Shining Threads by Audrey Howard Page B

purpose, who was to say? Certainly not the two boys whose eyes
had widened in alarm as his hands fell on their shoulders, the expression on his face freezing the blood in their veins.
    ‘You will settle down to some decent occupation,’ he said when they stood before the desk in his study, ‘and that means, naturally, in the trade which employed your maternal
and paternal grandfathers. Your place is in the mill. You are to be commercial gentlemen as not only your father, your grandfather but your great-grandfather were before you, not young squireens
like Nicky Longworth or Johnny Taylor who were born to it. Do you understand?’
    They said they did.
    ‘ You were born to be manufacturers and manufacturers you will be. That is why you were educated at the local grammar school and not at public school as your friends were, so that
you might get something in your heads other than a bit of Latin and Greek. Do I make myself clear?’
    They said he did.
    ‘Now I appreciate that you have no particular aptitude for it; that you have no inclination towards machinery, nor the adding up of profit and the subtraction of loss. But you will learn,
for that is what you are to do with your lives now that your schooling is ended. Is that clear?’
    They said it was.
    ‘You will accompany your Aunt Jenny and Charlie to the mill each day, starting at five thirty, as they do, and you will learn to get on with those about you. To start with you will go with
Wilson on his daily round of the mill at Chapmanstown, since it is the largest, and make yourselves conversant with all the processes of spinning, and work with Aunt Jenny in the counting house
getting to know the overall business strategy. You will travel to Manchester with Charlie to acquaint yourselves with the trading side of the business, see to the purchase of raw cotton, learning
from him, and others, how to judge when to buy and how much to pay . There will be the organising of credit to our customers, the collection of trade debts in world markets and the
proper knowledge of how to husband your resources. You will agree, will you not, that there is a lot to be learned and the quicker you get started the sooner you will be able to take over when the
time comes. Is that understood?’
    They said that it was.
    ‘You will go to the Cloth Hall each week, or perhaps more often, depending on trade. Your lives will be controlled, not by your own whims and fancies but by the factory bell. There will be
no galloping off to join the Squire’s hunt at the first hint of autumn. You will work in the spinning rooms and weaving sheds and get yourselves dirty, as I did, as your Aunt Jenny did, as
Charlie did, as your own mother did, and you will become millmasters, the manufacturing gentlemen you were destined to be. Do you understand? And if I hear you have disobeyed me I shall have you
whipped into the mill yard and keep you permanently without money until you stay there.’
    Mr Wilson was droning on and Drew yawned.
    ‘. . . designed to spin and wind automatically. It will also make the necessary adjustments between successive draws to take account of the growing size of the cop and the decreasing
length of the bare spindle blade, as you will see when we go into the spinning room . . .’
    What is the old fool blethering on about? Drew’s eyes signalled to Pearce. God knows, he was answered, and could you care less? The two handsome boys, just seventeen years old and destined
never to go to Cambridge, never to go on a Grand Tour as Johnny Taylor’s father had promised him , never to go anywhere , their despairing expressions said, but across the yard
and into the spinning room, or to Broadbank and the weaving sheds, stared desperately into one another’s eyes.
    ‘Now have you any questions before we go into the spinning room, young sirs?’ Mr Wilson asked genially, shortsightedly, hopelessly, since he knew there would be none.
    They said they hadn’t.
    ‘Right, then