had gone into bankruptcy with the downturn in business, and in late 1842 Engels wrote of “crowds of unemployed working men at every street corner, and many mills…still standing idle.”
The development of the power loom made earning a living particularly difficult on hand-weavers, whose wages—when they could still find work—had dropped by 60 percent between 1820 and 1840. As there were still about 100,000 of such craftsmen living and seeking work in the Manchester area, their desperation, according to one labor historian, “cast a pall over the entire period and over all the working classes.”(Interestingly, the desperation of the times led to the emigration of one such unemployed Scottish hand-weaver named Carnegie to the United States, where his son Andrew would become the chief industrialist of all time.)
T he city to which Dickens had come was in many ways the apotheosis, then, of all that he abhorred. He had made a brief visit in 1838, while he was beginning work on Nicholas Nickleby —“his purpose to see the interior of a cotton mill, I fancy with reference to some of his publications,” wrote fellow novelist Harrison Ainsworth in a letter of introduction for Dickens. And what Dickens found in those factories had an indelible effect: “What I have seen [in Manchester] has disgusted and astonished me beyond all measure.”
Still, he felt a great affinity for those who struggled on behalf of the downtrodden, and he had developed a number of friends among the locals in Manchester, including his first schoolmaster at Chatam, the Reverend William Giles. For that reason, he contended that despite conditions in the city, “I never came to Manchester without expecting pleasure, and I never left it without taking pleasure away,” though one might wonder if he expected to take any away on this night.
Disraeli up there at the podium, the rising star, while he sat contemplating fortunes on the wane. His sales a fifth of what they had once been. His publishers ready to dock his salary. The critics turned shortsighted and vicious.
And this audience before him, expecting what? Wisdom? Comfort? Salvation? Good Lord, it seemed he could not keep himself afloat. What had he to offer all them?
But Disraeli had finished, and now it was Dickens’s time.
A fter a hearty introduction and welcome that would surely have done something to boost his spirits, Dickens began his speech with a reminder of his faith in the power of reason, praising the occasion of their gathering in a venue “where we have no more knowledge of party difficulties, or public animosities between side and side…than if we were a public meeting in the commonwealth of Utopia.” And he followed by reiterating the credo that would guide him in his art and in his public life: “I take it, that it is not of greater importance to all of us than it is to every man who has learned to know that he has an interest in the moral and social elevation, the harmless relaxation, the peace, happiness, and improvement, of the community at large.”
Of Manchester and the Athenaeum on behalf of which he spoke, Dickens said, “It well becomes…this little world of labour, that…she should have a splendid temple sacred to the education and improvement of a large class of those who, in their various useful stations, assist in the production of our wealth.”
And he went on to add a bit of the poet’s touch in service of his point, with a gesture to the grand hall about them, “I think it is grand to know, that, while her factories re-echo with the clanking of stupendous engines, and the whirl and rattle of machinery, the immortal mechanism of God’s own hand, the mind, is not forgotten in the din and uproar, but is lodged and tended in a palace of its own.”
He then turned to the circumstances that had brought him to the city. He reminded his audience that “the Athenaeum was projected at a time when commerce was in a vigorous and flourishing condition,
The development of the power loom made earning a living particularly difficult on hand-weavers, whose wages—when they could still find work—had dropped by 60 percent between 1820 and 1840. As there were still about 100,000 of such craftsmen living and seeking work in the Manchester area, their desperation, according to one labor historian, “cast a pall over the entire period and over all the working classes.”(Interestingly, the desperation of the times led to the emigration of one such unemployed Scottish hand-weaver named Carnegie to the United States, where his son Andrew would become the chief industrialist of all time.)
T he city to which Dickens had come was in many ways the apotheosis, then, of all that he abhorred. He had made a brief visit in 1838, while he was beginning work on Nicholas Nickleby —“his purpose to see the interior of a cotton mill, I fancy with reference to some of his publications,” wrote fellow novelist Harrison Ainsworth in a letter of introduction for Dickens. And what Dickens found in those factories had an indelible effect: “What I have seen [in Manchester] has disgusted and astonished me beyond all measure.”
Still, he felt a great affinity for those who struggled on behalf of the downtrodden, and he had developed a number of friends among the locals in Manchester, including his first schoolmaster at Chatam, the Reverend William Giles. For that reason, he contended that despite conditions in the city, “I never came to Manchester without expecting pleasure, and I never left it without taking pleasure away,” though one might wonder if he expected to take any away on this night.
Disraeli up there at the podium, the rising star, while he sat contemplating fortunes on the wane. His sales a fifth of what they had once been. His publishers ready to dock his salary. The critics turned shortsighted and vicious.
And this audience before him, expecting what? Wisdom? Comfort? Salvation? Good Lord, it seemed he could not keep himself afloat. What had he to offer all them?
But Disraeli had finished, and now it was Dickens’s time.
A fter a hearty introduction and welcome that would surely have done something to boost his spirits, Dickens began his speech with a reminder of his faith in the power of reason, praising the occasion of their gathering in a venue “where we have no more knowledge of party difficulties, or public animosities between side and side…than if we were a public meeting in the commonwealth of Utopia.” And he followed by reiterating the credo that would guide him in his art and in his public life: “I take it, that it is not of greater importance to all of us than it is to every man who has learned to know that he has an interest in the moral and social elevation, the harmless relaxation, the peace, happiness, and improvement, of the community at large.”
Of Manchester and the Athenaeum on behalf of which he spoke, Dickens said, “It well becomes…this little world of labour, that…she should have a splendid temple sacred to the education and improvement of a large class of those who, in their various useful stations, assist in the production of our wealth.”
And he went on to add a bit of the poet’s touch in service of his point, with a gesture to the grand hall about them, “I think it is grand to know, that, while her factories re-echo with the clanking of stupendous engines, and the whirl and rattle of machinery, the immortal mechanism of God’s own hand, the mind, is not forgotten in the din and uproar, but is lodged and tended in a palace of its own.”
He then turned to the circumstances that had brought him to the city. He reminded his audience that “the Athenaeum was projected at a time when commerce was in a vigorous and flourishing condition,
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