Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/96

 whose wants could find employment for skilled handicraft. The manufacturers of the north, even when wealthy, did not always adopt a style of living commensurate with their earnings, for they often lacked the tastes which accompany hereditary riches. But London was alike the centre of society, fashion, politics, affairs, law, medicine and letters. It was the home, for part of the year at least, of an enormous proportion of the wealthy and leisured class. To meet their needs arose vast numbers of superior craftsmen, employed upon the better-class wares which found their best market in Westminster and the City. The political and commercial life of the metropolis furnished the most important of these artisans, from the political point of view. These were the compositors, employed upon the various newspapers and in the printing and publishing houses. These were necessarily men of fair education, keen intelligence, and of some acquaintance with the affairs of the world.

Apart from their superior rates of pay, these artisans of the capital had various other advantages over the mass of working people elsewhere. They had strong trade societies in which they were able to maintain apprenticeship regulations and high rates of wages, and as experts in trade union methods they were well acquainted with the problems of agitation and organisation. Living as they did in the centre of affairs, these men enjoyed opportunities of education and of intercourse which were far beyond what the "provincial" centres could provide. The districts of London were not then so specialised nor the different social classes so segregated as they have since become, under the influence of improved communications. The central districts, Charing Cross, Soho, Seven Dials, Holborn, Fleet Street and the City, contained a very mixed population in which Francis Place the tailor kept shop a few doors away from the Duke of Northumberland's town house. Seven Dials and Spitalfields, and parts of Holborn contained festering rookeries in which pauperised silk-weavers, labourers, and criminals found a refuge. The excellent little group of men who founded the London Working Men's Association lived in the district between Tottenham Court Road, Gray's Inn Lane, Charing Cross, and Fleet Street. Here during the late 'twenties and the early 'thirties flourished political and social discussion of every description. Dr. Birkbeck had started the London Mechanics' Institution, which still