Six hundred workers were employed, and there was not a school nor a church in the village. The workers worked when they wanted, and when they did not, they quit. Every pay-day they tramped off to neighboring towns, and did not come back until they had spent their last penny. In an endeavour to discipline them, the former manager had gotten their ill-will and they had mobbed the mill and broken every window. Cobden’s task was not commercial, it was a problem in diplomacy and education. To tell of how he introduced schools, stopped child labor, planted flower beds and vegetable gardens, built houses and model tenements, and disciplined the workers without their knowing it, would require a book. Let the simple fact stand that he made the mill pay by manufacturing a better grade of goods than had been made, and he also raised the social status of the people. In three years his income had increased to ten thousand pounds a year.*
“At thirty,” says John Morley, “Cobden passed at a single step from the natural egotism of youth to the broad and generous public spirit of a great citizen.”
American spelling retained
From ‘Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers’ (1917) by Elbert Green Hubbard (1856-1915).
* This history shows that, contrary to the impression often given, Cobden was an astute businessman, and that his enlightened methods did actually work. Nonetheless, Cobden’s remarkable political career distracted him so much from his business that shortly after his campaign to the repeal the Corn Laws (a protectionist policy that had brought thousands to near-starvation) had been crowned with success in 1846, he and his mill had to be rescued from bankruptcy by public subscription — crowdfunding, as we would call it today. The sum raised was almost £80,000. He accepted it gratefully, and used the money to buy his former childhood home in Midhurst, West Sussex.