"HE STOOD FOR COTTON."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14644, 1 April 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

"HE STOOD FOR COTTON."

Mn. Harold Begbik has a very vivid sketch in The Chronicle describing one of the passengers on the P. and 0, boat in which he went to India. He calls him The Paymaster—he stood for cotton." " He was a man fashioned by Nature to escape notice. In any crowd he would have been a smudged and merging unit, in any street, an unobserved and uninteresting pedestrian. But; destiny : had placed him among first-class passengers of & P. and O. steamer, and he stood out there, prominent and • provoking, because fe was so very undistinguished-looking, so very provincial, so very common-place, and so very un-first-class. ,"-,;" The majority of our passengers stood for the British Raj in all its hundre4-and-ono activities. We had men who looked like collectors, judges, lieutenant-governors, and secretaries; men who looked like majors, colonels, generals, and commanders-in-chief; men who : lookea like, ballard-sirig-ing, fan-carrying, / and society-gossiping A.D.O.'s. . ; "He stood - for , cotton. ;As.■ a child he had laboured in:the mills, of Oldham; by hard work, an iron perseverance, and abso-! lute integrity of character, he had/risen ] *to be'manager of . a;great /Manchester: firm with headquarters in.London a temporary !'interruption to hia : usual good health had j led to the suggestion made by his employer j that -he should take 'a turn'round India he proposed to visit most of, the big cbm^ : mercial■■■ cities, mterview some of the leading firms, fill a pocket-book with notes and ; ideas, and ; then return to .his] desk in* London. '• . ' ' ; •' -. ' / " He talked cotton, making a most rapid use of technical/terms, until my head was I in a daae and my patience dangerously res- ; tive. // He appeared to take for granted that every man in. the world knew -all about the/ business.of cotton, /down; to the smal[lest detail of its manufacture. If I stopped him to '"; inquire the precise meaning of a particular word he ■ merely repeated it, as if I had failed to hear, not failed to understand. India-—that mighty, majestic, and romantic empire of /beauty and problemstood in his imagination only as one thing —a customer for his cotton. We came to, see, many of us came to see,: that all our j delightfuj: and ; intellectual and powerful and elegant fellow-passengers were but; the j parasites of the ! plain; young man from/ Manchester. They were his servants, the decorative "/■ and ; clerky'.', classes of his industry. It ? was his enthusiasm; for cotton which paid our first-clasß fares to India; it was his assiduity ;in business which j clothed us in fine raiment it was his pro- j gressing enterprise and unflagging devotion i to trade which filled our pockets, fed our children, and gave us all our several opportunities / for improving our minds. In j all that fine company 'he stood for ; commerce. We were decorations 'and orders;/ he, pounds, lihillings, and ; pence—chiefly j pounds. He was England, the producer and paymaster of the world. ; ■; .. " For him- Dreadnoughts watched ; the ; seas, soldiers practised at the butts, statesmen wove the cocoon of diplomacy, and Chancellors of the Exchequer planned i their Budgets. He paid ' for policemen and judges, for journalists and schoolmasters, for hospitals and orphanages, for authors and ; clergymen, ' for steamships ■; and railways, for /cables; and ; Consuls, for everything in modern existence ; which is. supported ■by the wealth": of the producer. He bestrode that >P. -and 0. steamer like ; a Colossus; ;:."'.and we, /petty : men, crawled Wilder his short ■ legs to find ourselves honourable pensions or insurance premiums; for our children." ■ ' j