Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
RISE, PROGRESS, AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MECHANICAL AND MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN BIRMINGHAM—BRIEF NOTICE OF LEADING BRANCHES AND ESTABLISHMENTS.
SOME characteristics of the manufactures for which Birmingham is distinguished have been already generalized in a passing notice. Still they enter into the life and being of the town so vitally, that it would be irrelevant to the object of this volume not to devote to them an entire chapter. If in this space enough should be stated to create a new interest in the reader in them, he may satisfy it to the fullest extent by reading "Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District," by Samuel Timmins, Esq.—an exhaustive volume, full of the most extensive and instructive information on the subject. Hutton, the witty, apothegmatic historian of the town, writing more than half a century ago, observes that "Birmingham began with the productions of the anvil and probably will end with them." The first half of this statement is true of civilization itself. The hammer and anvil played the first notes in the Grand March of Humanity in the civilized arts; and the genealogy of all the productions of Birmingham, present and to come, may be traced back to that origin. Fighting-ware—such as guns, swords, bayonets, and pikes—at first predominated among the productions of the hammers and anvils, though hatchets, hoes, and other implements of peaceful husbandry had their place in the early industry of the town. The skill and taste acquired in the manufacture of these articles prepared the way for ornamental works or for articles of luxury and fashion. The pioneer in the introduction of this new art and occupation was John Taylor, who died in 1775, at the age of sixty-four, having acquired a fortune of £200,000 from the business he established, which was the manufacture of metal buttons. Rich-witted, quaint Hutton calls him "the Shakespeare or Newton of his day." He seems to have been a kind of Wedgwood in his line, applying great genius of design to gilt buttons, snuff-boxes, and articles of japanned ware. It is stated that, as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century, he manufactured buttons in his shop of the value of £800 weekly, besides other articles. He also introduced or monopolized the production of painted snuff-boxes, of infinite variety of device. It is said one of his workmen earned three pounds ten shillings per week by painting them at a farthing each. If this were true, that single hand must have turned out over 160,000 boxes in the year.
The artistic skill which John Taylor's wares had developed and diffused among the mechanics of Birmingham, as it were, lit the candle of a new industry, which again, in its turn, fed and transmitted the light to other departments of trade. This inventive skill, originating in finely-trained perceptions of beauty, is not only the minister but the founder of fashion. Buckles for hat, knee, and shoe became the ruling and raging fashion in the later years of the last century, from the taste and genius bestowed on their manufacture. For a long time they were worn in all civilized countries, and in none more generally among well-to-do people than in republican America. Birmingham and a few towns adjacent monopolized the business and supplied the whole demand for Europe and America. But when the trade was apparently at its height of prosperity, and promised golden harvests for many years to come, it fell in a moment. Fickle Fashion took a new and sudden freak. Although it may well be said of her, reversing the proverb, Fit, non nascitur, "made, not born,' still the makers could not keep her to their notions and interest. Without a moment's notice, or a motive's impulse which could be understood, she took to the "effeminate shoe--string," as it was indignantly styled. The Prince of Wales, the most unlikely man on earth to interfere with the royal prerogative of Fashion, was appealed to in an almost piteous petition to interpose his influence and save the craft from ruin. This petition is a remarkable document. It contains the stoutest remonstrance ever addressed to an intangible despotism stronger than the power of throned kings. In the first place, it shows how many had earned their bread by the fallen trade. It beseeches the Prince to assist in giving employment to "more than 20,000 persons who, in consequence of the prevalence of shoe-strings and slippers," were in great distress.
"The first gentleman in Europe," as the Prince aspired and claimed to be, yielded just enough to show the petitioners how little he could arrest the rule of Fashion. He ordered his gentlemen and servants to discard shoe-strings, but it was like opposing a rye-straw to a mountain torrent. The petitioners put a plaintive sentiment in an apothegm of great wisdom and truth. They say, "Fashion is void of feeling and deaf to argument."
But if buckles were obliged to succumb to the dictation of Fashion, a stout resistance was opposed to her rule in the matter of gilt or metal buttons. The protectionists of those times ruled their trades with a rod of iron. The button-makers would not tolerate either competition or rivalry. No shoestring innovators should be allowed to poach on their preserves, as they did in the buckle business. They would push the iron ægis of the law against all the inventors and improvers that sought to insinuate themselves into the pale of their profits. A statute enacted in the reign of the first George existed, and this they determined to see enforced. Whoever undertakes to write the history of Protection, should cite in full this Act. How strangely it reads in the ears that listen to the new doctrines of the present day! It imposed a penalty of £5 "on any Taylor or other person convicted of making, covering, selling, or using, or setting on to a garment any Buttons covered with cloth or of any stuff of which garments are made." But if "Love laughs at locksmiths," fashion laughed at all the bolts and bars which The Black Country iron and coal could make to bar her out of the kingdom. The button-makers, like other tradesmen and manufacturers who seek to make their government a kind of special providence for the protection of their pretended interests, appealed to all the influential powers of state to interpose in their behalf. Even as late as 1850 deputations were sent up to London, not to ask for Parliamentary legislation, but to solicit the royal court to patronize metal buttons. But, like the shoe-bucklemen, they found a power behind the throne that wielded the sceptre over the realm of taste, and like them they had to say and believe that "Fashion is void of feeling and deaf to argument."
Still, there was a rough, rude world outside of civilization, which Fashion, enthroned at Paris, could not rule or reach for many years after the issue of her edicts. Ornamental buttons and beads of brass, glass, steel, and iron continued to be as attractive to the North American Indians. Hottentots, and Tartars as if they were worn by all ranks in London and New York. Thus, the fall in these trades was somewhat broken by the demand for those productions which was still kept up in the barbarous regions of the earth. Matthew Boulton, who may be called the father of half the trades of Birmingham, and who laid down that broad and strong foundation on which the business character of the town was built, developed those almost infinite varieties of handicraft which won for it the name of "toyshop of the world." For years before the American Revolution he erected his blocks of workshops at Soho, a suburb of Birmingham, then a wild and barren heath. In 1774 it had become the most extensive and remarkable establishment in England. In none before or since was there ever such a wonderful variety of articles wrought out simultaneously. At that time it employed a thousand workmen, who, from the unprecedented variety of skilled occupations they represented and prosecuted, must have constituted a kind of normal school for artisans in all the other crafts subsequently introduced into the town. Indeed. Matthew Boulton and his copartners made Soho a kind of Mecca to Mechanism. From it has radiated a power which no mechanical dynamics can measure—a power which has taken rank with the great moral forces of mankind. When Boulton planted his establishment at Soho, water and wind were the only motive forces that propelled wheel or keel the world around. For years he propelled his machinery by water alone. Watt came with his great idea. He came to the right place and the right man; and the two, representing the best perceptive and executive faculties ever united in a private firm, worked out and gave to mankind that million-handed giant of the world, the Steam Engine What is Mecca or a hundred Mahomets to that mechanical power for human progress and happiness! Currens e Soho, the steam-engine was soon succeeded by another currency from the same establishment. The copper coinage of England up to Boulton's day had not only been coarse and common, but ununiform and uncertain. Boulton set at work to devise machinery for the manufacture of better pennies. He succeeded in producing them greatly improved in style and material; striking off twenty tons of copper, or 716,000 pennies a week for several months. It is somewhat remarkable that, with all his nice perceptions of taste, he paid, voluntarily or involuntarily, the old hereditary English homage to SOLIDITY. He gave a Spartan size and weight to his coppers that vied well with the iron currency of Lycurgus. His penny weighed just an ounce, and his twopenny piece two ounces. Eight of the latter and sixteen of the former made just a pound. A sovereign's value in them made a comfortable load of fifteen pounds for a pair of saddle-bags. But their inconvenience as currency was compensated in other uses to which they might be turned. They were not only the most exact but the only uniform weights in the kingdom, and could be used more safely for the purchaser than any others in weighing out tea, snuff, tobacco, and even small family purchases of butter and cheese. Boulton fancied he had produced a coinage by his nice machinery which could not be imitated; but it was, in a few years, by lead pennies faced with copper. But if hypocrisy be a compliment to virtue, these counterfeits were almost a virtuous suggestion to truth. One might be tempted to believe that virtuous people acquiesced in the suggestion, especially if they had ever carried a shilling's worth of Boulton's pennies in their pockets up two flights of stairs, or a mile of level road. Whereas the genuine article was sixteen to the pound, the counterfeit required sometimes more than eighty to make that weight.
Under Boulton, Watt, and Murdoch, Soho became an attracting and eradiating centre of scientific mechanism and artistic taste and skill, which not only supplied the manufacturing industries of Birmingham with their remarkable and diversified faculties, but diffused the overplusage throughout the kingdom and the world. Soho drew to itself and absorbed the best talent of the country. It attracted and employed the genius of Flaxman, Chantrey, and other eminent artists in designs for the almost infinite variety of articles which it produced. It trained up an army of workers under the tuition of all this science, genius, taste, and skill, and they, in their turn, became teachers of thousands of artisans in shops and factories scattered over the United Kingdom and the United States. Soho, also, as we have already noticed, elaborated a night sun for lighting the factories, shops, towns, and villages of the kingdom. It first gave to the world Gas as an illuminating power. Thus, considering all that has emanated from that famous establishment, its memory should be held in grateful estimation wherever the English language is spoken, and even where it is not.
While the Soho establishment was working out such marvels of taste, skill, and science in steel, iron, copper, silver, and gold, another pioneer in the trades of Birmingham, Henry Clay, introduced what might be called a paper metal, and created an entirely new business, which may be regarded as the distinguishing speciality of the town. This was the papier-maché. He was an apprentice to John Baskerville, and had the best possible tuition for the enterprise he made so successful. He had the good fortune to win the patronage of the royal court by a sedan chair he presented to Queen Caroline. This probably was the largest and most splendid article he ever made of the new material. The demand for his manufactures became immense, and he accumulated a great property, and was appointed High Sheriff of Warwickshire. At one period, during the last century, he employed 300 hands. He had the monopoly of the market, and his profits must have satisfied the average ambition of monopolists. It is said they amounted to £3. 8s. 2d, on a single tray sold for £5. 8s. 9d. Improvements have been introduced from year to year since his day, until such heavy and solid articles have been produced as were seen the Great Exhibition in Paris; or may be seem at any time at the warehouse of Messrs. M'Callum and Hodson, who are extensive manufacturers in Birmingham. Massive wardrobes, tables, sofas, &c., of the highest perfection will there be found, showing to what uses and to what brilliant solidities the waste paper, often floating on the wind, may be turned. The Glass Manufacture may also be called a speciality among the manifold productions of Birmingham. Two celebrated establishments, expanded to vast capacities by Messrs. Osler and the Messrs. Chance respectively, have carried the manufacture to wonderful perfection. The several international exhibitions that have taken place within the last sixteen years have made the public generally acquainted with the achievements of artistic mechanism and skilled labour which have distinguished different communities. At the Great Exhibition of 1851, it was seen, as never before, what Birmingham could do in the manufacture of glass. If the vote were taken of the million of different countries who saw what that first Crystal Palace contained, as to the most impressive, attractive, and best-remembered object, a majority would say that it was Osler's Crystal Fountain. It was a magnificent centre-piece for all the splendid surroundings of art and industry within those walls. It seemed a gorgeous stalactite from that concave sea of glass which gave translucent roofage to the great spectacle of human skill and toil. But that fairy fountain was only the beginning of productions which have excited equal admiration. One of the master-pieces of the art is the pair of crystal glass candelabras which the Oslers manufactured for the tomb of the Prophet and for Ibrahim Pasha's palace at Cairo. This was perhaps their most exquisite specimen of workmanship, and was so unique and beautiful that Prince Albert commissioned them to manufacture a similar pair, on a smaller scale, as a birthday present to the Queen, which are placed in Osborne House. Perhaps no house has brought more science of its own elaboration to bear upon the construction of instruments for the measurement of wind and rain. These anemometers have been developed to the most delicate issues—even to register, as it were, every counter-puff of air by day and night; to tell when and how often the wind changed from one point to another. Their show-room on Broad Street is a veritable museum in itself, and no one can visit it without being struck with admiration at the infinite variety as well as beauty of their productions.
The Chances have the largest establishment in Great Britain for the manufacture of plate and window glass, lighthouse lenses, and optical glasses. Their works constitute a village in itself, a few miles out of Birmingham, at Spon Lane. No manufacture in England has shown more elasticity than glass on being released from the heavy duty once imposed upon it. It was almost like the case of a man born blind, who, on having his eyes opened, luxuriated more in the sense of sight than in all the other senses put together. On removing the tax, not only all the houses in the kingdom seemed to open their old eyes wider than before, but also to show new ones in their faces. Window panes expanded from six inches by eight to six feet by eight, and grew on from that size to the dimensions of the front wall of a small cottage. Glass was put to uses never dreamt of before; even to purposes which it had been thought nothing but the toughness of iron could accomplish. First, small glass houses for flowers; then conservatories like that of Chatsworth; then the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Pillars, beams, and even globular boilers for boiling coffee have found their place among the new uses to which the brittlest of all materials has been turned. Any American, or other foreign-born visiter in Birmingham, will find the establishment of Messrs. Chance one of the great lions of English manufacturing enterprise.
The highest arts, or those which command the most enthusiastic and reverential admiration, are painting, sculpture, and music. And the triad had, beyond all other arts, the inspiration of religious sentiment and enthusiasm. The adoration of the Virgin and all the Roman Catholic saints, gave infinite scope and impetus to the genius of the great masters. Madonnas on canvas, glass, and in marble employed the pencils and chisels of the first if not all of the painters and sculptors of Europe in the Middle Ages. Songs in honour of these human divinities were breathed into music by the great composers of that period. But when the Reformation laid its hand upon this sensuous worship, glass-painting became obsolete, if it had ever been introduced in England. Birmingham took a leading part in its renaissance, at the time when the genius of Baskerville, Boulton, and Soho was diffusing itself through the artistic industries of the town, and producing a simultaneity of progress in them all. In 1784 Francis Egerton first began to paint glass at Soho, and brought the art to such perfection that he was commissioned even to supply windows for the famous St. George's Chapel, Windsor, also for Lichfield and Salisbury cathedrals, for several of the colleges of Oxford, and for many parish churches in different parts of the country. That showy and luxurious Lord Mayor of London, William Beckford, gave him commissions to the value of £12,000 for windows for his Fonthill mansion. A specimen of the genius and workmanship of this pioneer in the art may be seen in the east window of St. Paul's, Birmingham. It may not stand scientific criticism, but may serve as a point of departure from which his successors progressed to higher attainments. The most eminent of these was Mr. John Hardman, who, in 1837, formed an intimate acquaintance with the celebrated architect and designer, Augustus Welby Pugin, an enthusiastic devotee and student of the decorative art. Indeed, he seemed to have espoused the Roman Catholic faith in middle-life more out of his admiration for saints in glass than for any other religious convictions. One designed and the other executed seemingly with the same class and capacity of genius. Painted windows, of every device, form, and size, for cathedrals, colleges, churches, and private mansions under this firm became one of the special manufactures of Birmingham. The establishment of the Hardmans is on Newhall Hill, and is well worth a visit, not only for its beautiful productions but for its prominent place in the history of the art in England.
Messrs. Lloyd and Summerfield, at Birmingham Heath, have also distinguished themselves for the splendid specimens of glass-painting which they have produced.
But of all the manufactures of Birmingham none has such a wide reputation abroad, in America especially, as Gillott's steel pens. Happily there are a hundred "young ideas taught to shoot" with a pen where one is taught to shoot with a gun Pens are the knitting needles of civilization, and ply in all its webs of social life and literature. They are the metallic points from which flash the electric thoughts that thrill the world, and conduct the first that children write into visible words. The schoolmasters of two hemispheres owe Gillott a debt of gratitude which they do not realize for what he has done for them. I once taught school for a year, and from my own experience should estimate the hours then employed by American schoolmasters in slitting and pointing goose-quills with their penknives in a single year would make a century. The very term "penknife" will probably be perpetuated for ever as a memento of a process that did sorely try thousands of patient and virtuous souls employed in teaching children to write. Indeed, the invention of the steel pen was an absolute necessity, as much as was the use of pit coal in England when first discovered. As well might you expect to feed all the house-fires, furnaces, and forges of the kingdom with wood fuel grown on the island as to find goose-quills enough on the face of the globe to furnish the writing world with pens. And the cutlers of Sheffield had got on a little further into the light of political economy than to follow the example of some stiff protectionists we have noticed, or to appeal to Parliament or the Prince of Wales to put a stop to Gillott's steel pens which could be made without Sheffield penknives. Even if they at first regarded him as poacher on their preserves, the man who acted for him as guide was a Sheffield artisan, who made the first steel pen. It was a rude thing at first, being made on the fork principle. The two tines were flat and thin, and the points when brought closely together formed the "nib." The whole was made to resemble a quill pen in shape, and was gradually developed into a beautiful but expensive article. Some of the most highly finished were sold as high as five shillings each. They were generally purchased as presents or articles of curious mechanism, but were too few and costly for any considerable use. There was at that time no town in England that had developed such varied machinery for such purposes as Birmingham, and the making of pens became a speciality which perhaps has characterized the town more distinctively abroad than any other manufacture. At first the use of them encountered an obstinate prejudice, like the introduction of most useful articles. In fact the school-house door had to be carried at the point of the pen itself by a few teachers brave enough to lead the storming party against this prejudice. First and foremost and bravest of them all was Mr. James Perry, founder or patron of the Perryian system of education. He was supplied with excellent pens by Mr. Josiah Mason, who was a pioneer in their introduction to the public. But at this time they were very expensive, being sold at a shilling each by the dozen. Their use and manufacture progressed very slowly both from the prejudice against such an innovation and from the increased expense involved. So late as 1839 they were almost unknown to the general public, but in the following ten years they arose to an important place among the manufactures of the town. They were made in eighteen different establishments, all under the pressure of mutual competition to introduce improvements in form and facility of production. The number of manufacturers is now twelve, but the quantity made "for home and exportation" is simply prodigious. It amounts to over 14,000,000 of pens a week. There are 360 men and about 2,000 women and girls employed, and about ten tons of steel used weekly in producing these "small arms" of literature, business, and social intercourse.
It is doubtful if any article of such wide and almost universal use ever was so identified with one man's name as is the steel pen with Joseph Gillott, of Birmingham. Even the pens manufactured by others sent abroad there suggests his name and fame. In ten thousand school-houses scattered over the American continent between the two oceans, a million children are as familiarly acquainted with Joseph Gillott as with Noah Webster. The primer of the one and the pen of the other—twin pioneers of civilization—are making the tour of the western hemisphere together, and leaving behind them a wave and wake of light.
Gillott's Manufactory is a kind of central celebrity in Birmingham to visiters from America and other countries. Independent of the associations we have noticed, it is well worth a visit for its quiet order, neatness, comfort, and even elegance as a manufacturing establishment. The show-room is really a museum of the art, filled and embellished by an infinite variety of specimens of the utmost perfection. There are pens so large that they seem to be made for giants, or for common men to hold in both hands when writing, as one holds a hoe handle. Then there are others so minute, that it requires a magnifying glass to see the slit and point. Between the two extremes range gradations in size and varieties in form which may be counted by the hundreds. Shields, stars, flowers, and various pictures are exquisitely formed out of these varieties, in which nearly all the tints of the rainbow have their place and play. Then the process of manufacture at every stage is represented. First is the strip of plain sheet-steel as it comes from Sheffield. Then you have the pen when it has passed through the entire "freedom of the press." The first operation cuts out the form, another slits, another tubes it, and another passes it on to a fifth process. Thus at a glance your eye follows it through these processes, from the riddled sheet of steel to the tempering furnace, thence to the emery-wheel, and to the last touch that is given to it.
To show what improved machinery has done to cheapen and multiply their production, it may suffice to say, that pens that were sold at wholesale thirty years ago at five shillings a gross are now sold as low as a halfpenny per gross, or two dozen for a single farthing! The Birmingham pen-makers are beginning to encounter considerable competition in the foreign market from manufactories recently established in the United States, in France, and Germany. But there is room for all, and there will be plenty of business for them when the paternal authorities of states, towns, and villages shall make the necessary provision, and then insist that every child shall learn to write before it goes to field or factory. If any men have a large and direct interest in compulsory education and world-wide civilization they are the makers of metallic pens.
Although Gillott's Pen Factory is the great lion of Birmingham manufacturers to Americans visiting the town from their childhood associations with his pens, there is another which excites their special admiration when they visit it. This is the famous Electro-Plate establishment of Elkington and Co., which, with its affiliations or branch dépôts, is the most extensive in Great Britain. They may be considered the very fathers or founders of this splendid ware, which cheapens, to the means and use of middle-class men, articles of elegance and luxury which great wealth alone could once command. In 1836 they first invented or developed the process by which metals could be coated with a solution of silver or gold. For this very important and remarkable invention they obtained a patent both in England and France; and in the latter country it was considered a great contribution to science as well as to artistic and useful industry. The establishment is, in itself, a school of art, in which genius is trained to the finest conceptions of taste and beauty. No one can estimate the force and extent of influence it puts forth for the culture of a nation. One might as easily count the rays emitted from a Bude light and measure their length, as to measure the reach and result of that influence upon society. Here are more than "apples of gold in pictures of silver;" here are the trees that bear both, and the leaves that guard and garnish them, all done to Nature's best truth, life, and beauty. Here are her most exquisite ferns with their crinkly foliage in tracery as delicate as she herself could work. Here are the master-thoughts and master-touches of artistic genius in designs of infinite variety. Here is thirty years' growth of the productions of that genius, in patterns of gold and silver work, shaped to all the varying tastes and fashions of the world of luxury and wealth. Not that luxury or wealth has in itself the mental power to originate these tasteful designs, but the mind to appreciate and means to enjoy them when produced by that high art which would have starved in the sackcloth of mediocrity in all ages, had it not been for the favoured few who could reward the divinest conceptions and the finest touches of the painter or sculptor. How it would have astonished good Queen Bess and her court and courtiers if they could have seen what wares Wedgwood and the Elkingtons would bring within the reach and daily use of the common people! We could fancy she would have involuntarily put one hand to her throne and the other to her crown to steady them, if she could have seen the mechanics of the kingdom drinking their beer out of Wedgwood's pottery instead of their cow-horn mugs. But when she came to see small tradesmen drinking tea or coffee instead of beer and pouring it into china cups from Elkington's silver-faced tea-pots, she must have believed the world coming to an end. This popularizing of art and taste is perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the present age. In some directions and respects it has outrun the diffusion of other branches of popular education. There are thousands of beer-drinkers who handle Wedgwood's ware, and tea-drinkers who can see Elkington's best tea-pots, and are yet unable to read the shortest syllables of the language they speak. But multitudes even of these feel their minds illuminated to new perceptions of refining taste as they look admiringly upon these beautiful productions of genius and art; and if they cannot decorate their shelves with them, they can and do paint their cottage windows with the sweet sheen of living flowers. Thus any one, who appreciates at their true value these self-diffusing and cultivating influences, will see in such an establishment as Elkington and Co.'s something more than the finest specimens of gold and silverware. As regards the productions of these articles it is unrivalled in Great Britain, and only surpassed in extent by one establishment in France.
It may indicate the amount of raw material which is worked into an infinite variety of articles by this establishment to state one or two facts connected with the process. There are four coating vats, each of which deposits twenty-four ounces of silver per hour, and a fifth that deposits twelve ounces. As they work ten hours a day, the daily amount of silver thus fused and diffused is 1,080 ounces, or sixty-seven and a half pounds avoirdupois, or about 400 pounds a week. About one-third of this amount is the weight of gold deposited on various wares in the same way. Allowing five working days to the week, then this establishment must work up 17,555 pounds of silver, and an amount of gold of equal value in a year. And, what is a fact of great importance, every ounce of this silver and gold is lost to the world. It is doubtful if a pound's weight of all the tons which the manufactory has solved and deposited has been saved to be used over again for any purpose whatever. The silver or gold coating is worn away and disappears in the course of years. The same is the case with all the gold-beaters of the world. The acres of gold-leaf they hammer out for gilt work are all lost, as much as the sunshine of a past year.
About 1,000 persons are employed in the establishment, who probably represent as much highly-trained genius and skill as was ever brought together under the same roofage. First in the high art department stands M. Morel Ladeuil, a pupil of the celebrated Antoine Vechte. This distinguished artist in repoussé or raised work has attained an eminence which has often been recognized and honoured. He received a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition for specimens of exquisite conception and execution. It will serve to give some approximate idea of the amount of labour bestowed on some of the specimens of this raised work to examine one exhibited at the Messrs. Elkington and Co.'s. It is a silver vase, which will hold, perhaps, a quart. On its external surface are represented all the leading inventions of the century, in all the allegorical metaphors and symbols that were wont to delight the classical imaginations of ancient times. These figures are all raised from the inside and finished with exquisite delicacy. The amount of labour bestowed upon that single article cost £600, and it must rank among the master-pieces of art. It would be natural for nine persons in ten, who are acquainted with electro-plate ware, to conclude that it is merely washed or coated with silver, which coat can no more be removed from it entire than a coat of paint from a deal board. But on visiting this establishment, one sees the most elaborate and artistic article made throughout and entire by this clipping or washing process. The solution of silver or gold is poured into or against a mould, of which every figure, line, and point, however delicate, is reproduced with photographic fulness and fidelity.
The educational system by which this great establishment is supplied with reproductive skill and genius may be inferred from the fact, that fifty or sixty of the young men attend the evening classes in the Midland Institute, and take such lessons in design and in the application of science to the different branches of the manufacture as shall fit them for its highest grades of art. Thus, there are nearly 1,000 persons not only engaged in the production of these various and splendid articles, but comprising a kind of normal school for the training of teachers in the arts embraced in the manufacture.
In ascending to the show-room, one passes between two files of bronze statues drawn up on either side, which represent the perfection of bronze work, which makes an important department of the productions exhibited. Here stand crusading knights in their armour, statesmen, and many of the great masters of their day and generation. The most liberal and generous rule is adopted in making this show-room and the whole establishment accessible to all who wish to visit it. Such persons are conducted through the gorgeous hall and shown all they wish to see with an affable attention and courtesy which all will remember who have shared them. This policy pays well in sales as well as in the satisfaction it gives to all parties. On counting the names entered in the visiters' book, about one-fourth of the whole will be found to be American. Many persons on that side of the Atlantic, who may read these pages, will bear testimony to these characteristics of the establishment.
Another speciality of Birmingham manufactures is the Iron Bedstead. The invention of this article is attributed to Dr. Church, and was one of several he elaborated, like hundreds of other inventors, to his own impoverishment and to the enriching of many fortunate men who availed themselves cheaply of his genius. When he had spent his best years upon the development of these discoveries, a relative or friend invited him to a home in America, where he ended his days, little remembered for all his contributions to the benefit of his kind. Those of our readers who visited the Great Exhibition in Paris may easily form some approximate idea of the perfection to which iron bedsteads have been brought by remembering what a splendid show of them was produced by Messrs. Winfield and Co., the most extensive manufacturers in Birmingham. There was one especially that excited much admiration for its rich and elaborate design—a bedstead which Solomon in all his glory or any modern sovereign might have coveted. In the course of fifteen years the production of these bedsteads in Birmingham has increased tenfold; or from about 400 weekly in 1850 to about 5,000 in 1865. The high duty levied upon them, even before the Civil War, has kept them virtually out of the United States, but a large and increasing demand from Australia. Canada, and other British colonies, as well as several foreign states, stimulates and extends the production of these convenient and economical articles of furniture. The retail price of them varies from £10 to 10s, each, according to the size and style. A good double-bedded stead may be bought for a guinea.
The making of Pins was commenced in Birmingham more than a century ago. Up to 1824, they were all made by hand; and so minutely was the labour on them divided that fourteen persons were employed in performing all the manipulations requisite for perfecting one. In that year an American inventor by the name of Wright elaborated a machine, and patented it in England, which would take in the wire from a reel at one end and turned out a full-made pin at the other. Or that was the aim and intent of the inventor, though a great deal of time and vast sums of money were expended on the machine to bring it to this productive capacity. To this machine succeeded an apparatus for sticking the pins when made and for folding the wrappers. The leading establishment in Birmingham for their manufacture is that of Messrs. Edelsten and Williams, who also produce vast quantities of hair-pins, hooks and eyes, thimbles, eyelets, and a great variety of other articles of brass and steel wire.
We have left to the last place in our notice of the special industries the manufacture of Small Arms for war upon men, beasts, and birds. After all that the town has done in the production of pens, pins, buttons, thimbles, hoes, shovels, and other useful tools, it is widest if not best known to the outside world for these varied and ingenious weapons of death. For naturally the largest portion of the great human family are unable to use pens, but are trained to the handling of these shooting and stabbing irons used in great and small wars, and in manly recreations in cruelty to animals. The musket, sporting gun, and rifle have come to their present character by an inverse process and development. They have grown down and from the monster-mouthed cannon, instead of the cannon growing up from them into its huge dimensions. The cannon is said to have been made first in the middle of the fourteenth century at Liege, a town that armed half of Europe for several centuries with all sorts of weapons and armour against weapons. It was a huge, rude machine for shooting large stones at an enemy. They were first used by the English against the Scots in 1327, and by them against the French at the battle of Cressy, in 1346. It is stated that some of them were large enough to discharge a mass of stones weighing 1,200 pounds. They were great tubes of iron plates hooped together by large iron rings "shrunk on" when hot. The first we read of a hand-gun is in 1471, when Edward IV landed with 300 Flemings, armed with the miniature cannon, which the Germans had elaborated to a considerable capacity of mischief. It varied, however, but little from the cannon except in size. It was a simple barrel, mounted on a straight stock, with an uncovered touch-hole at the top, just like its great ugly prototype. It was fired from a rest by a match, so that the whole process was like that of a modern park of artillery in action. The furthest reach of the next improvement was to bend the stock at the breech. The inventive genius was busy at the machine, and next produced the match-lock, which probably enabled the gun to be used on rainy days. But the carrying of lighted matches about among so much loose powder led to frequent and fatal accidents. They often touched off the powder-horn or powder-cask instead of the loaded gun. It was a long and protracted struggle of the genius of the day to obviate this difficulty, and to generate the requisite spark where and when it was wanted. Finally, a flint or bit of firestone was fixed opposite the touch-hole, and a file chained to the gun, and a little rubbing with this produced the ignition. During the next two centuries another improvement was effected. Instead of the file, a spring steel wheel was so attached as to be set whizzing against the flint by touching a trigger. This was the best contrivance developed up to the reign of Charles II. The scarcity and expense of powder, and the awkwardness of the guns, limited the use of fire-arms, so that in Elizabeth's reign the bow and arrow were the principal weapon of the English army. Another cause may be ascribed for this slow introduction of them. To ward off the balls, the soldiers so cased themselves in iron armour that they were not only protected against the shot themselves, but disabled from injuring the enemy by the weight they carried. Still, as there was more genius brought to bear on the sword than the ploughshare, other improvements were made in different parts of Europe, and called after the towns in which they were invented. And some of these followed the decrescendo rule, which quite reversed the Irishman's idea, who said he had known a certain gun ever since it was a pocket-pistol. This miniature musket was first brought out in an Italian town called Pistoja, and was named the pistol after the place of its birth. The bayonet was first made in 1640 at Bayonne, and assumed the name of that town. It was first used as a simple dagger or poignard fixed in a wooden handle, which was fitted into the muzzle of the gun, so that no shooting could be carried on while it was used; and the gun became a simple pike for the time being. The French got the start in the improvement of the fixture; for when, in the reign of William III, they encountered an English force, they halted on the charge within a few paces of the regiment, and, with bayonets fixed by a socket over the muzzles of their guns, poured in a volley upon the enemy, who were as greatly astonished as if it had come with all its smoke from wooden crossbows. About 1690 the flint lock was invented, it is supposed, by the Dutch, and continued in use, with slight alteration, until the last quarter of a century. In 1807 the Rev. Mr. Forsyth obtained a patent for the application of fulminating powder to the discharging of loaded guns. But his "application" was not so successful to a charge of gunpowder as to the points of a sermon; and it was not until 1816 that the copper cap was invented. Still this improvement was not introduced into the English military service until 1839.
The rifle comes down with a long history of improvements. The common gun-barrel was grooved towards the last of the fifteenth century; the first specimen being produced at Vienna. In 1620. Koster, of Nuremburg, gave the grooves a twist in order to produce a rotary motion to the ball. During the next century, the grooved musket or rifle came into a somewhat extensive use by several continental powers, but not by the English until the war of the American Revolution. Up to within fifteen years the use of the rifle was much limited by the time and care required to ram the ball home when incased in a patch of leather. For the space of forty years, much ingenuity was exercised in different countries to overcome this difficulty. M. Delvigne, a French officer, in 1826, proposed to use a loosely-fitting ball such as is adapted to a smooth bore, and to expand it over the powder by a few smart blows of the ramrod. But this expedient did not answer the purpose. In 1836. Mr. Greener, of Birmingham, constructed a self-expanding ball by leaving an opening in it for the insertion of a plug of a harder metal, which forced out the lead at the explosion. This operation gave the ball a distorted or irregular form on leaving the barrel. In 1849. Colonel Thouvenin invented the Vincennes carbine, with a steel pin or stem at the bottom of the barrel which reached above the powder. Tic loose ball being forced upon this by several blows of the ramrod, was expanded to hug the grooves closely, and, to a good degree, accomplished the sought-for object. Captain Minié produced the improvement which bears his name. He removed the steel pin or stem and substituted a bullet hollow at the back, to which the explosion gave the necessary lateral expansion. Breech-loaders have now been brought into almost general use in England, both as sporting and military guns. The name of Westley Richards is well known in America, as well as in remoter countries, for his rifles and other fire-arms. His list of patrons embraces a great number of the English nobility and gentry, and his brand stands at the very head of high reputation for excellence. The Greeners also turn out sporting guns of great perfection. The wood stock-forms are brought mostly from countries where wood is more abundant and cheaper than in England. The walnut stocks are imported from Germany and Italy. During the Crimean war, a Birmingham contractor set up saw-mills at Turin, and has converted a whole forest, or nearly 100,000 walnut trees into stocks.
There are nearly 600 manufacturers in Birmingham engaged in different departments of the gun trade, which departments are eight in number, and some of these are again subdivided. There are about 10,000 men, women, and children employed in these different branches. Good workmen can earn, on an average, thirty shillings a-week. Gun-making by machinery, after the American process, has been introduced quite lately. In 1853, Mr. Whitworth and Mr. George Wallis, of Birmingham, were members of a commission sent to the United States to visit our private and national establishments. As the result of their report, the English Government resolved to erect a manufactory at Enfield, on the same system as that pursued at Springfield. A second commission was sent over, consisting of military officers, to purchase such machinery and models as were necessary for the Enfield factory. The most wonderful and ingenious of all our labour-saving machines to the English generally, were our lathes for turning crooked things, like lasts, axe-handles, and oxbows; and which produced gun stocks to such perfection, and so cheaply and speedily. The interchangeable principle was also appreciated at its true value, by which any part of one lock or gun would exactly fit any other. The report of this commission expresses their wonder and admiration at our process of effecting this in the following words:
"They selected, with Colonel Ripley's permission, ten muskets, each made in a different year, viz., from 1844 to 1853 inclusive, from the principal arsenal at Springfield, which they caused to be taken to pieces in their presence and the parts placed in a row of boxes mixed up together. They then requested the workman whose duty it is to 'assemble' the arms, to put them together, which he did, the committee handing him the parts taken at hazard, with the use of a turnscrew only, and as quickly as though they had been English muskets, whose parts had been carefully kept separate."
per week. On the return of this committee the Enfield works were pushed into extensive operation, especially under the pressure of the Crimean war. The establishment is arranged to turn out 2,000 guns per week. The Birmingham gun-makers were stirred up to somewhat indignant emotion at this Government competition and interference in their trade; but as they could not put down the Enfield factory, they formed a large and powerful joint--stock company, which has not only been able to compete successfully with the Government, but also to perform work which Enfield could not execute for want of productive capacity. The factory of the Birmingham Small-Arms Company is situated on the Great Western Railway, a few miles out of the town, and will well repay a visit. To an American it presents not only interesting features but facts in mechanical history. He will see there in operation the genius of his own country, and recognize an instalment of his country's debt paid back to Birmingham for all our skilled mechanics and manufacturers have derived from the establishments of Boulton and Watt, and other generating centres of ingenious industry. The American system has not only been introduced here, but the factory was launched into operation under American direction. The late Mr. Corey McFarland, so well known in Springfield, brought to this establishment all the mechanical genius and long experience for which he was so much valued at home. His sad and untimely death was felt nearly as deeply in Birmingham as in Springfield.
The total number of gun-barrels proved in England from 1855 to 1864 was 6,116,305; making an average annual production of 611,630. To show the proportion that Birmingham contributes to this production, the fact will suffice, that in the same period of ten years, 3,277,815 barrels were proved in this town, giving an annual average of 327,781. An elaborate and exhaustive paper by J. D. Goodman, Esq., the Chairman of the Birmingham Small-Arms Company, which may be found in Mr. Timmins's great work already cited, will supply any one wishing it the most minute and extensive information on the rise and progress of a manufacture which has given the town such a world-wide reputation.
We have now noticed at some length what may be called the manufacturing specialities of Birmingham. It is not the object of this volume, nor would half-a-dozen of the same size be sufficient, to describe those numerous trades which it carries on in common with other large towns in the kingdom. I have sought to impress especially upon the American reader the importance of the place which Birmingham has occupied as a normal school for the artistic, scientific, and skilled industries of the world; as a generating centre of mechanical genius to which no foreign country is so much indebted as the United States. Here is the birth-place of the first Great Exhibition of 1851, and all the International Exhibitions that followed it are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the Birmingham Industrial Exhibition in 1849. It was here that Prince Albert not only got the idea but practically the model of what was produced in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Such an aggregation of mechanical productions was unknown until it was presented in Birmingham, as a kind of outside illustration of the arts and sciences discussed in the British Association which met that year in the town. It was a display on such a large scale of what the Midland District and its metropolis could do, and embraced such a number and variety of specimens, that the most original feature of the Exhibition of 1851 was the building and not its contents.