176 History of Inland Transport 



Any stranger who ventured to appear among such a people, 

 devoid as they were of most of the attributes of civilisation, 

 might consider himself fortunate if he escaped rough usage 

 simply because he was a stranger. 



Of conditions such as those to be found in the Potteries 

 at the period in question one gets some glimpses in William 

 Mutton's " History of Birmingham " (1781). He tells of a 

 place called Lie Waste, otherwise Mud City, situate between 

 Halesowen and Stourbridge. The houses consisted of mud, 

 dried in the sun, though often destroyed by frost. Their 

 occupants, judging from the account he gives of them, could 

 have been little better than scarcely-clad barbarians. Of 

 a visit he paid to Bosworth Field in 1770 the same writer 

 says : 



" I accompanied a gentleman with no other intent than to 

 view the field celebrated for the fall of Richard the Third. 

 The inhabitants enjoyed the cruel satisfaction of setting 

 their dogs at us in the street, merely because we were strangers. 

 Human figures, not their own, are seldom seen in those in- 

 hospitable regions. Surrounded with impassable roads, 

 having no intercourse with man to humanize the mind, no 

 commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue 

 the boors of nature." 



How industry and improved communications may tend 

 to civilise a people, as well as ensure economic advance- 

 ment, was now to be shown in the case of the Potteries. 

 Wedgwood's enterprise led to the employment of far more 

 people ; the better means of communication allowed both 

 of the industry being greatly developed and of the intro- 

 duction of refining influences into a district no longer isolated ; 

 and the combination of these causes had a striking effect 

 on the material and the moral conditions of the workers. 



In giving evidence before a House of Commons Committee 

 in 1785, eight years after the Mersey and Trent Canal was 

 opened, Wedgwood was able to say that there were being 

 employed in the Potteries at that time from 15,000 to 20,000 

 persons on earthenware manufacture alone an increase of 

 from 8000 to 13,000 in twenty-five years, independently of 

 the opening of new branches of industry. Work was abundant, 

 and the general conditions were those of a greatly enhanced 

 comfort and prosperity. 



