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A fact from William Gott (industrialist) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 August 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Leeds industrialist William Gott was charged with nuisance when his factory's steam engine produced "noisome and unwholesome smokes and vapours"?
Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
The lead sentence strikes me as unbalanced. It describes him as a "a British wool merchant, mill owner, philanthropist and art collector from Leeds". The term "philanthropist" is a value judgment. The article makes it clear that he cut the wages of his workers on a promise of raising the wages later on. When the workers approached him several times for him to make good on his promise, he avoided them, then rebuffed them. When they went on strike to protest, he fired any women and children who worked for him who were associated with the strikers. That doesn't seem very philanthropic. He made his money to be philanthropic by paying low wages, then cutting his wages, then breaking his promise to workers who asked him to make good on his promises, and then sacking their wives and children. If wikipedia is going to make value judgments about philanthropy in the first line, that conduct also has to be included, with equal prominence. Otherwise, WP is accepting Victorian morality that favours the rich. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:08, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for your comment. I have made changes in line with the need to balance. However I would take issue with the tone of your comments, which appears to be judgemental. In the tough northern counties of 19th-century England it was normal for mill-owners to be tough businessmen, while being generous to local public services. Culture has changed since then, but we must beware of judging previous and other cultures only from the point of view of our own times. Of course low wages, child-employment, slave-owning, condemnation of same-sex liaisons and so on were wrong and are wrong. But every culture will always contain elements which may be severely condemned in the future. Today we tolerate the keeping of domestic cats which predate wildlife, and the eating of animal meat. That is happily carried on by the majority right now all over the world, but it is not inconceivable that there may be a future culture which will look back on that behaviour with the same anger that we now have about slavery etc. I agree that WP articles should be balanced, and I have taken steps to balance this one. However we are not here to judge. Storye book (talk) 09:18, 6 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
