When she stepped out of Skelton’s office Lizzie’s legs were shaking. She had committed herself to buying twelve cargoes of jute a year and the first of them was due to arrive in three months – but would Green Tree Mill be able to cope with such an influx of hemp and, what was even more of a problem, would she be able to sell the jute that they wove from Skelton’s cargoes?
I’ve gone mad. I’m risking everything, she told herself as she walked along Shore Terrace, blindly stumbling past the place where she used to take farewell of Sam when he went off on the whaling trips. She was so preoccupied that she did not even notice.
I must think, I must work this out. The words ran through her head over and over again. When she saw her carriage waiting at the corner, she waved the coachman away. ‘Go back to the mill. I want to walk for a bit,’ she told him.
She turned away from the river and climbed the hill to the High Street where the traffic was so heavy that even that broad thoroughfare was crammed with horse-drawn carts, hand barrows, private carriages, modern electric tramcars and cyclists.
Lizzie was jostled by the crowds of well-dressed people who thronged the pavements. Oblivious to the seething cauldron of poverty in other parts of the city, the mill owning families continued to lead lives of comfort and luxury. Emporia catering for their fine and discriminating tastes lined the streets of the town centre. They sold furniture, jewellery, furs, shoes and clothes imported from Paris or London. Lizzie, in her dark office clothes, walked slowly along, staring blank-eyed at their richly decorated windows.
She used to love shopping, she used to enjoy going with Sam into the quality stores and browsing among the richly laden counters but now she gazed like an outcast through the open doors, where she could see women in beautiful clothes chattering together as they fingered luscious silks or pondered over bottles of exotic scent. They were the families of the mill magnates, the men who had built fantastic rococo mansions facing out to sea at Broughty Ferry or on the Perth Road. They vied with each other in the magnificence of their homes, and when one man built a house with a high turret, his business rival had to build one even taller. They imported architects from France, garden planners from England and plasterers from Italy, and scoured the world for furnishings. Lizzie’s uncle had made a fortune selling them Italian paintings, Chinese famille rose bowls, Persian carpets, French bronzes, crystal chandeliers from Murano and Bohemian glass tableware that shone like rubies when turned towards the light.
She thought about this as she wandered along, ignored by the fashionable. There was a fierce hunger burning inside her. She knew she could sell Green Tree Mill and Tay Lodge and lead a safe, unexciting, middle-class life on the proceeds, but she was sure Mr Adams would have been disappointed in that decision. She wanted more, she wanted to be equal with those gilded people.
One day I’ll be as rich as any of you. One day I’ll be able to sweep into Draffens’ and buy whatever I want. One day I’ll be the most successful businesswoman in Dundee, she promised the oblivious crowds of shoppers.
By mid morning she had turned her steps towards the mill district and was climbing the Hilltown. Here she found herself in the slums that spread like honeycombs around the city centre. There were fewer people visible now because most of the women were packed inside the mills, but groups of idle men stood around at corners, gossiping and smoking.
Lizzie knew the joke: ‘When a man’s tired of working he marries a Dundee lassie’ because it was common in those mean streets for the woman to be the breadwinner and the man to be what was called ‘the kettle biler’.
They watched her pass with critical eyes. To them she was just another working woman going about her business. If they had known she was the mistress of Green Tree Mill they would have jeered her. Mill owners did not venture into the slums where families crammed into single rooms for which rack rent agents extorted money on behalf of middle-class landlords who never set foot in their property.
Lizzie used to think the overcrowding in the Vaults was bad but up here in the Hilltown it was worse – if only seven people shared one room they considered themselves lucky; one water tap provided for thirty, and if a building had a privy it served twenty families.
As she slowly climbed the steep hill she was not oblivious to the poverty. Its degradation and hopelessness hit her forcibly but she looked on it as a warning. She had just taken a tremendous gamble. If it failed she could lose everything. She looked up at broken windows, she stared into rubbish-littered courtyards and her resolve to be successful stiffened. She must never risk having to endure such conditions.
In the mill that afternoon she ordered a conference of senior management. She did not tell them about her commitment to Skelton but went straight into the attack.
‘I’ve been scrutinizing the order books and it seems to me that we only have three really major customers,’ she said to Mr Richards.
He nodded. ‘We had the army – they bought our jute for the stiffening inside officers’ greatcoats – but that’s dwindled away to nothing. We still have two big sack suppliers – one deals with farmers and the other with coal merchants. The rest of the people who buy from us are all small men. Mr Adams stuck with the folk he knew. He didn’t try to expand because the mill could sell whatever it made and that was enough for him.’
She gave him a bleak look. If he was implying she should let sleeping dogs lie, he was in for a surprise.
‘It’s not good enough for me. Have any of you suggestions to make about how we can increase our customers?’
‘Trade’s slack at the moment,’ said Richards. ‘Nobody’s buying jute.’
She leaned across the table at him. ‘It’s an all-purpose material, isn’t it? It’s used for all sorts of things. Somebody must still need it.’
Old Mr Bateson spoke up: ‘We don’t have many agents out selling our goods because we’ve relied on the same buyers all the time. Perhaps we should employ some good salesmen, Mrs Kinge.’
She was pleased to see someone was thinking constructively. ‘That’s what we need, agents. We need men out selling our jute. On the first day you showed me round the mill I remember you said we’re particularly good at making fine woven material. Our weavers are very skilled. Surely they’re wasted making sackcloth – so who else can we sell to? I want you all to think about it and bring me your suggestions.’
They trooped out of her office with their faces expressing surprise and a certain amount of apprehension. Mrs Kinge was not the innocent young woman she had seemed at first sight. She was about to make trouble and stir up their quiet mill pond. Some of them decided she would have to be stopped.
On her way home that night she halted the carriage at a newsagent’s and sent the coachman in to buy a copy of every newspaper available. To the tablemaid’s obvious disapproval she ate her supper with papers spread out beside her plate, and when she sat down in the drawing room, more newspapers were littered around her feet.
Next day she came home with bundles of magazines, a selection that extended from The Illustrated. London News to The Lady’s Realm. She scrutinized the pictures and read the editorial so carefully that her domestic staff were surprised by this new enthusiasm.
Maggy, to whom everything Lizzie did was perfectly acceptable, explained to the maids as they tidied up the piles of magazines and newsprint, ‘Mrs Kinge needs her mind taken off work.’
In fact the true explanation was quite the opposite. Lizzie was working very hard indeed when she read her magazines. She concentrated on the advertisements and when she was finished, she had a list of possible businesses that might be interested in buying her jute. They ranged from London modistes to makers of garden chairs and manufacturers of linoleum. The next step was to approach them.
‘I want you to find me three or four really keen young men – hungry men who want to make a name for themselves. I don’t care if they’re gentlemen or not as long as they’re ambitious,’ she told her managers at Green Tree.
There was no sentiment about the way she selected her candidates. Her father suggested she might want to do something for her half brother Robert but she brushed his suggestion aside.
‘I wouldn’t even be able to find a job for George now,’ she told him. ‘I know the sort of men I want and none of my brothers fit the bill.’ Lizzie was hardening.
She ended up with three suitable agents, picked from a dozen eager young fellows who were produced for her consideration. One man was the son of a well-known preacher in the city and burned with the same evangelical fire, though his was directed towards commerce; another was related to a distant cousin of her father and he won her respect because he refrained from capitalizing on their connection when he was interviewed; the third was a caustic fellow from the slums who reminded her of Johnny Davidson. When she saw him she realized that it was another Johnny that she was seeking, someone with the same hunger to succeed.
She lectured them about the way they were to work: ‘You’re to sell the products of Green Tree Mill and only Green Tree Mill. I won’t have you taking on other clients. You work for me and me alone. I’ll pay you a good salary and a percentage on every order you bring me.’
The young man who reminded her of Johnny asked, ‘Where do you want us to start, Mrs Kinge?’
She produced a sheaf of papers. ‘I’ve made lists of the outlets I want you to contact and I’ll keep on collecting information on other possible customers. You should as well. And remember, you work directly under me. You’re answerable to no one else. It’s only fair to warn you that I’ll not be easy to get along with if you make mistakes. Have any of you any objection to being told what to do by a woman?’
None of them had.
She made them report to her every day for a month. In her office she walked round them like a connoisseur looking at statues and made comments about their grooming. ‘I don’t like celluloid collars. Get real ones, even if it means a big laundry bill. I don’t like the smell of that pomatum. If you must wear one, wear a good one.’
When she was satisfied that they were sufficiently well groomed to represent her, she gave them their final briefing and they set forth out of Dundee to distant parts. They went to Manchester where the cotton trade was in constant need of sacking; they went to London where Lizzie had picked out a range of possible customers, from the Savile Row makers of tailcoats to East End tailoring shops in which armies of women toiled day and night over whirring sewing machines; they even went to France and Germany because she was casting her net wide.
Within weeks orders came in by telegraph and she began to feel another kind of dread as she added up the totals. There was work enough to take up Skelton’s cargoes, but could the mill cope with it, could it step up its production sufficiently to carry out the orders that her men were bringing in?
Now she had to examine every stage of the manufacturing process and find out the areas of weakness. She had to make her workers produce twice as much as they had ever done before.
She started by reorganizing the counting house. Remembering George’s tales about reading the Pink ’Un and throwing paper darts, she made a point of bursting in among her clerks at times when she was not expected.
‘Are you sure we need all those men?’ she sternly asked her chief accountant, Mr Gilchrist.
‘Oh yes, they’re very busy.’
‘Doing what, exactly?’
When their duties were listed she decided that the work force could be cut by fifty per cent.
Gilchrist’s face whitened. ‘But Mr Adams would never…’he protested.
She silenced him with a gesture. ‘Mr Adams was a kind man but his heart wasn’t in the business after Miss Dorothy died. Things have been slack here for far too long. I don’t intend to run a rest home for lazy workers.’
Next day the managers summoned to her office were surprised to see her dressed in a long white dust coat that swept the ground and with her hair tied up in a cloth snood like any woman mill worker.
‘I want to go round the mill, but not as a visitor. I want to see exactly how it works. I want to see every loom and speak to every worker.’
‘I’ll take you,’ said Mr Richards, but she shook her head.
‘I don’t want anyone with me. I’m going alone and no one must know when to expect me.’
The noise was deafening as she pushed open the heavy door that led into the glass-roofed cavern of the weaving shed where the huge looms were lined up. No one looked up at her arrival and she walked between the rows for quite a long time before one of the overseers spotted her and rushed up to ask, ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ When she saw who the woman in the white coat was, her face registered complete astonishment.
Lizzie cupped her hands and said in the woman’s ear, ‘Stop the looms. I want to speak to the women.’
It was very unusual to stop looms in the middle of the day and as the order was passed down the line, the weavers looked at each other, their faces registering surprise and fear. Had there been an accident? Did this mean the mill was closing? Were they to be thrown out of work?
When silence fell Lizzie climbed up on a chair at the end of the shed and shouted, ‘I’ve stopped the looms because I want to talk to you. I’ve been going round the mill and there’s lots of things I want to change, but first of all I need your help. I plan to increase the production of this mill by more than half. If I succeed there’ll be more work, but I want total effort from you all. I’ve no room for people who waste their time.’
Eyes stared at her. Some were curious, some were hostile, a few were admiring. A whisper of comment swept from woman to woman but she could not hear what they said.
‘In only one morning I’ve seen women sitting in circles singing songs when they ought to be working. I’ve seen people coming in late and overseers covering up for them. That’s all going to stop. When you’re in my mill, you are in to work. If you’re late you’re out of a job.’
The rustle of comment grew in volume. One woman from the back spoke up loudly: ‘We work hard. We work as hard as any mill. It’s fine for you – you don’t know what it’s like for women like us.’
Lizzie’s eye sought out the speaker – a thin and fierce little battler of a woman.
‘That’s right, Jean,’ said a few others and they all stared up with hostility at Lizzie on her chair.
She faced them out. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything I won’t do myself. I’m not going to hide in the office and take the profits. I’m going to keep on coming among you. You won’t ever know when. And don’t think I don’t know what it’s like to work. Like you I’ve a family to keep; like many of you I’m on my own. My life depends on this mill more than yours because you can find other jobs if you’re good enough.
‘What I want from you is maximum effort. Anybody who’s not skilled enough or who’s too idle will go. I warn you now. But for the people who stay I’ll pay good wages. I’ll give a bonus every year and I’ll make sure that you work in safe conditions. When I was walking through the spinning sheds a few minutes ago, I saw two flash fires. I’ve just dismissed the forewoman because she shouldn’t have allowed the stoor to build up on the overhead pipes so that it could catch fire.’
The women turned to each other and she heard them saying, ‘Did you hear that, she said “stoor”? Did you hear that, she’s fired old Armstrong!’
Miraculously this seemed to turn them in her favour. The feeling coming off them was more sympathetic. A few even smiled when she climbed down from her chair. She walked up to each loom and introduced herself to the weaver. When she reached the end of the line and stood beside the little battler who had barracked her, she was surprised to have her hand shaken, hear a rasping voice say, ‘You’ll do all right. Armstrong was an old bitch. She had favourites and she bullied the bairns. Good luck to you, missus. We’ll back you up.’
Her new regime was strict and if she had not made her tour of inspection first, it could have caused a great deal of trouble. She delegated Mr Richards to carry out her orders. ‘I want a notice posted saying that anyone who’s not at their machine by the time the gates close in the morning and after dinnertime will be dismissed. That’s what the big mills do and there’s always plenty more workers waiting to fill their vacancies. We’ll not be short of people.’
‘But Mr Adams knew all his workers personally. If they were late he knew there was usually a good reason.’
‘If anyone thinks they’re hard done by they can come to see me and I’ll judge each case on its merits. But the way of working here’s far too easygoing. It has to smarten up.’
The gates were closed as soon as the starting hooter went. Late arrivals were out of a job. Hearing about the new regime in Green Tree, which had always been regarded as an easy place to work, unemployed women took to waiting in a small crowd at the gate every morning and every lunchtime. When there were vacancies Lizzie went out personally and hired off the street to fill the empty places. She was determined that there must never be a loom or a spinning frame idle.