewal of these leases the fines during the first twenty years of a lease were made very light. It has been the practice of the Corporation to use the fines received as income in the year in which they are received. The fines received in the fifty years, 1835 to 1885, amounted to £1,762,000. This system of finance is radically wrong. The fines ought to be invested in annuities, and if this had been done these fines would now have returned an income of £66,000 per annum, and would have gone on increasing.

The committee, of which I was the chairman, held a prolonged enquiry, and examined many experts and actuaries, and our report is to-day the standard authority on the leasehold question. Our conclusions and recommendations are as sound to-day as they were then, but unfortunately the Council declined to accept or adopt them, and we still pursue the economically bad system of spending in the first year the fine which should be spread over the term of the lease.

When I retired from the Library, Museum, and Arts Committee in 1908, I was invited to take the chair of the Estate Committee, and found myself again face to face with the leasehold question. The revenue of the Corporation from fines on renewal of leases had fallen off to so alarming an extent that something had to be done to stop the shrinkage in revenue and restore the capital value of the estate. We had for so long used the fines as income that the position was a difficult one, and one only to be surmounted by a self-denying policy of accumulating a large portion of the assured income from fines for at least twenty-five years and encouraging leaseholders to extend their leases from seventy-five to ninety-nine years.

CHAPTER VIII.
LIBRARY, MUSEUM, AND ARTS COMMITTEE

Liverpool can justly lay claim to be the pioneer of free public libraries. William Ewart, one of the members for the borough, succeeded in 1850 in passing through Parliament the Public Libraries Act. But before this act had become law, a subscription had been raised in Liverpool for the purpose of starting a library, and a temporary library was opened in Duke Street. This was afterwards transferred to the Corporation, and was the beginning of the great library movement in Liverpool. The Council encouraged by this obtained a special act empowering them to establish not only a library, but a public library, museum, and art gallery – thus from the earliest days these three institutions have been linked together. Sir William Brown provided the funds for erection of the Library and Museum in William Brown Street. In 1851 the thirteenth Earl of Derby presented to the town his fine collection of natural history specimens; in 1857 Mr. Joseph Mayer gave his collection of historical and archæological objects, and in 1873 Mr. A. B. Walker completed this remarkable group of institutions by building the Walker Art Gallery. Liverpool has thus been most fortunate in possessing a public library, a museum, and an art gallery, which have cost the ratepayers nothing. It would be difficult to find a more unique cluster of institutions, each so perfectly adapted to its work, and all furnished with collections which have not only a local but a European reputation.

I was placed upon the Library and Museum Committee on entering the Council, Mr. Picton, afterwards Sir James Picton, being the chairman. The committee met at nine o'clock in the morning, and seldom rose before twelve. I could not afford so much time, and therefore resigned, but when master of my own time I joined the committee again, and found the work very interesting. Sir James Picton had an extensive knowledge of books, and he is entitled to the credit of building up our splendid reference library, and of making the excellent collection of books on architecture which it contains, but he had little sympathy with lending libraries, and when he died the three branch lending libraries were very indifferent and poor, which was the more extraordinary bearing in mind that the act of parliament instituting free libraries was promoted by Liverpool, and although Liverpool was not the first town to take advantage of it, she was only six weeks behind Manchester in adopting it.

Sir James Picton, the historian of Liverpool, was endowed with an excellent memory, and his mind was a storehouse of knowledge. He took an active part in the various literary societies, and was for many years one of our leading and most enlightened citizens.

After his death the chair of the Library Committee was occupied for three years by Mr. Samuelson, and in 1889 I was elected his successor, and held this chair for nineteen years. There is no public position in Liverpool more full of interest and with such wide possibilities for good as the chairmanship of the Library Committee. I very early decided that the right, and, indeed, only policy to pursue was to make the institutions placed under my care as democratic and as widely useful as possible, and this could best be done by breaking down all the barriers erected by red tape and by trusting the people; and, further, extending the system of branch libraries and reading rooms. In carrying out this work I always enjoyed the sympathy and active co-operation of my committee, and had the valuable assistance of Mr. Cowell, the chief librarian, and his staff. The acceptance of the guarantee of one ratepayer instead of two for the respectability of a reader has been a very popular reform, and the introduction of open bookshelves, containing the most recent and popular books of the day, has been greatly appreciated, and I am glad to say the books we have lost have been very few. Branch lending libraries were opened at the Central Library, Everton, Windsor Street, Sefton Park, West Derby, Wavertree, and Garston. At several of these libraries we have reading-rooms and special books for boys, which are much appreciated by them.

We were fortunate in inducing Mr. Andrew Carnegie to open the new library in Windsor Street, and he was so much pleased with it that he offered to build for us a duplicate in West Derby. He remarked it was the first time he had ever offered to give a library, making it a rule that he must be invited to present one, and then if the site was provided, and a suitable income assured to maintain it, he gave the necessary funds for the building as a matter of course. Mr. Carnegie subsequently presented us with another library for Garston, and more recently he gave me £19,000 for two more libraries, making his gift to Liverpool £50,000 in all.

Mr. Carnegie's munificence has been remarkable, not only in its extent, but in its method. He has given £30,000,000 for the erection of libraries and other institutions, but all of his gifts have been made after careful investigation, and in conformity with certain rules which he has laid down. When he opened the Windsor Street Library he stayed at Bromborough Hall, and we took him also to the opening of St. Deiniol's Library, at Hawarden. If Mr. Carnegie had not been a millionaire he would still have been a remarkable man. Endowed with a keen power of observation, rapidity of judgment, and great courage, he has all the elements which make for success in any walk in life. He told me that as a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railway he saw that iron bridges should take the place of their wooden bridges. He formed an iron company to supply these bridges. Another opportunity offered, of which he was not slow to avail, when the iron bridges had in course of time to be replaced with steel. The example of this great railway was quickly followed by others, and the Carnegie Steel Works grew larger and larger. The carriage of the iron ore 400 miles by rail, from Lake Superior, was a costly item, so he constructed his own railway, which enabled him to greatly reduce the carriage. All these things indicate his enterprise and courage, which have made him not only a millionaire, but also a great public benefactor.

The Council entrusted the Library Committee with the administration of the moneys granted for technical education, and as it took some years to lay the foundations of a technical system of education the funds accumulated, and we were able to pay off the debt on the libraries, about £8,000, and to build the extension to the museum, costing £80,000. The foundation stone was laid by me on the 1st July, 1898. Liverpool has always been rich in museum exhibits, and particularly in natural history and ethnography, and we have added recently to our collection by purchasing Canon Tristram's collection of birds. Out of this great storehouse our director, Doctor Forbes, has arranged the galleries so admirably, both on the scientific and popular sides, that they are the admiration of all naturalists, and Liverpool has every reason to be proud of her museums, which are admittedly the finest out of London. The galleries were opened by the late Earl of Derby on the 19th October, 1906.

I was anxious to bring the libraries, and especially the museums, into closer touch with the University, and have always maintained that co-operation between these institutions is absolutely necessary, if we are to get the best out of each.

The Walker Art Gallery

The work in connection with the Walker Art Gallery has always been to me one of absorbing interest, and the annual visit in the spring to the London studios a very great treat. It is not merely that one has the opportunity of seeing the pictures of the year, but also to hear the views of the artists; men who lead lives of their own, in their art, and for their art, and whose views upon art matters open up new avenues for thought, and continually suggest new methods of action. Mr. Philip Rathbone was our first chairman of the Art Sub-Committee, and he did a great work in popularising our Autumn Exhibition in London. He was almost a bohemian by nature, and was quite at home in the artist world of London. He was a genius in many ways; he knew much about art; was a poet whose verses had a charm of their own; he was a delightful companion and inherited many of those remarkable traits of character which have distinguished the Rathbone family and have made them such benefactors of their native city.

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