This article traces the progress of mutual improvement in the coalfields around Aspull beginning in the 1870s and culminating with the opening of the Garswood Hall Collieries Institute in 1893. It analyses this process in relation to Patrick Joyce’s account of the development of industrial paternalism in Lancashire. It shows how mutual improvement societies were formed primarily on the initiative of individual workers, with some assistance from local religious groups, rather than being employer-led. It also demonstrates how the Aspull Society acted as the starting point for a network of similar societies across the local area. By tracing the careers of a number of individuals closely associated with mutual improvement societies, this article shows that such societies did enable occupational and social mobility, thereby demonstrating the virtues of self-help to workers and employers alike. Next, the article traces the factors which led to the opening of the Garswood Hall Collieries Institute and argues that the formation of the Institute exemplifies the delicate social choreography on which the successful practice of paternalism in an industrial context depended. It demonstrates that local autonomous activity on the part of individual miners was combined with the use of local newspapers and delegations to employers to create the conditions for an appropriate paternalist response in the form of the ‘gift’ of the Institute to the community. The Institute thus became a demonstration of the employers’ fitness to exercise local leadership and a symbol of education as a means of achieving class harmony within the existing social hierarchy. It concludes by observing that in the case of the Garswood Hall Collieries Institute the vision of class harmony which it offered its members nonetheless remained vulnerable to the economic realities of the relationship between capital and labour.

中文翻译：

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“以平等友好的方式相聚”：兰开夏郡互助会的职场文学文化

本文追溯了从 1870 年代开始到 1893 年 Garswood Hall Collieries Institute 成立为止阿斯普尔周围煤田相互改进的进展。它结合帕特里克乔伊斯对兰开夏工业家长制发展的描述分析了这一过程。它显示了互助会是如何主要在个别工人的倡议下，在当地宗教团体的一些帮助下形成的，而不是由雇主主导的。它还展示了 Aspull Society 如何充当当地类似社团网络的起点。通过追溯许多与共同进步社会密切相关的个人的职业生涯，本文表明此类社会确实实现了职业和社会流动性，从而向工人和雇主展示自助的优点。接下来，文章追溯了导致 Garswood Hall Collieries Institute 成立的因素，并认为该研究所的成立体现了微妙的社会编排，工业背景下家长式作风的成功实践依赖于此。它表明，个体矿工在当地的自主活动与当地报纸的使用和对雇主的代表团相结合，为以协会对社区的“礼物”形式作出适当的家长式回应创造了条件。因此，该研究所成为雇主适合行使地方领导权的示范，并成为教育的象征，作为在现有社会等级制度中实现阶级和谐的一种手段。