Chapter I: Front Matter

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XL. June, 1852. No. 6.

Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

New York Printing Machine, Press, and Saw Works
Edith Morton
Ferdinand De Candolles
The Ghost-Raiser
Tom Moore—The Poet of Erin
A Life of Vicissitudes (continued)
Two Ways to Manage
The Master’s Mate’s Yarn (concluded)
The First Age (concluded)
Titus Quinctius Flamininus
Nelly Nowlan’s Experience
Review of New Books
Literary Gossip
Graham’s Small-Talk

Poetry and Music

A Farewell
Lines, Suggested by Rogers’ Statue of Ruth
What Dost Thou Work For?
April
I Woo Thee, Spring
Song
The Phantom Field
Shakspeare
The Actual
The Pledge
To A Beautiful Girl
The Orphan’s Hymn
Religion
Our Minnie’s Dream
Sonnet—Pleasure
To Adhemar
Hour of Fond Delight

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1852. No. 6.

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NEW YORK PRINTING MACHINE, PRESS, AND SAW WORKS.

R. HOE & CO.

Had it been possible for any human intellect, at the close of the eighteenth century, or the commencement of this its nineteenth successor, so to grasp and comprehend the development of science, its expansion and diffusion, and, above all, its application to the every-day wants and conveniences of ordinary human life, as to predict, only fifty years beforehand, any one of the almost incredible marvels which have long ceased to move especial wonder, as being now established facts, witnessed by all eyes, and of occurrence at all hours, the owner of that intellect would not have been merely laughed at as a crazy, crack-brained enthusiast, but would have run a very reasonable chance of being consigned to the cell of a madhouse, as an incorrigible and incurable monomaniac.

The writer of these lines, lacking several years yet of the completion of his tenth lustre, clearly remembers how, within thirty years at furthest, to assert an opinion of the feasibility of lighting streets by gas was to be sneered at for a visionary, or regarded with suspicion as a probable speculator in the _fancy_, even by the best informed, and most enlightened classes.

To the youngest of his readers the _dictum_ of the then infallible Doctor Dionysius Lardner against the possibility of Ocean Steam Navigation—for, deny it now as he may, he can be clearly convicted of its utterance—is familiar as a household word.

And now, what insignificant town, to say nothing of innumerable private dwellings, innumerable factories and workshops, prison houses, as it were, and _ergasteria_, would it were otherwise! of plebeian labor, innumerable theatres, assembly-halls, and banquet-rooms, abodes of patrician pleasure, are not ablaze through the murkiest midnight, and light as the broadest day, with the released and radiant spirit, that lay so long enthralled and unsuspected in the hard heart of the swart coal mine?

And now, with what quarter of the world are we not in daily, if not hourly, communication by the united agencies of those two most irreconcilable powers, fire and water?

Hardly one century has elapsed since the American Franklin revealed to the admiring world the scarcely suspected fact, that the subtle spark elicited from the electrifying magazine, or from the hairs of a cat, rubbed contrariwise to their direction, is identical with the sovereign, all-pervading flash,

“Which issues from the loaded cloud,
And rives the oak asunder.”

And now, at this day, we sit quietly engaged in our study, or stand, even, as it may be, laboriously plying our trade of manual labor, and send that very lightning-flash, a tamed domestic influence, nay, but a very slave and pack-horse to our will, to speed our tidings to New Orleans, or to Newfoundland, and to bring us back the answer, before a second hour has lagged round the dial.

Time was, nor very long ago, when to receive news from Europe within thirty days, was esteemed a feat, if not a miracle, on the part of the carriers. Now, or ere a second summer shall have passed, the electric telegraph will be in operation to Cape Race, the south-easternmost point of Newfoundland, and mail steamers will be cleaving the Atlantic far to the northward, to and fro, from the green shores of Galway. Then, within seven days at the utmost, the news of farthest Europe, news from the Vistula, the Danube, and the Don; news from the Tartar and the Turk, shall be sped, more swiftly than though they “had taken the wings of the morning,” to the uttermost parts of America, shall be read almost simultaneously on the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific, and sent far aloof among the oceanic isles of the southern hemisphere, even to drowsy China and remote Taprobane, by the almost unearthly powers of steam and electricity, and last, not least, the press.

The word is out—we have said it—the press—a kindred, not antagonistic, scarcely even rival, power to the two mighty elements we have named—since it has pressed both into its service; and itself, purely human in its origin, its influence, and its importance, purely material in “its age and body, form and pressure,” derives most of its incalculable puissance from the coöperation and subservience of the two mightiest, most unearthly, most immaterial, and most spiritual of essences, existing, or which have existed, in the universe.

But we are not about to write an essay on the power, the influence, the utility of the press. These are too generally appreciated and acknowledged, to render a single paragraph necessary. In the two first particulars of power and influence, the press is incomparable—not to be equaled by any instrument or agency of humanity that ever has existed. The extent of its utility—although still unquestionable—is limited and diminished, “cribbed, coffined,” and curtailed by the weakness, the willfulness, and the wickedness of the very many men, unfit and evil-minded, who have thrust themselves forward, assuming to conduct it, and through it the public mind, with no ulterior object nobler or higher than the misapplication of the weight and moral power with which it invests them, to all sorts of immorality and wrong, to which avarice, rapacity, ambition, and the insane desire of demagogueism may impel them.

This is, however, only to admit that the press is an agency of time and mortality; and as such liable, of a necessity, to be perverted. Perhaps it is rather to be wondered, that there are _few_ base, dishonest, licentious, and self-seeking journals in circulation, than that there are any; and it is clear, that the general tone of the reading world is so gradually and greatly improving, that few of those which now exist receive any considerable support, unless where they have the skill to introduce their false doctrines under cover of some specious sophistry, making them to wear the semblance of reforms. Even these, it may be observed, are daily becoming more and more transparent to the broad and keen eye of the public; and, in proportion as they are comprehended, lose their ill-acquired and abused popularity and power.

In one word, the utility of the press, its beneficial influences, its charities, its diffusion of knowledge and true light, and its general maintenance of the right, out-balance, as by ten thousand fold, the occasional obliquities, injustice, falsehood, and advocacy of devil’s doings here on earth, which periodically disgrace its columns.

For these the press is no more to be censured or condemned, than is the Book of Common Prayer, or the Holy Bible; because—in the middle ages—men, mad with too much, or too little learning—it matters not whether—applied their most hallowed texts, read backward, to the evocation of departed souls from Hades, or of evil spirits from the abyss of very Hell.

It is not, however, of the moral influences, but of the mere material powers of the press, as now existing in its wonderfully improved condition, with all appliances of marvelous time-saving machinery, that we would now speak—machinery born itself of machinery, self-developed from the swart, unplastic ore, with, comparatively speaking, small expense of human labor, though under the control of the all-contriving human brain, into engines of strange and mysterious potency.

It is little to say that the efficiency, and of course the utility, of the printing-press has been increased a thousand fold, that the facility and consequent cheapness, of the reproduction of books has been improved to such an extent that thousands and tens of thousands of volumes are now printed, published, and put into circulation, where there was one thirty years ago; and that too at prices, which bring it easily within the means of all—but the very idlest and poorest—to become familiar with the best thoughts of the brightest geniuses of all ages—That the whole system of journalism, and journal publishing, has passed through a complete revolution, reducing individual prices to a mere nominal fraction, and referring the question of profits, and remuneration of labor, to gross sales of tens of thousands of daily copies—the consequence of which revolution is to place the whole news of the world, including all discoveries of art or science, all arguments and disputations of the first statesmen and orators, all lectures of the most prominent literateurs and philosophers of the day, within the hand’s reach of every farmer and farm-laborer, every artisan, mechanic, clerk and shop-boy of the land, from the Aroostook to the Sacramento and Columbia.

It is little to say this—yet this is something; for it is the first step toward making those who do govern the land, fit to govern it—namely, the people—toward enabling them to judge, unlike the constituents of best European representative governments, not of men only, but, mediately, of measures; toward giving them to judge and learn for themselves, from the actual progress of recorded events, daily occuring, something of the policy of foreign nations, something of the interest of their own country; lastly, toward rendering the permanent establishment of a falsehood, or the long suppression of the truth, an impossibility.

And yet all this is to say little, as compared with what may be said—namely, that the difference between the efficiency of the modern printing-press and that of Guttenberg, Faustus and Schoffer, is almost greater than the difference between that and the manuscript system, which it superseded.

And all this is to be ascribed to the perfection of mechanics and machinery, brought by the aid of every branch of science to what we might well deem perfection, did not every coming day awake to perfectionate what was last night deemed perfect.

In all branches of human labor, in all phases of human ingenuity, for above half a century, this vast increase—both of the application and the power of machinery—has been in progress; constantly awakening the fears and jealousies, sometimes inducing the overt opposition and illegal violence of the working classes, as cheapening their labor, and about ultimately to subvert their trade and destroy their means of subsistence.

Than these fears and jealousies, nothing can be more erroneous, not to say absurd. For it is no longer a theory, but an established fact, that consumption of, and demand for, any article grows almost in arithmetical progression from the reduction of its price, to such a degree, as to render it available to all classes.

Two examples, alone, will be sufficient to make this clear:—

Some twenty years ago, the renewal of the English East India Company’s charter was refused by Parliament, and the tea-trade of Great Britain opened to all British bottoms[1]. The price of tea was reduced by above one-half, and the company exclaimed loudly, as companies ever do, against the unjust legislation, which must needs ruin them.

Mark the result, however. The price of tea fell one-half; the consumption of tea increased—we speak generally—almost ten-fold. The company never were more prosperous than now.

Again—within the same period, inland postage in Great Britain was reduced to a uniform rate of one penny sterling, not without much opposition and strenuous contest, the opponents insisting that the department must become a burden on the state, from sheer inability to do the work of transportation at prices merely nominal. The results are before the public, and not a boy but knows that they precisely reverse the prediction.

The same thing is true of the growth of the cotton trade; of the growth of agricultural productions: and last, not least, and most of all to the purpose, of the growth of the so-called _penny_-press of New York, and the United States in general. We use the term so-called, because though nominally penny, most, if not all, of the very paying papers of this class are really two-penny papers.

While we were considering these matters, to which consideration we were led by a visit to the extraordinary machine works of Messrs. Hoe & Co., the inventors and manufacturers of the great fast power-presses, which have effected the revolution of which we have spoken, we accidentally stumbled upon the following article from the columns of the New York Tribune; and it is so entirely germane to the matter, that we have no hesitation in quoting the former portion of it, without alteration or comment.

The latter portion we omit, because we entirely disagree with Mr. Greely in the deduction which he draws from the admitted facts, as we do with most of his socialistic and communistic notions.

It is to the increase of demand, growing out of the increase and cheapness of production, that he must look for employment and profit, not to the catching at the empty bubble of ownership, or to the ambition of governing, with none to serve under him.

“LABOR AND MACHINERY.

A thoughtful laborer—for wages—sends us an account he finds current in the journals of the rapid progress of Printing by Machinery, as illustrated by a single cheap daily newspaper. That paper now prints 48,475 sheets—or 101 reams—per day, which it is enabled by rapid machinery to do from one set of types, whereas, if obliged to use the Hand-Press of former days, it would be obliged to set up its type _twenty-nine times_ over for each daily edition, employing 812 compositors instead of barely 28, and 116 pressmen instead of some ten or twelve only. Hereupon our correspondent comments as follows:—

Mr. Greely:—It will be seen by the above, which I quote merely
as a convenient text to illustrate the matter in hand, that in
_one_ establishment a _difference_ is made of nearly or quite
_nine hundred_ men, in consequence of the invention or
improvement of machinery, which has taken place within a less
time than the last 25 years, from the number it would have been
necessary to have employed to prosecute the same amount of
business had no such progress been made. The same is true, I
suppose, to an equal extent, of _The Tribune_ and other journals
of large circulation. The same—i. e., _the alarming
encroachment which machinery is every day making on what has
heretofore been performed by human muscles alone_—is not
peculiar to any one branch of employment. The restless inquiry
and invention of the present is rapidly and surely intruding
_iron_ muscles, which do not become hungry, or experience the
depression of low wages and consequent low fare, into every
department of human industry, crowding out and setting adrift
thousands of the industrious, to seek new and untried means of
subsistence, from which soon again to be driven, by—what many
of them have come to look upon as their greatest, most
persevering and relentless enemy—machinery.

Whither, I would thoughtfully and anxiously ask, do these facts,
which stare us in the face from every quarter, tend? What is
their mighty significancy? The unprecedented increase of the
most cunningly adapted, durable, and economical machinery—on
the one hand—to perform, in great part, the work heretofore
done by us—the laborers; and—on the other hand—the sure and
certain increase of that most reliable portion of humanity which
we represent, and whose only capital is their muscles, and whose
hope of bread for themselves and children is in the performance,
to a large extent, of that same labor thus snatched from us by
the offspring of invention. What wonder that the honest laborer,
who knows no cunning but the use of the physical force which God
has given him, or the mechanic who plies his trade, should stand
aghast, and feel his heart sink within him, as he is forced from
his legitimate occupation, to another and still another, and at
last finds his employment altogether fitful and uncertain, from
the number of his fellows driven to the same condition as
himself. His labor is truly “a drug in the market,” and stern
necessity is fast putting him, if it has not already, wholly at
the mercy of capital. I could not but sadly ponder, as
one—while watching the nicely adjusted movements of a cheap
engine, which had ejected him and his fellow, in like condition,
from the place whence, for years, they had obtained a livelihood
for themselves and families—significantly observed to me that,
“the best thing that could be done with _that thing_ would be to
break it to pieces, and pitch it out of the window.” They saw
wood about town now, when they can get it to do, as the
_machinery_, which they have in such successful operation in
Chicago and some other cities for that purpose, has not yet been
introduced here. Their daughters, too, who have, till within a
six month back, had work at $2 50 per week, in the factories,
are now out of employ. This, you know, is but one of countless
similar illustrations which take place every day in poor
families.

H.

We have thus allowed our friend to state his whole case—though he only submitted it that we might comment on its substance—and we now solicit his attention to some thoughts by it suggested.

Why does our friend go back only to the Hand-Press to exhibit the disastrous effects of Machinery on the interests of Labor? The hand-press itself is a labor-saving machine of immense capacity—far more so in its day than the power-press which is now extensively superseding it. It threw wholly out of employment and reduced to absolute destitution thousands upon thousands of skillful, accurate, admirable penmen, who had given the best years of their lives to acquire skill in a profession, or pursuit, which the press almost extirpated. To be at all consistent, “H.” must demand, not the destruction of the power-press only, but of all printing or copying presses whatever.

“Ah! but then there could be no newspapers?”—Nay; that does not follow. Kossuth’s first gazette was not printed, but a carefully prepared abstract of the sayings and doings of the Hungarian Diet, whereof copies were made by scribes for general diffusion. There have been many such instances of unprinted journals.

“Well; there could be no _such_ journals as we now have.” No, nor could there be without the power-press. We could not afford such a paper as _The Tribune_ now is for four times its present price, if we were obliged to print it on hand-presses; in fact, no such paper could be supported at all.

The subsisting truth, then, must be accepted and looked fairly in the face. The mountain will not come to Mahomet; he must go to the mountain. The existence and rapid progress of Machinery is a fact which cannot be set aside; the world will not, cannot go backward: Machinery cannot be destroyed; it cannot even be held where it is, but must move onward to further and vaster triumphs. We may deplore this, but cannot prevent it.”

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The perusal of this article would have determined us, had we not been resolved beforehand, to lay before our readers an account of the very remarkable works to which we have before alluded, by the proprietors of which the machinery mentioned in the letter of “the thoughtful laborer” was of course manufactured, as by them it was invented; being no other than the great eight-cylinder, type-revolving, fast-printing press. Similar machines, though varying in the number of cylinders, are employed by the New York Herald and Tribune, the eight-cylinder being used by the Sun, the Philadelphia Ledger, and other journals in the United States, as also by the Parisian La Patrie, the quasi organ of the present Prince President, and, according to present appearances, future Emperor of the French.

These works are in truth one of the most remarkable sights, if not the most worthy of remark, of all that are shown to strangers in New York—and yet to how few are they shown. The changes to which they have already given birth are great enough, even now,

“To overcome us like a summer cloud,”

but the end of those changes is not yet, nor shall be, while we are. What they shall be, we may not even conjecture—perhaps the civilization, the christianizing of the world entire, and the reduction of all tongues and dialects to one universal English language.

To waste no more words, however, in mere speculation, but to come to facts, the history of the origin and progression of these truly wonderful works, of which more anon, is in itself by no means void of interest—even of something of romance.

In the well-known and ill-remembered yellow-fever summer of New York, an Englishman by birth, a carpenter by trade, landed in the city of the plague, a stranger, friendless, sick, and but scantily provided with what has been termed the root of all evil, which one-third of our people, however, regard as the sole object and aim of exertion and existence here and hereafter.

His good fortune, or rather—for we believe not in fortune—his good providence brought him in contact with that most singular of geniuses, Grant Thorburn. With him he boarded, with him struggled through the terrors of the prevailing pest, by him was tenderly nursed, and from his roof entered into business with Smith, the well-known machinist and inventor of the hand-press which still bears his name; nor is it yet superseded by more recent improvements. Their partnership terminated only with the decease of Mr. Smith; from which time, under the sole conduct of Mr. Hoe—for the stranger guest of Mr. Thorburn was no other than the father of the energetic, inventive and enterprising gentlemen, whose works we are about to describe—the business became permanently established, and yearly advanced in popularity and reputation, which constitute profits.

Still, greatly as he improved upon what had been before, at his death in 1834, the average annual sales of the concern did not exceed 50,000 dollars; they never now fall short of 400,000; and often amount to half a million. Such are, and will ever be, the consequences of energy, industry, probity and sobriety, joined to an earnest and sincere application of that talent, which each one of us in some sort possesses, to its true and legitimate increase and improvement—in other words, to quote a book so much out of fashion—find the more the pity!—in these piping times of progress, as the old church catechism, a quiet resolve to “do our duty in that state of life to which it hath pleased God to call us.”

Shortly after the death of Mr. Hoe, sen., his sons and successors, finding the then premises insufficient, moved to the ground now occupied by their great manufactories, occupying a hollow block four stories in height, of two hundred feet front on Broome street, by one hundred in depth on Sheriff and Columbia streets, as also a second lot on the other side of Broome street, containing their saw works, hardening furnaces, stables, and other necessary buildings. In these works, a bird’s eye view of which is pre-fixed to this paper, and the ground plan of which we here present, the Messrs. Hoe continually employ three hundred men, some of them persons of great ability as draughtsmen, pattern-makers, mechanicians, and the like—men literally of every nation, as nearly as may be, under the sun; among whom are comprised several Armenians, said to be persons of great intelligence and excellent deportment.

Besides this, their principal factory, they have another large and well built establishment, containing ware-rooms, counting-house, blacksmith’s shop, machine shop, and steam-engine room, in Gold street, nearly adjoining Fulton. This, though in fact headquarters, we shall pass over for the time being, premising only—in order to show the perfect method and system of time and labor-saving with which every thing belonging to this firm is conducted—that they have at their own expense, and for their own private use, erected an electric telegraph, carried by the permission of the proprietors over the roofs of houses, from the counting-room to the up-town factories, by which the smallest message or order is conveyed, and answered almost instantaneously. Nor are the proprietors dissatisfied with the result, having found by experience that the great original expense was very speedily compensated by the gain of time, and yet more of precision which it introduced.

Returning up-town, therefore, we will descend into the vault under the first yard, in which we shall find the moving puissance of all the vast machinery of hammers, planes, lathes, drills, grindstones, tools and devices, almost without name or number, which are constantly laboring with their iron nerves, noiseless, tireless, indefatigable, through every story of the great building—in the shape of the boilers and steam-engine, which, beside furnishing all the motive power, supply every part of the building, by a very ingenious application, with a constant stream of evenly tempered, pure, heated air, at the same time maintaining a thorough ventilation, and all without the slightest danger of fire.

The spent steam is brought into a series of coiled pipes within a trunk, through which a continual stream of pure external air flows without intermission, and is carried by wooden tubes through every story and room of the building; as is likewise an ample provision of Croton water, as well a provision against fire, as for the cleanliness and comfort of the men.

Of the engine there is nothing very special to be observed, as it is of the old construction, and, though perfectly efficient, not now to be imitated or adopted. It is a horizontal high pressure engine of about forty horse power, under the head of steam usually employed, though capable of exerting considerably more force, if called upon. There has been recently attached to it a singularly ingenious little machine, in the shape of a hydraulic regulator, of which great expectations are entertained, and which, in the very short time it has been tested, works to admiration, one week only having elapsed since its application. To attempt to describe this, or in fact any other complicated machine, in an illustrative article such as this pretends only to be, were an absurdity; for the operations of the simplest engines can be rendered thoroughly comprehensible, only—if at all—by thorough diagrams with numerical references, and then comprehensible only to scientific readers, conversant at least with the principles and working of the motive power, and the forces to be exerted by it.

Ascending from the subterranean regions, which are, by the way, so constructed under an open and little occupied court-yard that even in case of any untoward accident the least possible damage would ensue, and certainly no upheaval of whole edifices, as by the explosion of a powder magazine, would be the consequence, we arrive next in the order of production at the great foundery, occupying nearly one half of the ground floor on the Broome street front.

Of this, although it furnishes the rude material, the first degree we mean from the actual raw metal for the whole establishment, the saw manufactory alone excepted, there is little to be noted worthy of particular attention by those who are familiar with the operation of furnaces, founderies and casting on a large scale, as in fact there is nothing in it unusual or novel, unless it be what struck us as both novel and unusual, the general absence of noise, confusion, din and turmoil, not to mention ill sounds, ill savors, and oppressive heat, which seems to pervade the whole establishment. This, ministering as it does largely to the comfort and well-being of all concerned, detracts somewhat, it must be admitted from the picturesque effect of the scenery, and its adjuncts. Even the neatness and cleanliness of the orderly and well conducted moving about each his own business noiselessly, and obeying a sign or the wafture of a hand, diminished the effect which we almost expect to feel in an iron foundery, a furnace, or a machine shop.

We well remember the impression left on our mind years ago by a visit to some gigantic iron works in Sheffield, an impression which made itself felt for many a month in strange fantastic dreams and painful nightmares—such influence, not on the imagination only but on the nerves, had the dense murky gloom of the dim vaults, suddenly kindled, as by magic, into a fierce incandescent glare by the lava-like torrents of molten iron, the volumes of black smoke, the stifling heat of the oppressed and exhausted atmosphere, and then the roar of unseen waters, suggestive of those subterranean streams of Hades, Acheron and Cocytus, the whirr and hurtling of unnumbered wheels, the terrible and deafening clang of the huge trip-hammers, literally making the solid earth jar and tremble; and last and most appropriate to the scene, the swarthy, grim-visaged workmen, fit representatives of Vulcan and his Cyclops, now glancing into lurid light, now vanishing into darkness, as the fitful flashes rose and fell. Of a verity there can be no much more appropriate representation of Pandemonium than an old-fashioned English iron works on a large scale.

But there is no room for marveling or romancing after this fashion in the machine works of Messrs. Hoe & Co., for all the rooms are well aired, well lighted, and none the less adapted to their purpose for being suitable to the accommodation of men who neither are slaves, nor in anywise resemble devils.

From the foundery we proceed, across the open yard, to the smithy, a large, lofty, well proportioned apartment, containing two enormous steam-hammers, the speed and consequent impetus of which can be modulated by a very easy application of manual force, at the pleasure of the operator, so that they can be made either to rise and fall as slowly as the maces of Gog and Magog on the great bell of Saint Dunstan’s, or to impinge upon whatever is objected to their descent with a velocity which almost mocks the eye. In this apartment and its adjunct forge there are no less than eighteen stithies, the bellows of all which are worked by the ubiquitous power of the engine, with anvils of all manners and sizes in due proportion, and sturdy operatives plying them with tranquil and regulated industry, worth five times the amount of human force exerted unequally and impulsively, by fits and starts. These men, for the most part, and, in fact, always when not called off by some casual and unexpected pressure of business in some one department, are kept constantly employed at that peculiar species of work with which each is the most familiar, such method and system in the subdivision of labor being found to insure not only the greatest excellence, but the greatest celerity of workmanship.

In this shop all such portions of the engines, presses, large and small, printing and inking machines, and of the machinery by the agency of which the above machines themselves are created, as are composed of wrought metal, are forged, welded, made new from the commencement, or repaired in case of damage. For it is worthy of remark that, although many of the labor-saving machines and tools are of English make—not a few by the celebrated Whitworth, said to be the first tool-maker in the world—there is not one that cannot, on emergency, be made, mended, or altered, within the precincts of the establishment; while many of the most admirable contrivances are patents and inventions peculiar to this country and this firm.

Immediately adjoining the smithy, is the engine and machine shop, and on the same floor the large lathe-room containing four enormous surface lathes and two turning lathes, for drilling, boring, turning, and finishing both circular and horizontal surfaces.

From this point, we shall proceed to the saw works, preferring to take each separate department of work by itself, from the commencement to the end, rather than to adhere to the precise order and position of the several rooms, as situated in the building.

The first room devoted to this branch of manufacture, which is a very considerable and important item in the business of Messrs. Hoe & Co., the annual sales amounting to not less than 140,000 dollars, in circular saws, mill-saws, pit-saws, and crosscut-saws, for all parts of the country, is known as the saw shop.

Herein is performed the business of smithing, teething, and blocking the great saws; hundreds of thousands of which are at work, driven by water or by steam-power in every portion of the boundless territories of the United States, to which the enterprising foot and adventurous axe of the white settler has found access—clearing with their restless and indomitable teeth the solid and tenacious fibres of the gnarled live-oaks in the pestilent swamps of Florida, and the dank “regions far away, by Pascagoula’s sunny bay,” into the crooked knees of mighty vessels, that shall set at naught the howling billows of the wild Atlantic, and the blasts of the mad storm-wind, Euroclydon, riving into planks and beams and timbers, that shall build up the palaces of commerce, and the happy homes of our lordly cities, the white and penetrable flesh of “those captive kings so straight and tall, those lordly pines, which fell long ago in the deer-haunted forests of Maine, when deep upon mountain and plain lay the snow.”

The machinery by which these various processes are accomplished is exceedingly fine and worthy of notice, and vastly superior to that used in England; in the dock-yards of which country the circular saws were first brought into service, if we do not err; especially that for cutting the teeth, which, worked by steam-power, does its duty with great rapidity and incomparable precision.

This operation is performed by the vertical descent of a ponderous arm of iron, terminating in a cutter of the form of the notch to be made in the yet soft and smooth edge of the circular plate, which is made by the same power to revolve horizontally upon an axis placed at such distance from the impinging weight as the depth of the notch to be cut requires, and traversing at a rate so timed in unison with the descent of the cutters as to render the series of teeth perfectly continuous and equal; each blow of the cutter forming the interval between two teeth, and each full revolution of the plate completing a circular-saw. In the same way is effected the teething of the straight saws, the motion being a direct sliding action in a forward line, instead of a rotatory movement.

In the English saw works, owing to the influence of trade-unions, operative-unions, and the like, the application of steam-power to this machinery is prohibited, and the employer is restricted to the use of hand labor—the cutter being jerked down by man power, and the edge of the plate to be cut being subjected to the striker by hand, the formation of the teeth not being regulated by any absolute scale, but being executed by the calculation or guess-work of the artisan, and, of course, varying in accuracy, depth and precision of cutting according to the skillfulness or unskillfulness of the individual operator.

To the absence of these ingenious combinations, injurious alike to the true interest of operators and employers, the superiority in many respects of American to English machinery is in some degree due, and not less to the over stringency of the patent laws of Great Britain, which often prevent the application of really leading and most material improvements, of a radical nature, to principles secured for the benefit of the inventor.

We may here observe that the use of circular saws is very greatly on the increase in this country, more especially in the western portion of it. In the east, for some inexplicable reason, this admirable instrument is far less generally used; and the writer of this article, several years ago, when on a visit to the timber districts of Maine, on expressing his surprise at the non-adoption of this most excellent and labor-saving tool, could learn no adequate cause for the prejudice existing against it, unless it were some crude and absurd ideas concerning its vibration and consequent irregularity of cutting—objections not founded on facts, nor confirmed by experience.

From the saw shop the circular plates, now teethed and in the incipient stage of what Willis would call _sawdom_, are removed across Broome Street into the other building, and introduced to the saw hardening room, where they are converted into highly tempered steel.

This process is effected by heating the metal in charcoal furnaces to a white incandescent glow, and then cooling it by immersion in baths of oil and other drugs, the combination of which is, we believe, a secret. This done, the saws are ready for grinding which is effected in a special apartment of the main building—the flat, straight saws by hand application to a series of powerful grindstones, driven at a regular speed by gearings worked from the engine, and the circular saws by a very curious and effective patent machine, peculiar to this establishment, and invented by Mr. Hoe himself.

The old method of grinding circular saws, and that still practiced in all other works of this nature, is the application of them horizontally to the great vertically-moving grindstones by the hand; and, when it is considered that these great steel plates run up to six feet diameter and eighteen of circumference, and that they consequently entirely conceal the grindstone from the eyes of the operator who applies them, it will be evident that the process is mere guess-work, and that no certainty can be attained in regulating the thickness of the blades—in a word, that nothing was effected beyond the superficial brightening and abstersion of the surface.

The new machine causes the great circular plate to revolve vertically on its access, while a “pad” to which is applied some sharp, detergent mineral-powder, is moved forcibly over its surface with a triple action.

In the first place, the pad itself is made to revolve with great velocity against the circular plane, in a direction perpendicular to its line of motion. In the second place, it is driven forward against it horizontally with a force increasing or diminishing, in proportion as it may be desirable to render the saw-blades thicker or thinner in any particular part of the circumference. It is usual to leave them thicker at the centre, and to grind them away gradually toward the circumference. Thirdly and lastly, the pad, while it revolves vertically in a direction perpendicular to the revolving plane, and is forced horizontally against it, is also driven laterally to and fro across its surface; and the result is a degree of equability, or graduation of thickness, as well as of superficial polish, scarcely otherwise attainable. This machine is one of the special wonders and ornaments of the establishment.

It will not be amiss here to add, that with the improvements of their manufacture the demand for circular saws is continually on the increase; and that a single house is in the habit of taking regularly six of these powerful tools weekly from the Messrs. Hoes’ establishment.

Returning hence to the leading and principal feature of these works, the manufacture, namely, of all the various instruments and appliances for the art imprimatorial, we are next ushered into the iron planing and cutting engine rooms, for the cutting the cogs of engine wheels, and finishing the surfaces of whatever portions of the machinery must be brought to a smooth and polished face. This is done by the propulsion of the pieces of metal so to be planed, in a horizontal and longitudinal direction against cutting edges, which again move horizontally across the moving planes, and are pressed downward on them vertically, so as to bring the planing to the requisite depth. The abraded portions are thrown off from the surface, of cast iron in a sort of scaly dust, from wrought iron in long, curled shavings, and the planes can be wrought up to almost any desirable degree of finish and smoothness.

The cutting engine for the formation of cogged wheels, bears some relation to that for the teething of saws, the cutter impinging downward, with an action in some degree intermediate between that of sawing and filing, upon the exterior circumference of the circular wheels, which revolve on their axis under them in a rotation so regulated to the fall of the striker as to insure absolute equality in the width of the cogs or projections.

[_Conclusion in our next_

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[1] Ships.

* * * * *

A FAREWELL.

W. H. HOSMER.

Drifting on the darkened waters
Are Earth’s dying sons and daughters,
And, like ships that meet each other,
Brother gives a hail to brother:
Brief the pleasure of that meeting,
And forgotten oft the greeting.

Could I think that other faces
Would of me blot out all traces.
Though I cannot be thy lover,
Clouds my path would gather over;
From remembrance, then, endeavor
Not to blot me out forever.

Fare thee well! must now be spoken,
And another tie be broken;
Though the hour hath come to sever,
Lady! I’ll forget thee never,
But thy warmth of soul remember
Till extinct life’s wasting ember.

* * * * *

EDITH MORTON.

BY MISS S. A. STUART.