Shining Threads by Audrey Howard

Greenwood’s grandfather to house his own operatives. She had razed them to the ground and in their place had erected the factory which had become the talk of the
textile industry. Six storeys high, the site covered several acres. The rooms in which the work was done were high and spacious with windows which opened – as the old ones had not – in
order to allow in what fresh air there was, and blinds were put on those which faced south to keep out the heat of the sun. The machines were set, in pairs, at a decent distance from one another,
most of the moving parts well guarded. At the back of the building was a separate room with tables and chairs where the workers could eat their ‘carrying-out’ in peace instead of beside
their machines as they did in other factories. There was piped water, brought from the river, clean and cool, and separate privies for the men and women. Insanity, those millowners with whom
Katherine Chapman had done business called it, sheer madness and where the hell would it lead? Might not their workers want the same thing, indeed were they not already grumbling about
better conditions and higher wages?
    Charlie Greenwood looked down at the girl who was apologising to him for causing a disturbance, assuring him, him who had defended girls just like her, and children too, all his life,
that she and the child would soon have the machine going again. She was anxious to let him know, just as though he was as unrelenting as any other millowner, that he would lose no profit over this
little commotion. Did she not know that his own scarred face had been given him by an overlooker in circumstances very similar to those in which her sister had been involved? Had she not heard of
Joss Greenwood, his own brother, now up to Westminster as radical Member of Parliament for Crossfold, who had caused such trouble and aggravation on behalf of the working class in his younger days
he had been put in prison for it? Was she not aware that his father, Joshua Greenwood, had died for his belief, aye, given his life at St Peter’s Field in the massacre which took place
there?
    ‘Nay, lass . . . what’s your name? . . . Annie Beale. Well, Annie, thi shall have thy bread and a bit more besides,’ he went on, deeply moved, ‘if I’ve ’owt
to do with it, and as I’m bloody maister I reckon thee can count on it. Now get thissen home, you and the child an’ when she feels up to it, you an’ her come back,
d’you hear? Send someone to collect thy wages an’ you shall be paid. Now, don’t you argue wi’ me, Annie Beale, for I’ll not ’ave it. Dear Lord in heaven, what
next . . . no, please . . . I want no thanks . . .’
    He could do no more, he told himself; it wasn’t much but still a damn sight better than she could have expected in any other mill in the Penfold Valley, for despite his family’s
efforts to improve the lot of the workers in the textile industry there were still tens of thousands in the land who suffered under the tyranny of profit-mad millowners.
    He shook his head sadly as he walked out of the spinning room and into the bright, sunlit yard, since their dream of equality was as far off as it had been over thirty years ago when his father
had died for it.

3
    ‘Mr Greenwood’s not here just now. He had some business to attend to up at the Cloth Hall later on so happen he’s gone straight there. Unless it’s some
family thing which has held him up, as is more than likely. There’s always something with them Greenwoods. If it’s not them wild lads who should be here in this very room right now as
ordered by their father – and the Lord only knows where they’ve got to – it’s the lass. She’s as bad as them, let me tell you. Why, only last week we heard she’d
been seen over at . . .’ The man who spoke turned his head to look back at the long passage which led into a room where a dozen clerks employed in the main counting house of Chapman
Manufacturing had