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| Mrs Jenny Burt - 22nd April 1985 |
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J Burt - Thesis - Chapter 4
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This study was undertaken at Bedford College of Higher Education
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| The Relationship between the growth of the Boot and Shoe Industry and Non-conformity in Rushden, 1881-1901. |
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Conclusions When I first considered the title of this essay I believed that within the supportive, democratic atmosphere of the non-conformist churches, and at the time when the boot and shoe industry was moving from a domestic to a factory based industry, the enterprising shoe worker might be encouraged to become an entrepreneur, particularly with the support of his family and church. The Quaker Rowntree wrote that 'real piety favors the success of the trader by insuring his integrity (faithfulness in calling) and fostering habits of prudence and forethought, important items in obtaining that standing and credit in the commercial world which are requisite for the steady accumulation of wealth’1. The chapels with their many Sunday Schools and attendant societies, offered their members positions of organisation and responsibility in their administration, thus building up self-confidence, and this religious confidence in turn enabled the more ambitious members to enter into the business world, starting in the small 'shops' and expanding to larger factory premises. Another reason, perhaps, for their success may have been the extended kinship found among non-conformists. Payne argues that 'the over representation of non-conformists among the entrepreneurs who attained prominence may be explicable ... because they belonged to extended kinship families'2. Whilst he was concerned with national figures, nevertheless, in Rushden, the chapel congregations were made up of family groupings. When I spoke to a gentleman, a native of Rushden whose family had been prominent in the Old Baptist Church for many generations, he was able to look down the shoe manufacturers listed in the Trade Directories of the latter part of the century and tell me to which chapel the family belonged. He maintained that none belonged to the Anglican Church, and commented on the way the families intermarried and helped each other to establish their businesses. In his study of a Durham Mining community, R. Moore, found that 'all commentators on Methodism and the working class ... assert that Methodism provided a training in democracy. Whatever orthodox Methodists may have preached, the chapel was a school for democrats and a source of popular leaders'3. Ainsworth wrote that 'non-conformity was frequently more democratic in its organisation than, say, the Anglican church; it offered greater participation, through lay involvement of various kinds, for ordinary people in the day to day running of their chapels, and an increased sense of control over their own religious lives'4. Appendix F lists some of the persons who became leading shoe manufacturers in Rushden together with those interests and positions of influence which I have been able to discover, and this brief reference seems to me to echo both Moore and Ainsworth's studies. In Rushden it appears that many of the leading shoe manufacturers were brought up in the Sunday Schools, their names appear over and over again in church records and as adults they became pillars of strength in the church and the community. When writing of the Baptists in Mid Victorian Lancashire and (Cheshire, J. Lea commented on the way the chapels depended upon the wealthier members who provided real help in business acumen and social influence me well as finance. In Rushden, the shoe manufacturers gave the chapels the benefit of their experience and business expertise particularly in the planning and supervision of the extensive church building programme and in the raising of building loans. They were frequently appointed to the working committees and were the first to give contributions to the fund raising efforts. Records still survive of the pledged amount per week to be given to the chapel, i.e. the subscriptions, which ranged from 1d. to 6d., the leading shoe manufacturer and his wife and the shoe machinery engineer each pledging ten shillings. It might be argued that the non-conformist churches could be construed as the tool of the shoe masters and that they used the chapels and the temperance movement in order to pressure their employees and to improve production. I found no direct evidence of this and on the contrary upon perusing what records remain, I was impressed by the amount of energy expanded by the manufacturers and members of the chapels, the ordinary shoeworkers working in partnership, to further the work of the churches and Sunday Schools. When the Rector complained of the indifference and indolence among the upper and middle classes among church people contrasting painfully with the artisans, it is clear that those persons were not using the church for their own ends. "3ie pressures put upon the artisans and the working classes is an emotive question as one can always oast doubt upon a businessman's motive. But the general impression from the amount of activity in the chapels seems to show that their motives were not wholly selfish. H.E. Bates (born in Rushden) wrote that 'the geography of Rushden might well have been laid out by some shoemaking dictator who had insisted that for every hundred yards of dwelling house there should be thirty or forty of factory sandwiched between them and had then added the humanitarian proviso that a bakehouse and a chapel or two should somehow be tucked among them'5. Maybe the shoemaker did appear as a dictator, but he was also a benevolent dictator, the fast growth of the village needed housing and the majority of this housing he had erected for the immigrant worker was solid and well built, much of it remaining to-day. Moral pressures to conform were not confined to one social class upon another, but were extended to divisions within a class. For example, the chapel going shoeworker endeavoured to persuade his non—chapel going fellow shoeworker to conform, particularly in the subject of Temperance. There is a long tradition in the area that the temperance movement was very closely linked with the churches and I was particularly interested to see whether this link was maintained when the immigrant workers came to the village. I found that this connection was still very strong but that as the leisure hours of the shoeworker increased the chapel's expanding social life proved attractive probably only to the minority of the population, as, of course, it always had, and it was losing out to some extent to the alternative secular culture of the forking -fen's Clubs, whose phenomenal growth and membership paralleled that of the chapels. The chapels' strict adherence to temperance emphasised this division between the two distinctive cultures. In his introduction to his study on leading, Yeo comments on the numerous complaints of apathy found there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and I am quite sure that despite extensive chapel activity, Rushden had its share of shoeworkers who belonged neither to the chapels or to the Working Mens' Clubs. The majority of the membership of these Clubs were employed in the boot and shoe industry, but I could find no instance of the larger shoe manufacturer being a member, not even in the role of President or other leading honorary position during ray period of study. Thus when one looks at those persons exercising influence in the village, it can be seen that the leaders of the Working Mens’ Clubs played a very insignificant role compared to that of the chapels' leaders, and although there appeared to be two separate ways of life for the shoeworker to choose from, the influence of the chapel culture was predominant. There is no doubting the energy and zeal which emanated from the chapels in all classes of society, from the shoe masters to the workers. The emphasis was on the chapel not only as a place of worship but also as a place of fellowship. 'Chapels were centres of support and assistance; men and women felt that they could turn with confidence to their fellow members for help, both material and moral, in times of need’6. One was instantly recognisable as being a sober, industrious member of society if one belonged to a chapel. This Mantle of respectability was also aimed for by the Working Mens’ Clubs who somewhat equalled the chapels' projection as a family, by their concern with discipline and the support given to the members in times of sickness or distress. The vast expansion of the village and the influx of the immigrant workers caused the chapels to examine their role in society and adapt to the changing life of the village by providing a place where the newly arrived worker could be absorbed and welcomed into the family of God. They offered a way of life which when once accepted covered every moment and facet of the shoeworker's existence. To conclude there follows a contemporary view of the village given by the Revd. Harris (Old Baptist Minister) in 1901 which sums up the influence and role of the chapels during the period of Rushden's expansion from a village to a flourishing boot and shoe town7. 'It (Rushden) has a healthful, bracing atmosphere, free from smoke, except the smoke of tobacco, to the volume of which its youths far too largely contribute, and the moral contagion of foul language which is far too plentiful; though by no means free from the drink evil, it has a smaller proportion of public houses than almost any place in the Kingdom. The prevalence of drinking clubs, however, is not an entirely healthy or hopeful feature and the curse of gambling eats into its life like a cancer'. ‘The Churches have all done their part in the training of capable citizens and in the sweetening and purifying of the life of the people, while they have also preached, each in their own way, the doctrine of the Cross and Evangel of Salvation.' References
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