Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

Those who visit the metal works of Birmingham naturally desire to know where the metals come from; and especially the precious metals. Among the materials shown to the visitor, are drawers full of the brightest and cleanest gold; and ingots of silver, pure, or slightly streaked with copper. We have handled to-day an ingot which contains, to ninety-two ounces ten pennyweights of silver, seven ounces ten pennyweights of copper. We ask whether the gold comes from California; but we find that it has just arrived--from a much nearer place--from a refinery next door. We hear high praises of the Californian gold. It is so pure that some of it can be used, without refining, for second-rate articles. Some small black specks may be detected in it, certainly, though they are so few and so minute, that the native gold is wrought in large quantities. But what _is_ this neighboring refinery? Whence does it obtain the metals it refines? Let us go and see.

It is a strange murky place; a dismal inclosure, with ugly sheds, and yards not more agreeable to the eye. Its beauties come out by degrees, as the understanding opens to comprehend the affairs of the establishment. In the sheds, are ranges of musty-looking furnaces; some cold and gaping, others showing, through crevices, red signs of fire within. There are piles of blocks of coal, of burnt ladles and peels, and rivulets of black refuse, which has flowed out from the furnaces into safe beds of red sand. In a special shed, is a black moist-looking heap of what appears to be filth, battened into the shape of a large compost bed. A man is filling a barrow with this commodity, and smoothing it down with loving care. And well he may; for this despicable-looking dirt is the California of the concern! Here is their gold mine, and their silver mine, and their copper mine. In another shed, is a mill-stone on edge, revolving with the post to which it is fixed, to crush the material which is to be calcined. In the yard, we see heaps of scoriae--the shining, heavy, glassy-looking fragments, which tell tales of the prodigious heat to which they have been subjected. We see picks, and more ladles, and lanterns, and a most sordid-looking bonfire. A heap of refuse is burning on the stones; old rags, fragments of shoes, cinders, dust, and nails--the veriest sweepings that can be imagined. Something precious is there; but the mass must be burned to become manageable. The ashes will be swept up for the refinery.

But what is it that yields gold, and silver, and copper, and brass? What is that heap of dirt in the special shed? It is the sweepings of the Birmingham manufactories.

What economy! In all goldsmiths' shops every effort is made to save all the filings, and the minutest dust of the metals used. The floors are swept, and every thing recoverable is picked up. Yet the imperceptible loss is so valuable to the refiners, that they pay, and pay high, for the scrapings, sweepings, and picking of the work-rooms. A cart load of dirt is taken from a fork-and-spoon manufactory to the refinery, and paid for on the instant; and the money thus received is one of the regular items in the books of the concern. Perhaps it pays the wages of one of the workmen. Another establishment receives two hundred pounds a year for its sweepings. It is worth noting these methods in concerns which are flourishing, and which have been raised to a prosperous condition by pains and care; less flourishing people may be put in the way of similar methods. For instance, how good it would be for farmers if, instead of thinking there is something noble in disregard of trifling economy, they could see the wisdom and beauty of an economy which hurts nobody, but benefits every body! It would do no one any good to throw away these scattered particles of precious metal, while their preservation affords a maintenance to many families. In the same way, the waste of dead leaves, of animal manure, of odds and ends of time, of seed, of space in hedges, in the great majority of farms, does no good, and gives no pleasure to any body; while the same thrift on a farm that we see in a manufactory, would sustain much life, bestow much comfort, narrow no hearts, and expand the enjoyment of very many.

We must take care of our eyes when the ovens are opened--judging by the scarlet rays that peep out, here and there, from any small crevice. Prodigious! What a heat it is, when, by the turn of a handle, a door of the furnace is raised! The roasting, or calcining, to get rid of the sulphur, is going on here. The whole inside--walls, roof, embers, and all--are a transparent salmon-color. As a shovel, inserted from the opposite side, stirs and turns the burning mass, the sulphur appears above--a little blue flame, and a great deal of yellow smoke. We feel some of it in our throats. We exclaim about the intensity of the heat, declaring it tremendous. But we are told that it is not so; that, in fact, "it is very cold--that furnace;" which shows us that there is something hotter to come.

The Refiner's Test is pointed out to us;--a sort of shovel, with a spout, lined throughout with a material of burnt bones, the only substance which can endure unchanged the heat necessary for testing the metals. Of this material are made the little crucibles that we see in the furnaces, which our conductor admits to be "rather warm." There they are, ranged in rows, so obscured by the mere heat, which confounds every thing in one glow, that their circular rims are only seen by being looked for. Yet, one little orifice, at the back of this furnace, shows that even this heat can be exceeded. That orifice is a point of white heat, revealed from behind. We do not see the metal in the crucibles; but we know that it is simmering there.

One more oven is opened for us--the assay furnace, which is at a white heat. As the smallest quantities of metal serve for the assay, the crucibles are here on the scale of dolls' tea-things. The whole concern of that smallest furnace looks like a pretty toy; but it is a very serious matter--the work it does, and the values it determines.

The metals, which run down to the bottom, in the melting furnaces, are separated (the gold and silver by aquafortis), and cast in moulds, coming out as ingots; or, in fragments, of any shape they may have pleased to run into. Some of the gold fragments are of the cleanest and brightest yellow. Other, no less pure, are dark and brownish. They are for gilding porcelain. Lastly, we see a pretty curiosity. In the counting-house, a little glass chamber is erected upon a counter, with an apparatus of great beauty--a pair of scales, thin and small to the last degree, fastened by spider-like threads to a delicate beam, which is connected with an index, sensitive enough to show the variation of the hundredth part of a grain. The glass walls exclude atmospheric disturbance. Behind the rusty-looking doors were the white glowing crucibles; within the drawers was the yellow gold; and, hidden in its glass house, was the fairy balance.

Now, we will follow some of the gold and silver to a place where skilled hands are ready to work it curiously.

First, however, we may as well mention, in confidence to our readers, that our feelings are now and then wounded by the injustice of the world to the Birmingham manufacturers. We observe with pain, that the very virtues of Birmingham manufacture are made matters of reproach. Because the citizens have at their command extraordinary means of cheap production, and produce cheap goods accordingly, the world jumps to the conclusion that the work must be deceptive and bad. Fine gentlemen and ladies give, in London shops, twice the price for Birmingham jewelry that they would pay, if no middlemen stood, filling their pockets uncommonly fast, between them and the manufacturer; and they admire the solid value and great beauty of the work; but, as soon as they know where the articles were wrought, they undervalue them with the term "Brummagem." In the Great Exhibition there was a certain case of gold-work and jewelry, rich and thorough in material and workmanship. The contents of that case were worth many hundred pounds. A gentleman and lady stopped to admire their contents. The lady was so delighted with them that she supposed they must be French. The gentleman reminded her that they were in the British department. After a while, they observed the label at the top of the case, and instantly retracted their admiration. "Oh!" said the gentleman, pointing to the label, "these are Brummagem ware--shams!" Whatever may have been Brummagem-gold-beating in ancient times, and in days of imperfect art when long wars impeded the education of English taste, it is mere ignorance to keep up the censure in these times. It is merely accepting and retailing vulgar phrases without any inquiry, which is the stupidest form of ignorance. Perhaps some of the prejudice may be removed by a brief account of what a Birmingham manufacture of gold chains is at this day.

Twenty years ago, the making of gold chains occupied a dozen or twenty people in Birmingham. Now, the establishment we are entering, alone, employs probably eight times that number. Formerly, a small master undertook the business in a little back shop: drew out his wire with his own hands; cut the devices himself; soldered the pieces himself; in short, worked under the disadvantage of great waste of time, of effort, and of gold. Into the same shop more and more machinery has been since introduced as it was gradually devised by clever heads. This machinery is made on the spot, and the whole is set to work by steam. Few things in the arts can be more striking than the contrast between the murky chambers where the forging and grinding--the Plutonic processes of machine-making--are going on, and the upper chambers, light and quiet, where the delicate fingers of women and girls are arranging and fastening the cobweb links of the most delicate chain-work. The whole establishment is most picturesque. While in some speculative towns in our island great warehouses and other edifices have sprung up too quickly, and are standing untenanted, a rising manufacture like this cannot find room. In the case before us, more room is preparing. A large steam-engine will soon be at work, and the processes will be more conveniently connected. Mean time, house after house has been absorbed into the concern. There are steps up here, and steps down there; and galleries across courts; and long ranges of low-roofed chambers; and wooden staircases, in yards;--care being taken, however, to preserve in the midst an isolated, well-lighted chamber, where part of the stock is kept, where some high officials abide, and where there are four counters or hatches, where the people present themselves outside, to receive their work. All this has grown out of the original little back-shop.

Below, there is a refinery. It is for the establishment alone; but, just like that we have already described--only on a smaller scale. First, the rolling-mill shows us its powers by a speedy experiment;--it flattens a halfpenny, making it oblong at the first turn, and, by degrees, with the help of some annealing in the furnace, drawing it out into a long ribbon of shining copper, which is rolled up, tied with a wire, and presented to us as a curiosity. Next, we see coils of thick round wire, of a dirty white, which we can hardly believe to be gold. It is gold, however, and is speedily drawn out into wire. Then, there are cutting, and piercing, and snipping machines--all bright and diligent; and the women and girls who work them are bright and diligent too. Here, in this long room, lighted with lattices along the whole range, the machines stand, and the women sit, in a row--quiet, warm, and comfortable. Here we see sheets of soft metal (for solder) cut into strips or squares; here, again, a woman is holding such a strip to a machine, and snipping the metal very fine, into minute shreds, all alike. These are to be laid or stuck on little joins in the chain-work, or clasps, or swivel hinges, where soldering is required. Next, we find a dozen workwomen, each at her machine, pushing snips of gold into grooves, where they are pierced with a pattern, or one or two holes of a pattern, and made to fall into a receiver below. Each may take about a second of time. Farther on, slender gold wire is twisted into links by myriads. At every seat the counter is cut out in a semicircle, whereby room is saved, and the worker has a free use of her arms. Under every such semicircle hangs a leathern pouch, to catch every particle that falls, and to hold the tools. On shelves every where are ranges of steel dies; and larger pieces of the metal, for massive links or for clasps, or for watch-keys and other ornaments, are stamped from these. On the whole, we may say, that in these lower rooms the separate pieces are prepared for being put together elsewhere.

That putting together appears to novices very blinding work; but, we are assured that it becomes so easy, by practice, that the girls could almost do it with their eyes shut. In such a case we should certainly shut ours; for they ache with the mere sight of such poking and picking, and ranging of the white rings--all exactly like one another. They are ranged in a groove of a plate of metal, or on a block of pumice-stone. When pricked into a precise row, they are anointed, at their points of junction, with borax. Each worker has a little saucer of borax, wet, and stirred with a camel-hair pencil. With this pencil she transfers a little of the borax to the flattened point of a sort of bodkin, and then anoints the links where they join. When the whole row is thus treated, she turns on the gas, and, with a small blow-pipe, directs the flame upon the solder. It bubbles and spreads in the heat, and makes the row of links into a chain. There would be no end of describing the loops and hoops, and joints and embossings, which are soldered at these gas-pipes, after being taken up by tiny tweezers, and delicately treated by all manner of little tools. Suffice it, that here every thing is put together, and made ready for the finishing. In the middle of one room is a counter, where is fixed the machine for twisting the chains--with its cog-wheels, and its nippers, whereby it holds one end of a portion of chain, while another is twisted, as the door-handle fixes the schoolboy's twine, while he knots or loops his pattern, or twists his cord. Here, a little girl stands, and winds a plain gold chain into this or that pattern, which depends upon the twisting.

These ornaments of precious metal do not look very ornamental at present; being of the color of dirty soap-suds, and tossed together in heaps on the counters. We are now to see the hue and brightness of the gold brought out. We take up a chain, rather massive, and reminding us of some ornament we have somewhere seen; but it is so rough! and its flakes do not appear to fit upon each other. A man lays it along the length of his left hand, and files it briskly; as he works, the soapy white disappears, the polish comes out, the parts fit together, and it is, presently, one of those flexible, scaly, smooth, glittering chains that we have seen all our lives. Of course, the filings are dropped carefully into a box, to go to the refinery. There is, here, a home-invented and home-made apparatus for polishing and cutting topazes, amethysts, bloodstones and the like, into shield shapes, for seals, watch-keys, and ornaments of various kinds. The strongest man's arm must tire; but steam and steel need no consideration--so there go the wheels and the emery, smoothing and polishing infallibly; with a workman to apply the article, and a boy to drop oil when screw or socket begins to scream. This polishing and filing was such severe work, in the lapidary department, in former days, that the nervous energy of a man's arm was destroyed--a serious grief to both worker and employer. At this day, it is understood that the lapidary is past work at forty, from the contraction of the sinews of the wrist, consequent on the nature of his labor. The period of disablement depends much on the habits of the men; but, sooner or later, it is looked for as a matter of course. Here, the wear and tear is deputed to that which has no nerve. As the proprietor observes, it requires no sympathy.

It may be asked how there comes to be any lapidary department here? Do we never see gold chains the links whereof are studded with turquoises, or garnets, or little specks of emerald? Are there no ruby drops to ladies' necklaces?--no jewelled toys hanging from gentlemen's watch-guards? We see many of these pretty things here; besides cameos for setting.

After the delicate little filings (which must be done by hand) are all finished, the articles must be well washed, dried in box-wood sawdust, and finally hand-polished with rouge. The people in one apartment look grotesque enough--two women powdered over with rouge, and men of various dirty hues, all dressed alike, in an over-all garment of brown holland. A washerwoman is maintained on the establishment expressly to wash these dresses on the spot--her soap-suds being preserved, like all the other washes, for the sake of the gold-dust contained in them. Her wash-tubs are emptied, like every thing else, into the refinery.

In the final burnishing room, we observe a row of chemists's globes--glass vases filled with water, ranged on a shelf. A stranger might guess long before he would find out what these are for. They are to reflect a concentrated blaze from the gas-lights in the evening, to point out specks and dimnesses, to the eyes and fingers of the burnishers. What curious finger-ends they have--those women who chafe the precious metals into their last degree of polish! They are broad--the joint so flexible that it is bent considerably backwards when in use; and the skin has a peculiar smoothness: more mechanical, we fancy, than vital. However that may be, the burnish they produce is strikingly superior to any hitherto achieved by friction with any other substance.

In departing, the sense of contrast comes over us once more. We have just seen all manner of elegancies in ornament, from the classical and dignified to the minute, fanciful, and grotesque; in going out, we give a look to the unfinished engine-house, and the smiths' shop. All this hard work; all those many dwellings thrown into one establishment; all these scores of men, and women, and children, busy from year's end to year's end; all those diggers far away in California; all those lapidaries in Germany; all those engineers in their studies; all those ironmasters in their markets; all those miners in the bowels of the earth--all are enlisted in making gold chains; and some of us have no more knowledge and no more thought than to call the product "Brummagem shams!" Well! the price charged for them in London shops, where they are as good as French, is something real; and it is a real comfort to think how swingingly some fine folks pay, though the bulk of the profit comes, not to the manufacturer, but to the middlemen. Of these middlemen there are always two; the factor and the shopkeeper--often more. Their intervention is very useful, of course, or they would not exist; but somebody or other makes a prodigious profit of Birmingham jewelry, after it has left the manufacturer's hands. It was only yesterday that we saw, among a rich heap of wonderful things, a pair of elegant bracelets--foreign pebbles, beautifully set. We were told the wholesale price they were to be sold for; which was half the shop price. The transference to the London shop was to cost as much as the whole of the previous processes: from the digging of the silver and the collecting of the pebbles, through all the needful voyages and travels, to the burnishing and packing at Birmingham!

We have seen, however, something which may throw a little light on the prejudice against Birmingham jewelry. It is not conceivable that any one should despise such an establishment as we have been describing. But, we found ourselves, the other day, passing through a little dwelling where the housewife, with a baby on her arm, and where more than half-a-dozen children were housed; and then crossing a little yard, and mounting a flight of substantial brick steps with a stout hand-rail, and entering the most curious little work-room we ever were in. It would just hold four or five people, without allowing them room to turn round more than one at a time. In one corner, was a very small stove. A lattice-window ran along the whole front, and made it pleasant, light, and airy. A work-bench or counter was scalloped out, in the same way as in larger establishments, so as to accommodate three workers in the smallest possible space. The three workers had each his stool, his leathern pouch on his knees, and his gas-pipe. A row of tools bristled along the whole length of the lattice; and there was another row on a shelf behind. The principal workman was the father of those many children below. One son was at work at his elbow, and the remaining workman was an apprentice. This working jeweller was as thorough a gentleman, according to our notions, as anybody we have seen for a long time past. Tall, stout, and handsome; collar white and stiff; apron white and sound; his whole dress in good repair; his voice cheerful as his face; his manner open and courteous; his information exactly what we wanted. We could not help wishing that some rural grandee, who avows that he hates all manufacturers, could see this fair specimen of an English handicraftsman. As for his work, he told us he supplies the factors to order. It would not answer for him to keep a stock. The factors would not buy what he should offer, but dictate to him what he shall make. Fashions change incessantly, and he has only to keep up with them as well as he can. It is not for him to invent new patterns and get steel dies made for them; but to get the same steel dies that other makers are procuring. These dies are, of course, for the metallic part of his work. The boxes of lockets and hair brooches (now vehemently in fashion), and devices, and colored stones, he procures at "the French shops" in the town; and he showed us some variety of these, ready for setting. Then came out the "Brummagem" feature of the case; showing us how the gold setting that he was preparing--perforating and filing--was to be backed by a blue stone. He observed that it was not thought worth while to get costly stones for a purpose like that; for blue glass would do as well. I certainly thought so, considering that the stone was to be only the back-ground of his work. Of the specimens I saw in that airy little workshop, some were in excellent taste, and all, I believe, of good workmanship. These small masters are as punctilious about employing only regularly qualified workmen, as any members of any guild in the country. Their journeymen must all have served an apprenticeship; not only because they are thus best fitted for their business, but because the value of apprenticeship is thus kept up; and these small capitalists will not part with the advantage of having journeymen, under the name of apprentices, completely under their command during the last two or three years of their term.

One of the most remarkable sights, to those who knew Birmingham a quarter of a century ago, is such a manufacture as that of Messrs. Parker and Acott's ever-pointed pencils. Those of us whose fathers were in business in the days of the war, when the arts were not flourishing, may remember the bulky pocket-book, with its leather strap (always shabby after the first month), and its thick cedar pencil, which always wanted cutting; always blackening whatever came near it; always getting used up; the lead turning to dust at the most critical point of a memorandum. There was a fine trade in cedar pencils at Keswick in those days. It seemed a tale too romantic to be true, when we were told of ever-pointed pencils. First, we, of course, refused to believe in their existence;--what improvement have we not refused to believe in? Then, when we found there was a screw in the case, and that the pencil was not ever-pointed by a vital action of its own, we were sure we should not like it. We grew humble, and were certain we could never learn to manage it. And now, what have we not arrived at? We are so saucy as to look beyond our improved pencils; beyond pen and ink; beyond our present need of a cumbrous apparatus to carry about with us; ink that will spill and spot; leads that will break and use up; pens, paper, syllables, letters, pot-hooks, dots and crossings, and all the process of writing. Perhaps the electric telegraph has spoiled us: enabling us to imagine some process by which thoughts may record themselves; some brief and complete method of making "mems," without the complicated process of writing down hundreds of letters, and scores of syllables, to preserve one single idea. All this, however, is as romantic now as ever-pointed pencils seemed to be at first; and instead of dreaming of what is not yet achieved, let us look at the reality before our eyes.

Here is something wonderful enough, on our very entrance. Here is a silver pencil-case, neat and serviceable, though not of the most elegant form; handsome enough to have been praised for its looks, thirty years ago. This pencil-case carries two feet of lead. It is intended to be the commercial traveller's joy and treasure. It will last him his life, unless he take an unconscionable amount of orders. Unscrewing the top, we see that the upper end of the tube is divided into compartments,--which look like the mouth of a revolver; and here, protected from each other, the leads are bestowed, safe--despite their great length, through their owner's roughest travelling.

Some drawers in a counter are pulled out. One is divided into compartments, each of which holds a handful of something different from all the rest. This drawer contains one hundred gross of pencil-cases in parts; the tube, the rack and barrel, the propelling wire, the slide, the top, the various chambers, and screws, and niceties. In another drawer, there is a dazzling and beautiful heap of pure amethysts and topazes from far countries, of vast aggregate value: and, farther on, we see the elegant onyx and white cornelian from South America (a very recent importation), and the sardonyx, now in high favor for seals and the tops of pencil-cases. Its delicate layer of white upon red, (or the reverse,) the undermost color coming out in the engraving, makes it singularly fit for the purpose. Then, there is a paperful of small turquoises, which are poured out and handled like a sample of lentils. These are from Persia; and they have to be re-cut in England, the Persian tools being of the roughest. Then, there are bloodstones, and pebbles out of number, and pints of glittering fragments of Californian gold; rich materials tossed together, to be drawn out for use at the bidding of capricious fashion; for, fashion seems to be as capricious here, among these stones and ores that have required cycles of ages to compose, as in the milliner's shop, where the materials are drawn from the pods of a season and the insects of a summer. On shelves against the walls, are ranged rows and piles of steel dies,--that pretty and costly piece of apparatus, which we find in almost all these manufactories--together with the inexhaustible stamping and cutting machines, the blow-pipe, the borax, and soft metal for solder, the pumice-stone and wirebed, the turning wheel, the circular saw, and the bath of diluted aquafortis, and the pan of box-wood sawdust, in which the pretty things are dried when they come out of "pickle." From buttons to epergnes, we find this apparatus every where. The steel dies are an everlasting study: the block, like the conical weight of a pair of warehouse scales, seeming very large for the little figure indented in the upper surface. Here, in this manufactory, the figures are of the bugle, a favorite form of watch-key--the deer's foot, (a pretty study for the same purpose,) and a large variety of patterns--the tulip, the acanthus, and other foliage, flowers or fruit, climbing up the summit of the pencil-case, as if it were a little Corinthian capital.

And now for the process. The silver or gold comes from the rolling-mill, and is passed in slips through a series of draw-plates, each smaller than the last, and finally through the one which is to give it its fluted or other pattern. Soldering at the joint, filing away the roughness left by the solder, washing in an aquafortis bath come next. A slit for the slide is then made; the rims and screws and slides are added, and you have a pencil-case complete. We observed that a large proportion of the tops are hexagonal, or of some angular form, to prevent their rolling off the table.

Some of the pencil-cases are so small, and some of the watch-keys are so elaborate, that it requires a moment's consideration to decide which is which; and again, ladies' crochet-needles, of gold, diversely ornamented, are very like pencil-cases. Some of each kind are specked over with turquoise or garnets; and all appear to be designed for ornament, rather than for use. It is quite a relief to turn the eye upon a shovelful of the yellow sawdust, where substantial pencil-cases, fit for manly fingers, are drying. On the whole, perhaps, the most striking feature is the prodigious extent of the production. We ask where all these can possibly go; for a pencil-case is a thing which lasts half a century, as the manufacturer himself observes. These do not go to America; for, in such things, the Americans are our chief rivals. They supply their own wants, and a good deal more. We send our pencil-cases and trinkets over a good part of the world, however; and the caprice of fashion causes a great adventitious demand at home. In reply to our remark about this vast production, the manufacturer observes, "Yes, we cut up gold and silver as the year comes in, and as the year goes out." Something of a change, this, since the old days of cedar pencils!

Here is a steel die with an elegant pyramidal pattern; the half of a watch-key. We see the inch of metal stamped; and then another inch, for the other half: and then the filing and snipping of the edges; and then the laying in of the solder inside; and the binding together of the two halves with wire; and the repose on the bed of wire on the pumice-stone, to be broiled red-hot; and the neat cleaning when cool; the polishing, and the leaving certain parts of the pattern dead, while others are burnished; and the firing of the steel cylinder at the point, and the turning of the rims. All this for a watch-key! But, we are shown another, which does not look like anything very studied; and we are told, and are at once convinced, that it consists of no less than thirteen parts. Other keys, which look more fanciful, consist of ten, eight, or seven. None are the simple affair that a novice would suppose, now that we require the convenience of being able to wind up our watches without twisting the chain or ribbon with every turn of the key.

But we must leave these niceties; the little pistols, the deers feet, the bugle-horns, and all the dainty fancies embodied in watch-keys and knick-knacks. Here, as elsewhere, every atom is saved, of sweeping and wash; and we now find ourselves, writer and readers, like the materials of which we have been speaking, brought back, after all these various processes, to the refinery from which we set out.

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[21]

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.