Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/144

 the works, was elected Mayor for the Jubilee year (1887), being re-elected for the year 1888. In commemoration of Her Majesty's Jubilee, and of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the railway through Crewe, the Company presented the town with a public park, about forty acres in extent, which was dedicated by Sir Richard Moon, Bart., chairman of the Company, on the 4th July, 1887, and was formally opened to the public by H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, on the 9th June, 1888.

The Company have built, and are the owners of, nearly 800 houses occupied by their workpeople, in addition to which a considerable number have been built by the workmen themselves. The town being almost entirely dependent upon the works, and constituting, in fact, a veritable railway colony, the directors have aided by their countenance, and by material support, every public movement deserving of their liberality. They have erected and endowed a church belonging to the Establishment, and have subscribed to the expenses of building several places of worship of other denominations; have established large schools for the education of the children of the men employed in the works, and erected public baths. They have also provided a Mechanics' Institute, which contains a library of more than 8,000 volumes, a comfortable reading-room, well supplied with newspapers, periodicals, and magazines; class-rooms, a smoking-room, a gymnasium, and a lecture hall seating 800 persons. During the winter months evening classes are held for the instruction, both in elementary and advanced subjects, of the young people employed in the works during the day, and these are largely attended, the fact that since 1871 no less than twenty-four of the