GLASGOW :sx THE CREATION OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CITY OF CULTURE .sx by Bernard Aspinwall .sx " You do need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation , " wrote G. K. Chesterton .sx " It does really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think Glasgow is a grand place .sx Yet the miracle is achieved and while I was in Glasgow I shared the illusion " .sx Glasgow to American nineteenth century visitors was a similar striking experience .sx Some believed they had never seen a city so beautiful .sx The regular planned appearance of immaculate honey stone houses , clean wide streets , the magnificent buildings by 'Greek' Thompson and Charles Rennie Mackintosh , the impressive statues of great citizens in George Square , not to mention the department stores vastly superior to those of London :sx " The houses and streets are elegant , the parks well laid out and finely cared for , the streets wide and clean and the whole city has an elegance for which I was wholly unprepared .sx " To Grace Greenwood , Glasgow " as a manufacturing town , masks a very handsome appearance .sx Many of the public buildings are of a fine style of architecture ; and the planted squares , those fresh breathing spaces off the crowded business streets are truly beautiful " .sx Americans invariably felt at home in the city .sx They found the people friendly and interested in them rather than their lineage , in their talents and abilities .sx They felt it was the most democratic and American city in Europe .sx They readily compared it to their native cities , Baltimore , New York , Philadelphia and even the levee at New Orleans .sx To the imaginative son of the architect of the American Capitol Building in Washington , the immensely high chimney of the chemical works , Tennant's stalk , rivalled " the Pyramids or Strasbourg Cathedral , and even some who were merely quietly impressed felt a strong similarity between Paris and the city with the fine bridges over the Clyde .sx The river made the city and the city made the river .sx Deepened and developed the river was to be the setting for the first British steamship , 'Comet' , in 1812 .sx An ancient city , Glasgow established its international credentials and renown in the last century .sx It was arguably the first industrial city in the first industrial land , Scotland , in the world .sx Was not Adam Smith , the author of The Wealth of Nations ( 1776 ) , a Glasgow professor and had not James Watt first realised his steam power in his apprenticeship at the university ?sx Its professors and citizens had led the shift to enlightened modern attitudes :sx the father of sociology , Adam Ferguson , the moral philosopher , Francis Hutcheson and John Miller had queried the staid Calvinist moral and social tradition .sx In their wake Scottish Common Sense would prevail , combining the best of the old and new .sx In the city Rev. Dr. Thomas Chalmers had developed more scientific approaches to poverty , education and low attainments ; Patrick Colquhoun paved the way for the modern police service .sx With its myriad societies for the abolition of slavery , drink and social evils , Glasgow offered adjustment , self fulfilment , respectability here and now and salvation in the hereafter .sx The millenarian religion of the Godly Commonwealth was transformed by Scottish practicality .sx With its concern for freedom abroad , liberalism had an ideal home amid dedicated thrifty , sober , improving entrepreneurs at every level of society .sx It was arguably , the first 'modern' city in the world .sx The city motto , 'Let Glasgow Flourish' continues by 'the preaching of the Word' :sx Christianity , civilisation and the creation of wealth were the same providential concern .sx Such impressions are not the product of the much criticised hype of the revitalised city enjoying the well deserved title of European city of culture 1990 .sx They emphasise the rich Victorian urban heritage lavishly praised by John Betjeman , and thanks to local government and EEC initiatives recently rediscovered by historians , preservationists and tourists alike .sx A Brazilian academic friend has visited me several times in preference to the overcrowded , impersonal , polluted and ever expensive south .sx The city free from pretentiousness , as frequently noted by many travellers in the last century , still retains a welcoming uninhibited outlook .sx As in the last century Glasgow , with its nearby silicon glen , populated by the serried ranks of the world's computer companies , is once more at the cutting edge .sx Everywhere in the city there seems to be a rediscovery of that old self-confidence and vitality :sx a new international airport is developing with new hotels , office buildings and a renovated refurbished inner city , allegedly gentrified with luxurious appartments sic !sx in magnificent old warehouses , up-market boutiques and wine bars .sx With the Whistler collection in the University galleries , the substantial Impressionist and Scottish colourists in the Kelvingrove Gallery and the gigantic Burrell Collection in the grounds of Pollok House the younger - and other generations - can rediscover the quality , substance and taste of their nineteenth century predecessors .sx Equally with Scottish Opera , Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish ballet all based in the city , it is at the forefront of artistic endeavour with solid foundations built in the last century .sx Equally in its renowned Citizens' Theatre , its sparkling new Concert Hall , its young artists and designers of international renown cascading from the Glasgow School of Art , as well as its two fine universities contribute to a new respect for the former decaying old city .sx That one sidedness sic !sx that Sydney Checkland described as the upas tree of heavy industry and Colum Brogan as the static socialist dogma have gone .sx As in Andrew Young's Atlanta , it is as if the pragmatic Labour dominated city in partnership with business has rediscovered its forgotten tradition of innovation and social justice .sx Glasgow then is a cosmopolitan city .sx As H. V. Morton observed " Glasgow is the city of the glad hand and the smack on the back ; Edinburgh is the city of silence until birth or brains open the social circle .sx In Glasgow a man is innocent until he is found guilty ; in Edinburgh a man is guilty until he is found innocent .sx Glasgow is willing to believe the best of unknown quantity ; Edinburgh like all aristocracies , the worst !sx .sx .. Glasgow is cosmopolitan .sx .. Glasgow is a mighty and inspiring story .sx She is Scotland's anchor to reality .sx Lacking her Scotland would be a backward country lost in poetic memories and at enmity with an age where she was playing no part .sx " .sx Glasgow has played her part .sx Glasgow grew rapidly in the nineteenth century .sx The 77,000 population of 1800 quadrupled by 1850 and reached a million by the First World War .sx The city had well established links from colonial days with America through the tobacco trade which later developed into a substantial emigrant traffic .sx By 1930 America was home for almost fourteen per cent of all Scots .sx More than a quarter of all Scots born in the half century from 1871 emigrated .sx The first Mormon converts occurred in 1837 :sx more than 5,000 followed them to America .sx Other emigrant and trading links had been forged through Glasgow with British possessions :sx India and the Far East , New Zealand from 1833 , Australia , Canada and South Africa as well as the thriving Scottish engineering and farming enterprises in South America .sx In the provision of material and manpower , Glasgow was deservedly known as the 'Second City of the British Empire' .sx The city provided the technicians and technology of modernity .sx In the last century the city was indeed the workshop of the world .sx In the early period her textile industry boomed .sx It boomed with the latest sophisticated technology , and cheap , often child labour .sx The unparalleled quality and colour of Monteith's turkey red materials attracted Russian imperial and European aristocratic attention .sx Chemical industries naturally followed .sx The surrounding coalfields , iron , later steel works further aided rapid expansion .sx By mid century more than four fifths of all British shipping was built on the Clyde .sx To one American visitor the Clyde seemed one long twenty-four hour permanent shipyard .sx In 1913 , three quarters of a million tons were launched by the 60,000 workforce :sx with pride in Fairfields , John Browns Lithgows , Henderson and the rest .sx With such materials and skills , Glasgow with the huge north British locomotive works was supplying vast numbers of engines at home and abroad .sx The population flooding into the city was diverse .sx The city grew at 'an American pace' .sx In the early nineteenth century Glasgow matched the contemporary major American cities in rawness and undisciplined development .sx In 1839 a parliamentary report on housing was incredulous that " so large an amount of filth , crime , misery and disease existed in one spot in any civilised country " .sx In 1842 the redoubtable sanitary reformer , Edwin Chadwick in his report on the condition of British cities described Glasgow as " possibly the filthiest and unhealthiest of all British towns " .sx The contemporary death and disability rate among Catholic priests devoted to the poor was considerable .sx Infant mortality was commonplace :sx in 1821 half the population would die before the age of ten .sx In 1861 the worst slum area compacted some 583 people per acre .sx Twenty years later , Glasgow's pioneering Medical Officer of Health J. B. Russell , found that three quarters of the population lived in two - roomed apartments :sx only one in 20 lived in five rooms or more .sx Even after zealous municipal initiatives , Hector Bolitho , Cancer of Empire ( 1924 ) found two thirds of the population still lived below minimum Board of Health standards .sx Epidemics naturally flourished .sx In 1832 more than 3,000 perished from cholera .sx It remained a scourge until 1866 .sx Amid such squalor , poverty , drunkenness , crime and vice flourished .sx In 1843 William Logan estimated that Glasgow sustained 450 brothels with some 1,800 girls .sx In 1871 the Glasgow Daily Mail claimed that 200 brothels and 150 shebeens profitably traded in the inner city .sx The trials and tribulations of the poor were movingly portrayed by the self taught Glasgow based novelist , Patrick Macgill especially in his The Children of the Dead End ( 1914 ) and The Rat Pit ( 1915) .sx Even as late as 1914 , Margaret Sanger , the pioneer American birth controller , estimated the city contained tens of thousands of prostitutes among its poor .sx Drunkenness was widespread among this displaced population .sx The Saltmarket area was commonly refered sic !sx to as 'civilisation's inferno' to which respectable visitors were escorted by high minded citizens to be suitably outraged at the Saturday night degradation .sx If morally repulsive , such activities showed the entrepreneurial spirit at its worst and the need for social discipline .sx Discipline came from several sources :sx from the industrial work ethic ; from the churches ; municipal government and respectable public opinion .sx Labour , as Sydney G. Checkland argued , was largely quiescent through much of the century .sx The firm , if not brutal repression of popular unrest in 1811-2 , the 1820 rising and the 1837 cotton strike influenced subsequent developments .sx A booming local economy over time and the availability of allegedly cheaper immigrant labour contributed to more rational , articulate protest .sx Or rather alternative visions .sx Robert Owen had come to Glasgow , and in partnership with leading businessmen , established his new moral factory at nearby New Lanark .sx Some years later Chartists also presented their cause in highly moralistic terms of Chartist churches , temperance , public baths and self-improvement .sx That outlook might be attributable to the foundation of the practical Andersonian college , ( now Strathclyde University ) , largely developed from 1800 by John Birkbeck before his departure for London and to the accessibility of Glasgow University to many sons of the poorer classes :sx John MacDonald , the Scottish coal miners sic !sx leader , graduated in between working shifts down the pit in 1853 .sx Again unlike contemporary Oxford and Cambridge , the university did not demand a religious test .sx Skilled craftsmen might also emigrate to more rewarding opportunities in England or abroad :sx they were the exportable technicians of universal material improvement .sx To a considerable degree , the existing social order offered some prospects of improvement , provided status in the local community and self fulfilment .sx The churches also provided a means of self discipline in the traditional moral way .sx But in nineteenth century Glasgow they provided many other means of self-discipline .sx Glasgow churches performed an important role in giving an identity to the newcomers to the city .sx As the quotation above by H. V. Morton implied , Glasgow was a cosmopolitan city .sx It was like our contemporary California :sx comparatively few citizens had been born within its boundaries .sx