Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LICKEY HILLS—REDDITCH, AND ITS NEEDLE AND FISH-HOOK MANUFACTURES—SMETHWICK, OLDBURY, WESTBROMWICH, WEDNESBURY, TIPTON, AND WALSALL. AND THEIR INDUSTRIES—TABLE OF EXPORTS OF THE BLACK COUNTRY TO THE UNITED STATES.
IN all the Green Border-Land of the Black Country there are no hills more grateful than the Lickey cluster, overlooking Bromsgrove. And for this peculiar reason are they such happy pic nic rendezvous, especially for men, women, and children of the mine and forge district; they are perfectly Scotch in cut and clothing. They are belted with genuine Scotch firs and larches; they are carpeted with genuine Scotch heather, which feels so elastic under your feet and gives such elasticity clear through you to every lock of your hair. The thymy incense of its purple flood of blossom you breathe in the air, and you feel as if on one of the Ochil Hills. Indeed, each of the cluster realizes to you what the Scotch poet said of that range when glowing under the purer blaze of the setting sun; "it gleams a purple amethyst." These remarkable hills look as if transplanted here from the Highlands, all in their Highland dress; and are as Scotch in it, in the ranks of English hills to be seen drawn up over the vast levels of Oxfordshire and Worcestershire, as a regiment of Highland soldiers in kilts and tartans are among the British brigades of the line. Thus both for use and ornament they are beautiful and valuable features of the Green Border-Land of the Black Country, and thousands of all ages and conditions from the smoky district luxuriate these heathered heights in summer. Then they are famous for purple fruits as well as flowers. They supply Birmingham and other large towns far and near with bilberries of the finest size and flavour. So, any summer day in the year when the sun shines upon them, these hills are set to the music of merry voices of boys and girls, and older children who feel young on the purple heather at fifty. Then the scenery from these tops embraces a vast sweep of fertile and beautiful country. If our poet Whittier could call the central county of Massachusetts "rich and rural Worcester," he would the same and more of its English mother, if he could see Old England's Worcestershire from one of the Lickey Hills. You see on one side of the great green valley of the Severn the towering Malvern range, and on the other the Bredon heights, standing blue and lofty, like opposite pillars to the broad gateway of one of the most magnificent vales in England. Just between the feet of the two main Lickey Hills is nestled a snug, quiet little hotel, called "The Rose and Crown," associated in my mind to a memory which can never attach with such lively interest to any other way-side inn in England. For it was the first that I ever entered for a night's lodging. I had just arrived from America, in the leafy month of June, 1846, and that very day had commenced that foot tour which I resumed and completed in 1863-4. Good Joseph Sturge, that afternoon, had buckled on my knapsack and set me on the road at Edgbaston, and I had made a sauntering walk to this little cosy old inn, just as the setting sun was pouring its slanting cloud of glory into the green gorge. It was just the English way-side inn I had read and dreamed of from youth; just the one I was to meet in the programme of the tour sketched by fancy before leaving home. Everything around and in it was thoroughly English, to the watering-trough, the settle under the shade trees, the skittle-grounds, beer-mugs and all. And there was the landlady—I should have recognized her in New York—a regular Saxon-faced and Saxon-haired woman, buxom, bland, and radiant. There was the round, unvarnished deal table standing kindly on three legs, and the long tobacco pipes, with reddened tips to their stems. Never did I so luxuriate in a tavern entertainment before. It was all my fancy had dreamed; and I should realize the dream to the full—I knew I should. I was to walk all around the island in that fashion; to put up at such a way-side inn at night; write until twelve next day, then buckle on my knapsack and walk about ten miles through the country villages and hamlets to another hostelry at sunset. This was my first day's experience of this programme; and it promised well. Next morning arose early, and ate breakfast on the little round table to the song of the lark that came in at the open window like a benediction on the meal. When the table was cleared. I sat down to the literary part of my programme, determined to bring it up to the cherished expectation. How quiet was everything around and above! I was put upon the honour of an enthusiastic imagination, and could not disappoint it. So I wrote for four hours with great gusto and application, and got off an article under the head of "The Last Hour of the League," for "Douglas Jerrold's Newspaper," which he had just started, and for which I had promised to write a few papers on my proposed walk up and down England. Thus I had accomplished the first day's working of my plan satisfactorily. So, after dinner on the round table. I buckled on my knapsack, gave the ruddy-faced landlady a copy of my recipes for making bread, cakes, and puddings out of Indian corn-meal, and resumed my walk towards Worcester, perfectly delighted with this opening experience.
It was, therefore, especially interesting to me to visit this way-side inn after an interval of twenty-one years. The whole scenery of these hills had impressed itself on my mind, and two or three incidents had been associated to it, fixing the impression more vividly. A mile or two further on towards Bromsgrove I was caught in a shower, and turned into a nailer's shop by the road-side for shelter. It was not much larger than a good-sized potato-bin with a tile roof to it. Here a father and his son were busily at work. The lad was only nine years old, standing with bare feet on a stone to raise him breast-high to the anvil. His face was smutty of course, as it ought to have been, and his long black hair was coarse and unkempt. He could not read, nor could his father afford to send him to school, as he needed his earnings for the support of younger children. He was a hearty, healthy, merry-eyed boy; still, as he was the first I lad seen of his age at the anvil, and not dreaming that any younger or poorer was to be found at the same work. I made a little martyr of him in my own mind, and wrote my impressions of his condition in an article which had a wide reading in the United States. It excited so much sympathy with the youngster that, at my suggestion, the American children raised a contribution of about £30 to send him to school, and to pay his father 2s. 6d., a week in lieu of his wages. When he grew to be of age, he came to me in New England and worked a year on my farm; and is still living in my native town, the father of several happy children. This was the special incident of my second day's walk, and furnished the raw material of an article which was far more widely read than my "Last Hour of the League," which I had finished an hour before this little adventure.
As I am now on personal reminiscences connected with the Lickey and neighbourhood. I must notice Bromsgrove and its grand old church. This edifice is surpassed by few if any ecclesiastical structures in Worcestershire. It stands on ground raised by nature just high enough to make the earth-work conform to the symmetry of the building. The massive tower is a pedestal for the tall spire, in perfect harmony with its height and taper. The whole external aspect of the church, from the top of the spire to the base of the eminence, impresses one with a sense of symmetry, beauty, and grandeur. But it was the interior that made such a deep impression upon me in 1846. The stained windows and other features were admirable; but here I saw other objects for the first time and with wonder. They were whole families of lords and ladies lying side by side on marble or stone beds as large as life. There they lay with their pale hands folded so meekly as in prayer, while the flush of tinted light from the painted windows suffused their faces, giving them a pleasant look, as if their prayers were heard hopefully. I had read of effigies but had never seen one before, and never knew what manner of men and women they were in marble. The town itself is built chiefly on one long street, and is quite a bustling place of business. It is one of the principal nail-making centres of the district, and has a respectable variety of other trades. The Free Grammar School, founded by Edward VI, is its most salient and distinguishing feature. This is one of the institutions established in the reign of that excellent prince, which may be called the Edward or Educational Age of England, just as the time of the best of the Cæsars was called the Augustan Age in Rome. He inspired the movement and gave his name to establishments which afterwards were munificently endowed by benevolent and wealthy men who followed his example. Thus, Sir Thomas Cookes supplemented the royal gift to this school with a fund sufficient to pay for six scholarships and six fellowships in Worcester College. Oxford, a truly munificent donation.
Close to Bromsgrove are the extensive saltworks of Stoke Prior. The brine pits are the deepest in England, or more than 600 feet. The works cover the space of about seventeen acres, and cost about £450,000. The brine yields a rich proportion, or forty-two per cent., of salt. About 500 hands are employed, and about 3,000 tons of salt produced weekly. Droitwich, the next town, is a kind of Salina or Syracuse, whose very name breathes "the brine of the ocean." These Worcestershire springs or wells export about 50,000 tons, and those of Cheshire about 650,000 annually. Although so many corruptible things are seasoned and preserved wholesome by salt, it does but little in this way for the minds and morals of the men, women, and children engaged in its manufacture. The printed reports of their conduct and condition. I am inclined to believe, are exaggerated, or refer to times gone or going past. Says one of these statements: "The work is necessarily continuous day and night, and from Monday morning to Saturday evening it often happens that the labourer never quits the precincts of the works, snatching his intervals of rest beside the pans. Men and women, boys and girls, are thus exposed to more than all the debasing and demoralizing influences which haunt the worst dwellings of our agricultural labourers, without a single antagonistic agency to prevent their lapse into the lowest depths of brutish immorality. With scarcely an exception, wherever salt manufactories on a large scale have existed, the population employed in them has been the disgrace and pollution of the neighbourhood, a community almost unapproachable by philanthropy and irreclaimable by religion." This is truly a hard saying, and should be taken, I hope, "with a grain of salt." It may be true of many salt works, perhaps, in times past, of all of them. But this great establishment at Stoke Prior must be excepted from the rule; for the proprietor has entirely discontinued the employment of women at the works, and the change has already taken effect on the habits and social condition of the workpeople such a manner, it is said, as to produce a social revolution in the neighbourhood.
A few miles to the eastward of Bromsgrove is Redditch, an industrious, neat, rural little town, planted in one of the greenest districts of Worcestershire. In one salient respect, it is distinguished from every other manufacturing town in England. It has virtually absorbed and monopolized the whole needle-making trade of the kingdom and of half the rest of the world and more. Other towns have each taken the lead in some manufacture, but this has drawn one all into itself. The number of its needles sent abroad is perfectly incredible, and I wonder the manufacturers can believe the totals of their own bills. The history of the needle runs as parallel with the history of civilization as any other implement used by man or woman. It has had its wooden, bone, brass, iron, and steel age. Thorns hardened in the fire served the earliest generations doubtless, who were not very elaborate in their tailoring, and had not cultivated a fancy for fine embroidery. Fish-bones probably followed, and had their day and use; then brass and perhaps gold needles became known and used in the higher ranks of society. As most of the implements and appurtenances of civilization were brought into Europe by the Moors, they first introduced the steel needle. The first man who made it in England was doubtless a Moor, who set up the trade in London in 1545, although he was called an "Indian." The secret of the manufacture died out with him, and a considerable interval elapsed before it was revived. The Spaniards, who were indebted to the Moors for nearly all they knew, learned this art of them and taught it to the French and Germans. A German, by the name of Elias Krause, revived the manufacture in England in Elizabeth's time. The trade gradually emigrated from London to its present seat, Redditch, without any ostensible reason for this determination. For the first half century the wire was imported from Spain and Germany; after that time the English makers began to draw their own wire. At first it was cut to the length of the intended needle, then flattened at one end, in which was punched a square eye. This square-eyed needle continued in vogue up to 1800, when the stamp press with its dies was first introduced. Successive improvements followed, bringing the art to its present perfection. But the sleepless eye of prejudice looked with hostile suspicion at many of the improvements that were to work to the benefit of the workmen themselves. For instance, in 1840, one of the Redditch manufacturers revived the practice of hardening needles in oil instead of water, by which process they came out straight instead of crooked. The crook straighteners took alarm, and something worse at this new process, which was to supersede their old occupation, and the unhappy manufacturer was mobbed and driven from the town. Another improvement, entirely designed to render one operation less detrimental to the health of those engaged in it, was opposed by them on grounds that will seem incredible to the next generation of working-men. The pointing of the needles on the grindstone was one of the most dangerous of occupations, and short were the lives of those who followed it. A fine steel dust was generated, which permeated the lungs and brought on consumption frequently at middle age. But if the occupation was so fatal, the men earned extra wages by it, and measuring years by pounds and shillings, they seemed to estimate and prize the value of life by the amount of its earnings. So. I was told, they opposed the introduction of the Sheffield grinders' fan, which carried off the steel dust and made needle-pointing a more healthy employment, inasmuch as it did not pay for the extra risk of life it once involved. Labour could hardly be more minutely subdivided than in the production of the needle here. With all the introduction of machinery and improved methods, it still passes through seventy pairs of hands before it is fully ready for the market.
The lowest estimate of the production the needle trade of Redditch and adjoining villages given me by several manufacturers, will show what a business it has become. According to this estimate, 350 tons of cast steel and 450 tons of iron wire are used annually, from which one hundred millions of needles a week are produced for home and exportation! Every fortnight the Redditch men turn out a needle, "warranted not to cut in the eye," for every man, woman, and child on the globe. Nor has the demand been reduced by the very extensive use of the sewing machine. The quantity shipped to America, especially the year after the Civil War, was simply prodigious; showing that the bomb, ball, and bayonet had rent and tattered the clothing of millions as well as the face and faculties of their land. At least thirty millions of needles a week must have gone to the United States through the whole of 1866.
Fish-hooks are the other manufacture of Redditch. This has followed the needle in different stages of its development, from the crooked fish-bone to the crooked pin and from that to the present implement. In size and use they almost equal in variety the needle itself. Here are hooks for all waters and for all fish that swim in sea, lake, river, and meadow brooks—for sharks, cod, salmon, herring, trout, roach, and minnow. As there are more fresh-water fisheries in America than on all the other continents, a vast number of hooks go to the States and the British provinces. Not only the bare hooks go in such quantities, but a large number all ready for use. Fishing tackle, embracing all kinds of alluring baits, such as artificial flies, frogs, minnows, &c., constitutes a manufacture of considerable extent. About 600 persons are engaged in the fish-hook trade of Redditch. Thus Redditch has virtually monopolized the manufacture of needles and fish-hooks, and, if rightly conducted, may retain the business thus created. But I was sorry to learn, that, though deeply impressed with the value of the two trades to the town and to themselves individually, there was no organization, nor even spontaneous unity among the manufacturers to retain and expand the business; that a keen-eyed jealousy inspired their eager competition with a suspicious, unkindly spirit and aspect. I do not know if special occupations give a shaping to men's minds, or whether the exclusive manufacture of needles and fish-hooks tends to give peculiar sharpness to competitors in the trade. If such is the case, then a Chamber of Commerce, or a Trade Guild, would be all the more necessary and valuable to Redditch, to induce the manufacturers to say we and our in regard to the great businesses of the town more heartily than they do at present. No town could value too highly such a source of income and industry; and through unorganized and hostile rivalries it may some time go to another locality. Nature has done all it could by its gracious and peaceful surroundings to make the town and its interests a united and pleasant community, and the trade could not well find a happier seat, in this respect, for its industry. As a proof of the producing capacity of the meadow and pasture lands adjoining, the fact will suffice, that one of the leading manufacturers told me that he had kept four cows, of graded Alderney, on nine acres; and that they produced forty pounds of butter a week through the season, beside supplying his family with milk and cream. Few dairies in England can exhibit such a high average of production.
We have now radiated these walks from Birmingham in a westerly direction through the Black Country. With a winding walk through it from south to north, we will bring our notes on the district to a close.
The whole of the Black Country between Birmingham and Wolverhampton is a nebula of coal and iron towns, making one great cloud of industrial communities, interspersed with many centres of deeper density, each of which has a town or parish name, and gives it to a space of thinner shade that surrounds it. Smethwick is one of these centres of population and industry, and is the seat of several large establishments, including The London Works of the Patent Bolt and Nut Company, Patent File Company, and several other extensive manufactories. Soho, a centre of mechanical genius and enterprise which once put forth such an influence over the world under Boulton and Watt, has lost its pre-eminence since their day. Still important works are carried on in the parish, of which those established by the late George Frederick Muntz, M.P., for the manufacture of Metal Sheathing, are the most noted and extensive. Oldbury has perhaps as great variety and extent of manufacturing establishments as any equal space in the district. Here are the celebrated Brades Works, which have already been noticed at some length. Not far from them are the Bromford Works, of the Messrs. Dawes, perhaps equally celebrated for the production of the best kind of bar iron. Indeed they may be regarded as a representative establishment for the district; and I visited them one day with peculiar interest. When in full operation, with their sixty puddling furnaces in action, they present a scene which would have stirred the muse of Homer or Virgil beyond any of their vivid fancies. Puddles! mud puddles! what rustic. Saxon similes are applied to these fierce operations! To an outsider looking into one of those sixty furnaces, and seeing, if his eyes would bear it, the boiling, bubbling mass of metal, ten times more than red hot, a puddle would sound too wet and watery to describe it. The puddlers who fish in the troubled fountain, are generally stripped to the waist, and flooded with perspiration. They fish out a mass at the end of the rod, of a weight which shows what athletes they are trained to be. I hardly know what figure to use to convey an idea of the appearance and consistency of this burning, frittering fizzy mass of metal thus brought out of the furnace. Should one dip a large sponge into a mud-puddle, it would fill in a moment with the impure matter, which, on compression, would all flow out again, leaving the sponge as it was before the dip. There is this difference in the simile: the meshes of the sponge are in the metal puddle itself, and they all come out together with the mass. This mass, cooling a little on its way to make it more coherent, goes under a hammer, or into a squeezing machine, which, at the first blow or turn, throws out the spray of the impure puddle-matter, such as melted stone, cinder, &c. Thus the sponge part is only the genuine iron meshes or grains, which are thus squeezed and hammered and rolled into solid bars. To see these masses at white heat running down iron slide-ways from every direction to the squeezers, hammers, and rollers, is a stirring sight. Some of these hammers are of a tremendous power, especially the Nasmyth pounder. When it falls with a ton weight upon a liquid boulder, you will see a horizontal shower of meteors which would penetrate a suit of the best broadcloth considerable distance. There was machine called the squeezer which operated to admiration in the first stages. It was a large fluted horizontal wheel which turned in a fluted semicircular case, the receiving being twice as large as the delivering hopper. A mass of the half-liquid material was thrust in on the left, and pressed into a constantly narrowing space, until it was delivered at the right, a compact, elongated roll ready for the trip-hammer or rolling machine.
The chemical works of the Messrs. Chance, and other large establishments, are situated in Oldbury, and, embracing all these, it is a very important industrial centre in the district. West Bromwich, an adjoining town, is a place of much growth and vigour, with a goodly antiquity for a historical basis. It was a country village in the reign of Edward I, and was taxed to furnish that sovereign with the sinews of war in the Holy Land. As one of the social productions of society, it gave ladder-footing for the ascent of an old county family to the English peerage. This was the Legge family, which, by successive stages, culminated in the title of the Earl of Dartmouth. Sandwell Hall, near the town, was their seat and residence for several centuries. They have now converted it into a very useful institution, or a training college for farm and domestic servants, and a goodly and comfortable place it makes for the education of agricultural foremen or labourers, who seldom have such baronial halls for their outfitting. Colonel Legge, who fought with and for Charles II, and was wounded in the Worcester battle, was one of the family, and escaped the gallows only through the devotion and ingenuity of his wife, who exchanged dresses with him in Coventry gaol; a romantic feat not yet, I believe, set to poetry.
West Bromwich has grown in the last half century with the rapidity of an Illinois village. In 1811, its population numbered about 7,500; it now probably exceeds 50,000, and is to have a member of Parliament under the new Act. A great variety of manufactures are carried on here, of which box-irons, stoves, grates, coffee-mills, and iron bedsteads are the most noted and extensive.
A few miles further in the same direction you come to Wednesbury, which looks in print like the middle of the week, but is commonly pronounced "Wedgebury." As its name indicates, it has a Saxon basis and history, being called after the old Saxon Jove, Woden. Here the illustrious princess Ethelfleda, daughter of King Alfred, built a strong castle in 916, on the site of the present parish church, though the proof of its erection is perhaps more legendary than lapidary, as no traces of its existence remain. The Doomsday Book describes the village in 1085 as containing three hides of land, one servant, sixteen villains, and eleven borderers, the latter perhaps being what are called in America "squatters." Another item shows the average condition of the country at the time: "There is a mill of two shillings rent, and one acre of meadow; also a wood two miles in length and one in breadth." It may show the value of such estates in later times to quote another figure. The annual value of the whole manor in 1502 was under £14. There was a church in King John's day, which was rebuilt and highly decorated about twenty years before America was discovered. A century or two later the vicar was paid "in kind," the levy in eggs being recorded thus:
"For an hen two and a cock three;
For a duck two and a drake three.
Pro Hosto and Fumo 2d., which the minister gives to the clarke for his attendance of him."
Wednesbury has contributed its contingent to the noble families of the kingdom in the Pagets, who have figured largely in English history. William, the founder, was born here, and arose from an obscure lad to executor of Henry VIII, and subsequently Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. But he brought upon himself a sad reverse and disgrace by siding with the Duke of Somerset, and was deprived of his garter and fined £6,000 for his adhesion to that nobleman's cause. Wednesbury was one of the very first localities in which coal was discovered and developed into practical use. So far back as 1315 reference to its existence is made in the records of the town. Old Leland in 1538 speaks of "the secoles of Weddesbyrie," and Camden, writing forty years later, refers to the coal and iron mines existing in the neighbourhood, but rather doubtingly, as if he was uncertain whether they would be found to the "commodity or hindrance of the inhabitants." But the inhabitants soon solved this doubt in their favour, and Wednesbury grew up to be a prosperous and progressive community through the wealth of these minerals. About the middle of the last century, when the old British sports raged in their fury throughout the country, cock-fighting, bull, bear, and badger-baiting distinguished the town. It was in the midst of a population educated under such influences that John Wesley made his appearance as a Christian missionary in 1743. The narrative of his experience, taken from his private journal, is exceedingly rich. The people rose en masse and haled him before magistrates as a man who was trying to turn the world upside down. To give a religious aspect to their fanaticism, as the Ephesian craftsmen did on a similar occasion, they raised this mob-cry against him:
"Mr. Wesley's come to town
To try and pull the churches down."
If he did not effect this, he accomplished something they more really feared—he pulled down any of their evil habits, and Wednesbury is now one of the most active centres of the denomination he founded. The town has increased in population from about 5,000 in 1811 to 20,000 at the present time. The industries of the place are large and varied. The manufacture of axles, girders, wheels, iron and brass tubes for locomotive and marine boilers constitutes a great business. The works of Messrs. Lloyd, Foster, and Co., alone employ about 3,000 workpeople and pay fortnightly about £5,000 in wages. Moral and mental education has kept pace with this material progress pretty evenly, a large force of schools being kept in constant and increasing activity, and other means employed for the general enlightenment of the community.
Wednesfield is another locality bearing the name of Woden. Its ancient history attaches itself to one event principally—a bloody and decisive battle between one of the Saxon Edwards and the Danes, in which the latter were totally defeated, with the loss of two of their small kings and several of their nobles. A good portion of the land of the parish or manor was included in the gift of good Wulfruna to Wolverhampton Monastery; and the early inhabitants had some trouble with squatters and claimants; one of whom, by name Goodrich, "held possession of half an acre of alders valued at 8d. per annum." The population has quadrupled in the last forty years, and progressed favourably in all the faculties and enjoyments of a Christian community. Their special manufactures are traps of every size and species, and locks and keys.
Bilston, it is said, takes its name from its quarries of stone, famous for sharpening bills, and for the troughs, cisterns, &c., they produced. The iron trade won one of its decisive victories here. A power stronger than Woden was here brought first into action in the development of the mineral wealth of the district. It was at the Five Hole Furnaces at Bilston that Watt first applied steam to blow the blast furnace. One travelling through the district, and seeing no water streams more rapid than the canals, must wonder how iron ore was melted before the application of this self-generating power, for such it really is, as coal underlies all the furnaces and forges of the district. The population of the town has not kept pace with the increase of other manufacturing centres, as in 1832 one-twentieth part was swept away by the cholera, and one-fourth attacked by that fearful pestilence. The town now numbers about 26,000 inhabitants. Japanned ware, including trays, caddies, &c., is a prominent manufacture.
Tipton, once called Tibbington, is another compact nucleus in the nebulæ of the Black Country parishes. I fear that the fist of one brawny prize-fighter has given it a wider reputation than all the honest hammers it swings from year to year. "The Tipton Slasher" once had as popular a fame as the Stilton Cheese, and doubtless nine in ten of the people who pass the station on the railway are reminded of that celebrated bruiser of the prize-ring. Still the town is no worse, perhaps, for producing him, or at least has outgrown his influence and example. Cock-fighting was for many generations the favourite sport of all these communities, and the transition from shorter to taller bipeds was easy and natural. In 1744 John Wesley attempted to effect an entrance into the town with his Bible, "but finding the mob were raging up and down," he returned to Birmingham. The following year he succeeded however, and preached on Tipton Green, and, though greeted at first with a few clods, he at last obtained a hearing for such a sermon as they never listened to before, even if they had ever heard one at all. The town now contains four churches, a Baptist, and thirteen Methodist chapels, embracing the three divisions of that denomination. This fact proves pretty conclusively that Wesley's preaching here, in face of clods, was not in vain. The population has doubled itself since 1831, numbering at the present time nearly 30,000. It is enriched with seemingly exhaustless stores of coal, and presents a scene, especially at night, which must greatly impress the traveller. Perhaps no other space in the district sends up into the red ocean above such undulating rivers of furnace-light. As a sample of the wealth stored away in its cellarage, a lump of coal was taken from it and exhibited in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851, weighing six tons. It was cut in a circular shape, like a cheese, and measured six feet in height and eighteen in circumference. The whole township is planted with furnaces, forges, foundries, rolling and slitting mills, producing vast quantities of pig, bar, rod, and sheet iron. These again are largely manufactured into steam engines, boilers, chain cables, anchors, hinges, nails, screws, &c. Thus Tipton has become one of the most important centres of the district, with all the mechanical and material capital for a hopeful future.
Sedgley is a place which no one can pass by unnoticed, for it is truly set upon a hill, and claims to be the highest table land in England. Sedgley Beacon is supposed by some antiquarians to have been the site of Druidical sacrifice and worship. The parish is very large, embracing a space of 7,000 acres, and several distinct and considerable villages. It has long been distinguished for its mining and manufacturing industries; and the two occupations are frequently so blended in one family as to embrace all its working members. While the men and larger boys are employed in the mines, the women and younger children are making nails at home. The population now is estimated to number about 35,000.
Walsall, about ten miles north of Birmingham, is one of the most important and populous towns in Staffordshire. It is a Parliamentary borough represented by one member in the House of Commons, and is a place of historical interest as well as of manufacturing enterprise and material prosperity. It came into the ownership of the great king-making Earl of Warwick, and with his other estates made him a prince of wealth in the land. He was a good specimen of the old baronial hospitality which is such a romantic element and aspect of the feudal times. There is no wonder at the size of the great porridge pot at Warwick Castle, if what is chronicled of him is true. The historians writing soon after his time affirm that he served up six oxen daily on his table besides other provisions. But in his boast of setting up and putting down kings, he was put down himself and out of life at Barnet by King Edward IV, who took also possession of his great estates, including Walsall. His countess wandered about the realm in great distress and frequent want. The town arms are the Bear and Ragged Staff which have figured so many centuries in the history of the Warwicks. Indeed the town is a historical centre, bearing the record of many interesting events. Queen Elizabeth is said to have visited it in 1586, and in 1643 Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I, stayed here on her way to join the King at Edgehill. The most impressive feature is the parish church, which is mounted on a higher eminence than any other in the county. It sits upon the head of the town like a crown, and from a certain distance the houses seem to pave the steep slopes down from its base, as if they were appurtenant to the structure and made for it, instead of it for them. It has been mostly rebuilt within the last fifty years; so that it does not show the venerable, furrowed face of antiquity it once presented.
Walsall has an excellent Free Grammar School, where boys may reach the high roads of a good education more cheaply than at many institutions designed and founded to impart it without charge, but which, by certain perquisites and side items, make it expensive. The town is rather distinguished by its charities, such as alms-houses and the like. In an old history there is a tradition in reference to the Moseley Dole which is interesting enough to be true. It ran to this effect: One Thomas Moseley, a benevolent citizen, was walking the streets on Epiphany evening, when he heard a child cry for bread. The good man was so touched to the heart at this low, pining voice of want on such an anniversary that he vowed that no one in the town should ever want bread on that evening for evermore. He was as good as his vow, and immediately settled his manor and estate at Bescot upon the corporation to maintain this dole, which was "one penny and no more on Twelfth Eve to all persons then residing in the town and borough of Walsall and in all the villages and hamlets belonging thereunto." This is the traditionary, but not the authenticated origin of this charity.
The Town Hall, recently erected, is a building that would do credit to any large city. It is a large and elegant structure, of imposing exterior aspect, and with interior arrangements and embellishments and comforts which must make the honour and duty of a Mayor, Alderman, or Councillor more attractive and worthy of ambition. There are other buildings, especially the National School, which may serve as models, and are very creditable to the taste and liberality of the townspeople.
The great distinctive industry of Walsall is saddlery and harness ware. This manufacture has doubtless been the speciality of the town for several centuries, and it may have furnished the bits and stirrups and spurs of many of the knights in the Wars of the Roses. The history of the county, already mentioned, states that at the close of the seventeenth century, the ironworks of the town were chiefly employed in making a great variety of these articles, together with shoe and garter buckles. It is estimated that about 3,000 hands are now employed in their manufacture, and about an equal number in the making of locks. The population has increased evenly with the prosperity of the town, and now numbers nearly 50,000.
Having now noticed most of the considerable towns in the Black Country proper, and dwelt at more or less length upon their several industries and other peculiarities, it may interest many of the readers of this volume to see a tabulated resume of one department of the business of the district. It would be difficult to obtain full and reliable statistics of its total production both for home and foreign markets. I believe the U. S. Consulate at Birmingham keeps the only accurate or actual record of even a portion of the wares sent abroad; but this record may serve as a basis for estimating the total amount manufactured in the district. The following tables give the total money value of exports from the district to the United States in the years 1865 and 1866, which were periods of average prosperity. Or rather, they present a total of all the invoices of such exportations certified at the U. S. Consulate at Birmingham. A considerable amount may have first gone to large sea-port towns as the stock of merchants, and have been exported from those ports without a record at Birmingham. In the subjoined tables, although the money totals are correct, those of each of the articles enumerated are only approximately so; for many of the invoices embrace a great variety of articles under the general head of "Hardware" or "Fancy Goods," &c.; and the labour of analyzing such invoices, and resolving every article into its proper place and denomination would be almost infinite if not impossible. I am unable to say, or even to form an opinion of approximate correctness, as to the proportion of the goods manufactured in the Black Country that goes to the United States. I am not aware of any other registration in the kingdom except at our consulate that would enable one to ascertain the amount of the exportations from the district to other countries or for home consumption. It is a pity that no other registration exists. Perhaps the defect may be supplied when the manufacturers and merchants shall realize more fully the advantage of such a record. Without such statistics the material prosperity and progress of a nation can only be conjectured on the sandy foundation of fancy figures. The hay, wood, and stubble of these easy guesses and estimates are a treacherous basis for the statesman or political economist on which to rear the structure of an argument or policy.
| £. | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twine, Netting, Fish-hooks and Tackle | 3,592 | 11 | 0 |
| Hardware, Cutlery, Steel and Iron | 247,340 | 13 | 8 |
| Pearl and other Buttons | 34,220 | 18 | 0 |
| Precious Stones | 645 | 15 | 0 |
| Watches and Watch Materials | 6,499 | 4 | 5 |
| Chemicals | 15,295 | 3 | 2 |
| Cotton Goods, Tape, Frillings, &c. | 1,610 | 6 | 5 |
| Ditto Boot Webs and Webbing | 6,204 | 18 | 6 |
| Carpeting and Rugs | 14,489 | 13 | 8 |
| Silk Goods | 24,552 | 0 | 8½ |
| Glassware and Glass | 13,307 | 2 | 11 |
| Chamois Skins | 170 | 6 | 2 |
| Music Wire and Violin Strings | 2,756 | 4 | 3 |
| Metallic Pens and Holders | 10,829 | 17 | 0 |
| Silverware and Plated Goods | 2,962 | 6 | 9 |
| Jewellery and Fancy Goods | 27,042 | 9 | 1 |
| Jet Goods and Japanned Ware | 932 | 3 | 8 |
| Papier Maché | 441 | 9 | 9 |
| Gun Materials and Guns | 14,974 | 17 | 1 |
| Saddlery | 2,667 | 5 | 7 |
| Needles | 30,605 | 17 | 5 |
| Thimbles, Hooks, and Eyes | 1,236 | 13 | 2 |
| Spectacles and Optical Goods | 2,183 | 19 | 8 |
| Pins and Hair Pins | 1,321 | 7 | 6 |
| Tin Plates | 6,638 | 10 | 7 |
| Chandeliers | 241 | 19 | 0 |
| Ackle and Nickle Goods | 5,544 | 10 | 0 |
| Bead Goods | 871 | 2 | 3 |
| R. R. Fly Signals | 380 | 11 | 3 |
| Books, Clothing, &c. | 11,517 | 1 | 2½ |
| Red Lead | 679 | 2 | 0 |
| Total | £542,125 | 8 | 11 |
| £. | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twine, Netting, Fish-hooks and Tackle | 7,737 | 13 | 3½ |
| Hardware, Cutlery, Steel and Iron | 471,559 | 8 | 7 |
| Pearl and other Buttons | 22,100 | 17 | 7½ |
| Precious Stones | 5,637 | 15 | 10½ |
| Watches and Watch Materials | 10,712 | 0 | 11¾ |
| Chemicals | 25,936 | 4 | 2 |
| Cotton Goods, Tape, Frillings, &c. | 3,493 | 18 | 7 |
| Cotton Boot Webs and Webbing | 4,897 | 13 | 8½ |
| Carpeting and Rugs | 58,573 | 18 | 8 |
| Silk Goods | 18,121 | 10 | 3 |
| Glassware and Glass | 25,424 | 13 | 1 |
| Chamois Skins | 91 | 11 | 8 |
| Music Wire and Violin Strings | 1,168 | 6 | 1 |
| Metallic Pens and Holders | 15,392 | 1 | 7¾ |
| Silverware and Plated Goods | 7,078 | 15 | 10 |
| Jewellery and Fancy Goods | 53,325 | 12 | 0½ |
| Jet Goods and Japanned Ware | 918 | 9 | 9 |
| Chains, Hoes, Scythes, and Hooks | 64,600 | 9 | 0½ |
| Gun Materials and Guns | 59,664 | 2 | 11 |
| Saddlery | 330 | 0 | 5 |
| Needles | 54,722 | 10 | 0 |
| Thimbles, Hooks, and Eyes | 290 | 18 | 5 |
| Spectacles and Optical Goods | 2,759 | 16 | 2½ |
| Pins and Hair Pins | 423 | 4 | 0 |
| Tin Plates | 44,035 | 3 | 11½ |
| Chandeliers | 858 | 9 | 6 |
| Ackle and Nickle Goods | 19,928 | 2 | 8 |
| Bead Goods and Gimps | 1,514 | 2 | 10 |
| R. R. Fly Signals | 56 | 8 | 0 |
| Books, Clothing, &c. | 6,451 | 11 | 10 |
| Anvils Vices, and Nails | 13,666 | 10 | 10 |
| Sundries | 61,835 | 10 | 8½ |
| Total | £1,061,515 | 17 | 2½ |