Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 22 May 1931

Mightier Mexborough.

Secrets of a ” Magnetic ” Centre.

One Increasing Purpose.

The hospital rag showed how readily people are attracted to Mexborough. Even on ordinary days—market days particularly, of course—the throngs are so dense that the problem of More Room has been worrying the “city fathers” for many a day. But at the slightest hint of “something on.” the town’s confines seem to cabin and confine its possibilities, and to be many acres too small for the thousands who wish to while away their leisure hours within it.

Some day Mexborough may win for itself the elbow-room it is now gasping for. At present half the schemes of development which live in the keen, fertile brains of its townsmen, are held up because there is no room for them. The only way Mexborough can extend at present is skyward! The marvel is that so much of the cream of a county’s talent, trade, civic enterprise and ingenuity should be crowded into so small a compass. A stranger visiting Mexborough on Thursday afternoon would go away, if he were not too observant, convinced that Mexborough is one of those quiet little market towns which come to life once or twice a week, and during the rest of the week lie somnolently at rest, waiting for things to happen. The same visitor would get a terrific shock if he ventured into High Street on, say, a Saturday evening!

Mexborough has a certain magnetic power whose radius of influence is surprisingly wide. One of the reasons of its success is that its citizens have steadily built up a tradition of supporting home industries. It seems to be almost a point of honour that if a man earns his money in Mexborough he shall spend as much of it as possible in Mexborough.

This is the antithesis of the Vicious Circle of which economists speak. Mexborough is to as great an extent as possible in these days of long vision and wide horizons, or repercussions and inter-dependabilities, self-reliant. But not self-sufficient, Mexborough progresses primarily because of her own sound business ability and her own energetic prosecution of sound purposes; but, secondarily, her progress comes of her ability to draw unto herself the folk of neighbouring places who, seeking for a centre whose attractions are sufficient, turn to Mexborough when they want to “get away” for a day, an afternoon, or an evening.

With the years, enlightenment and self-sufficiency has gone. The growing number of the town’s organisations, professional, semi-professional and amateur, have gradually taken on the aspect of “district” organisations. The Chamber of Trade has taken a strong line here: begun as a protective, semi-social little family affair, it has become in a few years a powerful factor in the town’s progress and prosperity, because it has looked beyond the bounds of Mexborough and catered for “the district.” And “the district” is rapidly becoming an indefinite and indefinable area to which no one can set bounds.

The same note was struck this week at the annual meeting of the Mexborough Football Club, which did not forget, in the midst of its own trials and difficulties, common to all such organisations in these days of financial stringency and industrial stress, to think of their relation to the town’s welfare. The Chamber of Trade will, no doubt, see the point of their suggestion of co-operation in maintaining yet another of the numerous attractions which bring “outsiders” into Mexborough.

That spirit of co-operation is the real element that is pulling Mexborough through as severe a time of trial as ever betel South Yorkshire. It is tribute to the Mexborough genius for rising to the occasion when things are at their worst, that in 1931, when “dole” queues are longer than those of the men at the lamp cabin at shift time, that she should keep sailing ahead, always seeking new fields of enterprise, ever developing her own resources and providing for the district the beet that can be offered in trading goods and terms, in sport, in entertainment and in social intercourse.

Mexborough’s day is dawning. As surely as the rise of to-morrow’s sun—even though we see it not?—”the best,” in the words of the inimitable Mr. Cliff, “is yet to be.” That is no empty dream, but a clear forecast based on obvious facts and unmistakable trends. The advance of Mexborough is inevitable, with its councillors turning more and more to the modern problems of administration, and more and more inclining to take the “long view”; with its citizens holding fast to a pride in their home town that might seem strange to one who knows it not, from the inside, but only superficially; and with its Chamber of Trade daily increasing its shopping resources and its business assets in a way that is laying us riches for the future by the surest means of making the most of the present