Charles Bine Renshaw
From ‘Captains of Industry’ by William S. Murphy. Published 1901.
MR. CHARLES BINE RENSHAW, M.P. (MESSRS. A. F. STODDARD & CO., LTD.), GLENPATRICK CARPET WORKS, ELDERSLIE.
FAITH in Great Britain's imperial destiny has during recent years taken a firm hold of the mind of the British people. That such a faith may have its dangers and defects is admitted; but, if well founded and deeply rooted, it is a force that must issue in great and lasting good for Great Britain and the world. Faith in the greatness of human destiny lies at the root of all noble effort; faith in their divinely-appointed mission has been the inspiration of all great nations. Because Cromwell believed that God was with the people of England, he nobly fought and conquered a godless tyranny; because William Pitt, the great Commoner, loved England with a passionate personal affection, he became the first and greatest of Britain's Imperial statesmen, and laid the foundations of the British Empire on a basis deep and sure. William Pitt the younger had his father's personal love of England, but he was the first to see that her greatness lay not in conquest nor in feats of arms, but in her industrial genius and the victories of peace. The younger Pitt's foresight has been verified by the facts of history; Great Britain's industrial achievement stands her strongest claim to world-wide dominion. Britain was first in the field of industry; but that is no argument against British supremacy in the world's markets. Other rivals threaten to destroy British trade, but it is a curious commentary on their pretensions that Great Britain alone offers an open market to all the world. Other nations bolster up their manufactures and shipping by protective duties and bounties, while, confident in the ability of the people and the enterprise of industrial captains, the British nation has continued to practise the principle of free trade.
In no industry is the contrast between the British and foreign industrial ability more vividly brought out than in the history of carpet manufacture during the past fifty years. About forty years ago carpets made in Great Britain were freely sold all over the world; but now the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Russia impose protective tariffs ranging from 110 per cent. down to 40 per cent. on carpets manufactured by other nations. Scotland has borne its share of this heavy burden. The history of the carpet industry of Scotland is a record of indomitable pluck and perseverance. As one market was shut the carpet manufacturer sought another; that market closed again they developed still another, ranging all over the world to find or make outlets for their products. Among the carpet manufacturers of Scotland the firm of Messrs. A. F. Stoddard & Co., Limited, takes a high place, and the history of the firm throws light on the experience of Scottish carpet manufacturers generally.
About the year 1861 Mr. A. F. Stoddard, up till that time a partner in the firm of Messrs. A. & S. Hendry, a well-known house in Glasgow, bought the little carpet factory situated at Glenpatrick, near the village of Elderslie, and embarked in business on his own account. He developed a trade with the United States of America, and greater prosperity seemed to await him.
In 1870, however, the Yankees imposed a tariff on imported carpets which was practically prohibitive. The blow was a severe one, and Mr. Stoddard, who had assumed as partners in that year his son, Mr. Frederick Wolcott Stoddard and Mr. C. Bine Renshaw, set about finding a new market for the productions of Glenpatrick factory. Mr. Renshaw travelled all over the continent of Europe, establishing new agencies wherever practicable. Germany at first was the firm's most promising customer, but in a few years that nation imitated the United States in their protective policy; France followed suit; then Italy, Austria, Russia, and Holland successively laid on heavy tariffs. Despite the weight of these imposts, Messrs. Stoddard & Co. still exported a considerable quantity of carpets to the European markets. For the bulk of their trade, however, they were compelled to go elsewhere.
Though Asiatics have been famous for centuries as makers of carpets, this Scottish firm has established a large trade in Asia. Mr. Renshaw tells, with fine humour, an incident of his travels in the East, when he had to take off his boots before being allowed to walk on a carpet made in his own factory. Many Mohammedan mosques are carpeted by the products of Glenpatrick factory, showing that business advantage is not one of the things to which Moslem fanaticism blinds its votaries. The largest customers of the Elderslie factory are the British colonies and South America. It would seem, so far as the carpet industry is concerned at least, that a commercial and industrial league between all sections of the British Empire would have the effect of developing good tendencies already existing.
Glenpatrick factory is situated about a mile south of Elderslie, the birthplace of the national hero of Scotland, Sir William Wallace. Nicely sheltered in the Patrick valley from the waters of which a plentiful water supply is derived, the carpet factory extends over between five and six acres of ground. Except for the mass of its buildings the factory is not striking in external appearance, and but for the absence of cattle litter, might be mistaken for a gigantic dairy farm steading.
Inside, however, the works are seen in a different light. Divided into two divisions, the old and the new, the former a wide square of buildings ranged round a large courtyard, the latter a long series of saw-tooth roofs covering three acres of ground walled round with solid brick. To the left of the courtyard are the offices of the firm, situated on the first floor, the ground floor being occupied by store-rooms, timekeeper's office, and other departments of that kind. Counting-house, clerking department, and managing director's rooms are to one side, while the designers occupy the other. The designing room proper resembles a large art school, with easels, drawing-boards. and colour dishes, benches, desks, and pencils. Nor is the likeness inappropriate, for here are evidences of genuine artistic effort, each one of the large staff of designers being encouraged to devise new harmonies of colour and figure suitable to the fabric upon which the designs are to be worked. For the carpet designer is not permitted the gradation of colour open to the painter or even the cotton-cloth weaver. The thickness of the thread with which designs are wrought limits the gradation of variation of colour. Hence patterns are worked out on paper covered with squares equal in size to the space occupied by the square of the thickness of the carpet yarn. The designs being-full-prepared and approved, they are passed into the hands of the workers.
Now we have to see the preparation of carpet warps, for upon this depends all the beauty of the carpet. The wool of the warp has already been thoroughly scoured at Messrs. Stoddard & Co.'s Foxbar scouring works a short distance up the stream, and comes to Glenpatrick in hanks of white yarn. These are taken to the new division of the works. What has the external appearance of a series of long narrow buildings is in reality a magnificent workroom about three acres in area, filled with machines and busy workers. Fenced off from the main area by a curious lattice of open shelves divided into squares are the winding machines that wind the hanks of yarn on to thick bobbins. As the bobbins are filled they are laid into the shelves, each division of which is for a different quality or class of yarn. In front of these shelves are machines, the chief part of which is a huge revolving drum. The white bobbins are lifted from the shelves, ranged on a square board below the drum, and the yarn slowly transferred to the drum, there to be impressed with the colours according to design.
The colours, however, have to be prepared first. In a side room the barrels of dye stuffs are stored, and thence taken to the colour-mixing department, where they are mixed with flour and gum in large stone jars. From the jars the colour is taken and laid into a little square box below the revolving drum of the printing machine before-mentioned. Within the colour box revolves a little round disc, which, when the printing machine is set going, runs along the yarn-covered drum impressing a line of colour on the yarn. The lady printer has a pattern of the carpet design on a board before her, with numbered squares fixed beside it, and corresponding numbers are engraved on copper rims round the edge of the drum, the rims having a tooth or nick to each number. By this arrangement each colour is laid on precisely the place in the yarn required by the design. Colour after colour is impressed on the yarn, till the whole design is completed.
There are printing machines of all sizes here, from the little drums for narrow stair carpets to drums 16 ft. in diameter for broad carpet squares. Next the yarn is laid on long ladder-like frames filled with bran, and, having been covered with grain, the yarn is lifted in the frames on to bogie waggons and run into the steam presses to ensure fixity and brightness of colour. After being pressed, the yarn is washed by curious machines devised to work in precisely the same way as an intelligent human washer. On the floor is a long tank, through which a heavy stream of water constantly flows. Above, a long arm descends almost to the level of the water, and fixed in the arm is a revolving frame. The yarn is laid on the revolving frame, the iron arm moves rapidly backward and forward, the frame revolves, turning pound the yarn in the water, washing out the seed grains and superfluous colour. The yarn is now hung up to dry in the steam-heated drying stoves. The dried yarn is wound again on to bobbins by the winders further along the flat. Next to these are the setters. This is an interesting operation. At one end of the setting frame is a weaver's beam; at the other is a board filled with yarn-covered bobbins. The threads are led from the bobbins on to the setter's board, and thence to the weaving-beam. The setter lays all the different colours of yarn according to the pattern - a delicate and artistic operation, requiring a good-eye for colour and deft fingers. One section of the yarn set, the clamps on each side arc brought down to keep it in position, and the beam is turned round, taking on that part of the finished warp. Here the wonderful variety of colour and design produced at Glenpatrick begins to appear; but the full vision is not yet.
Over in the older buildings are the weaving-looms. The warps, having been finished, they are carried to the weaving sheds, and there laid on the looms. Steam-driven and iron-framed, those looms are powerful machines, the heddles moving swiftly up and down, the shuttles flying across the web with lightning speed. A carpet is not like cloth, for it must be thick and heavy. It has two warps; one, the fine worsted warp we have seen prepared with such care, and another of tough flax. Further, to produce the necessary thickness the warp is looped up as it is woven by long steel wires woven in between the threads of the flying shuttle; the wires drop out, each leaving a long row of little loops that form the upper surface of the ordinary tapestry carpet. For velvet pile carpets a little knife runs along at the end of the steel wires, cutting up the loops as they are made. It is a marvellous little instrument that cutter no bigger than a man's little finger, it flies along the surface of the carpet and leaves behind it the straight velvet pile.
Thus woven together, the carefully prepared warps are now seen in all their beauty as woven carpets. Here are bright coloured webs for the sunny East, there artistic designs for Holland or Italy; at one loom the weaver works a square 14 quarters wide, at another a stair carpet 2 ft. broad is being woven. In all, 180 looms are in operation. At the end of the weaving sheds the jute dressing work goes on. There the jute basis of the carpet is made, being wound on to bobbins, then unwound on to the warp beams, and in the process being dressed.
Adjoining is the winding department, where the cops that supply the weaving material for the linen are wound. When lifted oft the loom the carpets are taken to the finishers, who inspect and darn up defects, then sent on to the machinists, who sew round the edges. Messrs. A. F. Stoddard & Co. have recently introduced another finishing machine, the object of which is to smooth away all irregularities in velvet pile carpets. The effect produced by these knife-encircled rollers is certainly admirable.
Those works arc well-lighted, spacious, and heated with steam, the comfort of the workers being no secondary consideration, but a part of the firm's business policy. Six hundred and forty workers are regularly employed, and the devices adopted to save labour - the junction of one department with another - are certainly calculated to make that large number of workers efficient. Electric light is installed throughout the new premises, supplied from the firm's own engine-room. Of the engines, dynamos, and other auxiliary departments ire have no space to write. The business seems to be managed with energy, alertness, and progressive spirit.
The head of the firm, which is now a limited liability company, is Mr. Charles Bine Renshaw, M.P. for West Renfrewshire. His lather was Mr. Thomas C. Renshaw, Q.C., a lawyer of sonic repute and a landed proprietor of considerable property in Sussex. Born in London about the middle of the nineteenth century, Mr. Renshaw attended St. Clere School, in the county of Kent, and afterwards finished his education at Stuttgart, in Germany. Destined at first for the East Indies, he entered an East Indian merchant's house in 1866, and afterwards was employed by a Manchester firm.
In 1868, however, Mr. Renshaw came north to Elderslie, the place having stronger than business attractions for him, and entered the counting-house of his father-in-law, Mr. A. F. Stoddard. When the change in trade consequent on America's protectionist policy occurred Mr. Renshaw threw himself into the breach. His knowledge of French and German acquired at Stuttgart stood him in good stead. He travelled all over the Continent, establishing agencies wherever he could, and returned home to take his place in the reconstituted firm as a partner, along with Mr. Stoddard, jun.
Some years after the death of Mr. Stoddard, senior, young Mr. Stoddard retired, leaving Mr. Renshaw sole partner in the business. Mr. Arthur Renshaw came to assist his brother in the management, and in 1894 the firm was constituted a limited liability company, with Mr C. Bine Renshaw as chairman of the board of managing directors, Mr Arthur Renshaw, vice-chairman, and Messrs. Wallace and Allison managers in the works, associated with them. The latter two gentlemen had entered the factory as boys, and rose step by step till they were finally called to the position of managing directors.
Mr. Renshaw has always taken much interest in public affairs. An active Commissioner of Supply for Renfrew County before 1899, he was elected to the County Council then constituted, and has served on that Board ever since, acting for many years as chairman of the Committee on Secondary Education, and chairman of the Committee on Technical Education still. When the Education Act passed in 1872, Mr. Renshaw was elected a member of the Abbey School Board of Paisley, being chairman for many years, resigning the position when Parliamentary work left him no time to discharge its ditties.
In the year 1892 Mr. Renshaw consented to contest West Renfrew Division for Parliament in the Unionist interest. He won the seat, and has held it through three successive elections. Of clear intelligence, vigorous constitution, and kindly disposition, Mr. Renshaw is a good working member; open-minded and conciliatory, though of well-defined opinions, he has achieved such popularity that his party may thank his personality for holding West Renfrewshire against the amiable Sir Thomas Glen Coats.
Though a popular representative and friendly employer, Mr. Renshaw's knowledge of the needs of the masses is derived from sympathetic study, not from personal experience. As indicated above, he was born to good estate, and has improved upon his inheritance. He resides at Barochan, a fine place near Houston, which he bought from Mr. Cunningham, of Craigends. Mr. Renshaw has added to the extent of the property and improved it greatly. Fond of sport himself, and an agreeable host, Mr. Renshaw takes pleasure in entertaining at his shooting lodge, Garvock, above Greenock, where the Gryffe has its source. It is a nice estate, partly enclosing Loch Thom, and was formerly owned by Mr. James Stewart, who at one time was M.P. for Greenock. Part of the year Mr. Renshaw resides on another property in Sussex, Coldharlour, near Wivilsfield, where was situated the paternal estate. With all his possessions Mr. Charles Bine Renshaw is a frank and unaffected gentleman.