Signals of Distress Read Online Free Page B

younger, lesser man in everything but age. Matthias had a city and a country house, a wife, two daughters
and a son, a carriage and six servants. Matthias was a Justice of the Peace. He was obese. He sang, a decent baritone. And since his father died he’d been the acknowledged master of Hector
Smith & Sons. He had transformed the business. The city works employed ninety adult hands, as well as twenty children, and produced forty thousand bars of soap a week. Smith’s Finest
Soaps were used by royalty, but there were cheap, good-looking soaps for working people too. Soon the company would be renamed: M ATTHIAS S MITH & S ON .
    Aymer had little interest in soap. He was a Sceptic, a Radical and an active Amender. But, still, he was the junior partner in Hector Smith & Sons. It provided him with income, and
notionally it was his task to help his brother at the works. Matthias, though, had no faith in Aymer. He thought he was a waster and a fool, best left alone to read his riotous pamphlets and his
volumes of verse than let loose amongst the company’s order books and ledgers. Yet Aymer went to work each day. He had a sense of duty. There was dignity in labour. The task he took upon
himself was not to help his brother but to check him. If Aymer could rename the company it would not be M ATTHIAS S MITH & S ON or S MITH B ROTHERS , but S MITH B ROTHERHOOD or E MANCIPATION S OAPS . He didn’t have an easy manner with the factory hands. He wasn’t even liked. But he could fight on their behalf. To no avail he pressed his brother to
provide gloves and leather aprons to protect the soapmakers from the boiling fat. He bullied for a shorter working day. He argued that the works should not employ children under twelve. He
recommended profit-sharing schemes, and factory schools, and rights of Combination. He was, as Matthias said to Fidia, his wife, ‘half-boiled, half-baked and half a man’.
    ‘He’s hell set on damaging his one true brother in the selfish interests of fraternity,’ was Fidia’s practised opinion.
    At Aymer’s instigation, three factory hands had formed a Works Committee and should be (Fidia again) ‘sacked before they do some harm’. Matthias wished his brother were
elsewhere, so that the sackings could take place without commotion. As in everything, his wishes would come true.
    It was the plight of kelpers such as Rosie and Miggy Bowe in their rough cottages at Dry Manston that would provide Matthias with some respite from his brother’s quarrelsome philanthropy,
and bring Aymer on the journey west. For forty years Hector Smith & Sons had bought supplies of soda ash for soapmaking from the kelpers on the coast beyond Wherrytown. Walter Howells and
Walter Howells’s father before him had been Smith agents there, purchasing the kelp ash from the Dry Manston families and arranging wagons to deliver it to the manufactory, five days’
journey overland to the east. Now thanks to Nicolas Leblanc, a French surgeon with a taste for chemistry, a simple process was established to extract sodium carbonate from common salt. It was pure;
it was cheap; and when the railway was complete it could be delivered within a day. ‘What is the point,’ Matthias asked Aymer, ‘in using Mr Howells when we have
Leblanc?’
    ‘The point,’ said Aymer, ‘is our Duty. The Smiths and Howells have been partners since we were young. Our fortunes have been interlocked. And Mr Howells has contracts –
moral ones at least, if not legally established – with families who rely on stooping in the sea for kelp for their small incomes.’
    ‘Well, let them give their backs a rest and let them dry their feet. We have no further need of kelp. I cannot argue further.’
    ‘I will not let this rest.’
    ‘Aymer. The choice is mine, not yours. You well know the stipulations in Father’s will. Besides, my letter to Mr Howells is already written and ready for dispatch. I will not go back
on my word.’
    ‘You cannot break