INDUSTRIES 



John Timbs gives a circumstantial account of 

 the way in which an old woman named Clements 

 residing in Durham in 1720 invented a method 

 of extracting the full flavour from the mustard, 

 the details of which method she refused to impart 

 to anyone ; George I and the various notabilities 

 of the capital are said to have patronized her. 

 How much truth there is in the story it is 

 difficult to gauge accurately, but the fact remains 

 that within the memory of many people Durham 

 mustard was highly esteemed for its extreme 

 pungency, and the industry was sufficiently 

 flourishing to keep one of the Gateshead potteries 

 busy in supplying the pots in which to send it 

 away. 



The Durham mustard trade was killed by the 

 competition of an article with less flavour but at a 

 lower price. How far the competition of Germany 

 is answerable for the collapse of the trade in 

 earthenware is a difficult question to decide. The 

 study of the history of the individual potteries 

 leaves the impression that an important if not 

 the determining factor in the matter was the 

 incapacity of the managers who were installed 

 on the death of the original founders. Many of 

 the potteries came into the market at the moment 

 when the rapid development of the iron and 

 shipping industries led men to prefer to place 

 their capital where a high rate of profit and a 

 quick return could be commanded. Speculation 

 was in the air ; frugal men, contented to watch 

 the development of their own trade, had built 

 up the pottery business ; unfortunately they did 

 not succeed in handing down their own traditions 

 to their sons, and the firm often consisted of 

 persons ignorant of the details of the business. 

 The situations of Sunderland, Stockton, and 

 South Shields near the mouths of rivers gave 

 them an advantage over the Staffordshire pot- 

 teries ; and the success of the Malings at New- 

 castle, who left Sunderland early in the last 

 century, suggests the inference that had the 

 Durham firms been willing to put energy, brains, 

 capital, and new machinery into the potteries, 

 Wearside and Tees-side might have held their 

 own against competition, foreign or home. 



Another factor which must not be overlooked 

 in accounting for the decay of both the glass and 

 the pottery trades is that sometimes the site of 

 the works was required for the extension of the 

 shipyards, and the temptation to sell out when 

 trade was not very flourishing was irresistible, 

 especially when, as during the boom of shipping, 

 shipbuilders were willing to pay enormously for 

 land in the immediate neighbourhood of the 

 shipyard. 



The loss of the carpet and dress material 

 manufactures was doubtless partly due to the 

 geographical position of Durham, Darlington, 

 and Barnard Castle, the places chiefly associated 

 with the trades. Buyers rightly prefer a market 

 where, if one establishment does not supply their 



wants, they can without loss of time find another 

 in the neighbourhood ; the centralization of 

 northern textile industries in the West Riding 

 of Yorkshire is economically sound, though the 

 pathos of a decaying industry tends to make one 

 overlook the inherent weakness of its claims to 

 sympathy. The closing of the American market 

 militated seriously against the Durham trade, 

 and the more extensive use of linoleum against 

 the cheaper carpets made at Barnard Castle. 



Nails were once extensively manufactured ; 

 now Messrs. Galloway, of Gateshead, are the 

 only important dealers. The trade has gone to 

 Staffordshire. The fact of the extensive em- 

 ployment of women in Staffordshire, with the 

 consequent lessening of the cost of production, 

 may be one reason why Durham, where, except 

 in the textile industries, the employment of 

 women is rare, has ceased to be a nail-making 

 centre. 



Now that the potteries have vanished, and the 

 manufacture of glass gone to Lancashire, the 

 capital and energies of the county have concen- 

 trated during the last fifty years on the building 

 of ships, the working of iron, and the making of 

 chemicals. This change has seriously affected 

 the distribution of wealth and population ; 

 Hartlepool, Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, 

 and Durham, proud of their historic past, 

 naturally mourn their lost precedence, but Con- 

 sett, Blackhill, Spennymoor, have practically 

 been created by the iron industry, Jarrow and 

 West Hartlepool by the shipping and timber trade. 

 In the midst of the enormous iron and steel 

 works which spread like a net over many parts 

 of Durham, it is difficult to realize how modern 

 the trade is. But until the application of steam 

 engines to the working of blast furnaces at the 

 end of the eighteenth century, which almost 

 immediately doubled the production of pig iron, 

 the output in Durham was very small. The 

 iron trade made steady progress for the first half 

 of the nineteenth century, for the next quarter 

 it grew rapidly, but the substitution of steel for 

 iron rails about 1876, and, a few years later, of 

 steel plates for iron plates in shipbuilding, has 

 revolutionized the trade. 



In shipbuilding, the Durham tradition ot a 

 firm handed down from father to son, the family 

 system, still continues ; but in the iron and steel 

 industry, except in the case of Bell Brothers, at 

 Port Clarence (geographically a Durham firm, 

 but for convenience of classification generally 

 included as a Middlesbrough firm), there is no 

 such continuity. The most marked feature of 

 the steel industry in Durham during the last few 

 years has been the amalgamation of many of the 

 large works under one directorate ; the same 

 applies to the chemical works ; the gradual sub- 

 stitution of a trust system as contrasted with the 

 family system of the last century is clearly dis- 

 cernible throughout the county. 



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