My father was a tailer... in Leads...as was his father. And his father's father.
A time was if a man on the Avondale Road ask where was the finest clothes in northern England he was pointed towards the shop of a man named Rackham
Then the men who sell wool decide they'd not to compete with the men who imported fine cotton and as the men who sell wool has the ears of the men who make laws an embargo is enabled to increase profits.
And Calico disappears. And my father's business that he inherited from his father and his father's father began to wither die
And my father suffers the compound shame of financial failure seen through the eyes of his son and desended into drink.
I'd sit beside him as a boy at the Sunday service as he shouted at the pastor, at the altar, at anyone who would listen really at the injustice of it all
And I'll put my arm over his shoulder as the insults began, and help carry him the church and God the insults.
At his funeral, our neighbors were kind enough to whisper them rather than call them out loud.
So, I set to work determined to rebuild what had been taken away. I was 13 years old but I was determined....
Until a man arrived at my door claiming to hold debts
belonging to my father. Debts accumulated as my father drank. Debts he claimed that now belonged to me. Debts I could not possibly have hoped to repay.
Debts over which this man would have seen me imprisoned
imprisoned in a place where the debts would have been discharged only through hard labor. Hard labor with no wages
working at - wait for it - the production of textiles.
You people?
... incapable of accepting the world as it is says the man to whom the world handed everything
If no Anne. If no rescue. If this is defeat for me know this, you and I we're neck and neck in this race right til the end but Jesus did I make up alot of ground to catch you
