Editing Titus Salt (section)

==Career==
Salt's first job was as a [[wool-stapler]] in [[Wakefield]] but the family moved to Bradford in 1820,<ref>{{cite web |last=King |first=David |title=Debunking myths concerning Sir Titus Salt |url=https://saltairevillage.info/saltaire_history_0070_Debunking_myths_concerning_Sir_Titus_Salt_050620.html}}</ref> bringing that post to a close. Whilst father Daniel set up as a dealer in wool, Titus spent two years learning about textile manufacture at William Rouse and Sons<ref>{{cite web |last=Barker|first=Derek |date=23 July 2016 |title=North Brook Street Mill |url=https://bradfordunconsideredtrifles.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/north-brook-street-mill/ |access-date=9 September 2024 |website=Bradford unconsidered trifles }}</ref> before joining his father's company which traded in Russian Donskoi wool amongst others. Donskoi was widely used in the [[woollen]]s trade but not in the manufacture of [[worsted]] cloth. Titus encouraged the Bradford spinners to use Donskoi in [[worsted]] manufacture, with no success. So father and son decided to utilise it themselves and set up as spinner and manufacturer. The experiment was a success.<ref name=":0" />

Between 1833 and 1835, the Salt business changed significantly. Daniel retired; Titus's brother Edward joined; Titus struck out on his own; and the family partnership was dissolved.<ref name=":1">{{cite web |title=Story of Saltaire Biographies Sir Titus Salt |url=https://www.saltairecollection.org/story-of-saltaire/biographies/sir-titus-salt/ |access-date=19 September 2024 |website=Saltaire Collection}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

During this same period, Titus embarked on experiments with [[alpaca]] wool from Peru. The first documentary record of Salt encountering the wool is in his Day Book. On 27 June 1835, Salt recorded one bag of “Peruvian wool”.<ref>{{cite web |last=University of Bradford |first=Special Collections |title=100 Objects from Special Collections at the University of Bradford |date=26 January 2011 |url=https://100objectsbradford.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/3-one-bag-peruvian-wool-titus-salts-day-book/ |access-date=19 September 2024}}</ref>

The story of Salt's discovery of the fibre is well known, not least because it was published by [[Charles Dickens]] in a slightly fictionalised form in the magazine ''[[Household Words]]''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Greenhalf |first1=Jim |date=8 February 2012 |title=Dickens's creative take on Bradford's mill success |url=https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/tahistory/9517929.dickenss-creative-take-on-bradfords-mill-success/ |access-date=25 October 2022 |work=Bradford Telegraph and Argus}}</ref>  Salt came upon bales of [[alpaca]] wool in a warehouse in [[Liverpool]] and, after taking some samples away to experiment, came back and bought the consignment. According to Balgarnie, his friend and biographer, the tale is substantially true.<ref name=":0" />

Though he was not the first in England to work with the fibre, he was the creator of the lustrous and subsequently fashionable cloth called 'alpaca'.<ref name="Holroyd">{{cite book |last=Holroyd |first=Abraham |title=Saltaire and its Founder |publisher=Piroisms Press in collaboration with Falcon Books |year=2000 |isbn=0-9538601-0-8 |orig-year=1873}}</ref> It was this that transformed Salt from successful young businessman to the largest employer in Bradford.<ref name=":2">{{cite book |last=Reynolds |first=Jack |title=The Great Paternalist |publisher=Maurice Temple Smith |isbn=0-85117-230-X |publication-date=1983}}</ref> 

Around 1850, he decided to build a mill large enough to consolidate his textile manufacture in one place. However, he "did not like to be a party to increasing that already over-crowded borough [Bradford]"<ref name="Salt">From Titus Salt's speech at the opening banquet, 20 September 1853. (From Holroyd).</ref> and bought land three miles from Bradford, in Shipley, next to the [[River Aire]], the [[Leeds and Liverpool Canal]] and the [[Midland Railway]]. In 1851, the construction of the factory began. Saltaire Mills, now known as [[Salts Mill|Salt's Mill]], opened with that grand banquet, on his 50th birthday, 20 September 1853.  The construction of the village of Saltaire, with its houses, almshouses, shops, schools, an infirmary, a club and institute, baths and washhouses, started in the following year. In 1858–59, he built the [[congregational church]], now Saltaire United Reformed Church, later donating land on which the [[Methodist church|Wesleyan chapel]] was built by public subscription in 1866–68.

Famously, he forbade 'beershops' in Saltaire,<ref name="Holroyd" /> but the common supposition that he was [[Teetotalism|teetotal]] himself is untrue.<ref>{{cite news |author=Guardian Staff |title=Corrections and clarifications |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/sep/16/correctionsandclarifications |access-date=25 October 2022 |work=The Guardian |date=16 September 1999}}</ref>

Salt was a private man and left no written statement of his purposes in creating Saltaire, but he told Lord Harewood at the opening of Salt's Mill that he had built the place "to do good and to give his sons employment".<ref name='Bryant'>Introduction (2000) by Derek Bryant to Piroisms reprint of Holroyd, op. cit.</ref>
[[File:Bust of Sir Titus Salt at age 53.JPG|thumb|left|Bust of Titus Salt (not then a baronet) presented to him by his workforce in 1856 and now in [[Saltaire]] United Reformed Church.]] 
In David James's assessment:
<blockquote>"Salt's motives in building Saltaire remain obscure. They seem to have been a mixture of sound economics, Christian duty, and a desire to have effective control over his workforce. There were economic reasons for moving out of Bradford, and the village did provide him with an amenable, handpicked workforce. Yet Salt was deeply religious and sincerely believed that, by creating an environment where people could lead healthy, virtuous, godly lives, he was doing God's work. Perhaps, also, diffident and inarticulate as he was, the village may have been a way of demonstrating the extent of his wealth and power. Lastly, he may also have seen it as a means of establishing an industrial dynasty to match the landed estates of his Bradford contemporaries. However, Saltaire provided no real solution to the relationship between employer and worker. Its small size, healthy site, and comparative isolation provided an escape rather than an answer to the problems of urban industrial society".<ref>{{cite ODNB|first=David|last=James|title=Salt, Sir Titus, first baronet (1803–1876)|id=24565|date=23 September 2004}}</ref></blockquote>[[File:Sir Titus Salt Has Plans (8387938946).jpg|thumb|upright|Titus Salt's statue in Roberts Park]]

Saltaire was named alongside [[Hyde, Greater Manchester|Hyde]], [[Egerton, Greater Manchester|Egerton]] (then [[Turton, Lancashire|Turton]]), [[Tottington, Greater Manchester|Tottington]] ([[Metropolitan Borough of Bury|Bury]]), [[Bollington]], [[Holbeck]] ([[Leeds]]), [[Belper]] and [[Copley, West Yorkshire|Copley]] as an example of workers' colonies built by British rural factory owners in the Austrian economist [[Emil Sax]]'s 1869 book ''Die Wohnungszustände der arbeitenden Classen und ihre Reform''. Sax reported that "the employers' main motive for building dwellings for their workers" was to increase their productivity by shortening their walking commute, and construed the projects as "housing reform".{{sfn|Engels|1988|p=351}} In ''[[The Housing Question]]'', [[Friedrich Engels]] objected to this view and explained that the colonies constituted a "[[Cottage#England|cottage]] system" in which the employers doubled as landlords, and could thereby impose [[monopoly]] prices and prevent [[Strike action|strikes]] with the threat of [[eviction]].{{sfn|Engels|1988|pp=349, 352}} On these grounds, he commented, "for factory production in the rural districts expenditure on workers' dwellings was a necessary part of the total investment of capital, and a very profitable one, both directly and indirectly".{{sfn|Engels|1988|p=351}}