Ships still require ropes and if sails are now necessary only for yachts there are nevertheless many ways in which the products of these firms are used. Tents and tarpaulins, motor car hoods and covers, mail-bags and groundsheets, screens and curtains, golf-bags and rucksacks all are produced in Port Glasgow. The two companies will provide a cover for almost anything, from a basket to a tractor, for a wagon or a ship's hatch, for a boat or a cricket pitch.
Of the working population of the town 12 per cent are engaged in these two factories, the women outnumbering the men by five to two. Both firms import the raw material and carry through all the processes to the finished article. On the textile side, too, there is an interesting fist of occupations: rope-spinner and rope-layer; carder, pirn-winder and rollwinder; bleacher, weaver, dyer; sailmaker, hackler, mill-tenter, millwnght and calendar attendant.
The Gourock Ropework Company is now a world-wide organisation with its head office in Port Glasgow, with branches in most of the main British ports and branches and agencies scattered overseas from Reykjavik to Fiji and from Valparaiso to Wellington. 'Ropes for the Queen Mary and tents for Bertram Mills' Circus' is the creditable boast of the workers. Recently the company has been producing ropes and cords from nylon and
terylene, and is in the forefront of research into the use of synthetic materials. It has factories at Greenock, New Lanark and Shettleston and makes proofs industrial cloths from flax, cotton, nylon and terylene, as well as manufacturing rope and twine.
The service group of industries occupies a quarter of the population and includes the gas, electricity and water supplies, transport, commerce, banking and insurance, with the shopping and distributive trades. In 1951
1,150 males and 1,000 females were employed, but the number in each section was relatively small and the total for the entire group is below the average for the country as a whole. This fact, together with the percentage of less than 0.5 engaged in any kind of agriculture, reflects the industrial character of the town.
The fluctuations of industry in the west of Scotland have made plain the danger to a town whose interests are concentrated in shipbuilding; after 1945 an attempt was made to attract some lighter industry. An industrial estate was opened on top of the hill to the south of the town. Processing of herring, the making of needles and shirtings and various kinds of meters, with the manufacture and servicing of tents and all sorts of camping equipment, were among the activities undertaken, but development has been slow. The majority of workers will be women and it is hoped that
ultimately there may be employment for 1,100 in all. Even so, ships and ropes will still be the town's main livelihood.

The second main industrial group in the town is that of textiles, there are two firms whose origins go back over two centuries. With 47 square rigged ships sailing from the harbour in foreign trade and another 20 engaged coastwise by 1736, a ropemaking enterprise was begun. Four years later the manufacture of canvas was also taken up by the Port Glasgow Rope and Duck company. In 1797 this company was taken over by the Gourock Ropework company. Later a second, independant and smaller concern, The Port Glasgow and Newark Sailcloth company was formed. These are still the towns two textile firms.

The housing of its people has always been a major problem town on account of the natural features limiting its area, the congested building of the tenements in the narrow streets of the town centre and the
difficulty of obtaining suitable ground for expansion. In the town are some fine old houses of mid-eighteenth century construction but the narrow streets do not show them to advantage. Most of the four storey tenements in the town were built in the later nineteenth Century, with additional building in the early part of the present century,
When the old closes and dilapidated houses in the Bay area of the town centre were demolished and substantial four-storey sandstone tenements of two and three apartments, entered from balconies overlooking the back courts
were built in their stead.These houses are all solidly built and look secure enough to stand for centuries. But they are small, seldom with more than two rooms, very seldom with a bath, and often without indoor sanitation. The closes and stairways are often dark, with long lobbies reaching from the stair-head. Very few stairs have only two houses to a flat; three is more usual and often there are four. Where there are lobbies there may be as many as six or seven houses to a landing. In a tenement there may thus be thirty separate houses, all approached by the one close. To live in such congested conditions cannot be comfortable.
Yet, while some tenants come short of a desirable standard in housekeeping and tidiness, most of the houses are kept with commendable care and are a credit to housewives, who take real pride in their homes.

The local authority has been very active and good progress has been made. In 1935 the town had 4,020 houses, but a housing survey made in 1950 showed a total of 5,358, with another 530 under construction,
which is a 45%increase in 15 years. Of these houses more than a third (2,088) were of two apartments and slightly under one-third were of three; 263 houses were 'single-ends' and only 300 were of five or more rooms.
That only 31 houses were assessed at an annual rental of £45 or over is yet another striking indication of the predominantly industrial nature of the town, as is the further fact that of the 3,253 houses in the burgh not owned by the local authority only 154 were owned by their occupiers. In 1950 there were 2.105 local authority houses in the town most of them built in the last 30 years and most of them having three or four apartments: 90 of them had five or six.
According to the standards suggested in 1950 by the secretary of State, no less than 1.127 houses were classed as overcrowded, whether by reason of size of the tenants family, or because there were sub-tenants sharing the house or lodgers.

Breif ouline of the 3rd statistical account for Port Glasgow which was written in 1952 and revised in December 1958.

Statistical Accounts

Port Glasgow is well supplied with shops; the total number is about 230, including 131 food shops and 27 clothing shops. None of the shops are large and some are very small, but they carry a wide variety of stock there is no necessity for any person in Port Glasgow to travel to the larger warehouses in Greenock, Paisley or Glasgow, although in fact many do. Competition keeps prices low and quality good. Unfortunately, the shops are not very attractive and sometimes even dismal; and for all their number it is a question if they are really adequate to meet the needs of the population. Efforts are being made to improve the shopping centre but accomplishment will take some time. It is most regrettable that so much money earned within the town is spent elsewhere. but perhaps the shopkeepers are to blame more than the shoppers. The great majority of families do their shopping through the local co-operative society, which has a membership of 7,000. A few of the other shops are branches of firms in Greenock or of multiple stores, but most are run by the private enterprise of local people. Four of the Scottish banks have branches in the town and do a steady business; but the bulk of the savings of the people goes into the local branch of the Greenock Provident Bank. In 1952 the branch in Port Glasgow had over 9,000 depositors, who lodged as much as a quarter of a million pounds-and drew out a little more than that-and gained the benefit of £22,000 of interest. The average number of transactions weekly was 1,080.
Port Glasgow in 1908 received a gift of a hospital from Mr. and Mrs. Birkmyre of the Gourock Ropework company in celebration of their golden wedding. Few gifts can have been of greater value to any community. Containing two wards of around twenty beds each, with ,extra side-rooms for private patients, it has given splendid medical and surgical service for half a century, and is deservedly popular. The town has been fortunate in the gifts of industrialists and other eminent local people. In addition to the Broadstone Hospital there are Sunnybank Convalescent Home for Children, founded by Sir James and Lady Lithgow; Carnegie Park and Scott Orphanage Trust, an educational endowment; the Moffat Library, the gift of a successful merchant; the Birkmyre Park; the King George V Field; Parklea Playing Fields; and Auchenbothie Old People's Home near Kilmacolm, also a gift from Sir James and Lady Lithgow.
There is a local newspaper but its usefulness, like its opportunity, is limited. Until recently it appeared twice weekly, but it is now issued but once in the week, a small double sheet of four pages with sometimes another two pages of advertisements. The limitation of opportunity is due to the fact that almost the entire adult population of the town reads carefully and thoroughly that excellent daily, the Greenock Telegraph, Which covers the news and activity of the whole district and is a splendid local institution. The presence of a first-rate daily newspaper greatly cuts down the scope of any weekly that might be issued in Port Glasgow. Circulation in consequence is not large.

It cannot be described as a moulder of local opinion and confines itself mainly to reporting police cases, sporting events and prospects, and details of the numerous of congregations, societies and associations. It is difficult to see how the paper's usefulness could be increased in face of the excellent service by the Greenock paper, for Port Glasgow is not a sufficiently detached a community, with a life wholly of its own, to be able to fill a weekly paper with its own real 'news.'

The town is fairly well supplied with open spaces for playing fields, allotments, parks and playgrounds, possessing, 6.6 acres for recreational purposes for each 1,000 of the population. The usual proportion is a little higher and it is hoped shortly to provide an additional 2.5 acres for each 1,000. Apart from the parks, one of which is splendidly situated above the centre of the town, providing grand views of the firth for those not fortunate enough to have them from their own windows, most of the open spaces are devoted to football pitches and allotments.
The town has many halls, which is fortunate in a place where local people are much given to meeting for all sorts of functions. Port Glasgow people are willing to entertain themselves and share in the provision of entertainment according to their ability-which is a heartening thing in days of mass entertainment of the machine-made sort purveyed by cinema, television and, radio. During the winter months there are few evenings on which there is not a concert, an amateur dramaclc a basket-tea, a discussion, or a dance in one or other of the many halls. There are three public halls, including the spacious but neither very attractive nor very comfortable Town Hall, a dozen church halls and eleven private halls or clubs. All of them justify their existence by full employment.

The sporting interest of the town is keen. It is not every one who actually plays, but there are few who have not at least a passing concern for this or that pastime. Many busy themselves each week with football pool coupons, and each day groups of men are found outside the railway station or the town hall, whose conversation, if a guess were to be hazarded, now and then includes a reference to the prospects for the day's racing.
The main devotion is to association football and is centred in the fortunes or misfortunes of the Morton club, whose ground in the east-end of Greenock is situated suitably for the Port Glasgow follower. Many give themselves in deep devotion to following Rangers or Celtic, travelling by bus each Saturday either to Glasgow or to wherever their club may be playing. But Morton's welfare is a matter of great concern in the town, as also in Greenock. When the club in 1947 reached the final of the Scottish Cup competition the town was 'en fete' and it seemed that the entire population had gone to Hampden Park in buses and special trains to watch the game. At the end of the war an offer to establish a senior club in Port Glasgow was not taken up with any enthusiasm, but a few years later voluntary labour did get busy and prepared an adequate ground and enclosure beside the river for a new junior club , whose fortunes in its first few years have been mixed. But innumerable other teams are associated with the schools, works, youth clubs and youth organisations. Much interest is taken in these junior and juvenile clubs and they form a football nursery that is one of the finest in all Scotland. No youth who can play football and wishes to do so need find himself idle on a Saturday afternoon.
After football the most popular sport is bowls , which has a large following. One private set of greens and two others of a more public nature are fully occupied throughout the season, and the number of younger men who play is worthy of note.

The popularity of bowls may be due to some extent to the inaccessibility of the golf club , which possesses a very sportrting course on the moor above the town, with wide views and an abundance of fresh air, but the climb tends to limit membership to the more agile and more energetic. Some interest is taken in cricket, with two clubs playing to a not very high standard but with much enthusiasm.
Tennis has fewer devotees in summer than has badminton in winter. Good use is made of the corporation baths by swimmers and in the summer and in the summer a few rowing fours and eights may be seen on the river off the harbours.
The curling club has a long history; it has a pond on the moor, but functions more usually on the indoor ice at Glasgow. On the moor also members of the angling club have reasonable sport in the reservoirs, which
they have stocked with trout. Boxing gathers a lot of interest and a number of youths learn the art in the boys' clubs, one or two having reached some prominence. There is an infrequently-used quoiting ground. In the winter evenings whist is played, but bridge is practically unknown. A few enthusiasts have formed themselves into a chess club.

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