DRINK IN THE POTTERIES.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43086, 30 April 1907, Page 1

DRINK IN THE POTTERIES.

a stipendiary’s strictures. 1 - This was evidently deemed satisfactory, and people who had been shocked by the disclosures appeared to think the fact that other towns were equally immoral desposed of all need for anxiety! ./ The affects of the "drinking habits of the inhabitants of the Potteries naturally received attention during the controversy but it would doubtless be wrong to suggest that :in this respect the Potteries are any different from other working-class districts. The deplorable fact is that the standard of all our manufacturing towns is so low in this respect that the conditions are regarded as normal and; acquiescence in such a state of affairs is the common attidute, where there ought to be discontent, agitation and an unceasing attempt to obtain better and cleaner conditions and a higher standard of sobriety.

The Potteries are but A MICROCOSM OP INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND.

In some respects they are representative of industrialism everywhere. %. Perhaps the ugliness and squalor are intensified somewhat by being gathered into so confined an area, and the grime and smoke and meanness may be heightened in effect by contrast with the clean sweet countryside that lies within so short a distance of the miry pot banks. Then the district is, to some extent, isolated. No main line of railway touches it. It has its own line—the North Staffordshire, —its own distinctive industry, and the conditions produce certain, marked characteristics in the peopl .

A close and well-informed study of the Potteries is evideut in Mr Arnold Bennett’s novel,

“anna of the five towns.”

In this story the district has found its hostoriun. The characters fit the scene, moving naturally among their surroundings, and the towns themselves are described with photographic fidelity yet with artistic sympathy. Mr Bennett wrife3 of this unattractive neighbourhood as one who knows, aud-as one who can see beneath the forbidding exterior, and can discern not only the glare of furnaces and the reck of kilns, but the light of romance and the™ glow of human energy and endeavour.

Under a very thiu disguise he describes the towns of Tunstal.l, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, and Lon a tom “ Bursly, the ancient home of the potter, has an antiquhy of a thousand years. It -lies towards the north end of an extensive valley, which must have been one of the fairest spots in Alfred’s England, but which is now defaced by the activities of a quater of a . million of people. Five contiguous towns—Turnhill, Bursley, Hanbridge, Ivnype, and Longshaw—united by a single winding thoroughfare of some*' eight miles in length, have inundated the valley like a succession of great lakes. Of tLese five Bursley is the mother, but Hanbridge is the largest. “ They are mean and forbidding of aspect:—sombre," ;lUidfeatured, uncouth ; and the ' vuporous poison of their ovens and chimneys has soiled and shrivel* led the surrounding counfiy till there is no village lane within a league but what offers a gaunt and ludicrous travesty of rural charms. Nothing could be more prosaic than the huddled, redbrown streets;'; nothing more seemingly move remote from romance.”

t/To be Continued.)