Many versions exist as to the origin of the expression, a “Manchester man,” but it is evident enough that the phrase, like that of a “Lancashire lad,” is a natural alliterative growth. The most widely accepted story, however, is that which tells of a coachman, who, asked “Who has ta gotten in t’ coach, lad?” replied, “Wha, then, ther’s a gentleman fra Liverpool, a man fra Manchester, a chap fra Bolton, an’ a felly fra Wigan.” A Lancashire boy’s definition of a gentleman should not at this point be forgotten. It was given many years since, and was, “one what weers at watch, an’ ligs by hisself.” So now we know that gentility, in these days of cheap watches and a prejudice against sharing a bed, may be within the reach of all. It is no small thing to be a “Manchester man.” The name has a self-reliant ring about it that fits the men of Manchester like a glove, whatever may be the fitness of the other descriptions, or of that other which tells of “Oldham roughs.” The Manchester manufacturer of about 1750, as described by contemporaries, was a humble person, of the greatest simplicity, working like a journeyman among his hands; beginning the day before six o’clock in the morning and ending it proportionably earlier, as the habits of the time and the primitive means of artificial lighting dictated. He both produced the goods and warehoused them, and his combined warehouse and factory was also his home. He not only worked with his weavers, but sat at meals with them, and all helped themselves out of a common bowl of water-porridge, and a dish of milk. No one among the manufacturers had such a thing as a “private residence,” and speech was indeed so simple that none of them probably would have understood the term unless put in more homely English. So much for the mid-eighteenth century John Brown was originally a poor lad in a cotton mill. His father and mother were—the Lord alone knows whom, for his known career began with his being found as an infant one winter’s night on a doorstep, wrapped in a flannel petticoat marked “J. B.” The foundling was taken to the workhouse and was fed, clothed, and educated at the public charge, finally being sent, as a lad, to the nearest cotton factory, where, I do not know if any wealthy Manchester commercial men of the late ’sixties recognised themselves in this effort of the imagination; but at any rate it would not hold good nowadays. I do not perceive, at the present time, actually or imaginatively, any great cotton-spinner taking tea in the back-kitchen or retiring at 9 p.m., and, although the art patron idea vigorously survives, it is music that pre-eminently distinguishes MATTER-OF-FACT To the typical Manchester man of that time, birth and gentility were nothing. He was, above all things, unsentimental and matter-of-fact, and provokingly literal. It was a Manchester man who, when a passage of poetry was read from Coleridge, declared that the reading, “The swallow was a-cold,” was incorrect, and should be “had a cold.” “Day is breaking” remarked some one to a cotton-spinner. “Let it break,” he replied, “it owes me nothing.” It was an inhabitant of some town jealous of Manchester—and there are plenty of them—who declared that a Manchester man, viewing Nelson’s bloodstained coat and waistcoat at Greenwich Hospital, would feel little patriotic emotion. He wonders first what cloth they were made of. It is a cruel saying, but it has at least this foundation: that Little Englandism and the old Manchester School of politics were one. Were one, for the Manchester School of Bright and Cobden is dead and its corpse dishonoured. It is true that what looked like a mental aberration overtook Manchester and the country in general at the election of 1906, but that was, here at any rate, not so much political conviction as your straightforward, forthright Lancashire man’s indignation at the want of honesty, the pitiful pettifogging, that |