CGC € ET ELE EK cs EK CC \ Seas jie San aa C EG (es if i) ii] } ae} Hay Oy hol Bas i / ! is ry zi ths Says) Gt ¥ vo al }. aC@ (ea G& Cu Kou ce “OC ces , WW ve YW wo Cue ‘ aire WA, ae is wee Net f THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL LIBRARY PURCHASED ON THE DR. AND MRS. JOSEPH EZEKIEL POGUE ENDOWMENT FUND NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES AMT 004753314 TT This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on the last date stamped under ‘‘Date Due.” If not on hold it may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE DUE HEC (Gms en SEP mes “ mr if j ag Ky im - re . f i wt r « me i ae 3 ee Ok eas oe 9 Peeer INDUSTRIES OF a, & Semen b BINT PA LIN: Olea LeU SRA BED, (Gee eC Eel lee ieee ER ee GST Be TEN: LONDON, LARIS «o NEW YORK. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ] - ee U niversity of North Carolina at } Char Hill of eS CONT EH ONgAaSe —_— oo PAGE INTRODUCTION. By tue Eprror. . : ‘ c : ; ; : A s S 1 COTTON. By Davin Bremner, Autuor or ‘Tur Inpustrizs or ScorTLanp’’:— ‘Chapter I.—Tue Raw Marertatr—EHarty History or THE MANUFACTURE . : . . «. Of 5 IJ.—Inpian Mustins—Enciish CoMPETITION—HArLY Sprnninc MACHINES . ; : ns OF 55 IiI.—Tue Spmnnine-JeEnNy—ARKWRIGHT’S WATER SPINNING-FRAME—TROUBLES OF AN INyENTOR . 116 a IV.—Tue Srory or Arxkwricut’s Lire (Continued)—Tus Inventions or Tuomas Hicus . Remy at! ee V.—INVENTION OF THE SPINNING-MULE—THE Srory or Crompton’s Lirr . ; zi a lias os VI.—Crompron’s Rewarp—Tue Siuspinc-BILLy—Tune Senr-acting Mute—Ricuarp Roperts . 197 3 VII.—Orenine-—Scurcuinc—-CarDING . : ; : F : : . EDO: » WIII.—Carpine ENGINES . : 5 5 : : ; ‘ , : .* 26a FF TX.—Comping—DRAwINeG . : : ' : : ; s é : a 291 EMINENT MANUFACTURERS :— Chapter I.—Srir Tuomas Baztey, M.P. By Roperr Smizzs . : 5 . . , : 8 nS IJ.—Henry Bessemer, C.E. By Ropert SmILes : : i ° ° ° a8 oe » I11.—Sime Josran Mason, or Brrmincuam. By Roxsertr SMILES é C ° 3 sais » IV.—Str Jonn Brown, or SHEFFIELD. By Rozert Hate Dunpar . 2 9 e o 286 FOREIGN RIVALRIES IN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS. By H. R. Fox Bournz:— » . Chapter I.—Conprrions or RivaLry : ; : : : ° . ; ‘ q 44 x IJ.—Coau AND oTHER MINERALS. ; ; ; 5 : : - ; - 128 3 III.—Inon MANvurFAcTURE . , : : ; ' é 2 - 192 6 IV.—Toot Maxine anp Toot Usine . 5 3 : 6 5 ‘ p 254 41 V.—Corron ManuFracTURE ; - : ; . 5 A 318 HEALTH AND DISEASE IN INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS. By W. Gorvon Hoge, M.D., Late Senior PRESIDENT OF THE Roya Meprcau Society, EpinsurGu :— ¢ Chapter J.—Arz rue InpusrriaL Crasses NECESSARILY UNHEALTHY ? ‘ . : : 25 £ II.—Inrants, ‘“ Hanr-trmers,’ AND WORKING MorHErs : A j ; : . 895 3 TIJ.—Tue Direct Causzs or InpustRIAL DISEASE ; a ° e : LOL 4 Sigs HEMP, FLAX, AND JUTE. By Davmw Bremner, AUTHOR OF “Tur INDUSTRIES OF SCOTLAND”: ° 28 Chapter I.—Ropz Sprnnine F : : : : é c : : II.—Tur Manvuracture or Fisuina Nets—Hemp CuLTIVATION—VARIOUS CorDAGE FIBRES - oo - ” AMS ‘ ox > a oe op TII.—Instpz A Fuax Mitt—Srinning AND WEAVING . A : r > A 131 . LTV.—Tue Fuax PLant AND ITs CULTIVATION . é : ; 5 c . V.—How Fuax 1s Putrep, RivpLep, anp Rerrep—EXPERIMENTS IN ExtractiInG THE FIBRE a We” %, VI.—Ftax Scurcuinc, AnD Scurcuinc MAcuHINES ; ; : 3 - ° 210 D VII.—Fiax Hacxiinc—Eariy Mopss or SPINNING : : : : - - . 288 » VIII.—KernpRrew AND PorrHouse’s FLAX-SPINNING MAcHINES—DRAWING ‘ ‘ ; 272 x —Sp — —WonperruL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE Hanp Loom 309 of TX.—Frax Tow-Carpine—Srinning—Weravine— Wo , 3SIS E IES !—— INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION. By James Henpenson, Onze or H.M. Assistant-[yspEctors oF Factor 16 Chapter I.—Tue Factory System : - : ‘ ‘ 4 * iv CONTENTS. INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION (Continued) :— Chapter I1.—Harty Facrory Acts : : c c : é ; : : . ¥: IJ1.—Mr. Hosnovser’s Brr1—Oastier’s APPEAL : : ‘ : : : - as IV.—Suorr-time AGirarion In YorxKsuireE—THEe Bret or 1831—Irs Resection and Re- INTRODUCTION IN 1882 . F F ; 2 : 5 é . > “6 V.—Lorp Asuiry Accerrs THE PARLIAMENTARY LEADERSHIP OF THE SHORT-TIME MoVEMENT— Great Mertine in THE Lonpon TAvERN—Commission oF INQUIRY ‘ . . TRON AND STEEL. By Wirtiam Dunpas Scorr-Moncrinrr, C.E.:— Chapter I.—Tue Brasr Furnace. ; ; ; : : : : : : : i$ I1.—Tuet Brast Furnace, and Wuar Ferxps Ir : : : c c . . = I1Il.—Tue Buast Furnace: THE Fue . ; ‘ : é ( a ; 5 ss ITV.—Tue Curota Furnace AnD “ CastTINGs” . : 3 ‘ 5 ; : : a V.—CastTINGs : ; ; é A ‘ ‘ ; ; ‘ 5 E Hg VI.—MALuzaBLe Iron : : 4 ' : : , ; % é 5 5 VII.—Tuer Force . ; : ‘ : : : : C . . : » VII.—Tue Bessemer Process ; : 4 6 5 , A : 5 ., TX.—CermeEntTation—-Cast STEEL . ‘ ‘ 5 ; P - E ; 5 *s X.—UrinisaTION oF WASTE GASES, ETC. 3 : ‘ f 5 ‘ é, 3 MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS :— Chapter JI.—Mezssrs. Jonn Penn anp Sons, Martne ENGINEERS, GreENwicH. By Robert SMILES ‘ 5 I1.—Tuet Royvat Army Crorutnc Depot, Pintico. By Ropurr SmILEs : : 4 é _ III.—Barrow Iron anp Srrez Works. By Atrrep Ewen Frurrcuzr . ; : . 4) IV.—Tue Autston Woot-comprnc Works or Messrs. IsAac Hotpren anp Sons, Braprorp. By JAMES Burnury, AurHor or “ WorkKSHOPS OF THE West RipING”’ 3 : ; V.—Txe Sarwr Rortox Cuemicat Works, Guascow. By James G. Bertram, AUTHOR OF “THE Harvest oF THE SEA”’ ‘ : ¢ ; A ‘ : : SHIP RUILDING :— Chapter I.—Surp-yarps AND THEIR WORKERS . . . e ry ' ‘ ry - I1.—Tue Royat Dockyarps : . . . ° 2 . . * Iii.—Brirish Suie Burspine: irs Growrn AND Present Position . - ° . os ITV.—Cenrres oF Sure Burinpine . : ‘ ; : 5 : 5 ° : ee V.—Tue Ust oF Iron in Surv Buinpine F ; : és : Lo . 5 VI.—Tuer SrructurAL ARRANGEMENTS OF I[RoN SHIPS , : : : : . . VII.—Sysrems or Framine ror [ron SuHips ; ; : ‘ é 5 : ‘ » VIJI.—Tue Decks or IRon Surrs . : A 3 . $ 3 ; s IX.—“ Tue Great EAstern”’ ‘ : : A E . ; a ’ : As X.—WATER-TIGHT SUB-DIVISION IN IRON SHIPS : ; ; ; : A WOOL AND WORSTED. By Wit11am Grisson (ExcerTinc CuarTers IV. anp V.):— Chapter I.—Azpaca—First Paper: History . : : : : : , ; ; on II.—Atraca—Seconp Paper: SALTAIRE AND ITs FouNDER . ; A A ; : 55 III.—Arpaca—Tump Paper: ManuracturE : : . ‘ ; : ; 5; xf ITV.—Worsteps AND WooLlens: Wuat are Tury?—First Parzr. By Watrer 8. Bricur McLaren, M.A., Worstep SPINNER . ; : A : : : : $ V.—Worsteps AND WooLuens: Wuar are Tury?—Srconp Paper. By Watrer 8. Bricur McLaren, M.A., Worstep SPINNER . : ; A ; ‘ 2 : on VI.—Mouair . 2 2 2 : : : : ‘ ‘ : “ VII.—A Crotu Facrory—GerneraL VIEW , F : : 5 : : i » VIII.—Carrrts anp HEarTHRUGS . 7 : 4 3 ; : z A é FF) IX.—SuHoppy anp Munao. 2» : ‘ : ; és ‘ : MH : PAGE 268 121 164 224 296 1065 138 168 219 243 280 314 ay mK Ee ‘5 Ramsbotham and Brown’s Machine LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Be Guns oe PAGE PAGE Manufacture of Steel—The Bessemer Process Frontispiece | The Mill at Saltaire - ; : 109 Introductory Illustration . ‘ ; - 1 | Running the Molten Iron into the “Pigs” . 113 The Blast Furnaces at Summerlea by Night ; . 65 | Ladle for Small Castings 116 Portrait and Autograph of Sir Thomas Bazley . . 9 | Hargreaves’ Spinning-jenny : 117 A Cotton Plantation 12 Portrait and Autograph of Sir R. Arkw right 120 A Ripe Cotton Pod 13 | Central Hall of the Royal Army Clothing Depét, Cotton Plant Harps 13 Pimlico. 125 Fibres of Cotton, Mecaifiod 169 SElex Plante. 132 Battle Ships of 1800 and 1875—Nelson’s Victor y Seal | Flowers and Upper Stalks of Flax P iat 133 the Devastation . : - 21 | Fibre of Dressed Flax . 133 Clark's Hydraulic Lift, Bombay . , 24 | Portrait and Autograph of Sir J shah Manes 137 The Spinning Room in the Shadwell Rope Works 29 | Fibre of Wool . 140 Net Loom in the Stuarts’ Factory 33 | Woollen and Worsted ae (The ead) — iusto Male Hemp Plant; Female Hemp Plant 36 Worsted . 141 Wild Plantain 36 | The Great Britain : : ¢ . 144 Agave. 37 | Iron Ship in Frame on the Stocks, Meer Samuda’s New Zealand aes. 37 Yard : . 146 Rheea Plant : 37 | Arkwright’s Water-fratte Spinning Meche . 162 Plan of Portsmouth niga eae 40 | High’s Spinning-jenny » 168 Repairing Basin, Portsmouth Dockyard 41 | Axle of Railway Carriage - 157 Llamas 49 | Casting ‘‘ Box ” » 109 Alpaca Sheep 52 | “Core Box” . 159 Section of Blast Furnace, Rote its Food 56 | The Iron and Steel eed Barrow . 165 Swedish Peasants ‘‘ prospecting”? for Lake Ore . 57 | Worstead Church - 17 Sketch-Plan of Penn and Sons’ Establishment 61 | Flax Pulling 172 Ancient Distaff Spinners 65 | Flax Rippling . a Ea . 173 The Treadle Spinning Wheel 68 | Portrait and Autograph of Sanitel Crompton 5. ayy Portrait and Autograph of Henry Bessemer 69 | Mule Jenny. - 180 Charging a modern Blast Furnace (Govan Iron are) 77 | Sections of Bar Iron eel The Old Manor House, Morley, Birth-place of Sir Butt Strap: Double Chain Riveting . 184 Titus Salt : _ 80 | Edge Lap Joint: Double Riv eting Fae Rods Saltaire Works 81 | Section of Hull of Iron Merchant Ship . 185 The Salt Statue at Bradford ; 84 | Section of a Puddling Furnace aoe English Ship of the Fifteenth Century 89 | Puddlers at Work ; ais Venetian Galley . 92 | Helve Hammer 5 . se - 191 French War Ship of the ye ers Gare 93 | Hall-in-the-Wood, where Crompton invented Mule Great Hall of Messrs. Marshall’s Flax Mill, Leeds . 96 | — Spinning a eee oat Ship-yards and Shipping on the Clyde . 101 | Crompton’s Grave in Bolton Churchyard ‘ nt Ship-yards on the Tyne . 104 | Statue to Crompton, Bolton : ae Portrait and Autograph of Sir Titus galt - 105 | The Slubbing-billy . 201 Lister and Donnithorpe’s Machine . 107 | Transverse Section of the aut built ie Mr. ‘Scott : Preller’s Machine - 108 Russell ey - Crabtree’s Machine . 108 | Bracket Frame ae . 108 | Hand Scutchers at Work » 212 vi PAGE | Interior of a Scutching Mill 213. | Nasmyth’s Steam Hammer at Work 5, Vay Angora Goats 5 eS: The Alston Wool- Satie W ane of Neste Bee Holden and Sons, Bradford . a . 225 Front View, with the Door open, Side Section . 229 The Square-framed Willow . 229 Cotton-scutching Machine . 232 Paul’s Cylinder Carding Machine and eis Stick . 233 Construction of an Iron Beam Knee . 235 Construction of a Wood Beam Knee . 236 ~ Scarph of Wood Beam. meST Tron Deck Plating 5 EBT Hand Hacklers ; . 240 Combe’s Double Apron Flax Eee Nee: ‘ , 241 Sheep Washing . 243 South Downs . 244 Leicester Sheep . 245 Teasel . . 248 Teasels in the Frame : : . 248 Section of Card Engine, Feeding hee - 259 Dobson and Barlow’s Composite Carding Engine. . 260 Dobson and Barlow’s Travelling-flat Self-stripping Carding Engine : : : : . 261 Longitudinal Section and Plan of the Great Eastern : : c : : : . 264 Cross Section, through the Boiler-room, of the Great Eastern ; > 265 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Enlarged Section of the Upper Deck of the Great Eustern 267 The Great Eastern paying out the Atlantic Cable . 269 Diagrams illustrating Kendrew and Porthouse’s Speci- fication . : . 218 Plan of Flax Drawing Machine . 276 Rolling Steel Rails : ld Section of ‘‘ Brussels ” Carpet . 282 Carpet Pattern in Various Stages . 283 Whytock’s Drum and Trough—Section a a Wilton” Carpet . . 284 Design of Templeton’s—Design of Templeton Cut and Joined for Weaving—“ Chenille”? in Web— Cutting the ‘ Chenille” Web—Strip of “ Chenille” Cut—Section of “ Axminster ”’ Carpet . . 285 Portrait and Autograph of Sir John Brown 7289 Heilmann’s Combing Machine . 292 Sectional View of the Combing Machine 292 Sectional View of the Drawing Frame + 293 Arrangement of Rollers in the Drawing Frame . 294 The St. Rollox Chemical Works, Glasgow . oe PANE Water-tight Sub-division of an Ironclad Ship . 804 Vertical Siding Door . » 805 Water-tight Door Hinged . 805 Section of Tow-Carding Engine, showing Arrangement of Cylinders . . 808 The Landore and Siemens’ Steel Works . 313 “ Devil” Rag Machine : . 316 Arrangement of Rollers in ne eaten . 318 MANUFACTURE OF STEEL.—THE BEssSEMER PROCESS, oe YZ Neer Os UrCsl Ore. — Se Gas. BRITAIN and her brilliant dependencies form an industrial empire pure and simple. It is their business and function in the world to be industrial, just as it is the business of other empires to be agricultural or warlike. Year after year, what the Americans would call our “ manifest destiny” is driving us faster and faster into this position— forcing us to withdraw from merely producing raw material, and to concentrate more and more our energies on the business of furnishing the world with that raw material transformed into finished goods. England is year by year becoming the artisan, the spinner, the weaver, the ship builder, the manu- facturer, the engineer of the world. The world is every year more and more becoming a sort of colossal agriculturist, to render marketable whose productions is the business of the factories and the factory hands of England. Now, as the imperial position of Britain depends mainly on the excellence with which she does her business as the great world-manufacturer, it is evident that every intelligent person ought to have some accurate knowledge of the subject-matter of our business as a nation. What would be thought of a military empire whose citizens kept themselves studiously ignorant of the use of arms? Britain is an industrial State, and yet her citizens in the mass are comparatively uninformed about the nature, extent, relations, processes, and prospects of the Great Industries that rescue her overcrowded provinces from the gulf of relative pauperism. Were it not for her manufactures, England could not possibly buy food from foreign countries for her overcrowded population, because she would have nothing to offer in exchange for that food. In such a case every toiler in the land would have to desert all other occupations and strive to wring from the soil the barest sustenance. This rich realm would in fact be a nation of impoverished labourers doing nothing, and compelled to do nothing, but cultivate the land 1 2 GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. for the sake of half-starving on the scanty and inadequate produce of their tillage. What stands between us and this melancholy, though, we trust, improbable, fate? We answer, Those Great Industries, to the development of which our countrymen during the last century have consecrated the national energies. But we are sometimes told that our present supremacy as an empire of manufacturers may pass away, as did the commercial glory of Carthage, Genoa, and Venice. If we do not follow out our manifest destiny, and if, like them, we desert the fruitful field of commerce for the bloody and barren arena of military conquest, it is possible that our fate may be as theirs. If, again, we fail faithfully to serve the world as its manufacturer—if we do our work capriciously, badly, or dishonestly—we must lose our customers ; and then with the downfall of our trade the annalist of the future may write our history in two wailing words—Britannia fuit. But that which would most contribute to bring these perils upon us would be popular ignorance, or, to speak more appropriately, absence of technical knowledge. If the citizens of this queenly commonwealth were as illinformed about its true industrial interests as were the light-headed serfs of Carthage or Venice, the history of disaster might repeat itself. But, as a matter of fact, the attempted analogy is faulty. The glaring distinction between the ancient and modern commercial commonwealth is that in the latter knowledge of the true sources of national prosperity, and the necessary conditions of its continuance, is not restricted to any oligarchy of privileged capitalists, whose vaulting ambition in the former cases led nations to their ruin. Still, although our countrymen generally are not altogether ignorant of the true interests, relations, and processes of our Great Industries, it would be absurd to say they know enough about these all-important subjects. We propose, therefore, in the pages that follow, to deal with certain great branches of manufac- ture, such as Cotton, Iron and Steel, Flax, Hemp, and Jute, Wool and Worsted, Pottery, and the like, which are interesting not only on account of the vast amount of capital they utilise, but also for the legions of patient toilers to whom they give profitable employment, and the scientific or artistic beauty of their processes of production. These gigantic Industries will be treated in no narrow spirit or dry-as-dust style. We shall address ourselves alike to the general reader and the artisan, to the student and the operative. The growth of these manufactures, biographical details of inventors and others whose names are associated with the different Industries, the rise and progress of the leading industrial centres, their wonderful romance, will be fully narrated, in addition to a popular and lucid description of all the processes of each manufacture, so that this Work will present a complete. clear, and comprehensive history of each of the Great Industries with which we propose to concern ourselves. Then, again, there are many cognate subjects with which we shall deal in an easy, plain-spoken, homely fashion, For example, there is the great question of Industrial Sanitation—a question which we have thought it best to treat not merely in its legal, but also in its medical and physiological, aspects. Not forgetful of the subtle inspiration that les in biography, we have also deemed it useful to include in this Work a series of personal sketches of great captains of industry—men whose careers may furnish many a wholesome lesson to struggling genius, and impart many a noble stimulus to gifted lads eager to scale “young Ambition’s ladder.” Nor shall we disregard the importance of the fact that England as a trading nation is now being closely pressed by foreign competition, the causes and inevitable results of which are but vaguely known—if known at all—to those most nearly interested in.the matier. Our series of carefully-prepared papers on this most momentous question will be by design so put together that “he who runs may read.” Above all things, they will, it is hoped, give a calm, a fairly judicial, and intelli- gible presentment of a subject too often obscured by the hot dust of controversy. We shall also devote a series of descriptive articles to many of those model establishmenis which have a reputation almost world-wide, And the interesting and instructive study of art and design in relation to the various manu- factures of the country will be treated in a practical and attractive form. There are, besides, several other matters, all bearing directly upon the Great Industries of Great Britain, that will demand the most careful attention at our hands. The aim of each writer will be to treat his subject in an unconventional manner, and to strain after accurate statement as regards matter; clearness, brevity, and brightness as regards style. The picturesque points, the social relations—in a word, the “human interest” of our Great Industries will receive at least as much prominence as their technical or purely scientific aspects. In short, no effort will be spared to make a solid and valuable contribution to the store of popular information in respect to our mighty theme. PiaOeNgeAeN DiS. Eo hel?,—[. THE BLAST FURNACE, By Witu1am Dunpas Scorr-Moncrizrr, C.E. ORD PALMERSTON’S definition of dirt, as 4 matter out of its proper place, is peculiarly ap- plicable to the manufacture of iron, for the object of the blast furnace is simply to clean the ore. It is not that the substances mixed up with the iron are ob- jectionable in themselves. In their own place they are useful and important, but in combination with iron they come under the Palmerstonian definition of dirt, and must be eliminated. To do this, the chemist has to be employed to analyse a small specimen of the ore. It is first of all necessary to know what impurities exist in it, and then to pro- vide means for getting rid of them. But to effect this on a large scale is beyond the province and powers of the analytical laboratory, and so a vast crucible, where chemical changes are effected that require to be controlled with the greatest exact- ness, has to be called into requisition—and this is called a blast furnace. Iron ore must be subjected to certain changes before it can be made subservient to the uses of men, and the nature of these changes must be varied to suit the different compositions of the raw material. Ores which contain the greatest quantity of iron with the fewest impurities were probably the first to be employed, because they were the most easily refined. Thus the foundation of all our discoveries was laid by prehistoric, perhaps antediluvian, smelters, who carried out extremely simple and primitive processes. Who they were is never likely to be known. The identity of the cheavy-browed Assyrian, or the oval-eyed Egyptian, or the patient Hindoo, who first, after days and nights of watchful labour, produced the small but precious “bloom,” has long since passed away. The romance of their early struggles, and the story of their failures and successes, lie buried in deeper oblivion than even their ploughshares and pruning- hooks. It must now be enough for us that what they found out they taught their children. In nearly all Great Industries an interval of thousands of years has elapsed between their first introduction and the discovery of those improved methods of manufacture which led to their sudden and con- tinuous development. This is particularly the case with regard to iron smelting. At a future time, we hope to say something about Ralph Hogge, and Peter Baude, and John Darby, and also the shepherd-boy, John Thomas. Meanwhile, we ask the reader to follow us to the Black Country, and learn something of its great flame-crested towers, above which the glowing skies flicker and flash. as if they reflected the blaze of burning cities. The affinity of iron for other substances is so great that the pure metal, or “native ore,” is seldom found in nature, and is therefore of little or no practical importance. It is in combination with oxygen, carbon, and carbonic acid that iron occurs. most frequently, and it is with these substances— viz., protoxide of iron or sparry ore, peroxide of iron or hematite, and carbonate of iron or clay- band, or black-band—that the British ironmaster has principally to deal. At present, leaving an account of the different kinds of ore for another paper, let us try to understand what a modern blast furnace is, and what work it is meant to do. The term “blast” is applied to those furnaces into which air is forcibly introduced for the purpose of producing rapid combustion. They are further divided into the two great classes of “cold” and “hot” blast furnaces-—the air in the former being used at the temperature of the sur- rounding atmosphere ; that in the latter being arti- ficially heated before it is forced into the furnace. Tt was long before ironmasters could be persuaded that the hot blast made better iron, or even that it was more economical than the cold blast. Many of them argued that, because the furnaces seemed to work better and glow more brightly in winter than in summer, the blast should be always as cold as possible, and some of them even went so far as to cool it artificially. If there really was any truth in the statement about the effect of the seasons, it probably arose from there being less aqueous. vapour and more oxygen, bulk for bulk, contained in the atmosphere in cold weather than in hot. Even now it is not easy to explain why the hot blast is superior to the cold. Probably the cold air entering the furnace had the effect not only of retarding but reversing certain essential chemical combinations. The most practical objection to: the use of the cold blast is its chilling effect on the contents of the furnace, often amounting to a stoppage in the upward movement of the smelting process. In the face of these prejudices, Neilson, the discoverer of the hot blast, met with many difficulties and discouragements. Like nearly all other great improvements, its introduction was t GREAT INDUSTRIES so slow that its inventor was several times on the point of abandoning it ; and it is, probably, as much to the enterprise of the few men who first adopted it as to the original merit of the invention that we are indebted for the vast saving in fuel effected by its use. The greatest advance that has been made in the process of iron smelting during the present century still dates from the time of Neilson’s patent, which he obtained in 1824. Among the first great firms who proved the advantages of the hot over the cold blast, must be ranked the Coltness Iron Company, who, at their works in Ayrshire, con- structed the most perfect apparatus for heating the air that had ever been employed. The statistics of these improvements are very interesting. As early as 1834—35, Mr. W. Clark, professor of chemistry in the University of Aberdeen, reported upon the comparative merits of the hot and cold blast ; and some time afterwards M. Dufrénoy was employed by the Director-general of Mines in France to inves- tigate the subject. His report seems to be princi- pally based upon the result of experiments made at the Clyde Iron Works, near Glasgow, and as these speak for themselves, we will give them at length. In 1829, the combustion being produced by cold air, the consumption for one ton of iron was— Tons, Cwt. Coal—first converted into coke, and then burned in the blast . : ‘ : 6 13 » for the boilers supplying steam to work the blowing engine . . : : 1 0 Total coal used A j : ates ef 13 In July, 1833, the temperature of the blast being raised to 612° Fahr., and the fusion effected by raw coal, the consumption per ton of iron was— Tons. Cwt. Raw coal—burned in the blast : ; : 2 0 % used for heating the air on its pas- sage from the blowing engine to the furnace : : : : 0 8 » for blowing engine ; . : 0 11 Total coal used 2 E 5 5 : 2 19 The high temperature of the stoves used for heating the blast caused them to wear out quickly. How- ever, by arranging malleable iron pipes so that they are free to contract or expand with every change in the temperature, iron smelters can now deliver the blast at nearly double the temperature employed in these early experiments. At the Coltness Iron Works, the pressure of the blast is about four pounds per square inch, which represents the weight of about a hundredweight on the area of a man’s hand—no inconsiderable amount, when it OF GREAT BRITAIN. is considered that the air is sent into the furnace at the rate of ten thousand cubic feet per minute— a quantity which would fill a room fifty feet long, twenty feet broad, and ten feet high. The area of the heating surface in the apparatus employed is three thousand five hundred square feet, and the temperature of the blast is about 600° Fahr. Of Neilson’s great invention, it is enough to say that his first apparatus was of a very simple descrip- tion. It consisted of a cylindrical retort of wrought iron, with a pipe leading into it at one end, and out of itat the other. This was placed over a fireplace, and the air was forced through it by a blowing engine. The specification of his patent is also famous as having been a very simple one. The invention is described as an “improved application of air to produce heat in fires, forges, and furnaces, where bellows or other blowing apparatus are required.” He then goes on to propose “to pass the air through suitably-shaped vessels,” where it was “to be heated before it entered the furnace.” It was only after years of expensive litigation that Neilson gained any advantage from his discovery.* We cannot leave the subject of the hot blast without a quotation from a distinguished authority on all matters con- nected with the manufacture of iron. Sir Wilham Fairbairn, writing in 1869, places the discovery of Neilson as the most conspicuous landmark of the last of five distinct epochs in the history of the iron trade. He says, “The fifth and last—though not the least important epoch in the history of this manufacture—is marked by the application of the hot blast, an invention which has increased the production of iron fourfold, and has enabled the ironmaster to smelt otherwise useless and unre- ducible ores; it has abolished the processes of coking and roasting, and has given facilities for a large and rapid production, far beyond the most sanguine anticipations of its inventor.” Let us now say something of those great blowing engines and air pumps which ply the furnace with its blast, and which are amongst the most imposing features of a smelting works. The different methods of supplying air are:—(1st) Placing the furnace itself in a position to allow of the wind acting upon it with violence. This is probably the earliest way in which rapid combustion was obtained. It was * Neilson’s descendants still represent the energy and perse- verance which distinguished their father. Some of them are extensive ironmasters ; and one, who is the head of the well- known firm of locomotive engineers that bears his name, is now engaged upon the introduction of pneumatic locomotion on our streets, under the writer’s patent. TU HUN : si ren ye = >: a th ae ill Hi; Fee | aes , i Mh oe wl Wom So i Lo | W. D. Scott-Monerieff.) (From a Sketch by Mr. Nicur. Tue Buiast FurRNAcES AT SUMMERLEA BY 6 GREAT INDUSTRIES in this fashion that iron was first smelted in this country by the Romans. The remains of the waste cinders from their furnaces, from which the metal had been only partially extracted, actually afforded material for the operations of smelters centuries after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain. These early furnaces were probably small conical structures having openings below for the draught to rush through, and some rude arrangement for regulating its pressure. of as ‘ air-bloomeries.” They are usually spoken The heat they produced could never be sufficient to completely melt the iron, so that they could hardly be called smelting furnaces. The sort of work they did would pro- bably be to convert the ore into an imperfectly malleable iron, capable of being hammered into the different shapes required for the primitive implements and weapons of the time. Similar appliances are in use in some parts of ‘Savage Africa,” but even there they have been improved upon. Imperfect as the ‘air-bloomery” was, it must be regarded as the precursor and parent of the vast and complex apparatus now employed by the modern smelter. (2nd) Producing a cur- rent of ar by a fan, or some similar mechanism. (3rd) By the use of bellows. (4th) By means of a piston working in a cylinder, which draws the air in with one stroke, and forces it out by another. (5th) By the evolutions of a wheel, or fanner, which communicates a violent circular movement to the air, throwing it out by centrifugal force in such a way that it can be conveyed directly to the furnace. It is this last appliance which is almost invariably used for producing the blast in the cupola furnaces of iron founders, where pig iron is melted before being poured into moulds. But for the reduction of the ores in a blast furnace, a much greater blast is required, and the cylinder and piston apparatus is the one which is always employed. Practically, it is nothing more than an improvement upon a piece of similar mechanism which has been used from time im- memorial by the savage inhabitants of Borneo. Except that the material of which the apparatus is made is wood, instead of iron, the Bornean blow- ing machine is almost identical with those used in Great Britain till about the middle of last century. At that period the only available motive power, beyond that of animals, was water. Accordingly we find that the manufacture of iron was almost always carried on in the neighbourhood of some stream that could be utilised. The form in which steam was first applied was the atmospheric engine of OF GREAT BRITAIN. Newcommen ; but as it only acted in one direction, the action of the air pump was similarly defective. The improvements in the steam engine introduced by James Watt at once gave an immense impetus to the manufacture of iron, as it did to every other industry ; and the increased amount and regu-_ larity of the blast produced by it soon led to an increase in the size of the furnaces, as well as in the productiveness of the materials employed. Among the triumphs of engineering there is not one that holds a higher place or presents a more imposing spectacle than a large blowing engine. No class of machinery is subjected to the ordeal of a more continuous strain, oy ¢ Q) A Bract with several rows of Flowers; (2) A Flower, one-third the fibr es are reached, the nat. size ; (3) Horizontal Section of Ovary ; (4) Ripe Fruit, one- * . third nat. size; (5) Seed seen from the under side, showing the stems laid open and placed hilum, one-half nat. size; (6) Horizontal Section of Seed. in the sun to dry. When pressed against a board. Each bundle of the hemp is about as thick as one’s thumb, and in order to facilitate the handling of it a knot is put on one end, and allowed to remain until it is removed by the rope makers of the countries to which it is sent. New Zealand flax ( Phor- mium tenax) is being ex- tensively used in the colony, and also in Australia, for the manufacture of cordage, wool-bags, and mats. In appearance this plant re- sembles the flag or sedge, and is indigenous to New Zealand, where it is to be met with abundantly in marshy situations, and also on the sea-coast. The fibre, sufficiently dried, the stems are laid on the ground, which is detached with some difficulty, owing to its and the fibre is pulled out in belt-like pieces three being enclosed in a resinous coating, bears some HEMP—THE RAW MATERIAL, resemblance to jute, but of Bi it is harder and _ also wy AG) stronger. Successful ex- ames WY : RT en periments have been made coin OP? ; . 3 Selgin in the cultivation of the Cy Phormium tenax in Britain eH and various other parts of apne Wp Europe, and the promoters of the scheme for the de- iSsis- wef 8 velopment of the Missis Xu NON; Ul 4 A sippi valley have contem- WY Kt WAY) wil \ plated the introduction of the plant to that region, where it is believed it would thrive well. Owing to the extent to which the fibre is now worked in the colony, New Zealand has almost entirely disappeared from the list of importers of cordage, and her exports of that commodity and flax have assumed important dimensions, amounting in the aggregate to not less than £200,000 a year in value. The colonists have found the flax a remunera- ‘tive crop, and are devoting AGAVE (Agave sisilana). (i) Plant, one-thirtieth nat. size; (2) A Branch of Flowers, quarter nat. size ; (3) A Leaf, one-tenth nat, size. WOR LEE He SCC SSS 37 considerable attention to it. In all the centres of population flax factories have been established, and these, and the cultivation and gathering of the crop, give employment to a large number of persons. The price of the dressed flax ranges from £20 to £36 per ton, according to the quality. A few years ago a series of experiments were made at Wellington to test the durability of New Zealand flax rope as compared with rope made from Manila hemp. These showed that the former withstood wear 34 per cent. better than the latter, though it was more lable to chafe, and more suscep- tible to weather influences. The advantage was, how- ever, reversed when the ropes were saturated with sea-water, in which case the Manila rope showed RuEEa Prant (Urtica tenacissima). New ZEALAND Frax (Phormium tenaz), i y 4 , hird Plant, 7 feet high ; (2) Branch of Inflorescence with young Fruit, one-th Na nat. size ; (8) Corolla of Flower, cut open, showing Ovary, one-third nat. size; (4) Section of Fruit, showing imbricated Seeds. (1) Terminal Portion, one-third nat. ave showing ¥einee Flowers in the axils leaves, Male in the lower ¢ : E Re cet aleae times nat. size; (3) Female Flower, six times nat. size, and (4) Section of same; (5) Male Flower, six times nat. size. (2) Cluster of Female 38 GREAT INDUSTRIES itself to-be better than the New Zealand by 10 per cent. Another important material used in the manufac- ture of cordage, matting, &ec., is coir, as the fibrous rind of the cocoa-nut is called. Of this article we import about 10,000 tons per year, at a cost of over £200,000. It comes to us chiefly in the form of yarn suitable for making cables, and as thus em- ployed the fibre is held in high esteem on account of its strength, lightness, and elasticity. Vessels furnished with coir cables have, in many instances, ridden out storms in which others, though moored with heavier ropes of common hemp, have come to grief... Slor many purposes in which strength is a more important factor than elegant appearance, coir is used with much advantage, such as in netting for sheepfolds, &c., mats and bags for seed- crushing machines, nose-bags for horses, brooms and door-mats. Attempts have been made, and not without some measure of success, to reduce the fibre to a degree of fineness sufficient to admit of its being worked in the loom into various fabrics. Coir mat making has been introduced pretty ex- tensively into our prisons, and as the labour of convicts is cheaper than free labour, great dissatis- faction has been created in the ranks of those engaged in the trade outside prison walls. Various species of the agave plant supply a valuable fibre which is used for rope making and other purposes in Mexico and Peru, and has come into favour in the United States. also an importer to some extent. Sisal hemp is the product of the Agave sisilana, and the United States’ rope makers draw large supplies of it from Yucatan. Successful experiments have also been made in introducing the plant into the States, Key West and the adjacent islands now growing a considerable quantity. When carefully prepared, sisal hemp brings a higher price than Manila hemp. The fibre is contained in the leaves of the plant, which are cut off at a certain period of growth. After being dried for a little time, they are beaten with a mallet to loosen the fibre. Before the fibre can be finally released, the gummy substance in the leaf has to be got rid of by steeping in water and a vigorous application of a wooden scraper. The steeping is sometimes carried on till fermentation sets in; but that process, though it facilitates the separation of the fibre from its glutinous case, greatly deteriorates its quality. It is said that ropes made of sisal are lighter, stronger, and more durable than those made of ordinary hemp. Indian hemp, or sunn, is used for rope making England is OF GREAT BRITAIN. in many parts of the East, but it is of poor quality, and has nothing but its cheapness to recommend it. A more important Indian fibre is that derived from the rheea plant. It is a species of nettle, and its fibre is superior to both flax and hemp. In gloss and fineness it resembles silk, and having besides somewhat of a woolly character, it is fitted to occupy a high place among industrial fibres. Experience has shown that it can be easily worked on worsted machinery, and in combination with either cotton or wool, and that in the form of cloth it is very strong and durable. For rope- making purposes, it is superior to hemp, as being stronger, and suffering less deterioration from being frequently wetted. Its lightness and durability fit it also for making sail cloths, tents, &e. Asa basis in the manufacture of paper, it admits many materials otherwise unsuited for the purpose to be worked up. Under the name of China grass cloth, a fabric made from rheea fibre has long borne a high reputation. In 1803, Dr. Roxburgh named the plant Urtica tenacissima, and pointed out its importance as a ylelder of fibre. At the Exhibition of 1851, it was brought into notice somewhat pro- minently, and ropes made of it were shown which possessed a strength equal to three times that of ropes of the same dimensions made of Russian hemp. The value of the fibre was generally ad- mitted, but a serious obstacle to its introduction as a competitor with flax and hemp lay in the difficulty of its preparation. In 1869, the Indian Government offered a prize of £5,000 to the inventor of the best machine for separating the fibre from the stem, the conditions being that the cost of preparation should not exceed £15 per ton, and that the fibre produced should be of a quality to command a price of £50 per ton in the English market. It was also considered desirable that the fibre should be got out while the plants were in a green state, as then it presented a richer gloss; and as a supply of green stalks could not be had in this country, it was necessary that the machines should be tested in India. At the specified time only one machine was brought upon the ground, which, though very ingenious, failed to realise the conditions of the competition ; it was, however, considered so meritorious that the makers were rewarded with £1,500. Subsequent attempts to deal with the plant have been attended with an encouraging amount of success, and it may indeed be confidently predicted that rheea will, ere long, take an important position among our industrial fibres. SEH ela bso LD. NOG. Lp, THE ROYAL DOCKYARDS. OYAL dockyards are distinguished from the largest private ship yards by their antiquity and extent, as well as by their organisation and the diversity of their operations. They are really naval arsenals, comprehending all that is necessary for the building, equipment, and repair of our war fleet. As the types of war ships have changed, so have the dockyards been modified and extended to meet altered requirements; but much remains in them which is venerable on account of age or historical associations. In 1867, there were seven : of these dockyards. Since then the yards at Woolwich and Deptford have been closed, and * there now remain those at Portsmouth, Chatham, Devonport, Sheerness, and Pembroke. There is evidence that at so early a date as 1212 there was a naval establishment at Portsmouth; the sheriff of the county of Southampton having then received an order to enclose the king’s docks by a strong wall, and to provide suitable storehouses. Until the reign of Henry VIII., however, there was no royal navy specially built for fighting, nor any royal dockyard worthy of the name; and to that monarch belongs the credit of founding yards at Portsmouth, Woolwich, and Deptford. Chatham yard was founded in the reign of Eliza- beth ; Sheerness yard was established about 1661, and re-modelled about 1823. Devonport yard dates from 1693; and Pembroke yard from 1815. More than 16,000 men are employed in the five existing dockyards, the annual wages exceeding a million pounds sterling. Nearly one-half of these men are permanently employed, and become entitled to pensions after ten years’ service ; the values of their pensions vary with the length of servitude, and on attaining the age of sixty all workmen are retired from active service. The hold thus obtained on the men has very beneficial effects: strikes or interruptions to steady work are unknown in the dockyards ; a force of highly- trained artificers is always available, and this can be reinforced by large bodies of hired workmen in cases of emergency. It is probably within the truth to say that nowhere can a body of workmen be found superior in education, intelligence, and capability, to those employed in the royal dockyards. The Admiralty train a large part of this staff by the system of apprenticeship, but a large number of recruits come from private establishments. Every class of workman required in connection with the building or repair of ships and engines is represented in the dockyards. Twenty years ago, wood ships alone were built in these yards ; but now no wood ships are constructed, iron and composite ships having replaced them. A very large number of wood ships, however, remain on service, and their repairs constitute no mean share in the work of many of the yards. The leading trade is the shipwright; about one-fourth of the total number of men employed belong to this class. A shipwright in a royal dockyard is, however, a very different workman from one bearing the same name in a private yard. Minute sub-division of labour amongst different classes of workmen, such as exists in private establishments, is unknown in the dockyards: a shipwright is required to be able to work indifferently on wood and iron ships, per- forming for the latter the more difficult operations which the plater performs in private yards. The rougher parts of the iron shipwork are done by a class termed skilled labourers, who act as closers, drillers, riveters, caulkers, and painters, under the supervision of the shipwrights. Smiths, joiners, caulkers, riggers, sail makers, plumbers, fitters, founders, and members of other minor trades assist the shipwrights in completing the fittings of ships ; but it is still as true as it was in the days of wood ships, that the shipwright builds our men-o’-war. Except in special circumstances, the workmen in the dockyards are not employed on piece-work, or paid in proportion to the work accomplished. It is therefore necessary to have a well-organised system of inspection and supervision, in order to secure the proper quantity and quality of work; and such a system is in operation. The workmen are arranged in groups of twenty or thirty, and a subordinate officer is made responsible for the satisfactory per- formance of duty by each group; over these sub- ordinate officers superior officers are placed, who direct particular sections of the work of the yard. Over these, again, come several chief or principal officers ;, and at the head of each dockyard’ a naval officer is placed, termed the superintendent. The general direction of all the dockyards rests with the Admiralty. Factories for the repairs of the machinery and boiiers of our war ships have been created at all the dockyards except Pembroke. The first con- 40 GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. struction of the propelling machinery for ships of the royal navy is almost wholly entrusted to private marine engineering establishments. These factories are, of course, of comparatively modern date, but they have already attained large dimen- working the guns, and many other duties. This extensive use of steam power, of course, multi- plies the chances of derangement, and it is found desirable to employ from 1,500 to 2,000 men in the factories, to meet the current work on the repairs = — aS VE = al LE = ioe ‘ las Ip Ly \ WSS Wy TOWN OF PORTSEA . | Eritrance PLAN OF PORTSMOUTH DOCKYARD. sions, and are being considerably extended. Now that war ships are, as has been said, “mere boxes of machinery,” it is of the highest importance that the factory departments of the dockyards should be efficient. Steam power is used so freely, in order to reduce manual labour, that it is no uncommon thing to find thirty or forty engines on board a large ship. Besides the main propelling engines, there are engines for pumping water out of the ship, for driving ventilating fans, hoisting the anchors, steering, turning turrets, loading and of machinery for our war ships. Boiler makers, riveters, fitters, blacksmiths, copper-smiths, pat- tern makers, founders, and many other trades, are all included in this total. Until very re- cently, all these workmen were hired, and liable to be discharged when their services were not considered desirable ; but it has now become the practice to establish some portion of these men, and to guarantee them a pension, as is customary with the dockyard workmen. A greater hold is thus obtained upon the men than when under rity) — 7 tis = a 7 EP ES Yo a OF GREAT BRITAIN. perfection in the earlier that there is in the later products of his looms. But even such material as he was then able to offer to the public caused con- siderable stir in the markets and shops of Leeds, Manchester, and London, and speedily the demand for it grew apace. It was the very thing the ladies had been looking for—a fabric cheaper than silk, yet resembling it in glossiness, showy and elegant in appearance when made up into dresses, and though perfectly fit for summer wear, yet more durable than anything they had hitherto seen. Se an eek ee SE eee a “LESS ALPACA SHEEP. Here, however, a fresh difficulty started up. It was not everything to make goods, as Titus Salt found. Dealers had been bitten before with fabrics from the same sort of wool, and they were shy of buying. The merchants of those days had to deal with a public less eager to leap at novelties than that of our own time, and the consequence was that the new goods hung on their hands longer than they liked. Salt, however, had faith in his alpaca, and foresaw that it would become a favourite with the ladies. Traders might shake their heads, and the public shrug its shoulders, but he saw farther than they did, and he at once set about perfecting his machinery and providing for a regular supply of the raw material at as cheap a rate as possible. There was, of course, nothing like the beauty and Very soon Mr. Salt was obliged to remove from the small mill in Silsbridge Lane into larger works, and the ball of fortune, once set rolling at his feet, daily gained in momentum. The young manufac- turer, at the end of 1840, was already on the high road to success. Competitors sprang up on all sides, but those goods with the brand “'T. 8.” were always the best, and the original manufacture holds a proud pre-eminence in the trade up to the present hour. Indeed, the brand “T. 8.” had then, and retains still, a monopoly in certain sorts of alpaca goods. With the development of the industry, the number of manufacturers has multiplied, and as the supply of the article has increased, the demand for it has proportionately augmented. But for all practical purposes it may be said that the history of the alpaca ° IRON AND STEEL—WHAT GOES ON IN THE FURNACE. 53 trade centres in the firm which first made it popular, and that a description of the works at Saltaire will be an exposition of the best and most successful processes of its manufacture. We shall, therefore, chiefly confine ourselves to that remarkable alpaca town which has sprung up within a few miles of Bradford, the works of its creator, and the processes by which the raw material is converted into the marketable fabric. The growth of the trade will, however, be most easily set forth by a plain un- varnished statement of the quantities of alpaca imported into this country during various years since Messrs. Hegan, Hall, and Co. first disposed of their stock to young Titus Salt. The total quantity of the wool imported into England in 1837 was, in round numbers, 570,0001b. After a lapse of ten years, the quantity had increased to 1,500,0001b., and in 1854 it had risen to no less than 2,300,000 1b. Coming down to the year 1864, nearly 2,800,000]b. were brought into this country; but this com- paratively slight advance may be accounted for by the general depression of trade caused by the war in America. In 1872, however, the importation had leaped to 3,878,739 lb., in 1874 to 4,186,381Ib., and in 1875 to 4,600,0001b. In 1876, just forty years from alpaca coming into general use, as much as 5,000,000 lb. must have reached our shores from South America, Northern Hindostan, and the other sources of supply in different parts of the globe. So that to-day, for every 51b. of alpaca formerly used by our English mauufacturers 1,000Ib. are now worked into various textile fabrics. The price per lb. in 1836 was, as we know, 8d., but in a year or two it advanced to ls. per lb. ; in 1856 it was worth about 2s. 6d.; and at present prices range from 2s. 10d. to 3s. per 1b. Notwithstanding this in- crease of price, however, alpaca stuffs are cheaper in- 1876 than they were in 1856, and, of course, offered for infinitely less than the price per yard which was obtainable for them twenty years previously. IRON AND STEEL.—Ii. DE Ee BASS Ts HU RNA CL SAN DO WHAT HEE DS I'L. By Witi1am Dunpas Scort-Moncrizrr, C.E. INCE the introduction of the hot blast, the preliminary process of calcination of the ores has been greatly abandoned, and is only carried on when they contain an excessive amount of carbonic acid, water, or volatile matter which may need to be driven off by “roasting.” Ovens built for the “purpose are the best means for doing this; but practically the roasting is generally performed by mixing large heaps of coal and iron ore in the open air, and allowing them to burn themselves out. In Scotland, the black-band and clay-band ironstone ores are so full of coaly matter that the roasting is carried on with little or no additional fuel. If we now take the materials already referred to in con- nection with the hot-blast furnace at the Coltness Tronworks, viz., coal, calcined ironstone, and broken limestone, we shall see what goes on in the furnace. A great many elaborate experiments have been made by distinguished chemists to discover the exact nature of the changes which go on in the process of smelting. So long ago as 1845, Messrs. Bunsen and Playfair reported the result of their investigations on this subject to the British Association. In order to determine these, the furnace was divided into zones, from which the gases were extracted by means of pipes made of malleable iron, which were allowed to descend into the furnace along with the gradually descending materials of the ‘‘charge.” In these experiments the gases could not be collected at a depth lower than the top of the boshes, but Mr. Ebelman, by boring through the masonry only three feet and a half above the nozzles or “ tuyéres,” obtained gases which were conveyed and collected partly through porce- lain tubes and partly through gun barrels lined with porcelain. As these experiments deal with the furnace during different periods from the time of charging, and with different kinds of fuel, they are somewhat beyond the scope of the present paper ; but we may give Mr. Ebelman’s conclusions drawn from his investigations upon a furnace which was fifty feet in height. The air thrown in, according to his observations, produces successively carbonic acid and carbonic oxide at a small distance from the nozzles; the former attended by a disengage- ment of heat, the latter by a re-absorption of the principal part previously disengaged. The ascend- ing current of carbonic oxide and atmospheric nitrogen produces these effects: it heats the de- scending column of minerals, it becomes charged 54 GREAT INDUSTRIES with volatile products disengaged from the fuel, the limestone, &c., and it reduces the oxide of iron to the metallic state. Looking more to the solid materials, and less to the gases, it may be said that the upper contents of the furnace, as they approach the intense heat produced by the com- bustion of the fuel in contact with the blast, become gradually softened. In this state the lime- stone parts with its carbonic acid and attaches itself to the earthy impurities of the ironstone, which are thus amalgamated into a slag. The metallic iron is left to descend slowly till it ac- cumulates on the hearth, where it is deoxidised and thoroughly melted. In its passage through the furnace the iron becomes carbonised, and in this condition, before the blast has had time to burn away the carbon that has got into it, it is run off into a channel which is called the “sow,” from which it fills the moulds that are known as “ pigs.” The slag, which is continually forming during the smelting process, floats upon the surface of the melted iron, and is allowed to flow away con- tinuously from the top of the “dam-stone.” At the end of every twelve hours—more or less, according to the condition of the furnace—a plug made of sand, clay, and powdered coal is removed from the dam-stone, and the operation of tapping the melted iron is repeated. Of the more recent improvements in the blast furnace, more especially those which refer to the utilisation of the waste gases, we shall again have occasion to speak. Let us now say something about the ores that feed the blast furnace—the crude minerals from which iron is obtained. They are diffused so widely over every part of our globe, that it would be beyond the limits of the largest treatise to speak of every known kind and district in detail. The supply seems to be sutlicient not only for the requirements of our own time, but for those of innumerable ages to come. There was no more interesting feature of our Great International Exhibitions than the display of mineral wealth which was brought together, to the astonishment of mineralogists, who were ignorant until then of how rich the world was in iron. Specimens of ore, as fine as any that ever filled the pockets of a British ironmaster, were sent from the distant wilds of Canada, and the story of the mines from which they came, telling of beds of ore hundreds of feet in thickness, seemed at the time to be almost beyond belief. Yet these vast stores, after having tempted a few adventurers to erect furnaces in their neigh- bourhood, have been almost entirely abandoned. OF GREAT BRITAIN. They must wait till future waves of emigration render the working of them profitable. In some cases the ores were so rich in the finest descriptions of iron, that they were conveyed in the crude state as back freight in vessels that had taken cargoes to Kingston, on Lake Ontario, and found their way to the blast furnaces at Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. - Unfortunately the discovery of mines more con- veniently situated soon put an end to this traffic. As has already been said, iron is seldom found in its pure or ‘“‘native” state. In the rare cases in which it is so seen there are a few in which the metal has reached our planet in the form of meteoric masses that have, as it were, ‘ dropped from the clouds.” At Yale College, in America, there is preserved an aérolite or meteoric stone, containing about 90 per cent. of pure iron and 10 per cent. of nickel. It weighs 1,635 Ilb., or nearly 15 cwt., and measures 3 ft. 4 in. in length, 2 ft. 4 in. in breadth, and 1 ft. 4 in. in height. A meteorolite of about the same weight was discovered in Siberia, and others even larger have been found in South America. These, however, from their rarity, are of no commercial importance. The different combinations which iron assumes, both in its crude and manufactured state, with oxygen and carbon, are so distinct in their character that for all practical purposes they may be looked upon almost as if they were different metals; and it is of these combinations, mingled with various impurities, that what may be called “ the iron ores of commerce ” con- sist. The different combinations of the same iron— it may be, for instance, of pieces of a homogeneous bar with carbon alone—bring about such radical changes in the properties of the resultant products, that these are more distinct in many respects than some metals that have positively no chemical simi- larity or relationship whatever. Deprived not only of carbon, but also of all possible impurities, iron becomes useless except for medicinal purposes. Strangely enough, it is the only metal that is necessary, as a constituent element, to the sound structure of the human frame. Iron is so soft that it can be scratched with the finger-nail, and is readily worn away by friction. And yet, when combined with carbon in different ways, it becomes so altered in the qualities of hardness and tenacity, that it is capable of cutting in the form of steel what in an earlier stage of its carburisation was malleable iron. In other words, if we take a bar of wrought iron, and, dividing it into-two pieces, treat one half with carbon, and form it into a suitable tool, we’ shall then. be able to shear the other half into shreds, IRON AND STEEL—THE ORES. 55 It so happens that the process of smelting iron with charcoal, coke, or coal, in a blast furnace almost always supplies it with an excess of carbon. The result is that the metal obtained in this way, technically known as “pig iron,” is the most highly carburised of all the forms of commercial iron. ven the degrees of carburisation that take place in the same furnace, during different inter- vals of the operation of smelting, are sufficient to stamp their characteristics on the metal, and give rise to the terms, No. 1, 2, or 3 “pig,” No. 1 being the most highly carburised, No. 2 less so, and so on, in some cases down to No. 4. The terms grey, mottled, and white “pigs,” arise from the same conditions, and represent the combinations of what scientific men call “ combined carbon,” and “ graphitic carbon,” with iron—combinations which to this day are scarcely understood by the chemist and metallurgist. The highly carburised condition of the iron in a blast furnace, besides being the natural result of the process, may be looked upon as necessary, because a large amount of carbon is necessary to produce fusibility and fluidity in the ores ; and without this being effected, of course the process of smelting could not be carried on. It is this condition that creates the difference between the melting-point of cast iron and malleable iron, and it is familiar in practice to every village black- smith. If he subjected cast iron to the full heat of his forge, it would pour out of the hearth. If, on the other hand, the metal in a blast furnace were allowed to be so much deprived of carbon as to get into the state of malleable iron, it would solidify, and, by ceasing to flow, choke up every opening provided for its removal. It will now be readily seen that, as the com- bination with everything except carbon and oxygen is injurious to iron, speaking generally, it is only those ores which consist of a large percentage of iron and carbon, or oxygen, that are of any com- mercial value. There are some substances, such as silica, that are almost invariably present in every variety of manufactured iron, and which do not seem to spoil its usefulness. But most other admixtures, especially sulphur, are injurious, and when they occur in large quantities, render the iron entirely unfitted for any practical purpose. Among the few foreign substances that improve iron is phosphorus, which is supposed to render it more easy of melting. Hence it is often present in the metal used for fine ornamental castings, because when tainted with phosphorus the molten iron runs more freely into the delicate intricacies of a decorative mould. It will also be seen from these explanations that where the impurities of iron ores consist of carbonaceous matters adhering or mingling with the ore, as in the famous ‘black-band iron- stone” of Scotland, they are not injurious, because they perform much the same part in the smelting process as the fuel itself. It is very necessary now that the reader should understand that when iron is in a molten state it is eager to combine with any impurities that may come in contact with it. Therefore the ironmaster must not only have the purest possible ore, but the finest possible fuel to smelt it with. Reverting to a consideration of the ores them- selves, the first great class that generally stands at the head of the list are called “ the magnetic oxides.” They are the purest ores which exist, and it is from them that we obtain the finest Swedish iron—the metal that is converted in this country into the thousand and one articles that are known as cutlery. Supposing it be pure, a bit of magnetic oxide will consist of 72°4 per cent. of iron and 27°6 of oxygen. In Sweden it is often found in a massive state, and occurs in veins among various crystalline rocks, such as granite, quartz, hornblende, marble, &c. In some cases, no flux such as is almost invariably required, in the form of lime, is necessary to smelt magnetic oxides, as they supply, sometimes, a fusible slag of themselves, when properly mixed together before being put into the furnaces. When such fine ore as this is smelted with charcoal, which contains none of the impurities of coal, with which iron is generally smelted in other countries, it may well be supposed that the quality of the iron produced is the very best that is known to com- merce. Besides these rich and pure ores which are found in Sweden in veins and masses, there are others which are found in the lakes and bogs, and which on this account are called bog ores and lake ores. In the Swedish department of the Inter- national Exhibition of 1862, there was a large assortment of these ores, which are sub-divided and designated, according to their appearance, there, as pearl ore, bur ore (Borr-malm), called after the head of the burdock, gunpowder ore, cake ore, and money ore. The way in which these lake ores are collected is very curious. When the lakes are ice-bound, the miners, or rather gatherers, go out “ prospecting,” somewhat in the fashion of gold-diggers. They first of all make small holes in the ice, through which they pass a pole long enough to reach the bottom—which is generally at no great depth, as the ores are collected among the shallows and reed- 56 GREAT INDUSTRIES beds. By long practice the collector knows by the sound of the pole as it strikes ground whether or not there is ore on the bottom; and when he dis- covers it, he stakes off his “claim” with pegs driven into the ice ; and to this he has a legal right. When he has fixed upon the scene of his future operations, he makes a hole, about three feet in diameter, on the boundary of his “claim,” and through this he passes a sort of sieve fixed to the end of a pole, which rests on the ground. By means of a rake OF GREAT BRITAIN. attributed them to the sedimentary deposits washed down into the lakes by rivers from the surrounding - country. But Mr. Sjogreen, who wrote an account of these curious ores for the Exhibition of 1862, believes that they are of infusorial origin, If this be the case, iron beds might be planted in other lakes than those of Sweden, in conditions favourable to the growth of the animalcule that build them up. In 1860, according to the Swedish Board of Trade Report, published in 1861, there were 22,000 i \ (i \\ t WHE Fev ‘ \\ i\\) aN PN CaN Sp mn m itu \ ————— A WIS se | SECrION OF BLAST FURNACE, SHOWING ITS Foop. about two feet broad, secured to a long handle, he collects the ore into a heap, and then with a smaller rake he fills the riddle which is then pulled up, and has its contents emptied upon the ice. ‘The ore has afterwards to be washed and freed as much as possible from the mud and other impurities which adhere to it. In the province of Sveiiland this industry gives employment to a great many people during winter, and a skilful man can col- lect from half a ten to a ton of ore ina day. The thickness of these beds of ore varies from eight to thirty inches, and after being exhausted they are said to be renewed in about twenty-five years. There is some difference of opinion as to the origin of these beds of lake ore. The most plausible theory to account for them would, of course, be that which tons collected from the lake beds in the strange and laborious fashion just described. Owing to the inaccessibility of the country, the iron industries of Sweden are carried on under great difficulties, and in many districts it is necessary to wait till the frost has provided the means of sledging in order to convey the fuel to the furnaces. It is not only in the purity of the ore and the fuel that the Swedish ironmaster keeps the lead in the quality of the iron he produces ; in every point of the manufacture he is most careful and conscientious. If any injurious substances are combined with the ores, they are thoroughly got rid of by roasting them before they are put into the furnace. The smelting in some districts being conducted on a large scale, the capital _ of any one proprietor of minerals or forests is often || | | ie \i Ny He |) {i SWEDISH Peasants “ Prospectinc’”? ror LAKE ORE. 58 GREAT INDUSTRIES insufficient to carry on the business, and so mine owners combine to share the expense of construct- ing smelting works. In this way it often happens that a blast furnace is very much in the position of a rural mill, to which people send their corn to be ground, and ores and fuel which are the property of several persons are often melted in the same furnace at the same time, the products being shared in the proportions in which the raw materials were supplied. The importance of the ores of magnetic oxide of iron depends not so much on the large quantities which exist as the valuable nature of the manufactured iron which is obtained from them. Here we may remark that it is in this class of ore that the mineral wealth of Canada, already referred to, consists ; and as immense fields are found in the United States, the Transatlantic supply may be said to be almost inexhaustible. In England this kind of ore only occurs very rarely, though it has been found at Dartmoor, in Devonshire, containing 57 per cent. of iron. There is no scientific classification of iron ores based upon any principle of chemical analogy, but those of the next importance to the magnetic oxides are the hematites, which largely abound in Great Britain, and have within recent years been greatly increased in value by the introduction of the Bessemer process of manufacturing steel, for which they are particularly adapted. They are further divided into the two classes of red and brown hematite. The red kind usually occurs in the strata of rocks known as the carboniferous limestone, and varies in appearance, being sometimes hard and compact, with cavities lined with crystals of quartz, as at Cleaton Moor, in Cumberland ; but generally soft and unctuous, like the débris of bricks that had first been softened in some way and then beaten down till the largest lumps were about the size of a strong man’s fist. It is principally found in Cumberland, but it also exists in Lancashire and Glamorganshire. It is most frequently met with under ground, but sometimes it lies on the surface. In Cumberland, the very finest description of this valuable ore is found in beds 15, 30, and even 60 feet in thickness, and within a few years has raised that county to the position of one of the wealthiest in the kingdom. The brown hematites are gene- rally of an earthy appearance, and of an ochre-brown colour. They exist in great quantities in the Forest of Dean, and also in Northamptonshire and Staffordshire. A bed has also been discovered in Treland, in the neighbourhood of Belfast. They do not contain nearly so much iron as the red hematite, OF GREAT BRITAIN. the average samples showing about 40 per cent. In some parts of Devonshire the ore is ground down in mills constructed for the purpose, and being mixed with linseed oil, makes a capital pigment, which is especially useful for painting: ironwork. Both brown and red hematite ores are at present being imported to a large extent into this country from Spain. : Within a comparatively recent period a very interesting species of ore has been worked in England, called spathic, or sparry carbonate. It is an oxide of iron, like all the others, but contains a large percentage of carbonic acid, along with a sufficient quantity of manganese, to give very peculiar properties when smelted at low tempera- tures. It produces the same sort of iron as that which is known in Germany as spiegeleisen, and represents one of those puzzling combinations of iron with carbon, about which the chemists seem quite unable to agree; it has a beautiful white mirror-like fracture, and though apt to burn away very rapidly in the process of ‘“ puddling,” when being converted into malleable iron, the quality of the metal obtained is very fine. Spiegeleisen, as applied to the manufacture of iron and steel, has been the subject of numberless patents, one of which was taken out by Mr. Robert Mushet, in 1856. This patent afterwards appeared to be of immense pecuniary value, but was abandoned in the third year, so that the discoverer of the process reaped no advantage ; although afterwards greatly employed in the Bessemer process, being mixed in a molten state with the “charge” to produce a definite amount of carburisation after the whole carbon has been removed. Space does not permit of our giving any elaborate account at present of the distribution of these ores over the continent of Europe, where they occur in great quantities, more especially in Westphalia and Styria, where the spregeleisen 1s principally made, so we will conclude with a short description of by far the largest iron deposit of Great Britain. This is the argillaceous, or clay and black-band ironstone of the coal-measures, and the geological formation known as the Odlite and Lias. It occurs in such quantities, and in such close proximity to the fuel necessary for smelting it, that it has altogether altered—we might almost say, begrimed—the face of the country in the neighbour- hood of its manufacture. As most folks know, it has given to a great part of Staffordshire the name of the Black Country. Mr. Jukes, in speaking of the iron ores of South Staffordshire, says, “‘ In no other coalfield of the United Kingdom is a thickness of: MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS—PENN AND SONS. 59 30 ft. of coal to be found together ; while in South Staffordshire twelve or thirteen beds of coal rest one upon another, with but very light partings of shale between them; and I believe the quantity of ironstone to be found in this district within a vertical space of 100 or 150 yards is greater than is known anywhere else.” In the Derbyshire coal- field, these valuable deposits occur in great abund- ance, and besides forming the great mineral wealth of Scotland, from which the princely fortunes of the Bairds and others have been accumulated, they are worked to a great extent also in Yorkshire, War- wickshire, Worcestershire, and North and South Wales. At one time they were melted in Sussex, and beds of them may be seen in the cliffs near Hastings. Dr. Price states that he has seen truck- fuls of this ore at the Ebbw Vale works, which had been dredged up from the sea, off the coast of the Isle of Wight, and sold at Cardiff at 10s. per ton. The fuel necessary for smelting the other ores of this country has to be carried to the ores, or the ores to the fuel. But in the case of these argil- laceous ores, there is not only an ample supply of fuel, and generally of limestone flux, for the pur- poses of smelting and manufacturing them, but, as if Nature could not be sufficiently bountiful, she has mixed up with the ore itself a sufficient amount of carbonaceous matter to admit of its being roasted and freed from many of its impurities with the aid of little or no additional fuel beyond what is attached to it as it comes from the mine. MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS.—I. MESSRS, JOHN PENN AND SONS, MARINE ENGINEERS, GREENWICH. By Ropert SMILEs. NUMBER of important conditions should be complied with to entitle a large industrial concern to be designated a model establishment. Among others, a compact site should be chosen for the works, rectangular by preference ; convenient arrangements for consecutive processes ; machine and hand tools and appliances the best of their kind for the operations undertaken; abundant light and ventilation. Among other than physical conditions, the relations between employers and employed should be marked by reciprocal goodwill and thorough cordiality. Another requisite, supple- mentary rather than essential, should perhaps be, that the establishment is the foremost of its kind, or sut generis. Messrs. John Penn and Son’s works conform to all of these conditions excepting the first, of which more anon. In those works are made most of the largest and best marine engines any- where produced, and throughout the world the name of John Penn is more than favourably known among engineers and navigators. The works consist of two large establishments : one in which the engines are designed, the sepa- rate parts produced, and the whole constructed, or “fitted”; the other, or “lower shop,” in which the boilers are put together. This paper relates to the engine works, of which we give a free sketch-plan, from which it will be seen at a glance that the works do not comply with our first condition, as to compact- ness or rectangular form, The irregularities of form and arrangement are attributable to the simple fact that the extensive works, which now occupy about seven acres, are accretions upon a small germ ; plot having been added to plot, as they could be acquired, to meet the growing exigencies of the business. It may be well to refer briefly to the growth of the world-wide reputation of the firm. It was founded about the beginning of the century, by Mr. John Penn, grandfather of the present worthy bearer of that name. He was a man of remarkable natural and acquired ability, and, dzter alia, a keen politi- cian, and friend of William Cobbett ; indeed he was a candidate for the representation of Greenwich at the parliamentary election that followed the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. From his savings as a workman he purchased a property in Greenwich, built a smith’s shop, and commenced business in a small way. His first important work was the execution of a large contract with Government for machinery and apparatus for a bakery at the Dept- ford victualling yard, which he completed to the entire satisfaction of the authorities. Mr. John Penn, his son, who in 1874 retired from the firm, had a strong natural bent for me- chanical pursuits. He willingly accepted his father’s tutelage and training, and when stilla comparatively young man became, so to speak, his father’s right hand. It was during the reign of John Penn 60 GREAT INDUSTRIES secundus,.and very much owing to his inventive skill and constructive ability, that many marvel- lous improvements were effected in the machinery of marine propulsion. In his time, and in the works of the firm, engines of all grades and powers were designed and erected. A list of the vessels fitted with engines by Messrs. John Penn and Son would occupy more space than can be spared, and would be only dry reading ; but the starting-point in their career as renowned engine builders demands a word of reference. In 1836, anumber of boats, built on very fine lines by Mr. Ditchburn, were put upon the Thames to ply between London, Greenwich, and Woolwich. These were fitted by Messrs. Penn with oscillating engines, that proved themselves in all respects greatly superior to those on the side- lever principle. The royal yacht-tender Pairy was built on the same pattern ; her engines, of the same type, were fitted by Messrs. Penn, who also ap- plied the screw propeller to the Fatry, which was one of the first vessels in Her Majesty’s navy fitted with this kind of machinery. Among the first of the ships of the navy fitted with their improved oscil- lating engines, by Messrs. Penn, were—the Black Hagle, the Sphynx, the Banshee, and the royal yacht Victoria and Albert ; also the renowned Australian liner Great Britain, and many other ships for the navies and mercantile marine of various countries. These engines proved equal in power, although of only about half the weight of those constructed upon the side-lever principle, and some of the ships attained unusually high speeds. The engine works show, externally, large surfaces of roofing, and long ranges of wall, but they have no decorative elevation, certainly no grand facade. The entrance used by the heads of the firm, managers, clerks, draughtsmen, foremen, &c., is at the junction of John Penn Street with Lewisham Road. This entrance is only a few yards wide; from it the natural contour of the ground dips by a rather steep incline. Passing through the outer door and down a few steps, a hall is reached, with on each side ranges of well-lit offices, and counting, model, wait- ing, and other rooms. Over all these, on a first floor, is a large drawing office, admirably lit, partly from the roof. In this part of the premises, marked 0000 0in our sketch, the initiatory steps are taken in connection with every engine or boiler produced by the firm. On the ground floor, the “interview- ing” and the correspondence, of a polyglot character, that precede orders or contracts, are conducted. Preliminaries settled, the work is passed upstairs, where complete drawings and specifications are OF GREAT BRITAIN. prepared by chiefs of departments, in concert with the heads of the firm. From the finished designs working drawings are made, showing in exact pro- portions the minutest details, down to rivet and bolt holes. These drawings are passed to the head foremen in the different shops, who are responsible for the production of the numerous and varied parts that are to be brought into harmonious combination in a vast and complex machine. With the distri- bution of the working drawings among the foremen, the actual manufacture of the engine may be said to begin, and will give full scope to watchful over- sight and skilled work. On the inner edge of the office hall other doors and a flight of steps give access to the erecting shop and heavy turnery, and from it to all other parts of the works. Reverting to our sketch, it should be mentioned that the entrance for the workmen is by a wide gateway (G') in John Penn Street, where the timekeeper has a lodge (b). This is also the prin- cipal entrance and exit for raw materials, and for finished work. A powerful weighing machine (a) is placed within the gate, upon which the loads are weighed when necessary. The gateway referred to, it will be seen, affords ready access for pig iron to the foundry, malleable iron to the smiths’ shop, timber to the carpenters’, and materials for the different departments. For the convenient trans- port of raw material and of work in transitu, the passages between the shops, the yards, and the principal shops are traversed by tramways, with turn-tables at the intersections. In the consecutive processes of manufacture the pattern maker takes precedence; and it will be seen that the pattern shop is within easy reach of the brass and iron foundries, to which the pattern maker’s work leads up. The pattern shop, a large rectangular building, is the only one in the works of three storeys. The basement is a store room, the principal floor a turnery, and the first floor a pattern shop, with pattern stores in the roof. There is a second pattern makers’ shop above the larger turnery. These shops present a brighter and a more attractive aspect than some of the others, being free from clangour, and extremely in- teresting from the careful exactitude of the work done. Adjoining the large pattern shop is a spacious wood-working shop, and covered timber stores, the latter containing valuable stocks of mahogany for the casing of cylinders, and of lignum vite for screw-propeller tubes. The carpenters’ shop is well supplied with saw benches, planing machines, and other wood-working tools. The MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS—PENN AND SONS. 61 pattern stores are vast and varied in their contents, being an accumulation of all the patterns produced by the firm since they commenced to make marine engines. “~ es: «Shops each. ee eee te Sheds | LarGce Yarp, Messrs. PENN'S CEWisHany Pie i AD SKETCH-PLAN OF PENN AND SONS’ ESTABLISHMENT. much as 7 and 8 tons, and the blades more than 5 tons each. The screw-shaft tube is also of gun-metal, and in some cases reaches to 30 feet in length, the an- PROPERTY. thickness being about 2 inches ; these are not, in the cate- gory of brass- foundry, ‘ small work.” The screw- shaft tubes are the invention of Mr. John Penn. They nular are cast with dove- tailed grooves, that are fitted with bars of lignum vite, upon which the shaft revolves. This hard, olea- ginous wood is found to furnish an excellent and durable bearing. The smaller tur- nery, a long and comparatively nar- row shop, is an interesting depart- containing excellent ment, many machine tools, in lathes, planing, slotting, shaping, screw-cutting, drilling machines, &c. Among the other curiosities in tools is the so-called “ Jack-n- the-box” planing machine. The distinctive pecu- liarity of this invention is, that the cutter reverses, and attacks the metal as it travels in each direc- tion. The cut is about a third of the width of an inch tool. A machine in the same shop is specially designed for radial cutting ; and can 162 GREAT INDUSTRIES take work of as much as 13 feet radius, in sections of about 5 feet. This shop has. shaft- ing in motion from end to end along each side, and, as in all the other shops where heavy weights of metal have to be moved, is abundantly supplied with well-placed, powerful cranes. Here one of the smallest of engines was made ; it was of 8 horse-power, with a 9-inch cylinder and 10-inch stroke, and was for one of the somewhat unpopular craft known as steam launches. In strong contrast with this tiny machine are the engines that are building in the works, or that have been built for the Encounter frigate, the Black Prince, Achilles, Minotaur, Northumberland, Hercules, Sultan, De- vastation, and the Northampton; for the Kaiser, Deutschland, Independencia, and many others, or- dered by our own and foreign governments, some of these engines being capable of working up to 8,500 horse-power. The destination of the greater part of the work done in the various departments is the erecting shop, where the masses of metal are to be brought into shape, and put together. This great room is grand rather than picturesque. It has a roof in four bays and a lay-to. The height to the gutters is about 35 feet. The roof, which is of iron, has on each side of the ridges broad belts of glass, which amply light the great area, that has dimensions, in round numbers, of about 180 feet by 150 feet. The roof is supported upon ranges of strongly-strutted wooden uprights. The structure was erected over another fitting shop, that was not unroofed before the new one was ready to cover the space. In this shop great weights have to be moved in various directions, and it is, accordingly, well supplied with machinery and apparatus to meet this need. It has two lines of tramway that communicate with the foundry, smithy, and other parts of the premises. It has numerous steam and hand swing cranes, and twenty overhead travelling cranes, each of which can transport any mass for which it is equal, from one point to another, within their own bays respectively. The tramway facilitates change of place, when required, from one bay to another. Many of the most remarkable machine tools in Messrs. Penn’s works are to be seen in this shop. Some of these exercise great power, others are delicate in action; some are eccentric, others direct; but whether eccentric or direct, they are uniformly precise in their operation. Not a few of these machine tools are by the most noted makers, but the best in the works for special purposes have been designed by OF GREAT BRITAIN. members of the firm, or by men connected with it, and are not protected by patent. The sights and sounds with which he is assailed in such a great Cyclopean workshop as this, are somewhat distracting to the unprofessional visitor. All around him is dead matter—to use a sole- cism—in a state of activity, matter dead in itself, but quickened and controlled by human. intelli- gence. Extraordinary tools for such extraordi- nary operations as are carried on here may be naturally expected, and the expectation is not disappointed. Sacrifice of height in the engines of ships of war, so as to bring them low in the hull, necessitated either diminished stroke and loss of power, or the introduction of cylinders of much enlarged diameter. The manufacture of the double-trunk engines necessitated new tools, new modes of work- ing, enlarged plant, and, generally, means and appliances for working large as well as smaller masses of metal with precision and rapidity. The visitor cannot fail to be impressed by the enormous weights of metal he sees in all directions ; arms of engine-frames weighing 27 tons each; crank-axles weighing 34 tons as they come from the forge ; cylinders of 12 feet diameter; bosses, blades and tubes, of gun-metal for screw propellers, weighing in all nearly 40 tons; with other parts in like proportions. Nor can he fail to be struck by the correspondingly vast dimensions of the machine tools that have been invented to bring these masses of metal into exact form, and by their majestic performances. The successively improved forms of marine engine introduced by Messrs. Penn—the oscillating, the double-trunk, the com- pound, and, last, the “John Penn and Sons’ three- cylinder compound expansive engine ”—have from time to time stimulated to the production of new tools with extraordinary powers, and to the adoption of methods of manipulation before undreamt of. Amongst these wonderful machines there is a lathe with a chuck to take work of 12 feet in diameter. By adjustment of the straps upon the different cones, and other means, eight different speeds can be given to the machine; the larger the diameter of the work, the less the speed attained. A planing machine in the shop would have for its maximum work a job 8 feet wide, 8 feet high, and 18 feet long. A boring mill, designed and constructed by the firm, produces a true internal surface upon cylinders of 12 feet diameter. A principle that has been kept in view by Messrs. Penn, in the construction of their engines MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS—PENN AND SONS. 63 —maximum results from minimum weight and exercise of power in attaining them—is illustrated in some of their new machine tools. So it is with their vertical planing machines, in which the ordinary method is reversed. In these tools the work remains stationary, and the cutter moves— Mahomet is brought to the mountain, not the mountain to Mahomet. A boring machine for drilling the tube-plates of condensers is also a very clever tool. The best possible machinery for this work is obviously of the utmost importance, from its quantity. Some of the large engines produced by Messrs. Penn have in the condensers 7,000 tubes, aggregating 20 miles in length. The most remarkable machine in this theatre of mechanical wonders is one that has been in- vented and made by the firm for dressing crank- axles. These are the heaviest forgings, and are the most unwieldy and awkward in form of any that have to be dealt with. By alterations in the gearing of the machine in question, it performs the several operations of planing each side of the jaws of the crank, the faces, the segmental crown, and turns the crank-pin. The three-throw crank- axles are in sections, connected by flanges and bolts so as to be equal in strength to the ponderous and unmanageable single piece. Among the engines that have been or are being made, are four pairs for twin-screws of 500 horse- power nominal, for the Ajax and Agamemnon, and four pairs of equal power for the Italian Government. Three-cylinder compound expansive engines have been completed for the Vorthampton, K.N., and tried with great success. They are an entirely new type. The cylinders are 54 inches diameter, 3 feet 3 inches stroke, and make about 85 revolutions at full power. The great advan- tages claimed for this form of engine are, that it can be used as a compound engine for moderate power—say, a third to half of the maximum power —by using one cylinder at high pressure, and the other two at low pressure. When a high power or speed is required, the steam can be admitted direct from the boilers into all the three cylinders; the highest power required will thus be attained, at a small sacrifice of economy. The indicated horse- power of these new engines is 6,000 working as expansive, 3,000 working as compound ; the nominal horse-power being 1,000. The great erecting shop is heated by hot-water pipes. The engine works and yards have an area of about seven acres. The average number of men employed is about 1,200, including a few youths and gentlemen-student apprentices, fiom various parts of the world. The power exercised by the thews and sinews of the host of workmen is minis- tered to by three pairs of very compact and beautiful engines, made in the works, that are of 24 horse- power nominal per pair, but capable of working to double that power. They are placed in the situations where the power is needed, and where it can be most completely utilised. At the boiler works on the Thames bank about 500 men are employed. Here, as at the “upper shop,” the appliances for the various processes are the best of their kind, including machines for straightening or bending iron plates, and a rolling machine, with remarkably effective gear, that makes excellent work in rolling half-inch plates 12 feet long. The rivet-making and riveting machines are also very clever, and do their work with wonderful rapidity and completeness. This department is impressive by its deafening noise ; and among the objects exciting observation are the vast dimensions of the boilers for some of the great war ships that are In progress. An engine of 30 horse-power nominal serves the works. There is telegraphic communication between the upper and lower shops, and between each and Mr. Penn’s residence at the Cedars. There is also communication between the two shops—which are about a mile apart—by traction engines that travel during the night, and in daytime by wagons and trucks drawn by teams that are unsurpassed for power and symmetry in the county of Kent. It is a saying of Mr. John Penn, that he has always tried to get the best horses and the best men procurable. He has been very successful as re- gards the horses, and fairly so as regards men, but he states his experience to be that “it is easier to~ arrive at a satisfactory conclusion on the points and qualities of a horse than of aman.” It says much for the relations between masters and men in Penn’s works, that no employment is more eagerly desired by mechanical engineers or boiler makers in the district than ‘‘a job at Penn’s.” The liberality of the firm is greatly to their honour. Their numerous and generous Christmas gifts are alike creditable to donors and receivers. On the occasion of my visit, I fell upon an “old man eloquent,” long in ‘the employment of the firm, who, without pumping” on my part, was earnest and garrulous in laudation of the masters.” I am afraid to quot him as to the numbers and amounts of life-pensions to “old hands” with which the firm charges itself, or concerning: the 64 GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. number. of widows that Mrs. John Penn, of the Cedars—a true “ Lady Bountiful”—has upon her books. The old man capped his details by the climax, “In fact, master, there’s nobody like them!” From all that we have learned from other sources, we conclude that the sad wranglings and contests often prevailing between capital and labour would be almost impossible if large employers, acting upon its suggestions, would take a leaf from the book of John Penn and Son. In fine, the high reputation of the firm, and the confidence reposed in it by our own and foreign Governments, are attributable to the signal ability of its members, and their persevering action upon Mr. John Penn’s own declaration—* I can’t afford to turn out second-rate work.” COTTON.—II. INDIAN MUSLINS—ENGLISH COMPETITION—-EARLY SPINNING MACHINES. By Davin Bremner, AutHor oF “THE INDUSTRIES OF SCOTLAND.” OWARDS the end of the seventeenth century Indian silks, muslins, and printed calicoes became fashionable articles of dress with the upper and middle classes in this country. In consequence of this, persons interested in home manufactures were loud in their complaints, and there were not wanting prophets who foretold all sorts of calami- ties if people persisted in wearing the products of Hindoo looms in preference to home-made fabrics. The author of an essay upon trade, entitled ‘The Naked Truth,” published in 1696, made the follow- ing reflections on the obnoxious fashion :—‘“The advantage of the East India Company is chiefly in their muslin and Indian silks (a great value of these commodities being comprehended in a small bull), and those are becoming the general wear in Eng- land. Fashion is truly termed a witch—the dearer and scarcer any commodity, the more the mode. Thirty shillings a yard, and only the shadow of a commodity when procured!” And Gibson, in his “ History of Glasgow,” thus complains of the manner in which the Indian fabrics were sought after :— While the industrious inhabitants of Glasgow and Paisley were lately exerting them- selves to improve, bring to perfection, and extend the manufactures of cambric and lawn (flax fab- rics), the greater part of the women in Scotland were wearing muslin, a fabric of India; nay, so great is the influence of fashion, that the very wives and daughters of these men were wearing this exotic themselves. Surely we are void of thought!” About the time this was written, a proposal was seriously made that a patriotic association should be formed for the discouragement of the fashion of wearing Indian cotton cloths. Ladies who should persist in the practice were to be shunned as enemies of their country, and gentlemen who associated with such ladies were to be held in scorn. As such an organisation would interfere with the liberty of the fair sex, it was not proceeded with. A good deal of ridicule was heaped upon the preservers of the freedom of female action in this case, and several writers addressed themselves to proving that “the liberty of the ladies, their passion for their fashion, had been frequently injurious to the manufactures of England.” In the year 1700 an Act was passed forbidding the importation of Indian silks and printed calicoes, under a penalty of £200. This did not, however, check the desire of the wealthy classes to obtain the forbidden articles, and an extensive system of smuggling sprang up, for the suppression of which further enactments had to be devised. Daniel Defoe, in his Weekly Review for the spring months of 1708, congratulates Parliament on the action taken to preserve our native industries, and thus describes the state of matters which had _pre- viously existed :—“ We saw our persons of quality dressed in Indian carpets, which, but a few years before, their chambermaids would have thought too ordinary for them ; the chintzes were advanced from lying on their floors to their backs, from the foot-cloth to the petticoat, and even the Queen herself at that time was pleased to appear in China and Japan—I mean China silks and calico ; nor was this all, but it crept into our houses, our closets, and bed-chambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves were nothing but calicoes or Indian stuffs, and, in short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade. What remained, then, for our people to do but to stand still and look on, see the bread taken out of their mouths, and the East India trade carry away the whole employment of the people? What had the masters to do but to dismiss their journeymen, and take no more apprentices ? COTTON—WEAVERS AND SPINNERS. 65 What had the journeymen to do but to sit still, grow poor, run away, and starve?” In defiance of the prohibitory laws, and the pamphlets of patriotic protectionists, the importa- tion of dress materials from India continued, and they were generally preferred to the native pro- ducts. The English spinner and weaver were equal only to making coarse fabrics, and Manchester, Bolton, and Leigh, could offer no finer cloths than those known as dimities, jeans, velveteens, fustians, It was only natural then fancy cords, and the like. that the women of the time, once having possession of garments made of the light and HO elegant cloths of India, should give those a preference over the heavy and plain-looking home-made. stuffs. In order to meet the popular taste, both spinners and weavers did their best to rival the Hindoo manufac- turers; but for a long time they met with but little success, for their appliances, though quite equal to those of the Eastern workers, were not guided by the hereditary skill of thousands of years. Ingenious men had, however, for some time been directing their attention to the subject of improving and extending the home manufacture of cotton by means of machines which would excel hand-labour in both the quality and the quantity of work done. They succeeded marvellously, and many machines were devised which, in a comparatively short time, had the effect of revolutionising the cotton manu- facture, and laying the foundation in England of her greatest industry. Under the old conditions of production the manufacture made very slow progress, as is exemplified by the fact that during the first half of last century our imports of cotton- wool did not exceed in any year 2,000,000 Ib., of which a considerable proportion was devoted to the making of candle-wicks. But, after all, it is 9 Y SS as SSS Sas AncrIenT Distarr Spinners, (From Montfaucon.) not strictly correct to speak of the cotton manu- facture as existing in England in those days; for in no fabric was cotton-warp used, and the linen-warp was really the more important part of the cloth produced. It was not until the year 1773, when Arkwright had introduced his spinning machine, that a piece of cloth composed entirely of cotton was made in this country. The system on which the trade was carried on was this :— The merchant supplhed the weaver with linen- yarn for warp and a quantity of cotton-wool sufficient to pro- duce the weft. If the weaver had no family who could spin the latter for him, he had to give out the work to be done, and lost much time in going from house to house to find assistance. It was no unusual thing for a weaver to walk several miles La = a> SS FFI SS \ NV 1 /) WA\\S 7 RN . Vig), i AN every morning to A. H¥ AN collect from the \ \ \% \N . Ns fil \ spinners the weft iN SS he would require to keep him em- ployed during the day. The demand for weft usually greater than the supply, and as the spinners were con- stantly hurried, the yarn they produced was of a very irregular quality. Every inducement was Le ai Se SS! EN ao was “held out to spinners to increase the quantity of their work, and their wheels were kept “birring” from early morning till late at night, the tedious- ness of the toil being lightened by the knowledge that gifts of ribbon or other finery would cer- tainly reward any extraordinary effort on their part. A weaver in those days had no enviable position. When he was supplied with the linen- warp’ and cotton-wool necessary for the produc- tion of a piece of cloth, he was at the same time bound under a penalty to return the finished work by a certain day ; and when the custom of stimulating the spinners by means of gifts was established, he found a heavy tax placed upon his labour. The amount of time he had to devote to 66 GREAT INDUSTRIES running to’and fro, first in search of work and then in search of spinners, made it necessary that he should, in order to make a living, spend many hours of the night at his loom, This difficulty in obtaining a supply of yarn retarded the progress of the trade very much; and yet the advance made was such as to excite wonder in some minds, for in the Daily Advertiser, in 1739, we read as follows: —‘“The manufacture of cotton, mixed and plain, is arrived at so great perfection, within these twenty years, that we not only make enough for our own consumption, but supply our colonies, and many of the nations of Europe. The benefits arising from this branch are such as to enable the manufacturers of Manchester to lay out above £30,000 a year for many years past on buildings. “Tis computed that two thousand new houses have been built in that industrious town within these twenty years.” A more exact idea of the extent to which the trade had been developed at this time is to be obtained from the official statistics, which show that the total import of cotton-wool into England was, in the year referred to, considerably under 1,700,000 Ib., while the value of the cotton goods exported did not reach £20,000. A good test of the state of the manufac- ture is also afforded by the returns of imports from Ireland of linen-yarn to be used for warp in the cotton fabrics. They are as follows :—1731, 13,734 ewt. ; 1740, 18,519 ewt.; 1750, 22,231 cwt. We have seen that the chief obstacle to an increase of the cotton manufacture was the want of means of producing yarn in sufficient quan- tities. Let us now explain how that difficulty was overcome. The twisting of animal and vege- table fibres into threads is an art of the highest antiquity, and must, of course, have had its origin prior to the sister-art of weaving. Of the existence of both at a remote period in the history of the human race we have evidence in the earlier books of the Bible. In the account given, in the 35th chapter of Exodus, of the directions concerning the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the people are requested by Moses to bring offerings of “}lue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats’ hair ;” and further on, it is stated that “all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with. their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen.” The Egyptians had, it is to be pre- sumed, been familiar with spinning and weaving long before that time, and these and other arts the Hebrews carried with them when they took their departure. Among various nations of antiquity OF GREAT BRITAIN. the art of spinning was regarded as a great boon to the human race, and its invention was attributed to a high source. The Egyptians gave the honour to Isis; the Mohammedans to a son of Japhet; the Chinese to the consort of their Emperor Zoro ; the Peruvians to the wife of Manco Capac, their first Sovereign ; and in some ancient statues of Minerva, the goddess holds a distaff as a token that she was the originator of the art. The distaff and spindle were apparently the earliest apphances used in spinning, and it was not until a comparatively recent period that the spinning-wheel was invented. The use of the spindle and distaff could not be better described than they are by Catullus in the following passage from his poem on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis :— * The loaded distaff in the left hand placed, With spongy coils of snow-white wool was graced ; From these the right hand lengthening fibres drew, Which into thread ‘neath nimble fingers grew. At intervals a gentle touch was given, By which the twirling whorl was onward driven ; Then, when the sinking spindle reached the ground, The recent thread around its spire was wound, Until the clasp, within its nipping cleft, Held fast the newly-finished length of weft.” It does not appear that the spmning-wheel was known in this country till the fourteenth century, though a wheel of very simple construction was used by the Hindoos before that time. This early Indian wheel was capable of producing coarse yarns only, and the yarns from which the once famous muslins of Dacca were made were spun on the spindle and distaff, which primitive appliances yet exist in some parts of the East, and were, within this century, not uncommon in English homes. The first form of spinning-wheel known in this country, consisted simply of a spindle which was turned by a cord passing over a broad-rimmed wheel. Having by the use of hand-cards formed the wool into “rolls,” the spimner began operations by causing the wheel to revolve by a push of her hand, and then attaching the wool to the spindle, drew it into a soft cord called a “roving.” — When the spindle. was full, it was removed, and a fresh one put on. This process was continued until the supply of wool was worked up, and then came the “drawing” process. A spindleful of roving was placed on the lap of the spinner, and the end of the cord attached to the empty spindle in the wheel. By rotating the machine and pulling out the roving between the finger and thumb of the left hand, the yarn was reduced to the required degree of fineness, and firmly twisted. A serious defect of the machine was its requiring one hand of the spinner to keep it in motion. This disadvantage was overcome, after the wheel had been in use about two centuries, by fitting it with a crank and treadle motion, which enabled the spinner to work the machine with her foot, while, with both hands free, she was able to produce a much greater quantity of yarn in a given time than she could with the old wheel. The treadle-wheel came largely into use as a domestic machine. The wives and daughters of well-to-do people throughout the country were taught how to work it, and it was, not so long ago, a common thing to hear a thrifty farmer’s spouse boast that her household lnen and blankets were all of her own spinning ; while home-made articles of the same description used to be a highly-treasured part of a daughter’s dowry. In many parts of the country the wheel is still to be met with, especially in the Highlands of Scotland and the rural districts of Ireland ; indeed, it is on record that the most illustrious lady in the land not only possesses a machine of this kind, but that she and her daughters use 1t occasionally. The first attempt to supersede spinning on the wheel is by some authorities attributed to Mr. John Wyatt, of Bumingham. About the year 1730, it is said to have occurred to him that a pair of rollers might be made to perform the part of the finger and thumb of the spinner in supplying the wool-cardings toa mechanically-moved spindle, and he applied him- self assiduously to testing the matter. He reached only the verge of a grand discovery, however, and left the prize to be carried off by other hands. One of his sons thus describes the first experiment made with “a spinning-engine without hands” :—‘“ In the year 1730, or thereabouts, living then at a village near Litchfield, our respected father first conceived the project, and carried it into effect ; and in the year 1733, by a model of about two feet square, in _a small building near Sutton Coldfield, without a single witness to the performance, was spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers, he, the inventor, to use his own words, ‘ being all the time in a pleasing but trembling suspense.’ The wool had been carded in the common way, and was passed between two cylinders, from whence the bobbin drew it by means of the twist.” Encouraged by this measure of success, Mr. Wyatt sought to turn it to account, and with that view allied himself with an enter- prising foreigner named Lewis Paul. ‘The latter, who appears to have had considerable mechanical skill, effected some improvements on the original COTTON—WYATT AND PAUL'S FACTORY. 67 machine, and in 1738 took out a patent in his own name for spinning wool and cotton by means of rollers, His specification set forth that “the wool or cotton having been prepared by carding into slivers, one end of the mass, rope, thread, or sliver is put betwixt a pair of rowlers, cillinders, or cones, or some such movements, which being twined round by their motion draws in the raw mass of wool or cotton to be spun in proportion to the velocity given to such yowlers, cillinders, or cones. As the prepared mass passes regularly through or betwixt those rowlers, cillinders, or cones, a succession of other rowlers, cillinders, or cones moying proportionably faster than the first draw the rope, thread, or sliver into any degree of fineness which may be required.” ‘This is intelligible enough, but the succeeding sen- tences describe a mechanical impossibility. They are in these words :—“ Sometimes these successive rowlers, cillinders, or cones (but not the first) have another rotation besides that which diminishes the thread, yarn, or worsted—viz., that they give it a small degree of twist betwixt each pair by means of the thread itself passing through the axis and center of that rotation. In some other cases only the first pair of rowlers, cillinders, or cones are used, and then the bobbyn, spole, or quill, upon which the thread, yarn, or worsted is spun, is so contrived as to draw faster than the first rowlers, cillinders, or cones give, and in such proportion as the first mass, rope, or sliver is proposed to be diminished.” In the year 1741, Mr. Wyatt and his partner started a small factory at Birmingham for spimning eotton-yarns with the new machine. The establish- ment must have been on a very limited scale, as it gave employment to only ten girls, and the machinery was kept in motion by two donkeys, which by pulling round a horizontal bar caused a vertical shaft to revolve. Mr. Paul took charge of the factory, and Mr. Wyatt spent his time chiefly among the manufacturers of cotton goods, whom he tried to induce to purchase his machine-made yarns. The quality, however, appears to have been so in- ferior that he failed to meet with purchasers to a remunerative extent, and after struggling on for a couple of years, the venture was abandoned. Dr. Johnson’s friend, Mr. Cave, proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, had taken some interest in the labours of Mr. Wyatt, and had so much faith in the principle of the apparatus that he established a factory at Northampton, in which he fitted 250 spindles, and employed 50 opera- tives. The work was persevered with in a most 68 GREAT INDUSTRIES praiseworthy manner, but with no better success than attended Mr. Wyatt’s efforts; and in the course of a few years the factory changed hands, and was ultimately dismantled. Spmning by means of rollers appeared a hopeless project, as after being subjected to various modifications, and being studied by ingenious minds for nearly a quarter of a century, Mr. Wyatt’s machine could not be got to produce marketable yarn. Mr. Paul is said to have shown much perseverance in following up the idea of his OF GREAT BRITAIN. allowed to pass almost without contradiction until the year 1858, when Mr. Robert.Cole, F.S.A., ina paper read at the meeting of the British Association at Leeds, took up’the matter, and by indisputable evidence showed that to Paul alone must be awarded the merit and honour of being the sole inventor of the machine for spinning cotton and wool by means of rollers, and that Wyatt had nothing whatever to do with the invention or carrying it into execution beyond the fact that he had advanced some money Tue TREADLE SPINNING-WHEEL. friend, or rather, as some writers on the subject allege, in trying to turn to his own exclusive profit the invention of one who voluntarily introduced him to the venture. In 1758, on the plea of having effected some improvement, he obtained a second patent for a’roller spinning-machine ; but it would appear that the apparatus he desired to protect was identical with Mr. Wyatt’s original machine. Though the earlier historians of the cotton manu- facture give to Wyatt the credit of being the originator of roller-spinning, and describe his rela- tions with Paul to have been as above narrated, they appear to have had only very slender grounds for doing so. Their statements were, however, to Paul, and had been in his employment for some time as a workman receiving a weekly wage. Mr. Cole obtained possession of numerous letters written by both Paul and Wyatt, of accounts and agree- ments between them, and also of licenses to use his machine granted by Paul to various persons. In none of these does Wyatt appear even in the cha- racter of a partner, and when Paul granted to Wyatt the right to use a certain number of spindles on his principle in consideration of the “money advanced by the latter, the agreement set forth that the machinery was “the invention of the said Lewis Paul.” Lastly, it appears that Wyatt him- self never claimed to be the inventor. EMINENT MANUFACTURERS.—II. HENRY BESSEMER, C.E. By Ropert SmMives. MAJORITY of scientific men exemplify, more or less completely, the truth of Pope’s dictum, that ‘‘ One science only will one genius fit, So vast is art, so narrow human wit.” Comparatively short arcs of the circle of the sciences are sufficient for their concentrated powers, whether directed to a department of cos- mogony: or dynamics, or to the fields of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and their products. Mr. Henry Bessemer seems to be an exception to this rule, if it is a rule. The scope of his pursuits extendsover a wide range of the apphed sciences, and practical mechanics. His father was a man of extraordinary powers. He (Antony Bessemer), born in London, was taken by his parents to Holland when in his boy- hood. At twenty years of age, he distinguished himself at Haarlem by the erection of pumping- engines, to drain the turf-pits. Before he was twenty-five years of age he was elected a member of the Académie at Paris, for improvements in the microscope. The Revolution drove him from France, his escape being effected after he had been sum- moned to appear before the awe-inspiring Assembly. Returning to London, he achieved distinction by his industry and skill as a type-founder. He was the friend, without rivalry, of the eminent Henry Caslon, after whom he named his son Henry, the subject of this sketch. The elder Bessemer, from the fruits of his industry, purchased a freehold estate at Charlton, in the parish of Hitchin, Hert- fordshire, where Henry Bessemer was born on the 19th January, 1813. Educational means and appliances were greatly inferior then to what they are now. Though young Bessemer had his in- struction in the neigh- bouring town,at probably the best school acces- sible, it is certain that he did not receive there any special training for after-life. From his boy- hood he pursued with ardour, as his favourite amusement, the model- ling of buildings, and other objects, in clay. His manual dexterity and taste kept pace with each other; and when the family re- moved to London, Henry had the honour (aged twenty) of exhibiting at the Royal Academy, Somerset House, a model of St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea. He continued to follow the profession of modeller and designer for a time with a fair measure of success. His inventions > numerous are, in one sense, of two classes—those which he did not, and those which he did, protect by patent. The Patent Office records have no entry of Mr. Bessemer’s name prior to 1838, when he was concerned in an invention for the casting of printing-types. His unprotected inventions date from about 1834, when he was twenty-one years of age. These may be referred to irrespective of chronological order; they belong, indeed, to a period not exceeding three years. The attention of the young inventor having been directed to the difficulty of obtaining good examples 70 GREAT INDUSTRIES of figured. Utrecht velvet, he invented a machine to supply the want. His contrivance proved a success, and part of his productions were used in furnishing some of the State apartments of Windsor Casile. He, moreover, provided many of the designs for figured velvet which are still in use. About the same time Bessemer put an effectual stop to a fraud which inflicted heavy loss on the revenue. High-priced adhesive stamps used fre- quently to be dishonestly transferred from effete documents to new deeds, and thus made to do duty twice, or oftener, for one payment to the Stamp Office. He invented machinery by which elaborate designs were pierced through the body of the parchment deed, in a manner similar to that now so commonly employed in perforating paper for valentines, &c., and which designs it was impos- sible to transfer to other deeds. This plan was submitted to Sir Charles Presley at the Stamp Office, and was approved by him and the other Stamp Office authorities ; but a second plan of Mr. Bessemer’s was, however, preferred, as answering the same important end with less of change in the routine of the office. Mr. Bessemer’s second pian was to drill three round holes in all the steel ‘stamp-dies, and fit into them three circular mov- able steel types, one showing the date of the month, the second the month of the year, and the third the year of issue, so that old stamps thus dated could not be used on a new deed, as its date of issue would betray its former use. This plan met the high approbation of the Stamp Office authorities and of the Ministers of State; and within two months an Act of Parliament was passed, calling in the old stamps, and substituting Bessemer’s dated stamps, as they are stillin use. Lord Althorp, then Prime Minister, promised Mr. Bessemer a place with light duties, worth £600 or £800 per annum, in the Stamp Office, but he resigned before he had an opportunity of carrying out his pledge, and although the invention has probably saved millions of pounds to the State, the inventor has never received a shilling in acknowledgment of his services. In 1854, Mr. Bessemer was successful in depositing, by a process similar to the modern method of electro-plating, a coating of copper upon castings in pewter, or other metal. This was about a year before Jacobi, of St. Petersburg, announced his electro- type process, and six or seven years before Elking- ton and Mason, of Birmingham, were fairly at work. Mr. Bessemer’s specimens were publicly exhibited. An expert amateur engine-turner and engraver, Mr. Bessemer, when a young man, executed a OF GREAT BRITAIN. large quantity of delicate and beautiful designs on steel, engraved with a diamond point, for patent medicine labels. For this work very high prices were paid, and he had as much of it as he could put his hands to. One other invention we must briefly indicate. Having occasion -to use a litile bronze-powder for the adornment of his sister’s album, he was struck by its high price—seven shillings an ounce. He analysed it, and found that the intrinsic value of the materials was about ls. per Ib., and that the high price arose from the tedious and costly method of preparing it by hand. Many experiments resulted in his contrivance of five self-acting machines, that performed perfectly and rapidly the work hitherto done by hand. To prevent the discovery of his method, he had the machines made in parts by several different engineers. Two workmen, whom he had taken into his confidence, faithfully guarded the secret, and at the end of many years had the large and profit- able business of the bronze-powder and gold paint factory at Camden Town handed over to them. Mr. Bessemer, subsequently, in 1843 and 1844, took patents for the manufacture of bronze-powder and gold paint. The result of these inventions has been to reduce the wholesale price of bronze-powder from £5 5s. to 3s. 6d. per pound. Details, even of the short titles of Mr. Bessemer’s patents, would greatly outrun our space. Between 1838 and 1875 inclusive, they are 113 in number, and the numerous drawings that make up seven thick volumes are all his own work. The record indicates a degree of mental activity and versatility, as a keen observer, original thinker, and clever inventor, rarely, if ever, equalled. The subjects include, among others, patents in connection with railway working, improvements in rails, brakes, engines and car- riages, axles, wheels, tyres, &c. For improvements in sugar manufacture, and treating saccharine matter, he took fifteen patents. In connection with motors, atmospheric propulsion, rotary air and steam-engine blast-furnaces, hydraulic apparatus, and hydrostatic press for treatment of ores and pig- iron; manufacture of iron and cast steel, and the laminating, shaping, pressing, rolling, moulding, embossing, shearing, and cutting of metals, he took out many patents. He took numerous patents for marine artillery—ordnance, projectiles, and ammu- nition ; screw propeller; anchors ; armour-plates ; improvements in steam and sailing vessels, and suspended saloons; silvering glass; casting type ; bronze and metallic powder, gold-paint, oils, var- nishes, ornamenting surfaces with bronze, «ec. ; . EMINENT MANUFACTURERS—HENRY BESSEMER. 71 raising and forcing, and collecting and storing water; asphalte pavements; waterproof fabrics ; reflectors, lenses, &c. ; besides buildings, machinery, and apparatus for a variety of purposes that we cannot stay to enumerate. In two consecutive years Mr. Bessemer took out twenty-seven patents ; in some instances, four and five for the most diverse subjects in a single day. For improvements in the manufacture of sugar, he was awarded the gold medal given by the late Prince Consort. He ex- tracted 85 per cent. of juice from the cane. Mr. Scott Russell came next, but fell short by about 10 per cent., although he used a very powerful press. The famous ‘“‘ Bessemer” steamer, with suspended saloon, was meant to carry passengers over a rough sea so smoothly that they could not by any chance get sick, but it has never yet been fairly tested at sea. The fault that was noticeable in the trial lay not, as far as could be gathered from the passage trips, in the saloon, but in other parts of the ship which were tried and found to be unsatisfactory, and for which Mr. Bessemer could not be held respon- sible. Mr. Bessemer’s grandest invention is the method of “manufacture of iron and steel, without fuel,” announced at the meeting of the British Asso- ciation, at Cheltenham, in 1856, to the admiration and amazement of the scientific world. It should be mentioned that many of Mr. Bessemer’s patents are for improvements upon his own inventions, experience having taught him the necessity of blocking pirates at every step. The rapid conversion of crude pig-iron into mal- leable iron and steel is the invention, of all others, with which his associated. His name is, indeed, inseparably con- nected with the process and product, and ‘ Bessemer steel” is now known throughout the civilised world. name will from henceforth be By this process the price of steel rails for roads has been reduced to that formerly paid for iron, and steel tyres for wheels have been reduced from £90 to £13 per ton. The invention was rapidly adopted wherever the iron-manufacture is prosecuted, and many honowrs have been conferred on the inventor. In England, he received from the Institution of Civil Engineers the Telford Gold Medal ; from the Society of Arts, the Albert Gold Medal. He was elected an honorary member for the Iron Board of Sweden; was made a freeman of the City of Hamburg; was made a G.C. of the Order of H.1.M. Francis Josephof Austria. The late Emperor Louis Napoleon wished to confer on him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, but permission was refused to wear it in this country, and his Majesty presented him instead with a splendid gold medal, In the United States Mr. Bessemer’s name will be had in remembrance from its having been given to a prosperous and rapidly increasing town. He also received a gold medal, accompanied by an autograph letter, from the King of Wurtembureg ; as well as a gold medal and honorary membership of the Society of Arts and Manufactures at Berlin, &e. And in January, 1878, the Institution of Civil Engineers have further marked their appreciation of Mr. Bessemer’s inventions by conferring on him the honorary title of C.E., and have also awarded him the splendid Howard Quinquennial Prize for his improvements in the manufacture of steel. Mr. Bessemer’s constructive skill and exquisite taste as an architect are admirably illustrated in his mansion at Denmark Hill, and notably by the inner hall, billiard-room, and conservatory, that are simply perfect in their principles of construction, proportions, and the elaboration and graceful beauty of their decorations. No one who has enjoyed the privilege of inter- course with Mr. Bessemer can have failed to be charmed with his manners:and conversation ; and any one who can begrudge him such rewards as have been achieved by the industrious exercise of his high talents has a disposition the reverse of enviable. Mr. Bessemer’s life of leisure is not a life of idle- ness. He is nothing if not inventive and progres- sive. His last work, for the present, is to design and personally superintend the construction of an observatory for astronomical purposes. The specu- lum of his telescope will be fifty inches in diameter, of polished plate glass two inches thick, turned on the face by diamond points, in a lathe designed by himself. The depression will be about half an inch. The concave face, after polishing, will be coated with a deposit of pure silver, reflecting 90 per cent. of the incident light. He expects that his instru- ment will be of equal power to the world-famed telescope of Lord Rosse, whose reflector is an alloy of copper and tin, reflecting only 63 per cent. of the light falling on it. Tn closing this necessarily brief sketch, full of facts and suggestions as the subject is, we have to say unfeignedly that “the half hath not been told,” and thus abruptly must we take leave of this “great captain of modern civilisation.” Our portrait of Mr. Bessemer is taken from a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company. INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.—II. By James HenprErson, one or H.M IR ROBERT PEEL—grandfather of the pre- sent baronet—who was himself a large employer of factory children, and therefore well qualified to understand their circumstances and condition, was their first prominent champion in the House of Commons. In the year 1802, he succeeded in inducing Parliament to pass a Bill, the preamble of which set forth that, “Whereas it hath of late become a practice in cotton and woollen mills, and in cotton and woollen factories, to employ a great number of male and female ap- prentices and other persons in the same build- ing; and in consequence of which certain regulations are become necessary to preserve the health and morals of such apprentices and other persons ; be it therefore enacted,” &c. The clauses of this Act of themselves convey some idea of the condition of the factory operatives at this time, by indicating the evils which it was intended to guard against. It proyided— 1. For the washing with quicklime and water, twice a year, of all the rooms and apartments in a mill or factory, and for their due ventilation. 2. That every apprentice should be supplied with two complete suits of clothing, with suitable linen, stockings, hats, and shoes, one new complete suit being delivered to such apprentice once at least in every year. 3. That no apprentice after the Ist of January, 1803, should be allowed or compelled to work more than twelve hours a day, nor before six o’clock in the morning nor after nine o’clock at night. 4, That every apprentice should be instructed in some part of every working day, for the first four years at least of his or her apprenticeship, in reading, writing, and arithmetic, or either of them, according to the age and abilities of such apprentice, “by some discreet and proper person.” 5. That the male and female apprentices should be provided with separate and distinct sleeping apartments, and that not more than two appren- tices should be allowed to sleep in one bed. 6. That every apprentice should be instructed on Sundays in the principles of the Christian religion, and should attend divine worship once a month at least. 7. That the justices of the peace in Quarter Sessions should be authorised to appoint visitors of factories, whose duty it would be to enforce the . AssIsTANT-INSPECTORS OF FACTORIES. provisions of this Act. One of these visitors, it was provided, should be a justice of the peace, and the other a clergyman, either of the Church of England or of the Church of Scotland. Among other duties which the visitors were called upon to discharge under this Act, was to ascertain whether any infectious disorder prevailed among the operatives in a mill or factory, and they were empowered to call in a physician or other qualified medical practitioner. This Act of 1802 was therefore the first Factory Act placed on the statute-book. In its operation it was limited in several important respects, other- wise it would certainly have met with a greater amount of opposition than it appears to have done. Its application was limited to cotton and woollen factories, and to children and young persons who were apprentices employed therein, Its main defect, however, consisted in the imperfect nature of the machinery by which it was proposed to be enforced. It was too much to hope or to expect that a justice of the peace and a clergyman would willingly undertake such disagreeable and inquisi- torial duties as were imposed upon the visitors to be appointed under the Act. Practically the law proved inoperative, and its chief influence was to induce mill-owners to abandon the system of ap- prenticeship. It was an important Act, however, as expressing the principle that the State was justified in interfering with and regulating labour. In this respect it established a precedent of great value, for although the Act, being limited in its applica- tion to apprentices, could hardly be said to raise the question of the right of the State to interfere with the free labourer, yet it unquestionably made the subsequent protection of children and young persons who were not apprentices a much easier matter. This, the first of our factory-laws, however, was not long in being superseded by the altered conditions of employment in the textile manufacturing dis- tricts. Watt's improvements upon the steam-engino revolutionised the trade by substituting steam for water power. It became no longer necessary to build factories in remote and comparatively in- accessible localities, for a steam-engine could be erected anywhere, and more conveniently as a rule in a town than in the country. Manufacturers were not long in discovering that it was much more INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION—FACTORY-CHILDREN. 73 convenient and economical to bring the factory to the work-people than to take the work-people to the factory, and mills were rapidly erected in the densest centres of the population. The system of appren- ticeship soon became to a large extent obsolete, and thousands of young children were employed in factories who resided with their parents and were altogether controlled by them. Not being formally apprenticed, these children did not come within the scope of the Factory Act of 1802, and did not even enjoy the partial protection which it afforded. ‘The grievous oppression from which they suffered soon raised a loud outcry, and an active agitation was entered upon for an extension of the scope and application of the law regulating the employment of factory apprentices. In June, 1815, Sir Robert Peel gave effect to this opinion by introducing a new Factory Bill into the House of Commons which would apply to all children employed in cotton-mills, whether appren- ticed or not. The hon. baronet explained that what he was disposed to recommend was that a regulation should be adopted forbidding altogether the employment of children under ten years of age, and limiting the hours of work in the case of those above that age to twelve hours and a half per day, including the time for education and meals. This would leave ten hours a day for laborious employ- ment. The remissness of the inspectors under the Act of 1802 in the performance of their duties was referred to by Sir Robert, and he proposed some amendments in this respect. As it was understood that this Bill would not be pressed during the current session, its introduction did not provoke much comment. On the whole, it may be said to have been favourably received. Mr. Horner, in supporting it, said that the practice of apprenticing parish children in distant manufactories was as repugnant to humanity as any practice which had ever been suffered to exist by the negligence of the Legislature. The abuses which the system had engendered were most scandalous, as Mr. Horner explained. ‘It had been known,” he said, “ that with a bankrupt’s effects a gang of these children had been publicly advertised and put up for sale as part of the property.” A most atrocious instance had been brought before the Court of King’s Bench about two years before this time, in which a number of boys apprenticed by a parish in London to one manufacturer had been transferred to another, and had been found by some benevolent persons in a state of absolute famine. ‘Another case even more horrible,” Mr. Horner continued to explain, “had 10 come to his knowledge while sitting on a Select Committee, A London parish had actually entered into a formal agreement with a Lancashire manu- facturer by which it was stipulated that with every twenty sound children sent to the latter one idiot should be taken.” Beyond the introduction of the Bill nothing more was done in Parliament during the session of 1815. The following year the first Select Committee which considered this important question was appointed, and the facts which were for the first time formally disclosed in evidence materially aided those who were endeavouring to obtain some further legislative protection for the factory-children. The agitation on this subject was concurrent with a widespread revival throughout the country of the interest taken by the benevolent in the social and moral condition of the people. The establishment of Sunday-schools had become very general ; and much of the most valuable evidence submitted to the Committee came from gentlemen who had, through these invaluable institutions, become acquainted with the sufferings and degraded condition of the factory - children. Messrs. George and Nathaniel Gould, of Man- chester, made some remarkable statements before the Select Committee, their information being in the main derived from their experience in the Sunday-schools. Another powerful ally the oppressed factory- children found in the well-known social reformer Robert Owen. Owen’s opinions upon this ques- tion of factory legislation were highly valuable, because he had already put them to the test of practical application at the large mills at Lanark, in Scotland, of which he had been for some years part-owner and manager. He informed the Com- mittee that when he and his partners acquired the Lanark Mills, some seventeen years before, he found five hundred children employed in them, who had been obtained chiefly from the Edinburgh poor-houses. The ages of these children ranged generally from five and six to seven and eight, and their hours of work were thirteen per day, inclu- sive of meal-times. Owen, with that remarkable conscientiousness that distinguished all his actions in life, had his attention concentrated on the con- dition of this large number of helpless children, and he'soon discovered that, although they were extremely well fed, well clothed, and well lodged, and though great care was taken of them when out of the mills, yet their growth and their minds were materially injured by being employed at these ages in the cotton-mills for eleven hours 74 GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. and a half a day. It was true, he said, that these children, in consequence of being well fed and clothed and lodged, looked well and healthy to the superficial observer; yet their limbs were very generally deformed, their growth was stunted, and although one of the best school-masters upon the old plan was engaged to instruct them regularly every night, in general they made very little pro- gress, even in learning the common rudiments. Owen submitted to the Committee the heads of a Bill for regulating labour in all factories, which, it is interesting to note, anticipated in some respects the action of the Legislature by nearly half a century. He proposed to prohibit the employment of children under ten years of age altogether ; and he was the first to make the suggestion that work and educa- tion might be combined. He proposed that from ten to twelve years of age children should only be employed half time in the factory, while required to attend a day-school. Many years afterwards this idea was acted upon by Parliament, and it has proved a remarkable success. For young persons over twelve years of age, Owen was of opinion that ten hours of actual work in the day, or at most ten hours and a half, should be established as a maximum. The difference in the cost of production, supposing these regulations were enforced, he main- tained would be but slight, and no party would suffer from them either in respect to our home or foreign trade. Owen’s confidence upon this point, however, was shared in by few manufacturers, and a strenuous effort was made to depreciate the value of his evidence before the Select Committee. The broad facts established about the cruel overworking of children, however, could not be gainsayed. It was clearly proved that they were sent to work occa- sionally at five years of age, frequently at six and seven, and the regular hours of labour varied from thirteen to fifteen. At times they extended to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four—from 5 a.m. till 9p.m. The only stoppage permitted was for dinner, for which they were usually allowed forty minutes. The work-people took their breakfast and tea by snatches while at their work. In some ex- treme cases it was stated that the factory engine was run continuously for fourteen hours a day, the operators being compelled to swallow all their food while standing at the spinning-frames. Night-work was very common, and instances were quoted where children were employed in the factories till far on in the Sunday mornings. Notwithstanding the clear proof given of the existence of many gross abuses, the Legislature moved slowly in the direction of providing a remedy. It was not until the session of 1819 that Sir Robert Peel succeeded in getting the Factory Bill through Parliament which he had introduced into the House of Commons fowr years previously. And, after all, he had been constrained to accept of amendments which seriously impaired the practical value of the measure. Its application was limited in the first place to cotton-factories only, although the abuses of the factory system existed in every branch of our textile manufac- tures. There can be little doubt that in thus limiting the scope of the Bill our legislators were- actuated by a feeling of jealousy against this com- paratively new branch of business—an animus which had been even more distinctly manifested during the preceding century by the imposition of special restrictions and burdens upon the cotton manufacture. There was a heavy tax imposed upon the raw material imported from abroad, and even the manufactured calicoes were subjected in some cases to an excise-duty, so as to discourage their competition with the more highly-prized woollen manufactures of the country. The Act. of 1802 was not repealed, however, by that of 1819, and the latter, with all its shortcomings, made an important stride in advance. It forbade the employment of any child. in any description of work in a cotton-mill until it had attained the age of nine years, and it limited the hours of work for all under sixteen years of age to twelve per day, to be taken between the hours of 5 a.m. and 9 P.M. Out of this period of twelve hours it also: provided that half an hour should be given for breakfast and one hour for dinner, thus limiting the actual working hours to ten and a half per day. Provisions were also made under this Act. for improving the sanitary condition of factories. and for the publication of an abstract of the law in such a manner as that the work-people would be: kept fully informed respecting it. IRON AND STEEL.—III. THE BLAST FURNACE: THE FUEL. By Wruram Dtunpas Scorr-Moncrizrr, C.EH. NOUGH has been said in the two previous papers to enable the reader to understand how important it is to have pure fuel for the production of commercial iron. The finest ores are rendered worthless by the use of bad fuel, and inferior ores, after having been roasted, can be so refined by smelting with charcoal, that the best iron may be obtained from them. In the competition that is taking place among different nations and districts, and between individual producers as well, it has become necessary to look carefully into every source of economy. It can be readily understood that when the amount of the fuel employed is so much in excess of the material produced, as it is in the case of the blast furnace, the saving of it is a matter of paramount importance. The price of labour and the difficulties in the way of ob- taining fuel vary so greatly in different parts of the world, that those countries which are most favour- ably situated in these respects have hitherto been able to overlook to a great extent the loss arising from wasteful appliances. But the advances of others have so equalised the struggle, that if any one country is to maintain a pre-eminence, it must take advantage of every possible means for reducing the cost of production by a saving of its fuel. ‘With regard to the interests of the individual manufac- turer, every penny saved is a penny gained : so that his whole success may be said to depend on the same conditions of economical production. It is not only in the interests of any particular industry that the question of how to save our fuel has acquired its present importance. The original sources of supply of all forms of energy are supposed —and reasonably so—to be subjected to a process of continuous exhaustion ; but the process is going on so slowly, and to prevent it is so completely beyond the capacity of human ingenuity, that it must be accepted as inevitable. It is a different matter, however, when we come to deal with magazines of heat and force that have been stored up for us by nature, and for the economical use of which we are directly responsible. Already in this country coal- fields have become exhausted which ought to have remained untouched if economical appliances had been made use of. When the measurement of the coal that remains in Great Britain is given in tons, and the time it is likely to last is stated in years, the prospect of exhaustion seems to be distant enough ; but if the unit of measurement be repre- sented in square miles, and the periods of time in centuries, the numbers have a more ominous signi- ficance. In America the case is somewhat different : there the quantity of coal, both in the United States and in Canada, is so prodigious that several gene- rations may be permitted to hammer away at it to their hearts’ content without materially affecting the result. Yet even there the cost of conveyance renders it necessary to use as little as possible. In this country, on the other hand, the time has already come when every thinking man ought to see the national importance of using all reasonable means for saving our supplies of fuel. The calculations which have been made to show how long our sup- plies of coal are likely to last are so complicated, on account of the different estimates of the ratio of in- crease, that they are unsuited for a popular treatise. It has been estimated that nearly one-tenth of the entire area of Great Britain is made up of the coal- measures, which extend, it is believed, to about 11,859 square miles, and are divided into the two great classes of bituminous, and stone or anthracite coal. The former, it is calculated, occupies about 8,139 square miles, and the latter about 3,720. The bituminous coals are well known from their being almost exclusively used for household pur- poses. They may be readily recognised from the way in which they cake during the process of combustion. The next in rank is the splint coal, which is largely used in forging furnaces. It does not cake, like the bituminous coals, but is greatly used where intense heat is necessary, because it does not burn away so rapidly as caking coal. ‘The last is the stone or anthracite coal, which re- quires very intense heat for its combustion, and for long baffled all attempts to use it for smelting purposes. It is to the iron works at Ystalyfera, and the exertions of Mr. Crane and Mr. Budd, of South Wales, that we are indebted for the use of anthracite coal in blast furnaces. Sir William Fairbairn tells of a visit to the works of the former gentlemen about thirty years ago, when he was shown a specimen of anthracite coal that had been subjected to the temperature of fusion of the minerals in a blast furnace for forty-eight hours, and was only charred to a depth of about 76 GREAT INDUSTRIES three-quarters of an inch, the interior being quite unaffected. In America, the great iron-districts are dependent upon the same sort of fuel, which has been made available partly by the introduction of the hot blast, and partly by constructing the furnaces so as to increase the temperature. In other countries, the supplies of coal are much less than in Great Britain and America. In France it is estimated at 1,719 square miles, or 1-118th of the area; in Spain, 3,408 or 1-52nd ; in Belgium, 518 square miles, or 1-22nd; British America is supposed to contain 18,000 square miles of coal, 2-9ths of its area; the United States, 133,132 square miles of bituminous coal, or 1-17th of its area; and Pennsylvania, 15,437 miles of anthracite, or 1-3rd of its area.* It would be somewhat beyond the scope of the present paper to explain the causes of the waste that occurs in almost every case in which fuel is em- ployed, from the domestic hearth to the largest steam boiler; but referring especially to the blast furnace, the reader may be able to form some idea of the waste that was going on forty years ago, before the adoption of the hot blast, which 1s, after all, but one link in along chain of possible economy. Supposing all the commercial pig-iron of this country to have been produced without the hot blast, in the year 1857 there would have been a waste of at least 12,000,000 tons of coal in the process of smelting alone. What the accumulated waste would have amounted to since that time it may be left to the reader to imagine. In the process of converting the “pigs” into other forms of commercial iron the gross waste that is going on at present may be taken as greater than at any previous period, and is simply incalculable. We have said quite enough, however, on the general question, and will now give some account of the different kinds of fuel, and the mode of pre- paring them. It has already been explained that the finest kinds of iron require to be made from the finest kinds of fuel; and so it comes that charcoal, which is the best in respect of purity, and has the strongest chemical affinities, is invariably employed in the production of the best Swedish brands, which stand pre-eminent in all markets. Every variety of wood is capable of conversion into char- coal, but the kinds that are most generally used are those which, on account of their smaller growth, are unfitted for other purposes; and in order to avoid the expense that would be incurred from replanting, it is usual to employ those kinds which spring readily * Taylor. OF GREAT BRITAIN. from the root after cutting. Accordingly, the oak and alder are chiefly employed in this country, because they become as luxuriant as ever after a short term of years. This period, of course, varies with the climate, soil, and locality. In the neigh- bourhood of extensive forests, where large trees are cheaper they are, of course, employed in preference to the smaller timber. The common method of producing charcoal is by piling up the wood, which has been previously cut into short lengths, and filling in the interstices with the smaller branches. The heap being then covered with clay, earth, or wet charcoal powder, is ignited m such a way that combustion is allowed to go on very slowly, and so as gradually to eliminate the gases that are given off by the high temperature. These gases, when they are condensed, become commercially valuable in the form of pyroligneous acid, which is used, among other things, for producing a coarse kind of vinegar. It is therefore of considerable importance to utilise as far as possible the gaseous products which escape from the wood in the process of its conver- sion into charcoal. With this object, the wood is often placed in air-tight iron retorts instead of in heaps, as already described; an arrangement that admits of the heat being applied from the outside, and allows the gases to be carried off in iron pipes to the condensing apparatus, where they appear in the form of liquid pyroligneous acid. The charcoal which is used for making gunpowder requires to be freed as much as possible from the volatile products ; and so the communication between the retorts and the condensing apparatus has to be cut off when the charcoal is cooling, to prevent it from re-absorbing the gases. The following are the results of some experiments on the yield of charcoal from rapid and slow com- bustion :— Charcoal Pro- | Charcoal Pro- Wood, duced by Quick | duced by Slow Combustion. Combustion. Nouns Opice neers Hee | 16°54 25:60 Old‘ Oaks avi-crcemecccas | 16°91 wastrel Young Dede, .s-.cce. | 14°25 25°25 Old Déal maeererce fae | 14°05 25°00 Wow p Eueteer here eee | 16°22 27°72 Old’ ir Saeeeees ies tec 15°35 24°75 IME Cami mageestcnaanes 15°38 25°67 These experiments prove the great economy of slow combustion. It seems quite certain that charcoal was the fuel extensively used for the production of iron in the TE i == i) iu i (From a Sketch by Mr, W. D. Scott-Moncrief’.) < pe i 2 ie vat {tH ¥; + ms He N eet Dias alr le a te _ = PeLU SLA Pema Cs nas Praat spate a ce SEN ee tet ea WS poor =e —s = ——S— SS ee = See | — SSS == == —— = = = ioe —S>= = = = a ae = SSS 2 = Pavia amen thus CHARGING A MODERN Biast Furnace (Govan Iron Works). 78 GREAT INDUSTRIES primitive processes referred to in the first of these papers; and it also appears that coal was never thought available for the purposes of smelting until it had been subjected to the same process as wood, and been converted into coke. It is somewhat difficult to arrive at any exact information as to the historical sequence of discoveries in the process of smelting iron and casting it into moulds, but it is certainly to this branch of the industry that we owe those improvements in the treatment of coal that render it suitable for the purpose. The difficulties that lay in the way of producing cheap and strong castings led to the discovery of the use of coal in the form of coke, instead of charcoal, which was becoming so expensive, that its employment as fuel rendered the castings unsaleable. At Greenock, there is a large piece of cast-iron ordnance which is said to have been recovered from one of the wrecks of the Spanish Armada; and if this is an authentic account of its origin, and supposing it to have been manufactured in Spain, it proves the existence of appliances in that country which must have subsequently disappeared. Nearly fifty years previous to the time of the Spanish Armada, about 1543, a certain Ralph Hoge, or Hogge, of Bucksteed, in Sussex, had acquired great reputation for the manufacture of cast-iron ordnance ; and “this founder,’ it is stated, “employed as his assistant Peter Baude, a Frenchman, whom he had probably brought over to teach him the improved method,” whatever that may have been. Not long after, a covenanted servant of the Frenchman, John Johnson, excelled his master in the art of casting ordnance ; and his son Thomas, in 1595, succeeded in casting forty-two pieces for the Earl of Cumber- land, weighing 6,000 lb. or about three tons apiece, There is no record either of the exact period when the earlier blast bloomary developed into the blast furnace ; and it is quite possible that the one had no material influence upon the development of the other, as the earlier apparatus produced little, if anything, but malleable iron, and the blast furnace was exclusively employed for the production of castings. It is certain, however, that the fuel employed up to the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury was charcoal only, and that it was the rapid falling off in the supplies of timber that led to the almost total extinction of the industry, which, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, had risen to the im- portance of a great export trade. Special enact- ments had to be enforced for the preservation of the forests ; and the production of iron, which had risen towards the end of the seventeenth century OF GREAT BRITAIN. to 180,000 tons, was reduced in 1740 to 17,000 tons. It was this pressure, arismg from the scarcity of fuel, that became the mother of the recent discoveries and inventions in connection with the iron industries of this country. There is something inexpressibly sad in the biographies of many of the men who were the pioneers of these im- provements. They frequently fell as victims to the prejudice and ignorance of commercial Philistines, who looked upon their genius as madness and their improvements as impracticable. While on the subject of fuel, the story of the early struggles of the original partners of the Colebrookdale Iron Works is of special interest. At another time we shall speak at greater length of Abraham Darby and John Thomas, who founded these works; but at present we shall restrict the story of their lives to their discovery of a cheap substitute for charcoal, which had become so ex- pensive as to threaten to blot out the industry altogether. About 1730, Abraham Darby made experiments upon mixtures of raw coal and char- coal for the production of iron castings, but they completely failed. This led to his conceiving the idea of subjecting coal to the same process as wood when converting it into charcoal, and with this object he arranged a hearth in the open air, upon which he piled a mound of coal, and covering it with clay and cinders, ignited the heap, allowing just sufficient air to be admitted to keep the com- bustion going on as gradually as possible. The result was a stack of good coke. In applying his newly-discovered material, he himself spent six days and nights on the top of his furnace, taking no regular sleep, and having his meals brought to him; and when at last the experiment succeeded, and the iron began to pour, he fell so fast asleep that his workmen could not waken him. It is said he was taken home a distance of a quarter of a mile in a state of insensibility. In connection with Abraham Darby’s venture, there is the somewhat uncommon accompaniment of great success which followed shortly aftér his first experiment ; and it is pleasing to add that the descendants of the two original partners worked together for more than one hundred years, faithful to each other to the last. The discovery of coke as a substitute for charcoal revolutionised the art of casting in iron, although for long every detail of the process was kept as secret as possible, with barred doors and _ bolted windows. It was the almost universal substitute for charcoal until the introduction of the hot blast, which rendered the use of raw coal a cheaper and TRON AND more practicable mode of obtaining pig-iron from the erude iron. In castings where the pig-iron is poured into moulds, coke is still universally used. The im- provements referred to in producing charcoal have been introduced, in a modified form, for converting raw coal into coke: that is to say, that instead of burning it in a heap, as in the case of Abraham Darby’s first experiment, it is put into close ovens, by which a great saving is effected, amounting in most cases to fully twenty-five per cent. In addition to coal, which is now the fuel almost universally employed, it will be well to say something of peat, which is almost the only indi- genous source of artificial heat in Iveland and some districts, such as the North of Scotland. In Ireland there are great deposits of iron ore, such as those at the Arigna mines, and the Kidney ores of Balcarry Bay, though they have never become of any great commercial importance, owing to the absence of the fuel necessary for smelting them; but it appears that peat, which is the natural fuel of the country, when dried and car- bonised, is peculiarly well adapted for reducing them. Sir William Fairbairn, who was one of the greatest authorities on the subject of tron manu- facture, spoke, in 1869, in the most sanguine manner about the prospects of Ireland; but it seems that there are many difficulties in the way of introducing peat as a substitute for coal, on account of its light- ness and friability, and also from the expense that must be incurred in drying it and pressing it into a form that is available for the intense temperature of the blast furnace. The author referred to quotes a letter, which he received from Mr. M‘AIl, who had devoted much of his attention to the subject of iron ores in Ireland. He says: “I have sent you two samples of iron ore: one is the red, the other the purple hematite. There are strata which are inexhaustible, and the ore can be raised and delivered at the furnace for less than a shilling a ton; the peat or vegetable carbon is equally cheap and abundant. Limestone, of the purest quality, is also close at hand, and can be delivered at the furnace at ninepence per ton. On account of the purity of the materials, iron of the greatest strength and ductility can be made, which, from its non- liability to corrode, would be admirably adapted for STEEL—FUEL. 79 marine purposes.” The sanguine expectations sug- gested in this sentence, depending as they do upon the use of peat as a fuel for smelting purposes, have, unfortunately, never been realised. During what is now known as the coal famine, which occurred in 1873, great importance was attached to the use of peat as a substitute for coal, and many experiments were made, on an extensive scale, for drying and compressing it, so as to econontise the cost of con- veyance and add to its heating qualities, but none of them have survived the test of experience. It is therefore to be feared that until this problem is solved the iron ores of Ireland must remain unre- munerative. In speaking of peat, Sir William Fairbairn says that “when it is compressed in hydraulic presses, it loses two-thirds of its volume and two-fifths of its weight through the expulsion of water. It is used for smelting iron in the Vosges, Bavaria, Saxony, and France. The yield of charcoal from peat is never more than 40 per cent.; but the products of distillation are some- times collected, and form valuable articles of com- merce.” It only remains for us to say that the same remarks that apply to the other forms of fuel, with regard to the essential element of. purity, apply equally to coal. It is-said, whether truly or not, that the famous brands of malleable iron, known as Lowmoor, Farnely, and Bowling, depend for théir value and reputation, not so much on the purity of the ores as upon the superior character of the coal with which they are treated. The Low- moor iron is said to be manufactured from the “‘ Belter bed coal,” which contains a smaller per- centage of sulphur than any other coal in Stafford- shire ; but the bed is so thin that Dr. Percy, in his well-known book upon the metallurgy of iron and steel, comes to the conclusion that ‘it is quite in- sufficient for the manufacture of all the iron that goes out under the famous Lowmoor brand, and he thinks that its superiority really depends upon the care that is taken in every detail of its manufacture. Sufficient has been said, however, to prove that in coal, as well as in all other forms of fuel, freedom from impurities is an essential condition of its value for producing the finest qualities of com- mercial iron. > Tur Op Manor-Hovuse, Morey, BIRTH-PLACE OF Sir Titus Sar, (From a Photograph in Balgarnie’s ‘* Life of Salt.’’) WOOL AND WORSTED.—II. ALPACA—SECOND PAPER. SALTATRE AND ITS FOUNDER. By Wiuiiam GIBSson. ALKING northward from Bradford, the pe- destrian has Nab Woods and Heaton Royds on his left, and on the dexter hand rises a ridge that hides all to the north but a fringe of wood and the far-off blue sky. Presently, between three and four miles from the town, the road sweeps over the crest of this barrier, and before him opens out one of the prettiest panoramas in that part of Yorkshire. Lying snugly on the southern ridge, backed by a curtain of green, 1s a pretty stone-built town, its white houses gleaming in the sun; and lower down the valley there winds the shining Aire, one of the tributaries of the Great Ouse. Beyond that again Shipley sleeps in its cup-like hollow; and away towards the horizon are Baildon, or Baal’s Hill, a relic of our Druidical ancestors, and Baildon Moor. To the westward, Bingley nestles among her woods; and up the valley there are the smoke and bustle of Keighley, near the rugged bleakness of that famous country-house where the fiery-hearted authoress of “Shirley” and “Jane Eyre” first saw the light. This white stone-built town immediately below us is called Saltaire, after its founder, Titus Salt. Three chief buildings in it at once arrest attention —the schools, whose fagade and pretty flower-garden in front are nearest ; the church, with its fine portico and pretentious cupola, down by the side of the river ; and, farther to the right, a huge block of buildings, six storeys high, with a square, bell-like tower, some two hundred and fifty feet in altitude, from whose top curl silently but continuously wreaths of dense smoke. As we stand _ busily scanning the scene, the clanging of a bell breaks the prevailing silence, the great gates of this build- ing are flung back, and a stream of men and women pours out, and continues to flow on till all the streets of the town are crowded, and one begins to wonder ALPACA—SIR TITUS SALT. 81 whether the busy tide of life will ever cease flowing. It is in some senses a remarkable throng that one sees rushing along there. First of all there are an evident neatness and cleanliness about every in- dividual in it, betokening self-respect. Then there is that air of comfort and happiness on the faces never seen on those of the idler and the drone. Murmurs of conversation, intermingled with merry peals of laughter, float towards us on the breeze, and we can see the younger members of the living brain and a kind heart. Though both now lie mouldering in that mausoleum beside the church, there is among this people, whom Titus Salt brought together, taught, trained, and benefited, a keen, thankful memory of a great “captain of industry,” upon whose like the world may seldom look again. All this is the outcome of a certain journey to Liverpool in the year 1836. It began in Silsbridge Lane, grew through Brick Lane, Union Street, and Fawcett Street mills, till the thriving town of stream seizing the opportunity of the walk home to indulge in juvenile gambols and good-natured pranks. Not until some four or five thousand persons have filed past us are the great gates shut again, and when each workman composing the throng has closed his own cottage door behind him, one fancies the scene has for awhile been peopled by a dream. About a quarter of a century ago this thickly- populated town had no existence, and where rows of houses now stand there grew the short green grass. It sprang up, like the palace of Aladdin, under the powerful hand of a good genius, and stands there now a lasting monument to a busy 11 SALTAIRE Works. (From a Photograph by Messrs, Appleton and Co., Bradford.) Bradford was too small to contain it, and, bursting the corporate circle, it expanded itself here in pretty Airedale. The first stone in the great alpaca-town of Saltaire was laid by Titus Salt in 1851, and twenty years later the last building was completed. It may not be amiss here to jot down a few parti- culars concerning the builder of this town. Sir Titus Salt was born at Manor House, near Wakefield, in 1803. ‘Soon afterwards his father removed to Brad- ford, where he began business as a wool-stapler, and gained considerable notoriety as a keen man of business, and yet honest and clear as the day. When he arrived in the town its population was some sixteen thousand, and its wool industries 82 GREAT INDUSTRIES were then in their infancy. It was overshadowed by the great town of Leeds, only a few miles distant, and had to struggle to keep pace with its big rival. But there were a few men in the smaller town who were determined to stand by the place of their adoption, and to raise it into a greater position than that occupied even by Leeds itself. Richard Fawcett, Matthew Thompson, the brothers Horsfall, Rand, Garnett, the Ackroyds, and the Salts, father and son, were each hosts in themselves, and before many years had elapsed they held their own with their neighbours. Nor was it long before the great men of Leeds awoke to the fact that they would have to look to their laurels, for, whether as wool mervhants or manufacturers, the Bradford men were running them so close that it was doubtful whether after all Leeds was not destined to. take the second place in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Young Titus Salt went into his father’s business much against his will. Had he had his own way he would have essayed agriculture, for that was his beaw ideal of a profession. Circumstances, however, were stronger than his inclination, and he had to learn by hard knocks and rude rubs how to buy a pack of wool, and how best to get rid of it to In his twenty-first year he became a He was a tall, advantage. partner in the firm with his father. rather handsome-looking young fellow at this time, , and he very soon gained a fair reputation for his business capacities. So when, in 1834, he started for himself as a spinner in Silsbridge Lane, many of his shrewd, kindly neighbours predicted a great future for him. Indeed, about this time, no wool- stapler or spinner required any other testimonial than that an applicant for a situation within the West Riding should have been employed by Salt’s firm. Being a Radical in politics, young Salt threw himself into the agitations of the Reform movement, and before the Municipal Corporations Act passed he was acting chief-constable of Brad- ford. On its incorporation, he was at once elected as the senior alderman, a position he held till he was raised to the mayoralty, in 1848. Meanwhile he had been placed on the borough and county benches as a magistrate, and he afterwards rose to be deputy-leutenant of the West Riding. In the general election of 1851 he was strongly pressed to allow himself to be put in nomination for one of the borough seats, and so far acquiesced as to issue an address to the electors ; but he retired before the polling-day rather than split the Liberal vote. He was, however, returned to the Parliament of 1859, but resigned on account of feeble health, in 1861, OF GREAT BRITAIN. when Mr. W. E. Forster, himself a manufacturer of great repute, replaced him, and England got its national Education Act. My. Salt married, in 1829, Caroline, daughter of George Whitlam, Esq., of Great Grimsby, by whom he had issue seven sons and five daughters, nine of whom survive him ; and in 1869 her Majesty the Queen created him a baronet by advice of Mr. Gladstone’s Administra- tion. He died—and it is no flattery to say it—full of honours and universally esteemed, on the 29th of December, 1876, almost on the same day that another benevolent and great-hearted pioneer of commerce, Mr. George Moore, of the firm of Moore, Copestake, and Co., of London and Bradford, was called to his rest. Such, briefly, are the outlines of this remarkable life. Considered from the point of view of a wise philanthropist, he holds possibly the very highest position in the north of England. His purse was ever open to the call of the needy and the friendless. No local or national institution ever appealed to him in vain. He was, however, specially interested in the elementary and higher education of the youth of the district, and his earliest benefactions were bestowed on these objects. Ata time when learning was thought to be out of the reach of the poorer classes, he was founding scholarships in the Brad- ford Grammar Schools for boys and girls, and long before the name of W. E. Forster was connected with the great scheme which became law in 1870, Titus Salt had conceived the idea of founding schools for the children of his work-people, and scientific and other classes for the work-people them- selves. Education, indeed, was one of his hobbies, and two of the finest institutions in Saltaire are dedicated to this object. When, in 1844, his name was very little known outside the circle in which he lived, and the merchants with whom he dealt, her Majesty the Queen, who had heard that the new fabric called alpaca was beginning to come into vogue for ladies’ toilettes, and who had a couple of sheep of the alpaca breed in the home farm at Windsor, sent to Bradford two fleeces to be manufactured into his notable cloth. The Queen has always been not only a leader of fashion, but the first to commend virtue and honour wherever they have been brought to her notice, and no doubt Mr. Salt felt highly gratified by royalty taking note of his labours. The fleeces weighed 164 ]b., and when combed and sorted yielded 1 lb. of white and 9 Ib. of beautiful black wool. Salt did his utmost to please his illustrious patroness, and he surpassed ALPACA—SIR himself in the products the wool yielded. He wove an apron, which was a marvel of fineness and glossiness ; a striped figured dress, the warp of which was rose-coloured silk, the weft white alpaca, and the flowers thrown up in the pattern alternately im one material and the other. Probably this was the first time in England where the product of the Yhinese cocoon and the fleece of the Peruvian mountain camel were brought into contact, and it will serve to show the strides that had been taken in. Salt’s works, and the progress made in alpaca manufacture since 1836. There was also a plain dress fifteen yards in length, for which only 24 lb. of alpaca were used. A fourth article was a plaid alpaca dress of the same length, a great novelty in those days, in which the white and black wools and lustres were splendidly blended, and so fine that there was considerable difficulty in telling whether it was not entirely woven of silk. There was also a woollen alpaca dress among the articles sent back to Windsor, so that we may see from these curious facts that Salt by the year 1844 had so extended the processes of preparing and weaving, that he could at will produce the finest and most exquisite materials from alpaca, in combination with cotton, wool, or silk. In eight years, therefore, he had done what all his predecessors had failed in accom plishing. It may be added that these articles so charmed her Majesty that fashions were revolution- ised, and the alpaca manufacture received an impetus which carried its staple into the first place among new home products. Persistence in a course once entered upon was at the root of the success of Titus Salt. He might hesitate long before taking a thing in hand, but once he took it up he never let it go till it had yielded up ‘its secret, and served its purpose. Indeed, it has been said that he frequently worried his architects and machinists to the verge of desperation, for he was satisfied with nothing short of perfection, and pared and polished little defects till they became advantages. With him, indeed, as with nature, there was no such thing as a trifle, and all that left his hands had reached the ne plus ultra of finish. This caused his plans sometimes to have the air of slowness ; but as soon as he was satisfied with the design, he astonished his subordinates by the eagerness with which he awaited the completed result. Whether in a building, a machine, a new process of manufacture, or a projected variation in some department of his works, nothing he ever took in hand failed, because he brought to it that prime element of success—the doggedness of purpose which TITUS: SALT. 3 ie) would not be denied. In his case, as in that of most great leaders in national industries, what was most characteristic and striking was not so much the amount of genius he brought to bear upon that which engaged his attention, as the amount of vigilance he expended upon it. Then he was essentially a silent man—one after Carlyle’s own heart—whose ambition it was not to talk, but to do. He was all his life long a wrestler with nature, and he learned one of her best secrets. She labours silently. Neither the revolution of the spheres nor the growth of a blade of grass are heard, but, for all that, they produce with unerring sureness their appointed resulis. His habit was to turn a thing over and over in his mind till he had seen it in all its parts ; to look into the heart of it till he found what it was capable of doing, and, when he was satisfied that his estimate was right, and that he had thought out its hidden possibilities, to set to work upon it, and make it produce that which nature or art intended by it. One of the dogmas of his creed—and they were comparatively few— was ‘in the hearts of men, however overgrown they may be by a tangle-work of evil weeds, there is still sympathy with the beautiful and true.” And he set himself to find the one and the other everywhere. It will be seen, therefore, that Sir Titus Salt was not only a great industrial captain, a successful manu- facturer and merchant, but a social reformer, and moral philanthropist. It may be said that he retired from active life just as his social ideas were realised facts; and his fellow-citizens of Bradford marked their sense of his worth by erecting a statue to him, in 1874, in front of the new Town Hall in Market Street. Saltaire, the town he reared as the great seat of the alpaca manufacture, covers an area of over 50 acres, and provides accommodation for nearly 5,000 alpaca-workers and their families. It consists of 22 streets, containing 775 houses, besides 45 alms- houses for the aged. The streets are wide and regular, the fagades of the houses neat, and the interiors fitted up with every accommodation. The baths and wash-houses, which stand about the centre of the town, are a great public convenience. Labouring men know the misery of washing-day in a small cottage; but the inhabitants of Saltaire are free from this domestic plague. There the working man’s wife takes her clothes to the public wash-house overnight, and prepares them. Next morning she finds the three steam-engines, with their steam up, ready to drive the washing-machines. When washed, they are transferred to an immense 84 GREAT INDUSTRIES Cornish boiler, 18 feet by 6, and when they have been rinsed they are placed in the centrifugal wringer, and in a few seconds they are nearly dry. These wringers consist of a huge circular trough, the sides of which are perforated by many holes, OF GREAT BRITAIN. she wheels them into the drying-closet, and in a few hours from starting she brings them home pure and clean, neatly folded and mangled, be the day fair or foul. In the same building are twenty-four hot and cold water baths, for the use of the town, ANY ANT OOT ay 14 Hasagaacsene faa —— Tue Satt STATUE AT BRADFORD. (From a Photograph by Messrs. Appleton and Co., in Balgarnie’s ‘‘ Life of Salt.’’) and it is made to revolve very rapidly by a shaft driven by steam. ‘The clothes, placed in it quite wet, are driven against the sides of the trough with great force, and cling tighter and tighter as it rushes round, so that the water is squeezed out, escapes by the holes, and is carried away into the sewage-pipes. By this means a tubful of clothes is wrung almost dry in a few seconds, without any labour to the washerwoman. Next, stretching them on ‘“ horses,” and an excellently fitted Turkish bath, for those who prefer that luxury. “Gleanliness is next to godliness” the old saw says, and Titus Salt did not forget the spiritual needs of his people while providing sanitation. Down by the side of the river there stands a fine church in the Italian style of architecture, sur- mounted by a noble cupola, the interior of which is decorated in the highest style of art. The whole ALPACA—SALTATRE: TOWN AND PEOPLE. 85 structure forms one of the finest specimens of this style of architecture in the kingdom, and cost nearly £17,000. The Congregational form of divine worship is celebrated here, At the other end of the town stands the Wesleyan Chapel, opened in 1868 ; and within an easy walk there are parish churches. An Independent himself, Sir Titus Salt gave freest scope to the religious opinions of his people. The other public buildings are—the schools, providing accommodation for 750 children, which, besides a well-fitted gymnasium and ample play- ground, have gardens, where flowers bloom all the year round; the almshouses, constructed for the reception of 60 aged poor, in which, to save the inmates from climbing stairs, the rooms are all arranged on the ground floor ; the infirmary for the sick or maimed, with a staff of paid physicians and nurses ; the club and institute, with a good library, billiard, bagatelle, card, smoking, and conversation rooms, a liberally-filled chemical and physical labo- ratory, art, classical, and science schools ; a theatre for public lectures, exhibitions, and entertainments ; a gymnasium for the lovers of athletics, a drill-shed for the Saltaire Volunteers, and a band-room for the practice of music. Besides these conveniences, there are lavatories and all necessary offices ; and a good refreshment-hall near the works, where sub- stantial and wholesome meals are provided at very cheap rates. All the advantages of the club and institute are provided at merely nominal charges. Each inmate of the almshouses has a pension of 7s. 6d. per week—the married couples, who are not separated in their old age, being allowed 5s. extra ; and attached to the building is a neat chapel, for the use of the old folks who might not be able to walk so far as the public places of worship. Down by the banks of the river Aire, a plot of ground, 14 acres in extent, was some years ago opened as a public park, partially laid out in gardens, and attached to which are a cricket-field for the youths and men, a croquet-lawn for the ladies, and a bowling-green for lovers of that sport. Saltaire, in a word, is a tiny industrial cosmos— self-contained, self-supporting, and self-sufficing. Its architect forgot nothing, overlooked neither age nor sex in his plans, and provided for the shelter, comfort, health, recreation, and instruction of all who should become its citizens. Rents are low, taxes moderate, work constant, wages high: it is a sort of working man’s paradise. One thing alone is wanting—but that Sir Titus Salt looked upon as an unnecessary luxury, besides a demoralising institution— a public- house. . There are cellars in every house, where a man may have his cask of beer; but no place for lolling over a bar, no tap-room in which the drunkard may hide from wife and children. The result is that Saltaire has a low death-rate, little if any crime, and peace and prosperity within its walls. The idea whence it sprang was noble, and the exalted hope with which the immense outlay«was undertaken has been completely realised. Nor have the people for whom the employer and benefactor did so much been ungrateful. They aided in carrying the scheme to perfect success by economy, sobriety, and good behaviour. Few men or women there are ignorant of the masterpieces of English literature. Many are well versed in science, mechanics, and languages. All the children have had a sound elementary, and some of them a liberal higher, education. Sickness is chiefly the result of accident or old age, and in either case there is ample provision made for the needs of all; while the chime of bells in the church cupola sounds constant invi- tations to a higher spiritual life and nobler aims. Saltaire, indeed, is one of the happiest and sunniest spots in England, and its people have more than once given public utterance to their feelings of gratitude for its founder. But, after all, it is in the hearts of the people that the memory of Sir Titus Salt lies enshrined. To say that they are all ‘‘hero-worshippers” in the truest sense is to give them less than their due. So long as one stone of the town stands upon another, or one heart beats in the breast of those who call it home, it must be emphatically said that Sir Titus Salt will need no panegyrist. HEALTH AND DISEASE IN INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS.—IL. INFANTS, ‘‘ HALF-TIMERS,” AND WORKING MOTHERS. By W. Gorpon Hoce, M.D., tare Senior Present or THE Royat Mepicat Sociery, EDINBURGH. GOOD constitution represents the most valuable part of the worker’s capital. To the want of this endowment, which gives power to resist sick- ness, may be ultimately traced most of the special diseases found among the labouring classes. The first few years of life generally determine the 86 GREAT INDUSTRIES physical well-being of all animals, man included ; once give youth a fair start, and it can contend against the destructive agencies of nature with some prospect of success. Let us therefore inquire how the infants of the industrial classes are reared. It is a charge not unfrequently brought against this section of the community that they pay more attention to the up-bringing of their bull-terrier “pups” than to the welfare of their own offspring. Even though this were true, we must admit that it is not a failing peculiar to the working classes alone. The country gentleman, for example regards his horses and hounds with an anxious eye, and their management often occupies the chief portion of his thoughts and conversation. The clothing and food of his children are frequently to him what the world generally was to the jackdaw on the steeple, “of no concern at all.” A mother moving in high society has duties which are too frequently con- sidered superior to the claims of the nursery. She accordingly delegates the care of her infants to a nurse who is supposed to understand and minister to their wants. In truth, the personal interest of all classes, upper and lower, in their infants, is much alike. There is, however, this to be said in excuse of the manual worker: he cannot afford to hire a good nurse, and his wife has often to leave her babe for the purpose of helping to eke out the maintenance of the family. Barring this painful necessity, medical men who practice amongst the poor will readily testify that their children are the objects of more direct personal parental care than, as a rule, are the children of the aristocracy. But, unfortunately, when married women are engaged in employments which necessitate absence from home during a great part of the day, their babies must be left in charge of a “ care-taker.” This habit is doubtless attended with the most disastrous results, as may be shown by citing the great infant mortality in industrial centres where the custom prevails. In all England and Wales the annual death-rate amongst children under one year of age, from all causes, is 18 per cent. We find, however, in manufacturing towns the following startling contrasts as examples. In Liverpool, the infant death-rate per cent. is 30-5; in Leicester, 26-7; in Preston, 26:1; in Leeds, 25-6; in Man- chester, 25-1; in Bradford, 23-7. In 155 districts where infantile death-rates are great and abnormally in excess, we notice that manufactures are carried on, in which women are greatly employed. What are the causes of this Herodian slaughter, which one might well wish to be of the merciful speediness of OF GREAT BRITAIN. that ordered by the Roman Governor? These chil- dren not only die, but their death is usually the last. stage of an agonised life, starvation being the chief’ cause of the mortality. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of these untimely deaths are due to- the fact that nursing mothers, who, both for their own and their babes’ sakes, should be kept at home, resume their employments much too soon after child-birth. Their children, whilst as yet sucklings, are left in the hands of ‘ care-takers,” to whose houses they are carried early in the morning, and of course exposed to cold on the road. It is a trying task for a stranger to have patience with most. infants, and this rare virtue can scarcely be expected from an underpaid hireling. The children thus put out to nurse for the day are fed on “bread pobs”’ or boiled bread, artificial foods of various kinds, and a minimum of milk, if any at all. Indigestion. soon sets in, and the “care-taker” is irritated by the wailing and whimpering it produces. Recourse is then had to the ‘soothing cordial,” “which makes a desolation and calls it peace.” Numbers. of the babies thus dosed by the “ care-takers” never awake from this narcotic slumber, and in such cases. the doctor, if he be “very particular,” may refuse a. certificate of death. What follows? To save expense and possibly time, the coroner makes but a hasty investigation, and may even depute the police: to institute a few inquiries into the respectability of the dead child’s parents. On being satisfied. regarding this point, he probably goes no further,, thus leaving the real cause of death undiscovered. The infant’s life is most likely insured in one or more: burial-clubs for the maximum allowed by the law, namely £6. But an infant’s funeral can be managed! for about £1 15s.; so that a balance of £4 5s. accrues to the parents as the result of the child’s: death—a point worthy the attention of states-. men, sanitarians, and social reformers generally. . Not less significant is it to note what are the most. fatal diseases of the children in industrial centres. They are—convulsions, diarrhea, and atrophy,, ailments, that is to say, which are generally induced. by improper feeding; atrophy or wasting being” simply due to starvation. Amongst such infants. measles, too, are very fatal, as also diseases of the: lungs, pointing to the deadly effect of early exposure: to cold on ill-fed sucklings. The mother who. leaves her offspring thus to perish does not escape unscathed. By resuming work too soon after her: baby is born she often suffers from grave disorders. which it is here unnecessary to specify minutely. One may, however, go the length of saying that a. THE CRECHE SYSTEM—LEGISLATION ON INFANT MORTALITY. 87 tendency to debility and faintness is engendered, which, for the moment, may be relieved by the use of alcoholic stimulants, and thus the first step to habitual indulgence is often taken. What remedies can be found for checking these evils? Amongst the first and most obvious there may be mentioned moral suasion and good advice given to the poor by those to whom they naturally look up. In this connection we may say that it is to be regretted that one does not find more interest shown by the wives and daughters of manufacturers in the well-being of female employées. Many of these ladies are endowed with restless energy, and generous, if vaguely directed, enthusiasm for social reform, which might easily find fit scope for work in such a field as the one we now indicate. A good example has been set them by another class in the community. In rural districts the noble- man’s or squire’s family pay no small attention to the labouring peasantry, and they create amongst them much kindly feeling, and many firm bonds of attachment by such missions of mercy. Another remedy is the establishment of public nurseries under proper inspection and superintendence. At Stepney, London, E., a créche has been established by Mrs. Hilton, where nearly 130 infants are received early in the morning, fed, nursed, and amused till the mothers return to take them home at night. These families are spared the necessity of receiving parish relief, for the mothers can, without anxiety, leave them while working for their support. The elder children, too, are set at liberty to attend school. A payment of twopence a day is made; and the results have proved what incalculable benefits flow from Mrs. Hilton’s model nursery. Other towns, such as Plymouth, are following this good example, but no better institution of the kind exists than that founded by Mrs. Hilton, as a visit to it will at once show. The créche system, which originated in Belgium, presents a feasible solution of the difficulty with which working women have to contend in rearing infants, and it would be well if it were carried out in all manufacturing towns. As a more certain preventive of infant mortality in the industrial classes, I should suggest that the Legislature might prohibit women in factory districts from resuming work till two months after child- birth. They would then, physically speaking, be better fitted for toil, and their babies would, from eight weeks’ nursing at the outset, have a fairer start in life than most of them get now. Next, it should not be allowed that infantile lives may be insured up to £6. This privilege, as it now exists under legal sanction, simply means, in certain painful cases, putting a premium on the production of death. A maximum of £2 would suffice to cover all reasonable funeral expenses, and leave nothing over “to com- pensate for the bother.” Parents would then either not insure the lives of their children at all, or they would be more careful to prevent their dying; at any rate, they would have no pecuniary interest in their burial. Further, the sale of narcotics under cover of patent stamps should be discouraged. If pro- tection be afforded to patent medicines, the exact composition of the nostrums should be stated on the label, so that those using them need have no doubt as to the nature of the drug they are in the habit of buying. Finally, a more rigid inquiry into the causes of all uncertified infantile deaths should be made, and medical as well as police evidence exhaustively taken in every case. Should these suggestions ever be carried out, a marked improvement in the health of our industrial operatives will result. But a cau- tion to future statisticians must be noted. While strong children, well tended, will develop into robust adults, weak infants, who would perish under exist- ing customs, will probably, by wise health-protecting legislation, be spared to a somewhat feeble maturity. Hence we may one day hear the cry of degeneracy of race go forth, when, in fact, abounding instances of defective vitality will be due to the triumphs of sanitary precautions in past years. Investigators of the present day should recollect that the survival of the unfit (even now to some extent) goes on side by side with the predominance of the fittest. Let us now turn our attention to “ half-timers,” who have successfully “run the gauntlet” of six or seven years of perils on every side. To what extent do they depart from the average standard of health? There can be: no doubt that the young of the human species should, as far as possible, be emancipated from continuous labour, which stunts their growth of body and mind, and ends in the development of an adult feeble in form, and reproducing a rickety progeny. On the other hand, it is the earnest contention of many em- as, for instance, in the silk ployers of children trade—that they must begin young, in order to acquire the art of delicate manipulation while their fingers are yet lissome. But the Factory Acts are on this point inexorable, and their severity has been justified by results. No child under nine years of age can now be employed in a cotton or woollen manufactory, and a child between nine and thirteen years of age is only allowed to work certain hours a week, the rest of its time being spent in a good 88 GREAT INDUSTRIES school and in play. The employers bitterly opposed this legislation, and predicted the consequent down- fall of our industries. But what says Professor Fawcett, who is notoriously no friend to protective parental legislation? He remarks that “their fears have been signally falsified, for the Factory Acts have effected incalculable advantages. The physical deterioration of the operatives has been arrested. The daily training of the mind helps the develop- ment ef the body, and it has been conclusively proved that the children who are at school half the day, and are at work the remaining half, acquire vigour, energy, and intelligence ; the efficiency of their labour is thus so much increased, that they really do more work in a day than used to be done by those children who were employed whole time. and whose strength and activity were exhausted by such excessive toil.” If we investigate by a comparative method the nature of the physique of factory children, we find that their alleged degene- ration, about which a good deal of excitement has been got up, is not borne out by facts. It is not denied that sickness and deformity exist amongst them ; but then they do not exist to a much greater extent than in an equal number of children in other classes. A report to the Local Government Board on the hours and ages of employment in textile factories for 1875, throws the utmost doubt on the reckless assertions of those who, from a narrow range of observation, conclude that the young in the factory districts are rapidly degenerating in physique. In this report, we find given the weights and ages of factory children generally in’ 1835 and 1873 ; and, for the sake of comparison, those of (1) agricultural children in Yorkshire, and (2) of London charity-school children. Here are some of the figures :— Factory, Report, eee Report London Charity! Aerienitaral Age last School, 1873. |Children, 1873. Birthday Weight in Weight in Weight in Weight in Pounds. j Pounds. Pounds. ie Eouuce Oe tee bl 76 mr 8-72 51°63 60: 02 TD ae 50-0.” yhieG 24 54:53 | 65-29 tba 4 61°80 67°92 08°32, =e) 71:01 12 65:97 | 71:06 62°8 75:0 Many thousands of children were weighed and measured in Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, and other towns, in order to supply data for the statistics now cited. As the general result of this inquiry, it was found that the “half-timers” of to-day came up to a much higher standard of physical develop- ment than the London charity-school children, who are well housed, well fed, drilled and exercised. This may not say much for the latter; but the OF GREAT BRITAIN figures quoted prove that, instead of manifesting a tendency to degeneration, a factory child aged nine in 1873 weighs more than one aged ten did in 1835, and so on in proportion. Neither do these factory children appear in the matter of physique to be much behind the agricultural children reared in the wholesome atmosphere of the country. “ Half-timers,” as a matter of fact, may therefore be described as fairly well developed. Of course, they are not without defects. They show, it is admitted, a tendency to suffer from “flat foot” and relaxed joints, with “knock” knees, Their limbs, however, are thick and fleshy. They have hands and feet that are remarkable for their size and strength. Their bodies, it may be said, seem too old for their heads and their ages; but in point of intelligence and acuteness, they are proverbially in advance of all other children born in the lower ranks of life. In agricultural children, on the other hand, the feet are not so frequently “ flat,” but the legs tend to be “bowed.” This latter deformity I think may be due to the fact that the children are tempted to walk sooner than they are in factory dis- tricts, and thus their soft and partially ossified bones curve under the superimposed bodily weight. In factory children, the joints are relaxed probably because, in a city, children have not the opportunity of running about so early as in the country. Their bones have therefore time to consolidate, leaving the joimts the weaker parts. Another physical peculiarity of factory children is, that they suffer from extremely bad teeth, and from a scorbutic state of the gums, due in all probability to improper feeding when under the hands of the “ care-takers.” As compared with rural children, they are apt to be dirty, and they are much more frequently infested with vermin. Apart from all this, however, no special congenital diseases can be noted amongst “half-timers.” Sometimes slight deformities occur where a particular attitude has to be maintained at a machine, but even this is uncommon. It must be borne in mind that no attempt is here made to prove that “half-timers” are free from disease. They suffer from epidemics as much as—perhaps a little more than—other children ; but in discussing this question, the unhealthy state of their homes must be taken into account. Bearing this in mind, the result of a dispassionate investigation compels us to admit that there is nothing about them in the shape of peculiar physical degeneracy or deformity to forbid their employment under the restrictions ‘now enforced by Acts of Parliament and LESUO 8) inspectors, SHIP BUILDING.—III. BRITISH SHIPPING: ITS GROWTH AND PRESENT POSITION. HIP BUILDING is one of the most important of the Great Industries of Britain. Other industries excel it in the magnitude of their operations, the number of their workers, and the capital invested in them; but ship building yields to none in its direct influence upon the well-being the Portuguese and Spaniards were leaders in ship building as well as in maritime enterprise and discovery ; then the Dutch created the most powerful fleets in Europe ; and now Britain stands pre-eminent amongst nations, possessing a war fleet of unrivalled power, a mercantile marine of surpass- iH} ) ; | } ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. and integrity of the empire. The maintenance of our national position depends upon the main- tenance of our supremacy on the high seas: and that supremacy cannot be maintained apart from the continuous production of new types of ships. Naval architecture is essentially progressive, although its rate of advance is very variable. Types of ships which are most successful in one generation may become antiquated or obsolete in the next; and that nation which is most advanced _on the pathway of improvement in ship construc- tion, will almost certainly hold the lead in the commerce of the world. In the Middle Ages this was true of the Genoese and Venetians ; later on, 12 ing magnitude and efficiency, and resources in ship building well proportioned to her naval forces. A thousand years ago, when Alfred the Great had to meet the constant incursions of the Danes, he adopted a policy which is as true now as it was then. Creating a powerful fleet, he aimed at pre- venting invasion, rather than at the maintenance of an army which could only face the enemy after he had obtained foot-hold on our shores. But while our policy for the home defence of the British Isles is unchanged, the necessity for a powerful navy is infinitely greater now than it was in the time of Alfred. The empire is no longer self-contained and self-supporting : the British Isles are but the heart 90 GREAT INDUSTRIES of a mighty dominion, of which the several parts lie widespread over all quarters of the globe. Our food supplies are largely drawn from foreign sources ; our manufactures and commerce have attained fabulous dimensions, and any serious interruption to them threatens national disaster. British mer- chant ships float on every sea, laden with the wealth of the world. Rapid and regular communication with our remotest colonies and dependencies has now become not merely a matter of course, but practically a matter of necessity. Our friends in Canada are brought within eight days of home ; the passage to Australia is made in six weeks instead of six months. All this commerce requires protection ; the outlying parts of the empire need defence ; the lines of communication between the mother-country and her colonies must be kept open. In short, what has been gained in territory, in commerce, in shipping, and in wealth, renders it all the more necessary that Britain should maintain the supremacy in maritime power which has been so hardly won. Nor need the loss of this predominance be feared so long as the culture of the science and art of ship building flourishes; for the skill and courage of the British sailor are as marked now as they were in the days of yore, when these qualities often had to counterbalance the disadvantages of meeting a foe whose ships were swifter, larger, and better built than his own. The period of the great French war was that during which British merchant shipping reached that proud position of superiority over other mercan- tile fleets which it has ever since maintained. This may appear a singular fact at the first glance, but the explanation is very simple. British war fleets then swept the seas: none but British merchant ships, their allies, or neutrals had a chance of safety. Moreover, the Continental Powers of Europe were engaged in a struggle which taxed their energies to the utmost, and could not attempt the development of their merchant shipping. Hence it happened that while British merchantmen increased in num- bers, other European merchant fleets dwindled or stood still. The only sharer in our prosperity was the mercantile marine of the United States; and when the war ended the carrying trade of the world was in the hands of Britain and her revolted pro- vinces, the lion’s share falling to the mother- country. When the war began, in 1793, our mercantile marine included 16,000 ships, having a total tonnage of about 1,500,000 tons ; when the war ended, there were 21,000 ships, having a total tonnage of 2,200,000 tons, which was a greater OF GREAT BRITAIN. tonnage than the aggregate of all the merchant fleets of Europe. Such a condition of things could not continue after the restoration of peace; and before long fears were expressed that the prosperity of the British merchant navy had passed away. British ships were less in request than in the war time; other European Powers resumed the con- struction and employment of their own merchant- men; and, what was of no less importance, American builders proved dangerous rivals, producing ships of greater excellence than were then built in this country. Nearly all maritime countries were also better supplied than Great Britain with timbers suitable for ship building, and this fact added to the difficulties of British builders. The final out- come of these adverse circumstances was, however, very favourable to this country. Under the stress of competition, the designs of merchant ships were improved, injurious tonnage laws were abolished, the value of scientific methods of construction was more fully recognised ; and, finally, the introduction of iron hulls and steam propulsion, in both of which this country took the lead, relieved British builders of serious drawbacks to successful rivalry with foreigners. We can no longer hope to be the pos- sessors of the carrying trade of the world ; but we have so large a share of that trade that we may well be content. Instead of seeking for models in the vessels of other nations, as was commonly done in the last century, British ships are now models for the world. The enterprise of British merchants and ship builders has re-created not merely our own mercantile marine, but that of every other important maritime power. Formerly our chief claim to pre- eminence was in the number of our ships, not in their qualities ; now we can fairly assert superiority in both numbers and qualities, and the claim is frankly admitted by other nations. Before sketching the history of British shipping, it will be interesting to state briefly its present position. At the end of 1875 the United Kingdom owned more than six millions of tons of merchant shipping ; and more than a million and a half tons were owned by the British possessions. Altogether, the tonnage of merchant ships belonging to the British Empire was about 7% millions ; the number of ships exceeded 37,000, and the crews exceeded 342,000 men and boys. Within a period of less than sixty years the tonnage had been trebled, and the number of ships nearly doubled, after allowing for the wear and tear of service. The methods of constructing and propelling ships had been revolutionised ; the commerce and intercom- 7 has only two-thirds the tonnage of our own. SHIP BUILDING—AMERICAN AND BRITISH SHIPPING. munication of the world had been vastly increased. The British mercantile marine exceeds in tonnage the united merchant fleets of France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Austria. The Dominion of Canada possesses a fleet which will compare favourably with that of the great maritime Powers of Europe. Australia and New Zealand are both creating a-mercantile marine which already con- siderably exceeds that of Portugal or Denmark, and does not fall much below that of Spain. The only marine which at all bears comparison with our own is that of the United States; but even that fleet, with a total tonnage of about 43 millions, The great natural resources of the States, the skill of Americans as ship builders, and their vast coasting and internal navigation, all tell in their favour, and point to a possible future when they may either equal or surpass Great Britain as ship owners. Twenty years ago it appeared as if the time had come when we might have to yield the place of honour so far as the mercantile marine was con- cerned. Ship building was then advancing in the United States at a much greater rate than in Great Britain, In 1821 the total tonnage of British shipping slightly exceeded 24 millions, and was about double that of shipping owned in the United States. In 1841 the British tonnage had reached 34 millions, while that of the States somewhat exceeded 2 millions. In 1861 the British tonnage stood at 5,900,000 tons, and that of the States at 5,500,000 tons, or nearly equal to that of the mother-country. Since then very serious checks have been put upon American shipping by the Civil War, the rapid advance of iron ship building, the progress of steam navigation, and other causes. As a consequence, in 1871 the total American tonnage had decreased to 4,200,000—little more than the tonnage’ twenty years before ; whereas British ship- ping had gradually reached a tonnage exceeding 7,000,000. American ship building revived, how- ever, about five years ago, and during the period 1872-75 about 440,000 tons was the increment to the total tonnage. But even this great addition has been exceeded for British shipping, of which the tonnage has been increased in the same period by about 550,000 tons. At present, therefore, there is no reason to apprehend a loss of ow proud position as the first ship-building and ship-owning nation in the world. As an item in the national estate, our mercantile marine has an enormous value, probably approach- ing one hundred millions sterling. But the value 91 of the commerce of which our merchant ships are carriers to and from our shores, far transcends this enormous sum. For many years the annual value of imports and exports has exceeded 650 millions; and of the 45 million tons of ship- ping which have entered and cleared at British ports during each of the last three or four years, two-thirds have been British ships. In other words, two-thirds of our home trade is carried on by our own ships. Some patriotic persons express regret that a single foreign ship should have a share in British trade ; while, at the same time, they desire that BritiSh ships should obtain a still larger share of the foreign carrying trade. This is scarcely reasonable ; and our great advantage over all other nations will appear from the following facts. Ac- cording to the official returns, about seventy per cent. of the foreign trade of the United States is. carried on by foreign ships, and only thirty per cent. in American vessels ; the proportion of home to- foreign ships being the reverse of that which holds. in this country. Of the seventy per cent. of foreign ships trading to ports in the States, by far the greater part carry the British flag. Tt has become so much a matter of course for Great Britain to stand at the head of the maritime world, that we are apt to forget the long centuries. during which she occupied a subordinate place. Keeping in mind the foregoing figures for the: present condition of our fleet, it will be a strange: contrast to run over the muster-rolls of past days. In 1344, Edward III. ordered a return of the: whole maritime force of his kingdom : it was found to consist of about 700 ships, manned by about: 14,000 men. Seventy years after, Henry V. gathered all the vessels in England of twenty tons burden and upwards, in order to transport his army of 30,000 men to France. Having reinforced the English ships by vessels hired in Holland and Zealand, he had 1,500 ships at his command, giving an average of twenty men carried by each vessel,. exclusive of her own crew. The Great Hastern can carry 10,000 troops at one time, or one-third the whole army which Henry conducted into France ! For centuries before this invasion, and for a long time after it, the Mediterranean States, and more particularly Venice and Genoa, had possessed powerful fleets, fitted for commerce and for war. When the fourth took place, the Venetians furnished ships capable of convey- ing 4,500 knights and 20,000 infantry, with fifty galleys as an escort ; and some vessels em- ployed in this service are said to have carried 800: crusade 92 GREAT INDUSTRIES persons. Nor was Genoa an unworthy rival ; for in the wars with Venice, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it is said that fleets were equipped numbering from 100 to 300 vessels, the galleys each carrying over 200 fighting men. Nor were the Mahometan States deficient in mari- time force. When Richard Coeur-de-Lion was on his way to the Holy Land, it is related that he captured a vessel belonging to the Saracens which carried 1,500 men, and a large quantity of stores. OF GREAT BRITAIN. Redcliffe, which he had built. Some doubts attach to the statements respecting Canynge’s fleet ; but it seems certain that he owned several ships, which were of great size as compared with other English ships of the period, measuring from 400 to 900 tons; and that the total tonnage of his ships did not fall much short of 3,000 tons, manned by 800 seamen. Canynge had few rivals, however ; and, as a whole, English shipping suffered greatly from the civil wars, so that on the accession of oo bd Oo 32 =p Almost at the same time that Edward ITIL. invaded France, the Turks were preparing to undertake the invasion of Europe ; and for that purpose assembled a fleet of 300 ships, with an army of nearly 30,000 men. When Henry V., with infinite trouble, collected 1,500 English and Dutch ships, Venice is said to have owned 3,000 merchant ships, besides ships of war. There is, however, evidence that-amid the trouble and internal strife of England during the fifteenth century, the interests of trade and shipping were not altogether overlooked. One of the most famous merchants of that time was William Canynge, of Bristol, who was buried in the Church of St. Mary VENETIAN GALLEY. Henry VII. it was in a very depressed state. That monarch did something to revive the shipping interest ; and Henry VIII. did still more—be- coming, in fact, the founder of the Royal Navy as a force exclusively devoted to war service. In the earlier times, the sharp dividing line now exist- ing between ships for war and ships for commerce was not in existence. When the royal ships were not required by the State in times of peace, they were hired by merchants; and in time of war, the few royal ships were reinforced by numerous merchantmen, upon which the defence of the king- dom virtually depended. Merchant ships were readily adapted to warlike purposes, and were not » SHIP BUILDING—HISTORY OF BRITISH SHIPPING. 93 unfrequently found more handy and _ serviceable than the royal ships. The larger number of these auxiliaries were furnished by the Cinque Ports, which were bound to do so by their charters. When a sufficient number of ships could not be obtained from these ports, all other English ships were liable to impressment, and foreign ships were often hired. Every foreign war, consequently, caused a serious interruption to commerce—not merely by the hindrances and dangers resulting from the war, FI was the state of our shipping. In 1578, it is said that there were in England only 135 ships exceed- ing 100 tons burden, and only 656 ships having a burden of from 40 to 100 tons. The fleet which fought and defeated the Spaniards consisted of less than 200 vessels, having an aggregate burden of about 30,000 tons. Only one-sixth of this force were men-of-war: the rest were merchant ships. Some of these were of only thirty tons burden, and one-third of the total number were under 100 tons Le OPS ARE e) ls onstruction dueluy 2 K> Leur Usage de satin blanc en broderte)4 doret diArgent and Lemtlon sti (2 vaifSeau a ote Monte par evegneurs Se APCOUL de Bordeauce et Che rene cheraux des Armees Navalles desa (87 este G Vert seme de fleurs = de Lis Lo: q Enscigne desatin rouge Is od Bis Bese aed Why cre te Saunrougesemé de ours da lis Gurdienmerte ol ro chambre des Barbe ny = but by the withdrawal of ships from commercial pursuits, and their employment in warlike services. Tt is easy to see, therefore, why English commerce compared so unfavourably with that of many other States up to the end of the fifteenth century. Repeated invasions of France, civil wars, changes of dynasty, want of settled government, all told against material progress. There was then but little probability that England would ever attain the position of the greatest maritime nation in Europe and the world. Passing on to the time when every nerve was strained to equip an English force capable of en- countering the Spanish Armada, let us note what Frencn War-SHIP OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. (Reduced Fac-Simile of a Print of the Period.) each—smaller, in fact, than many of the yachts and fishing smacks of the present day. The largest English ships of that period about equalled in tonnage the sloops or small merchantmen now employed: the total tonnage of the English fleet would be represented by five or six mail steamers, four or five ironclads, or by two Great LHasterns ! This was the utmost force that England could muster in her hour of need: such were the small and fragile vessels that met and conquered the grandest fleet that had ever floated in European waters. The Armada consisted of 133 ships only, but their aggregate tonnage was nearly twice that of the more numerous English ships. Seamanship 94 GREAT INDUSTRIES and courage triumphed even under these conditions, and the bold commanders turned the small size of the English ships to account; closmg with the high-sided Spanish ships, the guns of the latter are said to have fired “ over the heads of the English, without doing any execution.” In dwelling upon this glorious victory, let it ever be remembered that all the conditions which make it remarkable also furnish evidence of the inferior position occupied by British shipping among the fleets of Europe towards the close of the sixteenth century. Although Queen Elizabeth fully appreciated the great importance attaching to the possession of shipping, and added largely to the royal navy, her reign is chiefly noticeable for the skill and courage of English seamen, comparatively small progress beimg made in the numbers, size, or efficiency of English ships. The exploits of Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Davis, Raleigh, and many others are wonderfully interesting ; but the full measure of their daring is only to be ascertained when the small size and scanty equipment of their ships are considered. To the enterprise of these “ private adventurers” were due the destruction of the huge monopolies which Spain and Portugal endeavoured to set up, the breaking down of barriers by which these nations sought to inclose the riches of the New World, and the establishment of a world-wide reputation for the English as a maritime nation. They were the pioneers, who did but little trading themselves, but made it possible for English com- merce to spread far and wide. Before English shipping reached the first rank, many a hard fight had to be fought with more formidable enemies than the Spaniard. The Dutch and English had made common cause against Spain, but their interests soon diverged, and a contest ensued during the latter half of the seventeenth century which for vigour and fierceness is probably unsurpassed, In this great series of naval actions, victory sometimes inclined to the one side, some- times to the other. So late as 1667, the Dutch sailed up the Medway, did great damage at Chatham, and threatened London. But while the English war fleet, strengthened by Charles I. and his father, and greatly improved during the time of the Com- monwealth, could rival that of Holland, it did not prove the victor until aided by the French fleet, which had been created by the vigorous adminis- tration of Louis XIV. When the Dutch finally yielded to the force of arms, they still retained a formidable war fleet and a mercantile marine of un- approachable extent and excellence. Early in the OF GREAT BRITAIN. seventeenth century, Sir Walter Raleigh credited Holland with the possession of as many merchant ships as were owned by England and ten other European States. One thousand new ships are said to have been built annually. Evelyn asserted that about the middle of that century, Holland possessed 20,000 sea-going vessels of all classes, some of them doubtless beg of small size; and Sir Henry Petty said that they owned nearly one- half the total tonnage of European shipping— England owning about one-fourth. The defeat of the Dutch war fleets, the establish- ment of the great trading companies in England, of which the East India Company was the chief, the enactment of stringent navigation laws, which were designed to exclude foreign shipping from English trade, and the wonderful progress in colonisation which had been made during the preceding century, all contributed to the advance- ment of the English mercantile marine relatively to that of the Dutch. In fact, further rivalry with them was of a peaceful character, and the accession of William III. led to the junction of the forces of the two in opposition to the French. By that time the French navy had reached dimensions which enabled it to compete with any war fleet. In 1661, the French force is said to have consisted of four or five small vessels, England and Holland then equipping fleets of more than a hundred men-of-war. Twenty years later, the French possessed nearly 300 war ships, manned by nearly 40,000 men ; and when the war with England began, the French for a time had a more powerful fleet afloat than was brought against them by the English and Dutch. The contest thus begun lasted for twenty-five years, and in the end France was defeated, although it is. unquestionable that she possessed finer ships than England, and was beaten only by the superior skill and courage of her opponents. All through the eighteenth century, war followed war in rapid suc- cession, France and Spain usually combining against. England, which held its own even against these odds. The losses incurred in these continued struggles were very great, the hindrances to progress were serious ; but still our mereantile marine flourished. In the year 1701, the total tonnage of English merchant ships was estimated to be less than 300,000 tons 3. the total number of ships being about 3,300. Ninety years later, there were over 16,000 merchant ships, of which the total tonnage exceeded 1,500,000 tons. From that time onward, Great Britain has had no successful rival to her naval supremacy. Hib MB ea xX AND JU TH —IE DT. INSIDE A FLAX MILL—-SPINNING AND WEAVING. By Davi Bremner, AutHoR or “ THE Inpustries or ScorLanD.” EFORE proceeding to deal with flax and its cultivation, or touching the curious history of the linen manufacture, it may be well to ex- cite the interest of the reader in our subject by describing in a general way what may be seen inside a flax mill. Im the construction of flax mills, as well as of the machinery employed, a great improvement has taken place during the last twenty years. Though there are still in existence many of the buildings erected before the idea that the health of the work-people was a thing to be con- sidered, had dawned upon the minds of mill-owners, these structures have for the most part been altered in order to adapt them to modern requirements, and now the lot of the operatives is far different from what it used to be. In Yorkshire, Forfarshire, and the Belfast district, flax mills are now to be, seen which may be described as palaces in com- parison with the low-roofed, small-windowed buildings in which flax spinning and weaving were carried on at the beginning of the century... Ex- ternally there is little in the appearance of a flax mill to distinguish it from a cotton or woollen factory—except, perhaps, the colour and abundance of the dust emerging from and deposited upon the windows of the preparing departments. The machines employed in these departments have been specially devised for working flax, but those used in spinning and weaving are simply modifications of those which were invented for dealing with cotton. Some flax mills are devoted exclusively to the pro- duction of sail-cloth, and other heavy fabrics ; some turn out table-linen only; while in others atten- tion is confined to the making of cambrics. Gener- ally, however, the productions of a mill embrace a wide range of goods, and to the making of cloth the spinning of sewing-threads is occasionally added. There are many establishments that might have been selected as models for description ; but in this paper it is preferred not to identify the factory to which the reader’s attention is invited. Let us suppose that we have arrived at the mill, and that the entrance of carts loaded with bags of flax at one gateway, and the exit of carts loaded with compact bales of manufactured goods at another gateway, have been duly noted. An intel- ligent guide having been detailed to escort us, we proceed to inspect the works. The first department that claims attention is, of course, the store in which the raw materia] is received and kept ready for use. The flax arrives at the mill in bags, direct from the scutching mills in the locality where it was grown ; the supplies being drawn chiefly from Iveland, Russia, Germany, Belgium, and Holland. On being removed from the bags, the flax, which is made up in bundles of convenient size for handling, is carefully examined, to see that it is of the specified quality, and is then built up in racks ready for removal to the hackling room. The latter is a department in which the visitor is not likely to make a prolonged stay. Though the apartment is large and lofty, the process to which the flax is here subjected creates so much dust, that the air is literally thick with it—so much so, that the figures of the workers in the remote parts of the room are at times but indistinctly seen. By fans and ventilators, the more deleterious particles of dust are drawn. of, but still enough is left to render the occupation of the persons employed in this department anything but pleasant, and it is certainly unhealthy. The heavy odour which clings to the flax after the “retting” process—that is, the steeping which the flax-straw has to undergo, in order to separate the fibre from the woody core—adds to the disagreeable- ness attending the hackling. For some purposes flax is still hackled by hand, much in the same manner as hemp; but by far the greater part of the fibre is hackled by machines of various con- struction, which perform the work with great celerity and completeness. The object sought to be accomplished by hackling is thoroughly to remove the tow and split up the finer portion of the fibre into minute hairs. The more carefully the opera- tion is performed, the finer and proportionately stronger will be the yarn produced. In _hand- hackling, the workman takes a bundle of flax, and draws it over steel spikes arranged on a bench. The first set of spikes are very strong and wide apart ; and, after the flax has received a first comb- ing on these, it is drawn over a second set of spikes of more slender form, and arranged more closely ; from these it is passed to a still finer set, and so on until the separation of the fibre has been carried out to the desired degree, the quality of cloth to be made determining the treatment of the flax at this stage. Of the hackling machines, (TT j — wiih (qr | Wy Mh ') i Great Hatt ww Messrs. Marssati’s Frax Miz, Leeps. : | FLAX—HACKLING AND the most efficient, and at the same time most ingenious, is that known as the self-acting sheet machine. The main part of this machine consists of a stout endless apron or belt, made of leather, and studded with spikes, similar to those in the flat hackles used for hand hackling. The apron is mounted on rollers, by which it is set in motion, and is so arranged as to present at the front part of the machine a flat surface, and it is on this that the hackling is actually accomplished. The spikes on the apron are arranged in half a dozen parallel bands, the spikes in the successive bands being of an increasing degree of fineness, so that as the apron “moves round on its rollers it presents continuously on the flat. section referred to a complete set of hackles. Let it be noted here that the difference between machine and hand hackling is this—that, whereas in the latter the flax is drawn over the spikes, in the former the spikes are drawn through the flax, which has to be firmly held in a suitable position. Before the flax is presented to the hack- ling machine, it is “ ended ”—that is, it is taken in small bundles, and the ends alternately submitted to the action of a strong little machine, which tears off the entangled portion of the extremities, and draws the fibres parallel. The operatives who attend to this part of the work give to each bundle of the flax a slight twist in the middle, which keeps it distinct from its neighbours, and facilitates sub- sequent operations. In this form, the flax is taken to the hackling machine. Here the bundles are successively fixed near one end in a pair of wooden clamps, and, thus held, are fed into the machine. Immediately over the point at which the apron assumes a flat surface, a rail passes from side to side of the machine, and on this rail the clamps, with their pendent tufts of flax, are placed. Let us suppose that the machine is just being started, and watch its operation. The flax is fed in from the right-hand side of the machine ; and, as it passes along the rail, is brought into contact with the dif- ferent sets of hackles in succession, pausing over each for a sufficient time to allow the spikes to accomplish their work thoroughly, first on one side of the bundle and then on the other; for by an automatic movement the clamps are turned over each of the bands of hackles. As one lot of flax passes from the coarser to the finer hackles, fresh lots are fed in, so that soon all the hackles are at work simultaneously. The finished bundles drop off the rail at the left-hand side of the machine, where they are received by an attendant, who un- screws the clamps, and places them on the dressed 13 _ other. SPINNING. oF end of each bundle, ready to go through the machine again, so that the end held in the clamp during the first passage over the hackles may be operated upon. When the flax receives the final hackling, it presents a beautiful silky appearance. Leaving the dust and din of the hackling room, we ascend to the floor where the drawing machines are situated, and there witness the first stages of the spinning process. Here is some flax brought from the hackling room, and we must note what is done with it. Taking up hand- ful after handful of the shiny fibre, a smart girl arranges it on the feed-board of a machine so that the ends of the successive bundles overlap each Thus placed, the flax is drawn between rollers, and disappears from that point of view. If we step round to the front of the machine we shall see what has become of it. There it is moving along in a continuous stream, so to speak ; but its path is a very thorny one, as it lies over a travelling belt of fine spikes, the points of which show through it during its whole course. On close observation it will be seen that the hackles travel at a quicker pace than the flax, and thus remove all tangled por- tions, and help to bring the fibres into the parallel order essential to spinning. From the hackles the flax passes to a set of drawing rollers, by which the soft ribbon or sliver which it now forms is elongated to a certain extent. As it emerges from the rollers the sliver is received in a tall tin can, in which it is removed to another drawing machine, which is almost identical in construction with that whose working we have just been noting. It is, however, fed ina different way. Hight of the slivers formed by the first machine are taken together, and as they pass over the hackles and through the rollers are drawn out until they are reduced in thickness to one-eighth of the aggregate bulk. This process is repeated again and again until a fine even sliver is obtained. As yet, it will be observed, the fibre has received no twist, and as it will not bear handling it is moved about in the cans into which it falls from the machines. The next process is the conversion of the sliver into a roving, or slightly-twisted cord. For the accomplishment of this the machine on which the last drawing takes place is furnished with bobbins and flyers. These receive the sliver from the last pair of drawing rollers, and by a simultaneous process impart to it the desired degree of twist, and wind it upon the bobbins. The latter, when filled, are removed to the spinning frame, where they are placed on pins arranged in line upon the top of the 98 GREAT INDUSTRIES machine. ‘Each roving is then led between draw- ing rollers, and attached to a bobbin and flyer. As it passes between the rollers it is elongated to the required extent, and the spinning operation is completed by the bobbin and flyer. Some of the flax is spun by the wet process, which better adapts it to certain purposes. In wet-spinning the roving in passing over the spinning frame is made to dip into a receptacle filled with water heated by steam. The hot water softens and separates the fibres, and admits of their being drawn out into a finer thread than if spun dry, while at the same time it causes the loose fibres to combine better with the body of the yarn. Wet-spinning used to be considered prejudicial to the health of the operatives; but as now conducted there is little to complain of. When the bobbins have been filled they are passed to the reelers, who make the yarn up into conve- nient forms for bleaching or the loom. We must now leave the region filled by the steady humming of the spinning machinery, and pass to that where the clash of the looms invites us to fresh scenes of interest. But first we must peep into the room where the warps are arranged and mounted, and the yarn receives a dressing of paste to give it greater solidity in the loom. The yarn having been wound on the warp-beam, the latter is placed at one end of a machine having at its central part a trough, or cistern, filled with paste, and through this the yarn is drawn and allowed to take up sufficient of the dressing to make it, when dry, firm and smooth. It is dried by being passed over heated rollers. Each separate thread has then to be passed through the heddles and reed of the loom, and after some adjustment all is ready for weaving. The looms on which plain linen is woven are similar to those used in cotton factories ; while for figured cloths and damask, the ingenious and complicated Jacquard machine is employed. Of the different kinds of loom, several hundreds are in operation here side by side, and the noise they make is deafening, and, to one wnaccustomed to it, positively distracting. The shuttles, impelled by untiring arms of iron, fly with lightning swiftness, and thread by thread the fabrics are formed at a pace that the deftest hand weaver could never hope to attain. Of all the machines, the Jacquard loom is the one that excites most wonder in the eyes of the casual visitor. The movements of the thousands of perforated cards which perform the function of working out the pattern from a lofty perch overhead, and the maze of gliding and dancing cords which these control, seem so compli- OF GREAT BRITAIN. cated and mysterious, as to fill one with admiration of the genius that devised the whole, and make one regard with most respectful feelings the loom-tender who has made it his business to master the in- tricate mechanism. Here is one of these machines, on which a table-cloth of elaborate device is being fashioned. Watch its operation for a moment. Overhead the cards move forward one at a time; then there is a pause, a movement among the cords, a flight of the shuttle, and a bang of the reed. So one thread of weft is put in. Look, now, at the web in the loom. The warp is a snowy plain of parallel threads extending forward from the dense bank of “harness,” as the cords which lift the warp threads in response to the action of the cards are called. At each movement of the loom the warp is opened up for the passage of the shuttle, and it is the manner of this opening up that deter- mines the pattern which is being developed at each flight of the shuttle. The threads are raised now singly, now in groups, and in seemingly aim- less confusion ; yet the fact is, that the position of every thread in the piece is being put in upon a most carefully prepared plan. For each thread of weft there is a perforated card in the loom which determines the part that particular thread will play in the elaboration of the design which the cloth is intended to bear. Here we see a picture in white produced upon a white ground; when the loom is employed on coloured cloths its operations may be more clearly followed. However used, it is a marvel of mechanism, and the memory of the inventor well merits all the honours that have been bestowed upon it. After leaving the loom the webs are, according to circumstances, treated in various ways: some being bleached and glazed, while others are merely calen- dered. The calendering department is always an important one in a linen factory, as the beauty of the cloth depends largely on its treatment therein, There are lapping machines for folding the cloth, and hydraulic presses for reducing the bulk of bales; besides other appliances too numerous to note on a cursory visit, but all of which will be fully described in subsequent papers. The engraving which accompanies this paper represents a room in the extensive and well-known flax mill of Messrs. Marshall and Co., Leeds. This apartment is remarkable for its size, the floor measuring nearly two acres in extent, being 132 yards long and 72 yards wide, and it is calculated that it would furnish standing accommodation for no fewer than 80,000 persons. The roof, which is SHIP BUILDING—ENTERPRISE ON THE CLYDE. 29 twenty feet above the floor, consists of sixty-six brick arches supported on iron pillars, and is furnished with an equal number of dome lights measuring forty-eight feet in circumference. As the domes rise about a dozen feet above the roof, they answer the purpose of ventilators as well as supplying an abundance of light. All the operations of spinning and weaving are conducted in this room, by the aid of apparently innumerable machines. The part which the artist has chosen for his sketch, is that in which the drawing machines are situated. In the centre may be seen the machines on which the bunches of flax brought from the hackling room are formed into a sliver, and on the left hand are machines which operate on eight of the slivers thus formed, and draw them out into a single one, which process having been re- peated again and again, gives to the fibres the parallel arrangement essential to their formation into yarn. Cai EAM et mine CENTRES IX rivers of Great Britain may fairly be styled the great centres of ship building. For many years past the Clyde, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Mersey, and the Thames, have produced more than three-fourths of the total tonnage of ships built in the United Kingdom. There are, of course, many other ports where a large amount of tonnage is annually built, and which may hereafter attain even greater importance than they at present possess. Hull, for example, was famous for its ship building centuries ago, and still holds a high place. Barrow-in-Furness has made wonderfully rapid progress, and is still advancing. Belfast occupies a good position, not merely because of its large annual ‘“ out-put,” but because some of the finest merchant steamers afloat have been built there. Nor are Aberdeen and Dundee without claims to recognition on account of their ship build- ing trade. But after reviewing the claims of all these and many other ports, it will be seen that no injustice is done in placing in the first rank the six rivers named above. Ship-yards are still scattered along the coast, and doing useful work ; but the greatest developments of iron and steam ship build- ing have not been made in these establishments, and their practice is antiquated or imperfect as compared with that of the great ports. Half a century ago it would have been difficult to point to any other important industry of which the practice was more widely distributed than that of ship building ; but the tendency to localise and concen- trate the trade has since been most marked. On the Clyde this tendency has been most fully illustrated, and we will begin our survey of the centres of ship building on that river. The Clyde ports, from Glasgow down to Greenock, OF SHIP BUILDING. have for years past produced quite one-third of the total tonnage built in the United Kingdom. A trip down the river in one of the swift passenger steamers for which the district is-famous, cannot fail to impress a visitor with the magnitude of the operations carried on in the numerous ship-yard_ which line the banks. Starting from the Broomie- law, he sees lying afloat many first-class ocean steamers, and will wonder when he is told that within the memory of many men still living it was possible to wade across the river, at low tide, near where these noble vessels now lhe. The energy and enterprise which the corporation of Glasgow dis- played in undertaking the works which have wrought this wondrous change, and made their city a sea-port, have been richly rewarded. It has resulted not merely in a vast increase of trade, but in an unrivalled development of the ship-building industry. The engineers and ship builders of the Clyde were amongst the first to appreciate the advantages of steam propulsion, and of iron hulls ; but their conceptions could never have been fully realised in the construction of large ships, had not the river been rendered navigable. Even now it is a matter for surprise to the visitor that ships of the great length and weight commonly built at Glasgow can with safety be launched into a comparatively narrow river. Care and skill triumph, however, under even these adverse circumstances, and it is no exaggeration to say that the Clyde stands pre- eminent in the construction of ships of all classes and sizes, competing successfully with other places which possess far greater natural advantages. Some of the finest iron-clad ships of the Royal Navy, and many of the largest trans-Atlantic steamers, have been built at Glasgow. Ships for war and 100 GREAT INDUSTRIES commerce,.paddle and screw steamers, sailing clip- per ships, powerful steam dredges, such as have been so successfully used in deepening the Clyde itself, and many other types, can be inspected in all stages of construction. But everywhere iron and steel will be found in use, and a wooden ship will scarcely be seen. It is difficult to make clear to the general reader the real magnitude of the work done annually by the Clyde ship builders. Take the year 1873, for example, and it appears that no less than 143 ships were launched, having a gross tonnage exceeding 230,000 tons. The value of these new vessels probably approached six millions sterling; and at the end of the year there remained on the stocks a total tonnage of more than 190,000 tons. It has been said, and doubtless with truth, that the Clyde alone produces more new ships than all the ports on the Continent of Europe taken together. Even when compared with the aggregate tonnage built in the United States, the out-put of the Clyde yards appears very considerable. In 1873 and 1874 the American yards produced about 800,000 tons of shipping; during the same years the Clyde yards launched about 500,000 tons. In the ten years, 1868-1877, the total tonnage of ships launched on the Clyde considerably exceeded two millions of tons. The largest ship-building establishment on the Clyde is that of Messrs. John Elder and Co. It covers about sixty acres of land, and contains not merely a large plant for ship building, but also a magnificent engine factory, where the machinery and boilers are constructed for the ships built in the yard. On an average 4,000 men of all trades are employed, and the annual out-put has sometimes exceeded 30,000 tons—about 50 per cent. in excess of the annual increment made to the tonnage of the Royal Navy from all sources, and about equal to the total tonnage of the English fleet which en- countered the Spanish Armada. A single private establishment can now produce in a single year shipping of equal tonnage to that mustered under circumstances of extreme peril from all parts of England three centuries ago! But even this state- ment of the contrast is incomplete; the modern ships would be far superior in size and structure to their predecessors, and nearly all of them would be fitted with powerful engines, capable of propelling the vessels against wind and sea. Messrs. Elder undertake the construction of all classes of ships ; and at various times have built ships for the Royal Navy. The reputation of the firm is, however, mainly due to their success in the construction of OF GREAT BRITAIN. ocean steam-ships. The late Mr. John Elder was one of the chief advocates of engines on the ‘“‘ com- pound ” principle, which greatly economise fuel, and render it possible for vessels of moderate size to perform the longest ocean voyages under steam. Limits of space prevent reference to any of the other eminent Clyde ship builders, whose vessels are well known all over the world. Many of these firms devote themselves to the construction of special classes of ships. Some, for example, excel in sailing-ships, a large number having been built recently, notwithstanding the progress of steam navigation, and competing with steamers on distant trades, like that with China or Australia. Other firms pay special attention to shallow-draught ships; many of these vessels are erected on the Clyde, then taken to pieces for transhipment to the localities for which they are built, and finally put together there. Cargo-carrying vessels furnish the staple industry to still other firms; and the non- descript small fry of barges, dredges, tugs, &c., are constructed in yards where larger classes of ships are rarely if ever laid down. On the Clyde the bulk of the work done is in budding ships ; one may travel far along either bank of the river and see but few establishments where repairs are under- taken. There are, however, a few such repairing yards, and one of the most notable of these is that of Messrs. Inglis, where one of the largest hauling- up slips in the world may be seen in operation. Another notable fact is that by far the greater num- ber of the leading firms on the Clyde are engineers as well as ship builders; not a few having been engineers originally, and having added ship building to their business, when the construction of iron ships began to be practised. The Tyne, unlike the Clyde, has for a very long period been known as “a nursery of shipping,” to quote the words of a committee of the House of Commons in 1642. In the reign of Edward III. the coal-fields in this district were first worked, and alarge export trade soon sprang up. London and the south of England began to receive “ sea-borne ” coal, and France became an extensive buyer. New- castle consequently became a great centre of shipping and ship building; and when Sir Walter Raleigh summarised the naval force of the kingdom, in his “Invention of Shipping,” he laid great stress on the value of the “‘two hundred sail of crumsters or hoyes of Newcastle,” which “may be chosen out of four hundred.” When wood ships began to give place to iron, the Tyne ship builders did not at once begin the construction of iron ships, although they ey \ Sea On ‘ | \ ! on Ht Ma il ||| (mI i rm Uta He Lili fs ent MT CT) de A Ri 1 iy } Man A) lth =F] Mill cH I i | te: SSS a bee LV.DUTERTRE << SHIP-YAKDS AND SHIPPING ON THE CLypr. 102 GREAT INDUSTRIES were so well placed for the practice of the new industry ; but in 1840 the first steps were taken, and now very few wood ships are built. As the visitor passes down the river from Newcastle to Tynemouth he may see here and there a wood ship in frame, but the skeletons of iron ships will meet his gaze on all sides. On the Tyne the ship-yards are not clustered so closely as they are at Glasgow; and the character of the river-banks, with the numberless factories planted thereon, is so entirely different from that of the Clyde that it is very difficult for an observer to appreciate the scale upon which ship building is carried on. The trade on Tyne-side is not nearly so considerable as that on the Clyde, but it is, nevertheless, very impor- tant: the tonnage built annually for many years past has averaged about 50,000 or 60,000 tons. Cargo-carrying steamers of moderate speed are the types most commonly produced, and they do their work exceedingly well. Other classes are, how- ever, by no means neglected, and the Tyne can boast of iron-clad war-ships as well as first-class mail steamers built on its banks. Two specialties of this river are its steam collisrs and its tugs. The latter are built in considerable numbers, and employed all round the coast ; while the colliers are so well adapted to their special work as to deserve a brief notice. Prior to 1850, only sailing colliers were employed in the trade with London; but they could not compete successfully with the railways, and iron screw colliers were then introduced by Mr. C. M. Palmer. The pioneer vessel was named the John Bowes, and her first voyage was an earnest of what the new type would accomplish. In four hours she received on board 650 tons of coal, her passage to London occupied two days, her cargo was discharged in twenty-four hours, and within five days after leaving she was again in the Tyne, having accomplished an amount of work which would have occupied two average- sized sailing colliers a full month. Since 1850, many changes and improvements have been made in the screw colliers, and whereas in 1859 these vessels brought about 550,000 tons of coal to London, in 1869. they brought 1,700,000 tons. The colliers now in use are larger and swifter than those of twenty years ago; hydraulic and other machinery is largely used for loading and unload- ing their cargoes, and time is further saved by the use of water ballast. Formerly rubble ballast was used, and when a collier had discharged her cargo a considerable time was occupied in putting ballast on board for the return voyage. On her OF GREAT BRITAIN. arrival in the Tyne, this ballast had to be dis- charged, at the cost of much time and labour, and. the huge “ ballast heaps” which abound along the river-banks—puzzling the visitor who strives to guess their origin—bear witness to the great savings which have resulted from the use of water ballast. Cellular tanks are formed in the bottoms of the colliers, and as soon as their cargoes are discharged they at once start on the return voyage. On the way down the Thames the ballast tanks are filled with water, and the vessel is in sea-going trim by the time she reaches the Nore. On her arrival at Tynemouth, or even sooner if the weather .is favourable, the operation of pumping out the water ballast is commenced, and continued as the vessel makes her way up to the loading stage. Coal-laden railway trucks there await her, her loading at once begins, and by the time this is finished the ballast tanks are free, and the collier is ready to start on another trip. . The Wear and the Tees have much in common with the Tyne, and the practice of ship builders, as well as the types of ships produced, in these three districts are very similar. Of the three, the Wear is the most productive of new ships, and the Tees occupies the lowest place ; but even the Tees much exceeds in its out-put the Mersey or the Thames. Taking these north-eastern districts together, it appears that in-the period 1871-75 they produced a greater tonnage than the Clyde; and during the year 1877, when the trade on the Clyde suffered severely from strikes, the north-eastern districts not merely gained relatively, but produced a greater tonnage than they had ever attained before. It is, indeed, obvious that so far as regards natural advantages for carrying on the business of iron ship building, these three rivers surpass the Clyde. Flowing through a great coal and iron district, the materials required by the ship builder are ready to hand, and cheaper than elsewhere. The lead which the Clyde has obtained must, therefore, be attri- buted mainly to greater enterprise on the part of the Scottish ship builders, and to the fact that on the English rivers the coal trade and various manufactures are carried on upon a scale of such magnitude as to withdraw attention from the fuller development of the ship-building industry for which the districts present such facilities. On the Mersey, ship building may be said to be overshadowed by shipping. Attention is attracted towards the forests of masts and miles of docks, and a visitor may easily overlook the ship- yards, although their work is very important and _ SHIP BUILDING—YARDS extensive. Many well-equipped establishments exist, where the building or repair of ships and engines is carried on upon a large scale; but Liverpool no longer occupies so high a place as a ship-building port as it did in the earlier days of iron ships. From 20,000 to 30,000 tons of new ships is about the average annual production, and this is a very small percentage upon the tonnage owned in Liverpool or trading from that port. Liverpool ship-owners find it preferable to have most of their vessels built on the Clyde, or in the north-eastern ports. Of the ship-yards still at work, that of the Messrs. Laird is by far the most important. It was one of the earliest establishments in which iron ships were built, and the success achieved in this direction formed the foundation of a reputation that has since become world-wide. Ships for war and commerce, of all classes and all sizes, have been constructed by this firm; their yard contains all necessary plant and facilities for repairs as well as for building, and engines as well as ships are produced. Many of the ships built by the Messrs. Laird have attained great notoriety. From their yard issued the Alabama, to commence a career of daring and destruction ; the ill-fated Captain was also built by them, in conjunction with Captain Coles ; and the Vanguard, now lying in the Irish Channel, where she sank after collision with the Iron Duke, was their work. ‘Three out of the four well-known Holyhead packets were built in this yard, and several ocean-going steamers of large size and high speed. While closely associated with the mercantile marine, Messrs. Laird’s establishment is one of the great private firms which give valuable aid to the Royal Navy, and are capable of building iron-clad ships. Of late years, large repairs, as well as new work, have been done by the firm on several of H.M. ships, and the Royal Dockyards have thus been considerably relieved in times of pressure. The Thames has been placed last in the list of centres of ship building because it has for many years past done the least work in producing new ships. A large ship-building trade still exists, but it is far less important than it was twenty years ago, and it isa sad sight to note deserted ship-yards, like that at Millwall, where once thousands of workmen were employed. Various causes have contributed to work this change. It is undeniable that the Thames was placed at a disadvantage, as compared with other centres of ship building, when the use of iron and steam-power became general; but its greater distance from the iron and coal districts OF THE MERSEY AND THE THAMES. 103 will scarcely account for the rapid decay of ship building. The most influential causes of this decay were doubtless the frequent occurrence of strikes, and the maintenance of an artificially high rate of wages. Consequently the cost of labour on a slip built on the Thames was made much greater than it would have been on the Tyne or the Clyde, and this difference practically threw the Thames builders out of competition. A large amount of repairing work is necessarily done in the port of London, and this gives employment to large numbers of men; but several building-yards once famous are now closed, and there appears no prospect of the revival of ship building. GERMAN AND NORTH AMERICAN COAL FIELDS. It will be long before some of the richest coal fields in the world, as for instance those of the Asturias, Cordova, and Catalonia in Spain, will be. made much use of, the people who own them haying yet to be educated in industrial art and energy; but other countries are already boldly entering into rivalry with us. So it is with Belgium; and yet more, because the areas to be worked are so much more extensive, with Germany, which has import- ant coal fields in Upper Silesia, Saarbriick, and Westphalia; the last, situated in the valley of the Ruhr, near its junction with the Lower Rhine, being not only the largest in area, but also now the most productive. The history of this Westphalian coal field well illustrates the nature of the foreign competition with England that is growing up in many localities. “Twenty years ago,” Mr. Cliffe Leslie wrote in 1869, “the Ruhr Basin was nowhere in the industrial race: now it produces nearly half as much coal as the great northern coal field of England. Twenty years ago it had only just com- pleted a single line of railway ; now the basin is a network of branches, connecting not only the towns, but the principal manufactories and collieries, with the three main lines which traverse it. The immense increase of production is mainly attributable to the introduction of railways and the low charge of the carriage of coal. Down to 1851 the Ruhr and the Rhine were the only means of transport in districts beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the collieries, and the greater part of the coal was of an inferior kind, raised where it came to the surface by small collieries along the Ruhr. In 1851 the Cologne-Minden Railway came into use for the transport of coal, and led not only to deep- pit sinking and the discovery of seams of superior coal in other parts of the basin, but also to the establishment of iron works and other manufactories, affording a local market for the coal. To this local market, down to 1859, it was in a great manner confined. In that year the charge for railway carriage of coal for long distances was reduced to one pfenning per centner per German mile ”—rather less than a farthing a ton per English mile—‘“ and the result was immense increase of production. The railways and coal mines render each other reciprocal service. The carriage of Westphalian coal is now one of the most important branches of traffic on several of the chief Prussian lines, and the low rates at which it is carried enable it to find a distant market. The projected reduction of the rate for the transport of iron ore to the same tariff as that for coal, when carried into effect, will 17 ® 129 greatly augment the market for coal as well as for manufactured iron. Until the last few years the Ruhr Basin excelled only in the manufacture of steel, but its iron manufactures are now of the highest quality.” The same process is going on in many other parts of Europe, threatening not only the coal trade of England, but much more seriously the iron trade, which is always largely dependent on the accessibility of the fuel necessary to its operations. The greatest danger to England, however, in respect of coal, will certainly come, though, per- haps, not at once, from the United States. Not only are the North American coal fields at least ten times as extensive as those of Great Britain, but they abound in the richest varieties of coal, much of which is very easily to be got at, and in convenient proximity to the almost equally abundant stores of iron. Whereas in 1840 the output of anthracite coal was only about 1,000,000 tons, in 1875 it reached 21,000,000, the supply of bituminous and other coal in the same year being about 25,500,000 tons. Only a generation having elapsed since the American mining industries were in their infancy, their pro- gress has been an amazing one. They have laboured under both natural and artificial difficulties. Ina sparsely-peopled country, the expense of transit is necessarily great, and labour is often very costly. Both these obstacles, however, have been in great measure overcome already, and the country has flourished so much in spite of mischievous com- mercial legislation and the follies of unprincipled speculators, that when these have been got rid of, its industries may be expected to increase with even more startling rapidity than heretofore. Hven should the United States do no more than use their own coal to feed their own manufactories and supply their own inhabitants with all such commodities as have hitherto been sent across the Atlantic from Europe, and especially from England, the effect will be considerable. But more than that must be looked for. Already our American cousins are competing successfully with us in many of the markets of the world. With their increased skill in manufacturing for themselves will come increased ability to cater cheaply for the wants of other nations. The possession of coal and iron in abundance means power to make and sell almost everything. That power will certainly be used more and more every year by the capitalists and working men of America. In certain respects, as regards coal and other mining, England and the United States, whatever —_ 130 GREAT INDUSTRIES rivalry may exist between themselves, occupy and will probably continue to occupy, nearly the same position as competitors with other nations. The American working classes are naturally of almost the same temperament as their kinsmen in this country, and exhibit substantially the same merits and demerits. The average English collier is able to do at least half as much work again in a day as a Frenchman or a Belgian, and he is also greatly superior to an ordinary German. An American is generally his equal, and often even gets through con- siderably more work in a given time. Both Americans and Englishmen, however, expect higher pay than Continental labourers, not only because they require more food and other necessaries of life to keep up their physical superiority, but also because many of their tastes are extravagant. In 1874, a season of high wages, Mr. Lowthian Bell, instituting a careful comparison between the English and American wage rates for mining, found that an American produced 13 cwt. of coal in an hour, for which he received ls. 1d., while an Englishman obtained ls. 2d. for turning out 11 ewt. in the same time, the difference being mainly caused by the greater facility with which American collieries are generally worked. On both sides of the Atlantic the rate of wages has of course been considerably reduced in later years, but now, as heretofore, the labourer on the Continent gets far lower wages than his rival either in England or in America. Though he toils for a longer period each day, the produce of his toil is far less. Whether this difference is likely to be permanent may well be doubted. Great efforts are made by many employers abroad, and especially in Belgium, to improve the condition of their work- men. No one visiting the mining establishments in the neighbourhood of Liége, for instance, can fail to be astonished—however much he may object to the excess of paternal authority, leading to something like serfdom, thus displayed—by the elaborate and benevolent zeal with which the colliers and other labourers are cared for in all domestic concerns. A spirit of independence is hardly encouraged thereby ; but the physical power of the workman is increased. “The value of the English workman,” says Mr. Redgrave, “still remains pre- eminent, although the interval between him and his competitors is not so great as it was. He has not retrograded, but they have advanced.” That im- plies, other conditions of rivalry being stationary, that the foreigner is gaining on the Englishman ; and, if it be so, the result must necessarily be un- favourable to the supremacy of English industry. OF GREAT BRITAIN. It is not necessary now to say much about the various minerals that have become great staples of British manufactures and commerce, as in future chapters we shall have to note the principal features in the competition between our own and other countries in converting them from the raw material into articles of use and ornament. We have had, indeed, to refer to iron more than once in our remarks on coal. The great value of our iron wealth, as compared with that of other nations, depends largely on the convenient proximity of the ore to the fuel needed for its manipulation as well as its extraction. ‘Till lately, in fact, through the occurrence of clay ironstones in the coal basins of West Scotland, Staffordshire, and South Wales, both minerals were obtained from immediately adjacent, if not actually from the same pits. These stores have been to a great extent exhausted, but our country still has the advantage of possessing deeper seams of ironstone, which only began to be opened up some thirty years ago, in North York- shire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire, and which are sufficiently near to the coal fields to render their working easy and very profitable. The discovery of the Bessemer processes, again, has greatly enhanced the value of the hematite ores that were formerly of small account. Of the 16,841,583 tons of iron ore pro- duced in 1876 about a third was of the first-named description, more than half of the second, and a seventh of the third. When noticing the competi- tion between England and foreign countries in manufactured iron, we shall have some evidence of the dangerous rivalry offered to us by favoured Continental districts in consequence of their possess- ing iron seams nearly as readily workable as ours. It is from the United States, however, that in the more or less distant future the greatest opposition may be expected in respect of iron as well as of coal. There the distances between the two materials that have to be brought together cause heavy ex- pense at present, but the ores are, on the whole, of unrivalled quality. ‘Taking all the iron ore raised in Great Britain,” says Mr. Lowthian Bell, “its average percentage of iron will be a trifle under 35 per cent., whereas the produce of the mines of the United States, similarly considered, will be about 56 per cent.; which means that for each ton of iron made there is a ton less ore to be dealt with by the American ironmaster than by ourselves. This, in smelting charges, and parti- cularly in the matter of transport, is a very im- portant distinction.” That is only the chief of 7 FLAX—THE PLANT. many advantages which the Americans possess over the English iron manufacturers, and of which they may be expected naturally to make great use. In comparison with iron, the other mineral treasures of Great Britain, famous as they were in old times, are almost insignificant, and therefore the dangers offered to our national welfare are less momentous. Yet, in some cases, there is ground enough for alarm. Whereas a hundred years ago the annual yield of tin from the Cornish and Devonshire mines was only about 3,000 tons, the quantity was 13,688 tons in 1876. There has been a steady decrease, however, for several years past in the English supply, and yet more in the price obtained for it, the produce of the East 131 Indian islands and of Australia being now brought over so freely as to cripple home enterprise. What is gain to the manufacturers is thus a serious injury to the mining classes. The lead mines, which stand next to tin in order of value, are hardly at all affected by foreign competition ; but the prospects of the copper mines are yet more gloomy. The yield of copper ore in 1869 was 129,953 tons ; in 1872 it had sunk to 91,983 tons ; and in 1876 it amounted to only 79,252 tons. The fluctuations in the zine trade are considerable from year to year, but these are due chiefly to local causes. Prussia and Belgium have already, as regards this metal, inflicted upon our country nearly as much injury as can come from foreign competition. HEMP, FLAX, AND JUTE—IV. THE FLAX PLANT AND ITS CULTIVATION. By Davi Bremner, Autruor or “ Tur Inpusrrizs or Scoruanp.” ERSONS who have visited the North of Ive- land when the flax plant was in flower, must have carried away pleasant recollections of the ap- pearance presented by the fields. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive anything more beautiful than the broad expanse of delicately-formed blue flowers, borne aloft on their slender stems, and undulated by the gentlest breeze. In many cases the raw materials of industry present little attraction to the eye, but here we have what may be truly described as ‘a thing of beauty.” When the flowers give place to the seed vessels, and the fields assume a more sober hue, the plant still retains a captivating grace of form, and as it shakes its capsules in the breeze, gives out a low rustling sound, which soothes the ear like the murmur of a brook. If a stalk or two be pulled and jerked between the fingers till the woody core becomes separated from the fibre, it will be seen how strong and silk-like the latter is. This experiment will also show how firmly adhesive the fibre is to the core, and serve to explain the necessity for the operation employed in their separa- tion on a large scale. The botanical name of flax is Linum usitatis- simum; in German it is flachs ; Dutch, vlasch ; Russian, Jen; French, lin; Italian and Spanish lino. In botanical phraseology the plant is de- scribed as follows, but persons who are not familiar with the scientific terms may form an excellent idea of its appearance from the accompanying engravings :—F lax is an annual, rising on a single stalk to the height of from 20 to 40 inches. The stem is smooth, simple, and erect, of a beautiful green colour, and when at its full height, it is crowned with a number of small bright-blue flowers, of very delicate texture and elegant form. The leaves are alternate, sessile, linearlanceolate, and smooth, and the flowers are arranged in a corymbose panicle. The sepals, or green outer leaf- lets of the flower, are five in number, ovate acute, slightly ciliated, and nearly equal to the capsule in length. The five petals are obscurely crenate, com- paratively large, and deciduous. The stamens are alternate with the petals, and have their filaments united together near their base into a sort of ring. The ovary, or young seed vessel, is divided into five cells, surmounted by five stigmata, and-the capsule or boll is roundish, but rather pointed at the apex, divided into five cells, each sub-divided into two, thus forming ten divisions, each of which contains one seed. The seeds are of an oval shape, plump, smooth, and shining, generally brown externally, but white internally, the seed coat mucilaginous, and the kernel oily and farinaceous. The stem consists of a pith and woody part, with a layer of bast fibres, covered with cuticle on the outside. When carefully cultivated for the fibre, there are only two or three seed vessels to each stalk, and few or no branches, but any there are spring from near the top of the stem. Shortly after flowering, the aspect 132 GREAT INDUSTRIES of the plant becomes changed, and the handsome flowers give place to the small, rough-cased globules or bolls filled with seed. There are four varieties of the plant. One, known as ulsee or tesee, has long been grown in India for the sake of \y its seed, and owing to the fibre Gil | being of no consideration, the SV \\ stem has, through neglect, become much branched and stunted, and coarse. It is believed, however, that were attention paid to the growth of the stems, the plant would, in course of time, assume the characteristics of the kind Though the fibre is with us regarded as the most valuable product of the plant, the seed is an important article of commerce. It contains a large proportion of oil, which, when expressed, is known as lin- seed oil, and is applied to many purposes. After the oil has been extracted, the refuse is pressed into cakes, and is largely used as a fatting food for cattle, while the ground seed, known as linseed meal, is a well-known emollient. One bushel of East Indian seed yields from 14$1b. to 161b. of oil; of Egyptian, 15 1b.; of Sici- lian, from 14$1b. to 1541b.; of Russian, from 11 lb. to 13]b.; and of English, Irish, or Scotch, 103 1b. to 12 1b. Our imports of seed, oil, and cake, are very large. In 1829, we imported only a million and a half bushels of seed ; now we take six or seven times that quantity every year, at a cost of between three and four millions sterling. Of seed oil we took in 1876, 22,759 tuns, valued at £811,421, and of oil-seed cake 190,281 tons, valued at £1,768,231. The seed from which flax is raised in Ireland and other parts of the king- dom is for the most part imported from Russia and Holland, and as on the quality of the seed the success of the crop chiefly depends, great care is taken in its selection: As the seed, when kept long, loses its germinating powers, means are taken to insure that the seed purchased for sowing grown in Europe. Fiax PLant, (One-fourth Nat. Size.) (1) Stamens and Pistils, six times nat. size; (2) Seed Vessel, nat. size; (3) Section of Seed Vessel, twice nat. size ; (4) a Seed, slightly magnified, OF GREAT BRITAIN. is of the previous year’s growth. Riga seed is the kind generally used in Ireland, as it is best adapted to produce a fine quality of fibre from the soil of the country. American and Dutch seed find favour with some growers. An inter- We Qe. change is believed to be rather Sa, wal advantageous, for it does not suit to raise the crop from the seed saved on the same ground, ex- cept, perhaps, in an _ occasional year. According to Professor Hodges, of Belfast, the chemical compo- sition of the flax plant is as follows :— Water 56°64 Organic matters 41:97 Ash . 1:39 100°00 The stem of the plant, when dried, contains 96°89 of organic matter, and yields 3:11 of ash. The ash contains :— | 20°32 Potash Soda. ; . : 2:07 Chloride of Sodium . 9-27 Lime 19°88 Magnesia . 4:05 Oxide of Iron . 2283 Sulphuric acid . 7:13 Phosphoric acid 10°24 Carbonic acid 10°72 Silica 12:80 99°31 Climate and soil are, of course, most important factors in the successful cultivation of the flax plant. Mr. Warden, in his ad- mirable work on “The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern,” says, the climate most suitable for the growth of the plant is one having a regular supply of genial moisture in spring, without an excess of wet in autumn, and where the tem- perature is pretty equable throughout the season. A severe drought, with a hot sun, after the plant has risen two or three inches above the ground, is very detrimental to it. The delicate leaves are then unable to exclude the scorching rays from the surface of the soil, and as the roots have not had time to penetrate sufficiently deep to secure a supply of moisture, the plant droops, FLAX—CULTIVATION. turns a whitish yellow, and, if the drought con- tinue long, it dies. Long-continued droughts are therefore a great enemy to the flax grower, and as these are less frequent in the British Islands than on the Continent, this country would appear to be more suited for its cultivation. When the plant thoroughly covers the ground, dry _ weather does little injury ; but occasional gentle showers are requisite to stimulate its growth, from the germinating of the seed until the flax attains maturity. Alternate showers and sunshine make the most vigorous plants, and - produce both quantity and quality of fibre. Short, hot summers induce too rapid a growth, and, although the quantity of fibre produced is wf ff large, the quality is never fine. In Egypt, though the plant attains great luxuriousness in the rich alluvial soil of the Nile, and efforts have been made to improve its culture and preparation, yet the fibre does not reach the degree of: fineness and softness requisite for spinning into very small sizes of yarn. The hot summers of Russia and Prussia are also inimical to fineness of fibre, and the bulk of the flax grown in those countries is dry and brittle, and wants that elasticity, pliancy, and oiliness, which are found in the pro- duce of more temperate coun- tries. There is, however, less care bestowed upon the culti- vation of flax in these countries than in Belgium or Iveland, and perhaps this, as well as the hotter climate, may tend to produce a coarser fibre. With careful cultivation, flax will flourish over a great rahge of latitude; but only where the conditions indicated exist can it be pro- duced in the highest degree of fineness, and con- sequent suitability for conversion into the more delicate textures. FLOWERS AND UPPER STALKS OF FLax PLANT. 133 With regard to soil and cultivation, we could have no better guide than Mr. Charley, whose book on ‘“ Flax and its Pro- ducts in Ireland” contains much valuable information. He tells us that the best soil we for flax is a nice dry, sandy ‘ES loam, or an alluvial soil, not too light, but of medium weight, with a strong subsoil, but not of a clayey nature. With great care, however, a fair crop may be had on other soils not so well adapted for the purpose. The treat- ment of the soil should de- its quality, the object to be attained being the production of a fine, deep, dry, and clean bed for the seed. In the case of light soils, it is considered best to plough the wheat stubble in \ February, or early in March, so as to get a little of the frost. In April it should be well harrowed, and picked clean of any weeds, then sown with seed at the rate of 34 bushels to the Trish acre, equal to a little over 2 bushels to the English statute acre. The ground should be made as even and flat as possible, in order to insure uniformity of length in the stems of the plant when at maturity. After the seed is sown, which should be done up and down the rig, not across, a fine seed harrow and a light roller should be passed over the field, to cover the seed and finish the plot. When these operations are completed, the seed should be about one inch below the surface. It is con- sidered advisable to sow rather a full quantity, as the greater the number of stems the greater the quantity of fibre. When the seed is sown sparsely, as in cases where the seed produce and not the fibre is the chief consideration, the plants come up stronger and coarser, and bear heavily-branched tops, loaded with seed capsules. Depth of tillage is of great im- portance, as the roots penetrate far down in search pend on 134 GREAT INDUSTRIES of the nourishment required by the plant, and if their wanderings be checked the crop suffers. In the case of soils of a medium class, the same treatment as here described will be found to suit, provided the fields are well situated and well drained. Heavy soils require two ploughings and frequent harrowing and rolling to reduce them to even a tolerable condition, and wise farmers as a rule avoid committing flax to ground of this kind. The seed is the next consideration, and, as already stated, it is an important one, and the best modes of using it are indicated above. Then, the rotation of crops must be kept in view, as on this depends the successful cultivation of flax. The usual system is not to sow two crops of flax on the same soil without an interval between of from six to ten years, so that the land under the ordinary agricultural rotation is regularly re- ceiving from the different manures applied a part of the special nourishment yielded to the flax, and in the time specified becomes again ready to support another crop. In the instructions to flax growers, the Société Liniére of Brussels main- tains that “above all things the rotation of crops must be scrupulously observed ; if seven or eight years be allowed to elapse before again sowing flax in the same field, it is certain that there will be a good crop; but the less the interval between the two crops, the less is the second to be calculated on, either for quality or weight.” In Iveland, the highest authorities seem to be agreed that the best rotation is as follows :—First year, lea ; second, oats; third, potatoes and turnips ; fourth, wheat, one-half sown with grass; fifth, half hay, one-fourth flax, one-fourth beans. More or less flax than this may be safely grown, at the discretion of the farmer; but flax ought never to be raised on the same soil oftener than once in ten years. If sown the first year after a potato crop, the flax grows too rank to thrive, and besides this the farmer loses the intermediate very profitable crop of wheat, without having any real benefit to counterbalance the sacrifice. When sown after wheat in the manner mentioned, it is really an extra crop, grown without manure, and so in no way an exhaustive or severe crop. If grown oftener than once in ten years, it is no doubt a severe crop. In poor soils not fit for growing wheat, flax may be sown after potatoes with advantage. A difficulty that farmers who have been disposed to give flax a trial have experienced, and, indeed, continue to experience, is a rooted belief in the minds of many landowners OF GREAT BRITAIN. that the crop is one that impoverishes the soil. It has been customary in certain parts of Ireland, anc also in England and Scotland, to insert clauses in the leases of farms prohibiting the growth of flax. The prejudice is, however, a groundless one ; for by following a proper rotation of crops, and returning the waste matter of the flax to the soil in the form of manure, all that is taken away may be restored. Among the instructions to flax growers issued by the North-Eastern Agricultural Association of Treland is the following relating to sowing, which illustrates how careful is the treatment required to produce a satisfactory crop:—‘“ The seed best adapted for the generality of soils is Riga, although Dutch has been used in many districts of the country for a series of years with perfect success, and generally produces a finer fibre, but not so heavy a crop as Riga. In buying seed, select it plump, shining, and heavy, and of the best brands, from a respect- able merchant. Sift it clear of all seeds of weeds, which will save a great deal of after-trouble, when the crop is growing. This may be done by farmers, and through a wire sieve, twelve bars to the inch. Home-saved seed has produced excellent crops, yet it will be best, in most cases, to use the seed which is saved at home for feeding, or to sell it for the oil mills. The proportion of seed may be stated at one Riga barrel, or three and a half imperial bushels to the Irish or plantation acre, and so on, in proportion to the Scotch or Cunningham, and the English or statute acre. It is better to sow rather too thick than too thin, as with thick sowing the stem grows tall and straight, with only one or two seed capsules at the top; and the fibre is found greatly superior in fineness and length to that produced from thin-sown flax, which grows coarse and branches out, producing (as we have already seen) much seed, but a very inferior quality of fibre. The ground having been pulver- ised and well cleaned, roll and sow. If it has been laid off without ridges, it should be marked off in divisions, 8 or 10 feet broad, in order to give an equable supply of seed. After sowing, cover it with a seed harrow, goimg twice over it —once up and down, and once across or angle-wise, as this makes it more equally spread, and avoids the small drills made by the teeth of the harrow. Finish with the roller, which will leave the seed covered about an inch—the proper depth. The ridges should be very little raised in the centre, when the ground is ready for the seed, otherwise the crop will not ripen evenly ; and when land is properly drained there should be no ridges. A EMINENT MANUFACTURERS—SIR JOSIAH MASON. stolen crop of rape or winter vetches, or of turnips of the stone or Norfolk globe varieties, may be taken after the flax is pulled. Rolling the ground after sowing is very advisable, care being taken not to roll when the ground is so wet that the earth adheres to the roller.” Having deposited the seed in the earth, the flax grower’s next care is to keep a close watch for the appearance of weeds among his crop. In all cases weeds are objectionable, but flax is peculiarly liable to deterioration from their presence. Accordingly, when the plant has reached a height of 5 or 6 inches, and such weeds as may be present have shown themselves, the fields must be gone over with scrupulous care, and every alien growth re- moved. The weeders must be shod in a way not to injure the flax plants, and in passing over the ground they must work towards the wind, so that the down-trodden plants may have the aid of the breeze in their effort to recover a perpendicular position ;—this point is of such importance that, as we shall immediately see, great stress is laid upon it in certain official regulations. When the plant is grown chiefly for its seed, it is usual to allow it to attain maturity; but when the fibre is the chief consideration, it is pulled before it has become quite ripe, the common rule in Ireland being to allow two-thirds of the stalk 135 to becomé yellow, and not to allow time for the seed capsules to become more than slightly tinged with brown. In the instructions of the Société Liniere, above referred to, the following is the directions relating to the proper time for pulling: —‘“ It has been proved that when the flax is pulled between the falling of the flower and the formation of the seed, the fibre is finer and more solid than at any other time ; so that unless it is wished to sacri- fice the quality of the flax to obtain seed, the former must not wait the full maturity of the latter.” The instruction of the North-Eastern Agricultural Asso- ciation of Ireland, with regard to weeding, is as follows :—“ If care has been paid to clearing the seed and the soil, few weeds will appear; but if there be any, they must be carefully pulled. This is done in Belgium by women and children, who, with coarse cloths round their knees, creep along on all-fours. This injures the young plant less than walking over it (which, if done, should be by persons whose shoes are not filled with nails). They should work also facing the wind, so that the plants laid flat by the pressure may be blown up again, or thus be assisted to regain their upright position. The tender plant pressed one way soon recovers; but if twisted or flattened by careless weeders, it seldom rises again. ‘The weeding should be done before the flax exceeds 6 inches in height.” EMINENT MANUFACTURERS.—III. SIR JOSIAH MASON, OF BIRMINGHAM. By Ropert SMILEs. HE teachers of a certain school pronounce in set terms the dictum that “‘man has always been the creature of the circumstances in which he has been placed ; and that it is the character of these circum- stances which inevitably makes him ignorant or intelligent, vicious or virtuous, wretched or happy.” The progress, conduct, character, attainments, and achievements in life, of some men, furnish startling commentaries on this doctrine. There are instances of even boys, handicapped with ignorance and poverty, who run splendidly the race of life, and rise to become useful, honoured, and influential men, and reach the summit in the business occupa- tion, or profession, they elect to follow. Sir Josiah Mason is just such a man. He was born at Kidderminster, on the 23rd of February, 1795. His parents were worthy and reputable people, though their circumstances were straitened. When only twelve years old, he had the misfortune to lose his father (who died at seventy years of age, and his mother at eighty-two). The occupations followed by Mr. Mason in his boyhood and youth at Kidderminster, were those of shoemaker, baker, and carpet-weaver, and it can be readily believed that they were but a sorry training for his new life in Birmingham as a metal worker—an entirely new vocation, in which he had everything to learn. His marvellous success fur- nishes conclusive evidence of his power of adapting himself to circumstances, of his industry, skill, and exceptionally great natural gifts and capacity. Either immediately, or very soon after, he commenced work in Birmingham, he was employed by a maker of jewellery and gilt toys, and remained with him for about ten years. Before the expiry of that time, such had been his assiduity and acquired skill, that 136 GREAT INDUSTRIES his employer promised him a partnership. The employer’s family opposed the proposal, and the master died without its being carried out. - The successors to the business offered Mason a liberal salary to remain as manager, but feeling that he had not been treated honourably, he refused to accept the engagement, and left the concern. He had, however, become to some extent known, and had no occasion to despond, men of his stamp being in demand in Birmingham. An acquaintance directed him to Mr. Samuel Harrison, of Lancaster. Street, split-ring maker, to whose business Josiah Mason ultimately succeeded, under the style and title of Mason, late Harrison. The attachment between Mr. Harrison and Mr. Mason from almost the commencement of their connection, was of the most affectionate character, and memorials of his deceased friend in tools, presses, and other articles, are preserved and cherished by Sir Josiah in his house and in the Orphanage at Erdington, with the most loving care. Harrison was a man of excel- lent parts. He had a high sense of honour, a warm temperament, and was possessed of considerable scientific knowledge and handicraft skill. He was the friend of Baskerville, the eminent printer, and of the distinguished Dr. Priestley, with whom he made scientific experiments. Mason was not probably very fastidious, when he reached what Burke called “the toy-shop of Europe,” as to the branch of metal working he would take up. He had a wide choice, but whether he betook himself to making the parti- cular instrument—the pen—hbecause it is “ mightier than the sword,” we know not. At any rate, he did so, and became one of the “ largest makers ” of steel pens in this country—probably in the world. How Mason began to make steel pens was in this wise. The late Mr. James Perry, of Red Lion Square, London, a man of great energy and _per- severance, was probably the first maker of steel pens “for the market.” It was not, we believe, earlier than 1825 that he commenced to push the sale of these articles by travellers and advertise- ments. About 1828—three or four years after he had joined Mr. Harrison—Mr. Mason saw a card of Perry’s pens in a stationer’s window in Birming- ham, price 3s. 6d. each. He purchased one, and after examining it, came to the conclusion that he could improve upon it. He forthwith made three pens, and sent them to Mr. Perry in London, who within two days arrived at Lancaster Street, for conference with the man that could make better pens than his own. The result was an arrangement for Mason to make the pens, and Perry to sell them, t OF GREAT BRITAIN. the goods to be stamped with Perry’s name, or with the title of the “‘Perryan Pen.” It may here be men- tioned that, although Sir Josiah Mason has been an extensive manufacturer of steel pens for nearly fifty years, he has never been known as such by the general public, the names of the traders whom he supplied, and not his own, being stamped upon his productions. Mr. Joseph Gillott commenced his career as a pen maker about the same time as Mr. Mason. It was an entirely new department of metal working, requiring specially adapted machine tools and other appliances. Mason and Gillott appear to have contrived their own methods, for it is remarkable that their names scarcely appear in the Patent Office Records. A considerable time after the trade was fairly established, steel pens were sold at Is. each. But now a gross can be had as low as 24d., the prices for nibs, wholesale, ranging from that figure to about ls. 6d.; and for barrel pens, from 7d. to 30s. per gross. Since 1830, great improvements have been effected in the machine tools and processes employed in pen making; the quality of the goods has been vastly improved, the production has been enormously increased, and the use of the article greatly extended. Sir Josiah Mason has taken a leading part in effecting this revolution. When he retired from the Lancaster Street Works, his people were rolling 5 tons of steel weekly, and had con- stantly about 60 tons of pens in different stages. of manufacture. Mr. G. R. Elkington, about 1840, commenced operations as an electro-plater, and inaugurated a. complete revolution in the plating trade. In 1842, Sir Josiah joined him as partner, and took an active share in the design and erection of the magnificent establishment in Newhall Street. Many friends endeavoured to dissuade the firm from prosecuting their enterprise. They carried on the business for a considerable time at a loss; but by skill, perseverance, and good management, surmounted all obstacles, overcame all difficulties, recovered their losses, and had their efforts crowned with triumphant success. In 1850, Mr. A. Parkes, chemist to Elkington and Mason, an accomplished metallurgical chemist, took out a patent for an improved method of copper smelting: the partners in Elkington and Mason, the electro-plating firm, entered into another partner- ship as Mason and Elkington, for the copper smelt- ing business. They erected works at Pembrey, in South Wales, which was then a small village ; but in consequence of the establishment of the works, EMINENT MANUFACTURERS—SIR JOSIAH MASON. rapidly increased in importance. A school for the workmen’s children was built very soon after the works were opened. The school, in the provision of which Sir Josiah Mason took the leading part, has always been to him an object of the most lively interest and watchful care. When Mr. G. R. Elkington died, Sir Josiah retired from the electro- plating firm of Elkington and Mason, and the copper-smelting firm of Mason and Elkington. Subsequently he retired from the extensive pen manufactory, steel and other metal small-ware works in Lancaster Street, which are now carried on by a limited liability company. But he has succeeded in es- tablishing an extensive refinery for the manu- facture of nickel and other metals. The eminently suc- cessful career of Sir Josiah Mason, highly honourable to himself, furnishes material for an interesting study; but the crowning glory of his life and character is to be found less in his success than in the results, per- sonalto himself, that have proceeded from it, in the enlightened munificence and exalted charity he has displayed in the ap- plication of his wealth. Sir Josiah Mason has made a notable contribu- tion to the solution of the problem—how a man may best dispose of his accumulated wealth for the benefit of survivors and posterity. The hardships of his own early life, and the disadvantages under which he laboured from defective education, or rather the want of education, probably gave direc- tion to Sir Josiah’s benevolence in founding and Orphanage, Almshouses, and a Scientific College, to be identified with his name, and which will prove his monuments in all coming generations. 18 endowing an 137 The Orphanage, near Sir Josiah’s residence at Erdington, about five miles to the north-east of Birmingham, is built for the accommodation of 300 boys and girls. Although a careful and exact business man, Sir Josiah would not allow any con- sideration of cost to interpose in making the whole as perfect as possible. The cost was about £60,000. It is endowed with land and building estates of the estimated value of £200,000. The building has a very picturesque and imposing ance. appear- The Orphanage is managed by trustees appointed by the founder ; afterwards they will be appointed, subject to certain conditions pro- vided in the trust-deed, by the Town Council of Birmingham. The In- stitution was opened in August, 1869, and, as characteristic of the un- obtrusive founder, with- out ceremony of any kind. Sir Josiah, diately after the comple- tion of the Orphanage, entered upon the elabo- ration of his other and greater philanthropic project —the Scientific College, for thorough systematic scientific in- struction, specially adap- ted to the practical,. mechanical, and artistic requirements of the dis- The founder provides by the trust-deed that the curriculum must include the following :—Mathe- matics, abstract and applied ; physics, mathematical and experimental ; chemistry, theoretical, practical, and applied ; natural sciences, especially geology and mineralogy, with their application to mines and metallurgy; botany and zoology, with special appli- cation to manufactures; physiology, with special reference to the laws of health; English, French, and German languages. The trustees may include such other subjects as they may think necessary to a course of thorough systematic scientific instruction, imme- trict. 138 GREAT INDUSTRIES adapted to the practical, mechanical, and artistic requirements for the time being of the manufac- turing and industrial pursuits of the midland district, and of the boroughs of Birmingham and Kidderminster, specially including mechanical draw- ing and architecture, but excluding mere literary education and instruction. Six trustees have been appointed by the founder, and hereafter the Town Council of Birmingham will have power to appoint other five, but the number of trustees must never exceed eleven. They must be laymen and Protest- ants, but no religious test is to be imposed upon the principal, vice-principal, professors, or teachers. The property dedicated in perpetuity by Sir Josiah Mason for the establishment and endowment of the Orphanage and the Scientific College will not be less than £370,000. In fine, Sir Josiah Mason is a man whom his fellow-townsmen and all who know him delight to honour, and whom they do honour, but whose diffidence makes him shrink from the acceptance of any public manifestation of such regard. On the occasion of the opening of the Orphanage, he was requested to sit for his portrait to be painted by a first-rate artist at the public expense. To silence respectful importunity, he gave a reluctant consent, which he afterwards, on reflection, withdrew. The OF GREAT BRITAIN. well-earned honour of knighthood was one that he accepted, but neither desired nor sought. Although full of anecdote, and highly interesting in his con- versation in private, he uses in public the ‘eloquence of silence.” He is an illustration of the saying, that “modest men are dumb ;” but, withal, his modesty is ‘a candle to his merit.” He is little known in connection with public affairs, and avoids acceptance of honourable offices that are open to him. On one occasion, at least, he departed from what seems to bea rule of life with him. In 1866, when the disastrous failure of the Birmingham Banking Company occurred, he was earnestly assured that his acceptance of the post of chairman of the new company would render essential service to the shareholders, and he reluctantly accepted office on this representation. Sir Josiah Mason is a strict economist in time and money, and has earned his position by the exercise of such humble but by no means common qualities as industry, honesty, and perse- verance, and by making the best use possible of the faculties with which he is endowed, and of his opportunities for promoting the welfare and pros- perity of himself and others. The portrait of Sir Josiah Mason is taken from a photograph by Mr. H. Penn, of Birmingham. WOOL AND WORSTED.—IV. WORSTEDS AND WOOLLENS : WHAT ARE THEY ?—FIRST PAPER: By Water S. B. McLaren, M.A., Worstep Spinner. HERE are very few persons not engaged in some branch of the wool trade who know technically what worsteds and woollens really are, or what is the difference between them. Among the general public there is, no doubt, considerable ignorance as to the materials of which things are severally made. It is related that after a party of strangers had been taken through a cotton mill, and had been shown all the processes through which the cotton passed before the goods were finished, one of the number, noticing some bales of the raw material, went to them, and taking out a handful of cotton, exclaimed, “So this is really the wool just as it comes from the sheep’s back!” The difficulty in the case of worsted is not, however, to know of what it is made. It may be assumed that most persons know it is spun from wool. Yet, so recently as 1875, the worsted spinners were astonished to receive a circular, signed by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Factories, asking, among other questions, “ Do you spin worsted, or wool?” It would be un- charitable to suppose that the gentlemen who signed that circular did not know of what worsted consisted, and that the correct answer for every spinner to give would be :—‘“TI spin both: I spin wool into worsted.” Hence the question, as it stood, was absurd. The real meaning, of course, was, “ Do you spin worsted or woollen yarn?” and though each spinner could tell at once whether he spun worsted or woollen yarn, yet if he had been called upon to define the meaning of the two words, and to state the difference between cloths made of the two materials, he might not have found it so easy. It can therefore hardly be expected that persons not engaged in the trade should know what worsted really is, and the distinction between it and woollen. WORSTED AND WOOLLEN YARNS yarn or cloth. But as it is desirable that the difference should be known, it is necessary to explain what are the supposed and what are the real points of difference between worsted and woollen yarns. It is popularly said that worsted is made of long wool which is combed ; and that woollen yarn is made of short wool which is carded. As the pro- cesses of combing and carding must be frequently mentioned in any account of worsted and woollen yarn spinning, it is requisite to define briefly what they are. The wool upon a sheep’s back is more or less matted, and the fibres require to be separated and prepared for spinning. Combs and cards are two kinds of machines used for this pur- pose. The card, or carding machine, which derives its name from the Latin carduus, a thistle, consists of a number of cylinders of various sizes, covered with thousands of short wire pins, which revolve rapidly. The wool is drawn in between the two first cylinders, and is gradually worked forward till it comes out at the other end of the machine, all the fibres having, in the meantime, been separated from each other by the action of the pins on the revolving cylinders. By this means all the knots and lumps which were in the wool are opened ; but the wool does not come off the card with the fibres stretched out lengthways, as is the case when it has been combed. Nor is the very short wool separated from that which is longer ; it all remains mixed together. When it is desired to separate this short wool with the object of obtaining a smoother thread (for it must be remembered that upon every sheep long and short wool grow together), the comb must be used. This separation is obtained by placing the wool upon rows of steel pins arranged in a circle. As the circle revolves, the long wool is first drawn off by a pair of rollers, and the short wool which remains is removed in a similar way, and kept separate. The long wool thus drawn off, the fibres of which lie smoothly side by side, is called the ‘ top,” while the short wool, or refuse, is called the “noil.” The wool, however, needs some preparation before it can be combed, and this preparation consists either in carding it, as above described, or in passing it through what are known as “preparing boxes,” which will be afterwards alluded to. It is supposed, then, that all long wool is combed and spun into worsted, while all short wool is carded and spun into woollen yarn : and that in this lies the essential difference between the two classes of yarns. This opinion is endorsed by almost every writer upon 139 the subject. Nevertheless, it is quite inaccurate at the present day, although, no doubt, there was a time when it was substantially correct. Even then, however, it was an unsatisfactory definition, on account of the vagueness of the terms “long” and “short,” as may be seen, for example, in Dr. Ure’s description of these two kinds of wool. In his “ Dictionary of Manufactures,” he says that long wool varies from 3 to 8 inches, while short wool is seldom longer than 3 or 4 inches. At the present time, however, combing wool for worsteds varies from less than 2 inches to more than 20 inches in length, while carding wool for woollens varies from what may be said to be no length at all up to about 5 inches. Thus, for example, a large quantity of Australian or “ Botany ” wool is combed, in which a considerable proportion of the fibres in the “‘top” (or ball of combed wool) are not more than an inch long, while in the “noil” (or refuse of short wool) the fibres are of course still shorter. In rough woollen cloths, on the other hand, made of Cheviot and half-bred wools, the fibres are often 5 inches long. It is clear, therefore, that the distinction between worsteds and woollens depend- ing on the length of the fibre is no longer tenable. Nor is the distinction that the one is combed and the other carded satisfactory. All woollen yarns are carded, or, to use another name, “scribbled,” but: a very large proportion of worsted yarns are also. carded. There may be said to be three main classes of worsted yarns, which, however, to some extent overlap each other. Lately, a fourth class has been invented, which is of a curious character. The first, class is composed chiefly of long English wool, which is combed after having passed through what are known as ‘preparing boxes.” Of the second class, yarn made of Botany wool may be considered representative, for the wool is short, and is first carded and then combed. Carpet yarns and coarse fingering ov knitting yarns compose the third class, and are made of wool of various lengths, which is carded without being combed afterwards. We have seen wool more than a foot long used in this way without much detriment. The fourth class is known as knickerbocker yarn, and is made of wool mixed with silk noil, or waste. To make it, the wool is first combed by itself, and afterwards carded, to. insure the thorough distribution of the silk noil, which stands out in small lumps and knots on the surface of the yarn. These different classes cannot always be kept distinct. The top of combed English wool may be mixed with a top of carded Botany to give it a finer quality; or the carded 140 carpet yarn may have in it some combed wool to make it more level, and other combinations may be made; but the idea that worsted yarn must be combed, and that only short wool can be carded, is entirely erroneous ; and a more accurate distinction between worsted and woollen yarns must be found. By some persons it is supposed that this distinction lies in the spinning-frame : woollen yarn being spun upon the “mule,” and worsted upon the “ throstle.” The chief characteristic of the latter spinning- frame is that the yarn is twisted and wound upon a bobbin as fast as it is delivered by the pair of rollers which draw it out ; and as this pair of rollers revolve constantly while the spinning-frame is in motion, the principle of the “throstle” frame is known as “continuous drafting.” The characteristic of the mule spinning-frame, on the other hand, is that the thread is drawn out by the rollers for about two yards before it is wound on to the bobbin, being kept stretched out by means of the spindle and bobbin on which it is to be wound travelling away from the rollers on a “carriage.” When the “car- riage” has gone the full length of its journey, the drawing-out rollers stop and allow the yarn to be twisted as much as may be necessary, after which it is wound on to the bobbin as the carriage again travels to the rollers. In consequence of this stoppage of the rollers, the drafting, or drawing out of the yarn, 1s not continuous. It is believed that this mode of spinning is most suitable for woollen yarn, while the principle of continuous drafting is most suitable for worsted. But this, too, is a mistake. Woollen yarn has, we believe, been spun on the mule since that machine was invented; but a spinning-frame upon the throstle principle ‘of continuous drafting has recently been made which is said to be rule for woollen yarn. Worsted, however, is spun upon both the throstle and the mule: the latter frame being almost exclu- sively in use on the Continent, mihere it is found to be suitable for spinning combed as well as carded wool. As this distinction, therefore, is untenable, we turn to another, which is generally believed to be correct—viz., that woollen fabrics are “fulled,” or milled, or felted, while those made of worsted are not. This is still an unsatisfactory definition, Fibre oF Woon (Magnified 30 Diameters), GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. because it deals with the cloth, whereas it is obvious that whatever difference there may be must exist in the yarn, seeing that both sorts of yarn can be woven in the same way. Apart, how- ever, from this objection, which is fatal, the defi- nition is not exhaustive. There are, we believe, some woollen cloths which are not milled, but merely scoured to remove the oil that has been used to help the spinning. On the other hand, there are worsted fabrics (such as cloths for coats), some of which are milled to give them greater soft- ness. There are also mixtures, of which the warp may be worsted and the weft woollen, and these may or may not be milled. But though this defi- nition is even more unsatisfactory than those previously considered, it is in connection with it, although indirectly, that the solution of the problem is to be found. The difference between wors- ted and woollen depends on the arrangement of the fibres in the thread, and this indirectly de- pends upon the general belief that the fibres arranged in one way are less suited for felting than if they are arranged in another ; but whether this belief has any justification in fact is doubted by some persons. To make this clear it is necessary to state briefly what felting or milling is, and what property wool possesses which allows it to be felted. When a piece of cloth is woven, each thread of warp and weft can be distinguished, if not by the naked eye, by the aid of a magnifying glass. This gives the cloth a somewhat bare look, and if the wool of which the yarn is made be very short, the cloth is comparatively weak. In certain cloths it is de- sirable to avoid this, and to make the stuff into one compact piece. For this purpose the cloth is put into water and pounded with large hammers of wood, called “stocks,” or it is passed through rollers under a heavy weight. By these means the fibres of wool shrink and are drawn closer to each other. They become matted and locked fast in each other. The original form of the cloth is lost, and the separate threads can no longer be seen. Instead of a piece of cloth similar to that which was put in, there comes out from the stocks (if the felting has been continued long enough) a piece apparently quite different. It has lost in length VARIETIES OF WOOL, AND THEIR FELTING QUALITIES. and breadth, but has gained in thickness, and now appears a matted, solid piece of woollen stuff. What is it in wool which permits this operation ? If hair were to be woven and milled under the stocks, it would not felt or mat together in the same way, or only to a very slight extent. The difference between hair and wool is that a hair has a smooth surface, comparatively free from jagged edges or serratures of any size, and lies straight ; while a fibre of wool is more or less waved, and is 141 are required to make wool felt in addition to its serrated surface. Among these are Cape of Good Hope, Odessa, and Buenos Ayres wools. The first named is fine in quality and has a very large number of serratures ; yet it is found to be, of all wools, perhaps the most difficult to felt. Odessa wool, which is also well serrated, can hardly be felted unless mixed with wool from other countries ; and the same may be said of that from Buenos Ayres. Peruvian wool, on the other hand, which is WOOLLEN AND WoRSTED Yarns (THREADS) (Magnified 50 Diameters). (1) 30s Worsted made of Fine Wool; (2) 30-skein Woollen made of Fine Wool; (3) 30s Worsted made of Strong Wool; (4) 28-skein Woollen made of Cheviot Wool.* covered with serratures. A fibre of wool, in fact, may be likened to a serpent’s skin or to a fir-cone covered with scales. The serratures, or saw-like teeth, representing these scales, overlap each other, and present innumerable little points, which act as hooks. They are extremely small, and in a fibre there are said to be from 1,200 to 3,000 per inch, When wool is spun, these serratures to some extent fit into or catch each other, and help to bind and lock the fibres together ; consequently, other things (such as length, quality, &c.) being equal, wool which has many serratures will spin better than wool which has few. It is believed that wool with many serratures is best suited for felting, and that it is on account of its jagged and serrated surface that felting is possible. There are, however, some kinds of wool which throw doubt on this, and show that some other qualities * Nos. 1—4 are specimens of worsted and woollen yarns, showing the difference in the arrangement of the fibres in the two classes of threads. No. 5 shows how very straight good worsted can be made, and how evenly the fibres of wool lie. Worsted is numbered according to the number of hanks (= 560 yards) in a pound. Thus in 30s there are 30 hanks of 560 yards each to a pound. stronger and longer, and not so well serrated, appears to be especially easy to felt. Hence it may be considered certain that the serrated surface alone is not enough to give wool its property of felting. What the other requisites are cannot be stated with cer- tainty. It is supposed that the country, the climate, the nature of the soil, and the food of the sheep, affect the wool, and make it more or less suited for felting. But beyond these somewhat vague surmises, nothing is positively known. Persons engaged in the trade are content to know that some wools can be felted better than others, without inquiring into the reason of the difference. No thorough scientific investiga- tion has hitherto been made into the nature of various classes of 36s Lustre Worsted. wool; but it may be hoped, as technical schools for instruction in textile industries have been founded, that some definite information 142 GREAT INDUSTRIES will be obtained on this subject. It may be said, however, that as a rule fine wool is best suited for felting, because strong wool seems to partake more of the nature of hair—the strongest sort of all, that which grows on the hind quarters of badly- bred sheep, being known technically as ‘ cow-tail.” Nevertheless, all wool can be felted to some extent; and as it is almost invariably intended that woollen cloth should undergo that operation, it is necessary to prepare and spin the yarn in such a way that felting may be facilitated ; and in consequence of the shrmking and matting of the cloth which thereby take place, any slight imperfections, such as unevenness, are not éasily seen. But in worsted fabrics it is different. They are not intended to be felted, except in the case of some worsted coatings, and even then only very slightly. It is, therefore, of the highest importance, except in the knickerbocker variety, that the yarn should be level, smooth, and free from lumps of any kind. To attain this end how must the fibres be arranged? To have a level thread, and a smooth surface on | the worsted fabric, all the fibres of wool must lie in the same direction in the yarn. That is the essential characteristic of a worsted thread. If the fibres are doubled up, or crossed, or tumbled about in any way, it is impossible to have a really even thread. To insure this levelness it is necessary in the finer yarns to remove, by means of combing, all the very short fibres, and the little knots and lumps which are inseparable from them. In the coarser sorts, such as carpet yarns, where this high degree of excellence is not needed, and where it is necessary to have a soft bulky yarn, it is not desirable to remove the short fibres by combing ; but yet the wool is put through certain processes to insure that, as far as possible, the fibres shall all lie in one direc- tion. Now, compare this with a woollen thread. In it, instead of lying smoothly and having a regular twist to bind them together, the fibres are crossed and doubled in every direction. The thread is con- sequently somewhat rough, and many loose fibres seem to stand out from it. These are of great use in assisting the felting of the cloth, as they lay hold of each other, and knit the different threads into one piece, The beauty of worsted is to have as few OF GREAT BRITAIN. of these loose fibres as possible, and, at the same time, to have a round, level thread, because the thread is seen in the woven fabric. On the other hand, as the woollen cloth is generally intended to be felted or milled, the fibres must be arranged in such a way as to assist that operation ; and it is supposed that when the fibres of wool lie in all pos- sible directions in the thread, and when many of them stand out from the surface of it, their serrated surfaces are more exposed than when they are smoothly stretched out in parallel lines. In other words, by this rough arrangement of the fibres, they get hold of each other better, and lap round each other more firmly in the felting. It must not, however, be supposed that it is the felting or milling which entitles a par- ticular yarn or cloth to be called woollen. A woollen cloth is made of woollen yarn, whether it be milled or not; and similarly a worsted cloth is made of worsted yarn, however much it may be milled. If it were considered necessary—which it never is —to mill fabrics of which both the warp and weft were spun from wool 15 or 18 inches long, it could be done. In the same way, too, any fabric made of mohair could be milled, for mohair is a wool rather than a hair, as its name seems to imply. The word mohair evidently comes from the same source as its equivalents in French, German, and Russian, moire, mohr, and mor; and is, according to the ety- mologist Skinner—not a very good authority, how- ever—derived “ ab orientale voce ‘ moiacar’ species cameloti” [from the Eastern word moiacar, a kind of camelote, a cloth originally made of camel’s hair]. There are, of course, worsted goods which are partly made of cotton or silk, or even China grass, but of these it is not necessary to speak at present. They are usually called worsted, in spite of their mixture, not on account of it ; and they prove, for: the present argument, that any attempt to define the difference between worsted and woollen in the cloth instead of in the yarn would be unsatisfactory. To understand the difference between the two classes of yarn, it is necessary to have some idea of the way in which each is made, and it will then be seen that it is according to the manner in which the fibres are arranged that a thread is known as worsted or woollen. SHIP BUILDING.—V. THE USE OF IRON TT\HE use of wrought iron for constructional purposes may be said to date from the years 1783-84, when Cort introduced his patent processes for puddling and rolling iron. By these simple but original devices, the manufacturer was endowed with the power of producing iron plates of various sizes and thicknesses, as well as bars of varied sec- tional forms. Until the period named, hammering was the only process by which wrought iron could be shaped from the rough mass into plates and bars; and as a consequence, the material was but little used. Sir William Fairbairn, speaking of the changes resulting from Cort’s inventions, said :— “When Watt was engaged with his steam engine, the only material at his command for his boiler, in which to generate steam, was hammered copper plates or cast iron; hammered iron plates were occasionally made, but seldom used, and it was not until the introduction of rolls that anything in the shape of iron plates could be obtained.” It may be safely said, therefore, that the subsequent develop- ments of the steam engine, of iron ship building, of bridges, railways, and other structures in which wrought iron is largely used, have been rendered possible by the practical effect given to the inven- tion originated by Cort. And it is to be regretted that a man to whom Great Britain and the world at large are so deeply indebted should have reaped so little personal advantage from his inventions, Engineers were the first to make extensive use of rolled iron plates, in the construction of steam boilers. So early as the year 1786 such boilers were built; and in the following year there is a record of the existence of an iron canal boat—the first iron vessel of which any account is extant. This boat arrived at Birmingham with a cargo of about 23 tons of iron, her own weight being 8 tons. She was 70 feet long and 62 feet wide; was built of iron plates ;2,ths of an inch thick, and had wooden stem, stern-post, and beams. It is further stated that she was “put together with rivets, like copper or fire-engine boilers.” Probably none of the spectators who witnessed the arrival of this little vessel dreamed that she was the pioneer of a new system of construction, that was to extend to all classes of ships, and revolutionise the art of ship building. Yet, so it was, although the change did not begin to show itself for thirty years, outside the special class of vessels where it originated. On the IN SHIP BUILDING. canals of Staffordshire, iron canal boats were gene- rally used at the commencement of the present century, and their efficiency and durability soon led to their employment in other districts. Some of these vessels continued at work for thirty or forty years, and a few for even a longer period. One most remarkable case is that of the Vulcan, built on the banks of the Monkland Canal, near Glas- gow, in 1818, and found to be at work quite recently, after sixty years’ service. In 1821 it was proposed to extend the use of iron hulls to steamers designed for service on rivers or coasts. One of the promoters of this scheme was the gallant officer afterwards so well known as Admiral Sir Charles Napier. It is a significant fact that the first iron steamer was constructed by the Horsley Company, in Staffordshire, and not by any ship builder at one of our sea-ports ; iron was evidently regarded at that time with anything but favour by shipwrights, whose training and precedents excluded all other materials but wood. The Aaron Manby was 120 feet long, and 18 feet broad, with engines of 80 horse-power. Having been erected at Horsley, the Aaron Manby was taken to pieces and brought to London, where she was finally put together and equipped. Having shipped a cargo of iron and linseed, she started for Havre, under the command of Captain Napier, and afterwards ascended the Seine to Paris, where her arrival caused a great sensation. Her success led to the construction, in France, of other iron steamers, which, with the Aaron Manby, were employed on the Seme. Al- though the Aaron Manby crossed the Channel, she was not intended for sea-going purposes, and was essentially a river steamer. This was true also of the next iron steamer built in England, for service on the river Shannon. Designed and fitted together at Horsley, she was taken, in pieces, to Liverpool and there completed, crossing the Irish Channel and proceeding to her destination in 1825, This vessel was the pioneer of another flotilla, and she remained at work for a very long period—more than thirty years. .One of her successors on the Shannon had the honour of being the first iron vessel wholly built at Liverpool: 1829 was the date of her construction, and it is worth notice, as fixing the period when iron ship building properly so called began to be practised in English sea-ports. From that time onward, the progress of the new industry has been 144 GREAT INDUSTRIES continuous and gradually accelerated ; until at the present time we find it almost displacing wood ship building in the United Kingdom, making inroads upon wood elsewhere, and only holding a sub- ordinate place in countries which, like Canada, are rich in timber, but have their iron manufacture imperfectly developed. In 1830, the late Sir William Fairbairn first turned his attention to the construction of iron vessels, with special reference to the design of canal boats of high speeds that should compete with the railways then about to be undertaken. Four such vessels were built at Manchester for service on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and some of these, after passing through the canal from Manchester to Liverpool, made the passage to Greenock. A coast- ing steamer was also built at the Manchester works, in 1831; and the OF GREAT BRITAIN. from those experiments have been derived some of the most valuable principles since embodied in the structures of iron ships. The “cellular double bottom,” as a source of strength and safety to iron ships, is a direct deduction from wrought-iron bridge construction ; and methods of riveting de- vised for bridges have, with some modifications, been of advantage to iron ships. About the same time that Fairbairn commenced work, another famous ship-building firm was started at Liverpool—that of the Messrs. Laird. One of their earlier vessels had the honour of being the: first iron steamer that accomplished a long sea voyage. She was named the Hlburkah, and was only 70 feet long, 13 feet broad, and 61 feet deep. Her skin was formed of plates only }th and ith of an inch in thickness, and she weighed about 15. tons, exclusive of success of these her engines and, outfit. Her en- undertakings in- duced Fairbairn gines were of 16 to enter business as a ship builder. horse-power, and, her draught of Selecting London as the seat of his new enterprise, he established a yard at Millwall, 1835, and con- tinued at work in water only 34 feet.. It was, no doubt,. a daring venture to navigate such a vessel from Liverpool to the Niger, but she there for thirteen years, building more than a hun- dred vessels, some of which were of large size. The ill-fated Megewra, whose loss formed the sub- ject of inquiry by a Royal Commission in 1872, was one of the largest vessels built by Fairbairn ; but the undertaking did not prove commercially successful, and was abandoned. It should be added that although not remaining personally engaged in ship building, Fairbairn continued to the last to watch and aid its developments: his experimental investigations and numerous suggestions are still of great value to the iron ship builder, and his name will always be held in honour. Combining, as he did, the professions of civil engineer and ship builder, Fairbairn made his experience in the one available for improvements in the practice of the other. For example, the experiments which preceded the con- struction of the Britannia Tubular Bridge, were intrusted by Mr. Robert Stephenson to Fairbairn, partly because of his acquaintance with iron ship building, and his possession of special plant; but Tuer ‘‘GREAT BRITAIN.” performed the voyage — success- fully, and gained a reputation for seaworthiness. After making two ascents of the Niger, she was beached and abandoned, having served the purpose for which she was built. Her success, doubtless, did much to extend the employment of iron ships on over-sea voyages, which up to that time had been performed exclusively by wooden ships. Such voyages were then considered impossibilities for steamers, the sphere of whose operations was limited to rivers or coasting ; but simultaneously, in 1838, both of these opinions were shown to be erroneous by the hard logic of facts. In that year the Sirius and Great Western steamships crossed the Atlantic, and opened up a traffic which has since attained gigantic proportions ; while the first iron sailing- ship, adapted for the most distant voyages, was launched, and appropriately named the Jronsides. By this time it was generally acknowledged that iron ships could be built with sufficient strength to withstand any weather ; but while their seaworthi- Iron Suip iy FRAME oN THE Stocks, Mussrs. Samupa’s YARD. 146 GREAT INDUSTRIES ness was admitted, there remained the very serious objection of the deviation of their compasses—an objection which would have been fatal to the general employment of iron vessels, had not means been devised for correcting the compasses, and insuring safe navigation. Of the many workers in this important field, we can only name one of the earliest and most eminent—Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who not merely corrected the compasses of the Jronsides, but devised a simple and inexpensive method applicable to all iron ships. Compass correction has now grown so much a matter of course, that it may astonish some readers to learn that only forty years ago the subject was regarded as one presenting in- superable difficulties, and preventing the possible employment of iron ships on distant voyages. Cases have, undoubtedly, happened in which errors of the compass have been the cause of danger or disaster, but they are comparatively few and far between. Intelligence on the part of the officers of iron ships, and proper care on the part of those charged with adjusting the compasses before a ship leaves port, ought to render the repetition of such accidents im- possible. The most difficult cases to be dealt with are those of armoured ships, with great masses of iron bolted on the sides of their iron hulls, and with heavy guns, which, when fired, cause a serious alteration in the compasses; but even these cases are successfully treated by officers charged with this duty by the Admiralty. It would be difi- cult to point to any case where science has been of more direct benefit to practice than that which has just been under our consideration. Iron ship building had become well estab- lished in other ports besides Liverpool and London, by the time the Jronsides was built, the Clyde being a centre of the industry. In the year 1839, a great step in advance of all pre- ceding ships was, however, taken by beginning at Bristol the construction of the famous iron steamer, the Great Britain. My. I. K. Brunel was the prime mover in this enterprise, and the impetus thus given to the application of sound principles of construction to iron ships was most considerable ; it is scarcely necessary to add that Mr. Brunel was not a ship builder, but a civil engineer. This fact may have helped rather than hindered progress, for as a civil engineer Mr. Brunel was familiar with the use of wrought iron in structures, and not being a ship builder he was untrammelled by traditions or prejudices derived from the practice of builders of wood ships. Any one who reviews the structural OF GREAT BRITAIN. arrangements of the earlier iron ships cannot fail to remark the close imitation of wood ships in the arrangements and forms of the various parts of the structure. Many features which were unavoidable with wood, but which were very objectionable, as well as unnecessary, with iron, were retained in the earlier ships; and there was frequently a want of appreciation of the superior qualities of iron as a material for ship building. The Great Britain was a protest against such servile copying ; and it has been well said that “in the construction of the hull, in- stead of a mere imitation of the arrangements of the timber in wooden ships, the proper distribution of the material to receive the strains that would come upon it was carefully considered.” Remembering the date of her construction, the vessel is indeed most remarkable in her structure, as well as her dimensions. She was 322 feet long, 51 feet broad, and of 3,000 tons displacement; was propelled by a screw, had a “balanced” rudder, and surpassed all her competitors in speed, making the passage from Liverpool to New York in the then unprecedented time of from 12 to 13 days. Her very misfortunes supplied weighty arguments in favour of the use of iron hulls ; for no wooden ship could have survived the exposure to which she was subjected during a whole winter ashore in Dundrum Bay, and have been repaired at such comparatively moderate cost after she was floated. Her repairs were completed in 1851, and with unimpaired strength the ship was once more sent to sea, this time on the Australian line, where she remained at work for nearly a quarter of a century, and obtained a great reputa- tion for speed and seaworthiness. She now (1878) lies in the docks at Birkenhead, and is by no means past service, although nearly forty years old. The improvements effected in steamers of more recent construction place her under unfavourable condi- tions for competition, and probably account for her non-employment. The importance which iron ship building had attained in Great Britain in the year 1842 is eyvi- denced by the fact that the French Government deemed it advisable to send over an able officer to inspect and report on the various establishments. This Report, by M. Dupuy de Lome, gives us glimpses of the methods of work then common in England, and of the condition of the iron manu- facture at that time. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Bristol where the chief ports visited, but no- where was so much of interest to be seen as at the last-named port, where the Great Britain was then in progress. From this Report afew facts may be SHIP BUILDING—IRON SHIPS. gleaned, illustrating the differences that have arisen during the last thirty years in the means at the disposal of the iron ship builder. Large forgings for the keels, stems, and stern-posts were not then pro- curable, or were very expensive, and in lieu of them combinations of plates were used, such combina- tions being frequently very weak. The “ribs,” or transverse frames, had to be formed in several lengths, whereas the angle bars used for the pur- pose can now be procured in much greater lengths. The plates used in the skins were of very small dimensions as compared with those now in use: lengths of 7 or 8 feet, and breadths of 14 or 2 feet, -were formerly thought considerable ; now it is not uncommon to produce plates 4 and 5 feet broad, and 14 or 16 feet long. Deck beams or girders were at first made of wood in iron ships; when iron came into use, the beams had to be formed by riveting angle bars and plates together, but now the iron manufacturer gives to the ship builder a choice of so many sectional forms of iron beams and bars, that the preparatory work of combination is almost en- tirely dispensed with in constructing decks and platforms. In passing judgment upon the skill of the early iron ship builders, their inferior appliances and facilities should therefore be always borne in mind. They made a good, if not always the best, use of the means at hand, and out of their require- ments and suggestions grew most of the improve- ments in iron manufacture and ship-yard machinery of which the benefits are reaped at the present day. From the first, as we have shown, iron ship building was closely associated with engineering, and iron ship yards were furnished with special plant and machinery. A few ship builders were sufficiently alive to the future of the new material as to enter into the earlier competitions with engineers such as Fairbairn; but even these em- ployers had to seek their workers in iron amongst the boiler makers, fitters, and other trades which had sprung up in connection with the construction of engines. The shipwrights clung to their ancient handicraft, and gradually passed, from being the principal tradesmen in ship building, to the sub- ordinate place they still occupy in private yards. The traditions of wood ships, however, could not be shaken off entirely by the builders of iron ships, even when they were engineers. For many cen- turies wood ships had been built with transverse frames or “ribs” within their water-tight skins ; and with wooden ribs this arrangement was pro- bably the best that could be made. With an iron skin and ribs the case was very different: yet the 147 old transverse arrangement of framing was imitated faithfully in the earlier iron ships, and still sur- vives in by far the greater number of iron ships. Every one who has visited an iron ship yard and seen a ship ‘in frame” on the stocks, must have remarked the fact now mentioned. It should, how- ever, be added that the continued use of transverse ribs in iron ships is rather a matter of convenience than of tradition: it does not most fully develope the capacities of iron as a constructive material, but it answers practical purposes well, even in the largest ships, and it much facilitates the work of building. It is unnecessary to trace the history of iron ship building in any detail beyond the date of the Great Britain’s construction. As the capabilities of the material have become better understood, and its manufacture has been developed, so have the sizes and speeds of iron ships been increased. The Great. Britain sinks almost Into insignificance when con- trasted with the Atlantic steamers now at work, the largest of which are nearly 500 feet long, while their total weight is three times as great as that of their predecessor. But even these magnificent vessels appear small beside the Great astern, which is nearly 700 feet long, and exceeds 27,000 tons in weight when fully laden. Different opinions may be entertained as to the wisdom displayed by Mr. Brunel in planning such a monster ship, but there can be no difference of opinion as to the skill with which the structural arrangements were de- signed by Mr. Brunel, assisted by Mr. Scott Russell. The ship must always remain a monu- ment of what can be done with iron in the associa- tion of lightness with strength, and although her design dates from 1852-3 it surpasses in simplicity and efficiency of construction nearly all the large mercantile steamers of the present day. The struc- tures of our armoured ships have also been greatly influenced by the principles exemplified in the Great Eastern ; and it is worthy of remark that the same system of construction, with some minor modifications, would be exceedingly well adapted for use in steel ships, should that material replace iron, as it appears likely to do. Iron ship building has made its way in the face of much, opposition and popular prejudice. Mr. Scott Russell relates an anecdote bearing on this matter, which will illustrate a feeling at one time very general, but now almost non-existent. “A good many years ago,” he says, “ I happened to converse with the chief naval architect of one of our dock- yards on the subject of building ships of iron: the 148 GREAT INDUSTRIES answer was characteristic, and I have never for- gotten it; he said with some indignation, ‘Don’t talk to me about iron ships; it’s contrary to nature.’” The source of this popular error is obvious at a glance. Iron in the form of single plates or solid bars is so heavy that it cannot float; but if thin sheet iron and angle bars are used to make a box it will float readily enough, because it excludes water from a considerable space ; and it is a fundamental law of hydrostatics that a floating body must “ dis- place” a weight of water equal to its own weight. Those persons who objected to iron on the ground of its heaviness, omitted to notice the fact that many kinds of timber are, bulk for bulk, heavier than water, and so will not float any more than solid masses of iron. As a matter of fact, the hulls of OF GREAT BRITAIN. iron ships are actually lighter than those of wood ships; so that of two vessels having the same out- side form and draught of water, that built of iron would carry a considerably greater weight of cargo than the other built of wood. Experience: shows that to give sufficient strength to a wooden hull it must be made nearly as heavy as the burden it carries; whereas, iron hulls often carry cargoes: twice as heavy as themselves without showing the slightest signs of weakness. The gain in favour of the carrying power of iron ships is consequently about one-sixth of the total weight of a ship and her lading; and this is not only a most important commercial advantage, but it also helps to explain what perhaps may have required explanation—the disuse of wood in favour of iron. INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.—III. MR. HOBHOUSE’S BILL—-OASTLER’S APPEAL. By James HENDERSON, oNE OF H.M. Assistant-InsprEcTors oF FACTORIES. LTHOUGH obtained after a very long and arduous struggle, the Factory Act of 1819 afforded such a small amount of relief to the oppressed and suffering factory children, that it did little to allay the agitation which the exposure of their wretched condition had provoked. The Act practically proved inoperative, as it contained no provision for compelling witnesses to attend and give evidence in the event of a prosecution, nor was there any special authority given to an executive officer to enforce this particular law. Several attempts were made to improve the Act, none of which, however, succeeded, until, in the year 1825, Mr. John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), then member for Westminster, introduced a Bill which aimed in the first instance at reducing the hours of work of children in cotton factories to eleven hours a day, and also at strengthening the authority of the magistrates whose duty it was to enforce it. When this measure was first introduced, several members of the House of Commons expressed their warm approval of it, and urged that it ought to be extended so as to embrace the children employed in all textile factories. On the second reading of the Bill, on the 16th of May, 1825, its rejection was moved by Mr. Hornby, the member for Preston, who main- tained that if this additional restriction were to be imposed upon the cotton trade, the annual produc- tion would be curtailed to the extent of two millions. and a half sterling. Mr. Hobhouse in his reply very appositely remarked that this was not a consideration, where the health, the comfort, and the happiness of so many children were concerned. Among the members who took part in the discussion on this occasion was Sir Francis Burdett, who contended that the helpless children in factories should not be sacrificed to the avarice and cupidity of their unfeeling parents, or of those: by whom their labour was purchased. These parents, whatever their right might be to receive the profits of their children’s labour, had no right to sell them. ‘“ We heard of slavery abroad,” con- tinued Sir Francis, ‘but, good God! did we ever hear of any such instances of over-working as had been published with respect to the labour of children in the cotton manufactories? These: wretched little beimgs were in many instances: employed day after day for more than twelve hours at a time. Why, had any man a horse that he could think of putting to such toil? It was shocking to humanity ; and it was still more odious when it was considered that these children, if they chanced to be overpowered by sleep, were beaten. by the spinners until they awoke.” Moderate as Mr. Hobhouse’s proposals were, he found it — INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION—SHORT TIME MOVEMENT. impracticable to carry them, in the teeth of the powerful opposition which was offered in the House of Commons to any farther limitation of hours of work in cotton factories. On the 31st of March, therefore, when the House went into committee on the Bill, Mr. Hobhouse was con- strained to withdraw his proposal to restrict the hours of work to eleven per day, and to substitute for it one which sanctioned twelve hours’ work on the first five days of the week, and nine hours on Saturday, making a total of sixty-nine hours a week for a child of nine years of age. This was a reduction of three hours a week, as compared with the limit fixed by Sir Robert Peel’s Act of 1819; but the main object which Mr. Hobhouse had in view, was to render that Act really operative, by giving magistrates power to compel the attendance of witnesses. This he secured, although he had to abandon the suggestion to reduce the hours of work to sixty-six in the week. At this distance of time, and with the additional knowledge and experience which we have acquired as to the most suitable conditions under which factory labour can be really successfully prosecuted, the persistent opposition offered to such moderate measures as that proposed in 1825 by Mr. Hob- house can hardly fail to surprise and astonish us. Much of this was due undoubtedly to sheer ignorance of the consequences on the part of the general public. And this ignorance is not sur- prising, when we bear in mind the character of some of the medical and professional evidence which was given before the several committees who inquired into this question, prior to the passing of the Act of 1819. Mr. Hobhouse made some allusion to this when moving the second reading of his Bill of 1825. The opinion of some medical gentlemen was relied upon as a proof that seventy-two hours’ labour a week was not too much for a child of nine years; but the weight which was to be attached to such an opinion might be judged of from the fact that one of the medical witnesses examined against the Bill, when asked whether a child could keep standing at its work for twenty-three hours continuously without injury to its health, replied that the question was one of great doubt. Another medical witness denied that the inhaling of cotton dust and fly was in- jurious to health, and on being asked to explain why, answered that the effects were counter- acted by constant expectoration. “And is not constant expectoration injurious to health?” asked another member of the committee. ‘ That,” 149 replied the witness, ‘‘depends upon a variety of facts.” Special pleading of this kind, however, availed little against the growing conviction throughout the country that a more efficient check should be placed upon the abuses which, it was clearly estab- lished, prevailed in respect to the employment of children and young persons in the textile fac- tories of the United Kingdom. Sir Robert Peel’s Act of 1819 had effected a partial improvement ; but it was no more than partial. The more humane and considerate among the cotton manu- facturers frankly accepted it, and obeyed it, but it. was notorious that by others it was shamelessly and openly violated. Unfortunately, the machinery for enforcing the law against such wilful offenders was. wholly inadequate. But the men who had taken the amelioration of the factory children in hand were not easily discouraged, and they persevered in their noble work. It has been estimated that Mr. Nathaniel Gould, of Manchester, expended on his. own account some £15,000 on the agitation which preceded the passing of the Act of 1819. The debates on Mr. Hobhouse’s Bill, in the session of 1825, gave a fresh impetus to the agitation of this question of factory legislation in the cotton manu- facturing districts, more especially in Lancashire. Short time committees were established in the chief towns, such as Manchester, Stockport, Bolton, and Blackburn. Among those who took an active share in this work of organisation was Mr. Philip Grant, of Manchester, who subsequently published a history of the agitation for a ten-hours’ Factory Bill which has had an extensive circulation. Among the factory operatives who were associated with him on the Manchester committee, after the passing of Mr. Hobhouse’s Act, in 1825, he mentions the names of Thomas Foster, John Doherty, James Turner, and Thomas Daniel. It was not alone the opposition of certain of the factory owners that these men had at this time to contend against, for Mr. Grant acknowledges that among the work- people themselves the proposal to limit the hours of work of the children employed was unpopular. As in the case of the introduction of improved machinery, the effect apprehended from this move- ment was, that it would interfere with their employment and reduce their earnings. It was about this time that the whole nation was engrossed in the interesting and absorbing question of colonial slavery. In the manufacturing districts of the North of England, and especially in York- shire, the subject was debated with an earnestness 150 and an enthusiasm seldom witnessed. The West Riding rang with the eloquent denunciations of social oppression, so forcibly expressed by Lord Brougham, and a timely and powerful appeal on behalf of the factory children was made at this juncture by a gentleman who was ultimately in- duced to become one of the most prominent leaders in the movement for their emancipation and protection—namely, Mr. Richard Qastler, who in subsequent years came to be known among the factory operatives by the familiar soubriquet of “The Factory King.” Mr. Oastler resided at Fixly Hall, near Huddersfield, and as a matter of course was familiar with the social changes which were being rapidly effected around him by the wonderful development and extension of the woollen and worsted manufactures. Step by step, but somewhat later in the day, these branches of manufacturing industry were, like the cotton manu- facture, being altogether revolutionised by the intro- duction of steam power and improved machinery. The increase in the productive power, great as 1t was, failed to keep pace with the demand for the manufactured goods, and new mills and factories were rapidly erected in every populous centre. The processes of the manufacture, particularly in the worsted trade, admitted of the employment of young children in large numbers with advantage, and very soon they were to be found at work in thousands. At this time, it is to be borne in mind, no law existed which in any way regulated the employment of children either in a woollen or a worsted mill. The application of the Factory Acts, which had been obtained after so much trouble and agitation, was limited solely to cotton factories ; and if even under their protective influence such abuses could exist as had been established in the case of cotton factories, our readers may safely conclude that the state of matters was certainly no better when children were employed in large numbers in the woollen and worsted manufac- tures. It was at this juncture that Mr. Richard Oastler appeared on the field ; and in October, 1830, a letter with his signature attached was published in the Leeds Mercury, which exercised a most remarkable influence upon the sentiments and opinions of the public upon this question. The document, indeed, has an historical value, as it indicates an entirely new and important departure in the public agita- tion for factory legislation. We think it important, therefore, to append it in extenso as it appeared in the Leeds Mercury. It was as follows :— GREAT INDUSTRIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. YORKSHIRE SLAVERY. To the Editors of the ‘ Leeds Mercury.” “Tt is the pride of Britain that a slave cannot exist on her soil; and if I read the genius of her constitution aright, I find that slavery is most abhorrent to it—that the air which Britons breathe is free—the ground on which they tread is sacred to liberty.”—Rev. R. W. Hamilton’s Speech at the Meeting held in the Cloth Hall Yara, Sept. 22nd, 1830. GENTLEMEN,—No heart responded with truer accents to the sounds of liberty which were heard in the Leeds Cloth Hall Yard on the 22nd inst. than did mine; and from none could more sincere and earnest prayers arise to the throne of Heaven, that hereafter slavery might only be known to Britain in the pages of her history. One shade alone obscured my pleasure, arising not from any difference in principle, but from the want of application of the general principle to the whole empire. The pious and able champions of negro liberty and colonial rights should, if I mistake not, have gone farther than they did ; or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, before they had travelled so far as the West Indies should at least for a few moments have sojourned in our own immediate neighbourhood, and have directed the attention of the meeting to scenes of misery, acts of oppression, and victims of slavery, even on the threshold of our homes. Let truth speak out, appalling as the statement may appear. The fact istrue. Thousands of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, both male and female, the miserable in- habitants of a Yorkshire town (Yorkshire, now represented in Parliament by the giant of Anti-Slavery principles) are at this very moment existing in a state of slavery, more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system, “ colonial slavery.” These innocent creatures drawl out unpitied their short but miserable existence in a place famed for its profession of religious zeal, whose inhabitants are ever foremost in pro- fessing ‘‘temperance,” and ‘‘reformation,” and are striv- ing to outrun their neighbours in missionary exertions, and would fain send the Bible to the farthest corner of the globe—ay, in the very place where the anti-slavery fever rages most furiously, her apparent charity is not more admired on earth than her real cruelty is abhorred in heaven. ‘The very streets which receive the droppings of an Anti-Slavery Society are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled, not by the cruel whip of the negro slave driver, but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or strap of the overlooker, to hasten, half-dressed, but not half- fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery—the worsted mills in the town and neighbourhood of Bradford! !! Would that I had a Brougham’s eloquence, that I might rouse the hearts of the nation, and make every Briton swear “‘ These innocents shall be free!” Thousands of little children—both male and female, but principally female—from seven to fourteen years of age, are daily compelled to labour from six o’clock in the morning till seven in the evening, with only—Britons! blush while you read it—with only thirty minutes allowed for eating and recreation. Poor infants! ye are indeed sacrificed at the shrine of avarice, without even the solace of the negro slave; ye are, no more than he is, free agents; ye are compelled to work as long as the necessity of your needy parents may require, or the cold-blooded avarice of your worse than barbarian masters may demand! ye live in the boasted land of freedom, and feel, and mourn that ye are slaves, and slaves without the only comfort COTTON—PERSECUTIONS OF ARKWRIGHT. which the negro has. He knows that it is his sordid, mercenary master’s interest that he should live—be strong and healthy; not so with you. You are doomed to labour Zrom morning to night for one who cares not how soon your weak and tender frames are stretched to breaking! You are not mercifully valued at so much per head! this would assure you at least, even with the worst and most cruel masters, of the mercy shown to their own labouring beasts. No, no! your soft and delicate limbs are tired, and fagged, and jaded, at only so much per week ; and when your joints can act no longer, your emaciated frames are cast aside, the boards on which you lately toiled and wasted life away are instantly supplied with other victims, who, in this boasted land of liberty, are hired—not sold—as’slaves, and daily forced to hear that they are free. Oh, Duncombe! thou hatest slavery—I know thou dost resolve that York- shire children shall no more be slaves. And Morpeth! who justly glories in the Christian faith. Oh, Morpeth! listen to the cries and count the tears of these poor babes, and let St. Stephen’s hear thee swear they shall no longer groan in slavery! And Bethel, too! who swear’st eternal hatred to the name of slave, whene’er thy manly voice is heard in Britain’s senate, assert the rights and liberty of Yorkshire youths. And Brougham! thou who art the chosen champion of liberty in every clime, oh, bend thy giant’s mind and listen to the sorrowing accents of these poor Yorkshire little ones, and note their tears; then let thy voice rehearse their woes, and touch the chord thou only holdest—the chord that sounds above the silvery notes 151 in place of heavenly liberty, and, down descending at thy will, groans in horrid caverns of the deep, in muttering sounds of misery accursed to hellish bondage; and as thou soundest these notes, let Yorkshire swear, ‘‘ Here children. shall be free!” Yes, all ye four protectors of our rights, chosen by freemen to destroy Oppression’s red— Vow one by one, vow altogether, vow, With heart and voice eternal enmity Against oppression by your brethren’s hands, Till man, nor woman, under Britain’s laws, Nor son, nor daughter, born within her empire, Shall buy, or sell, or hire, or be a slave. The nation is now most resolutely determined that negroes shall be free. Let them, however, not forget that Britons should have common rights with Afric’s sons. The blacks may be fairly compared to beasts of burden kept for their master’s use ; the whites to those which others keep and let for hire. If I have succeeded in calling the attention of your readers to the horrid and abominable system on which the worsted mills in andnear Bradford are conducted, I have done some good. Why should not children working in them be protected by legislative enact- ments, as well as those who work in cotton mills? Chr.sviaus should feel and act for those Christ so eminently loved, and declared that “‘ of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” I remain, yours, &c., RicHAkD OASTLER. Fixly Hall, near Huddersfield, September 29, 1830. COTTON.—IV. THE STORY OF ARKWRIGHT’S LIFE (continiied)—THE INVENTIONS OF THOMAS HIGHS. By Dayip Bremner, Auruor or “THE InpusTRIES oF SCOTLAND.” ANY obstacles, as we have seen, were thrown in Arkwright’s way in working out his ideas and laying the foundation of the factory system. His mill at Cromford was an object of much aver- sion to the manufacturers of Lancashire ; and when the powers of the machinery he had devised for it became known, no pains were spared to crush the inventor. In drawing up his specifications, Ark- wright left several loopholes, which enabled his opponents to dispute his patent rights successfully on two occasions. “ The most extraordinary piece of malevolence,” says Dr. Ure (one of the most friendly of Arkwright’s biographers), in his “ History of the Factory System,” “which, if not well attested, would be incredible, was the manufacturers of Lancashire combining not to buy Arkwright’s yarn, though it was acknowledged to be superior in quality to any in the market.” His best servants were bribed to leave his employment, and a mill which he had built at Birkacre was burned by incendiaries, acting, it was alleged, under the instructions of the disaffected cotton manufacturers of the district. After the first trial of his patent, in 1781, which resulted in its being set aside on the ground of obscurity and defectiveness in the specification, Arkwright published his “Case,” in which his object was to set himself right in the eyes of the unprejudiced public. An extract from that docu- ment will show the spirit of the time with which the inventor had to contend :—‘‘ No sooner were the merits of Mr. Arkwright’s invention fully understood, from the great increase of material produced in a given time, and the superior quality of the goods manufactured ; no sooner was it known that his assiduity and great mechanical abilities were rewarded with success, than the very men who had before treated him with contempt and derision began to devise means to rob him of his inventions, and profit by his ingenuity. Every attempt that cunning could suggest for this purpose was made, by the seduction of his servants and workmen (whom he had with great labour taught 152 GREAT INDUSTRIES the business). A knowledge of his machinery and inventions was fully gained. From that time many persons began to pilfer something from him ; and then by adding something else of their own, and by calling similar productions and machines by other names, they hoped to screen themselves from punish- ment. So many of those artful and designing individuals had, at length, infringed on his patent right, that he found it necessary to prosecute several ; but it was not without great difficulty and consider- able expense that he was able to make any proof against them ; conscidus that their conduct was un- justifiable, their proceedings were conducted with the utmost caution and secrecy. Many of the per- sons employed by them were sworn to secrecy, and their buildings and workshops were locked up or otherwise secured. This neces- sary proceeding of Mr. Arkwright occa- sioned, as in the case of poor Hargreaves, an association against him of the very per- sons whom he had served and obliged. Formidable, however, as it was, Mr. Ark- wright persevered, trusting that he should obtain, in the = OF GREAT BRITAIN. the sufficiency of his specification, that he was led to take fresh proceedings to secure the fruits of his ingenuity and enterprise. A trial in February of the year mentioned resulted in a verdict in his favour, and once more his monopoly was secured to him. He was not destined to enjoy it long, however, for immediately after the favourable verdict was passed, the cotton spinners of Lancashire applied for and obtained a writ of scvre facias to try the validity of the patent. The trial took place in June of the same year, and excited much interest. Counsel for the Crown opposed the patent on four grounds— Ist, that it was a great inconvenience to the public ; 2nd, that it was not a new invention at the time of the patent being granted ; 3rd, that it was not a new inven- tion by Mr. Ark- wright at all; and Ath, that he had not disclosed his inven- tion in the specifica- tion. Evidence was led to show that several of the im- provements in the carding machine claimed by Arkwright were the invention of other persons, and also that spinning by event, that satisfac- tion to which he appeared to be justly entitled. A trial in Westminster Hall, in July last [1781], at a large expense, was the consequence; when, solely by not describing so fully and accurately the nature of his last complex machinery, as was strictly by law required, a verdict was found against him.” At that time the capital invested in factories in which Arkwright’s machinery was used was £200,000, and the number of persons employed was 5,000. The result of this adverse verdict induced Arkwright to abandon eight other actions which he had entered against persons who in- fringed what he believed to be his rights, and to forego, for a time, at least, the advantages which he hoped he had secured by his second patent. By the beginning of the year 1785 he had, however, obtained such a weight of testimony by competent persons to the justice of his claims, and AREWRIGHT’S WATER-FRAME SPINNING MACHINE. means of rollers had been practised long before Arkwright came upon the scene as an inventor or adapter of cotton machinery. The case against Arkwright was undoubtedly strong, and his defence was weak. The consequence was, that the jury without a moment’s hesitation returned a verdict for the Crown, thus annulling the patent and destroying Arkwright’s monopoly. The machines thus made available for general use were readily and extensively adopted, the result being a great expansion of the cotton manufacture of the country. By that time Arkwright’s material position was secured, however; and, though deprived of the power to charge royalties for the use of his machines, he was able, by applying himself to the development of the factories he had built for him- self, to achieve a position of affluence. His com- petitors failed for a considerable time to equal the quality of the yarns he produced, and he consequently (Specification Drawing.) COTTON—ARKWRIGHT’S WIFE. held a strong position in the markets. His three sons were engaged in the business, and re- lieved him in his later years from the exertion of active superintendence—a relief which must have been grateful to one who had led such a busy life, and who had had to fight the prejudices and jea- lousies of a powerful combination of capitalists. Some incidents of Arkwright’s domestic life have already been mentioned. He was twice married, his first wife being Patience Holt, of Bolton, who died in 1761, and whose existence is barely noticed iis f I! ll oa aD | | — === NM - = ——— ! i i | i ll l = : i 1 quo ann | un , | | | , an i | | | | 1 yy | | VW | I iy aS Ua 153 day to the study of grammar, and another hour to writing and orthography. Having taken up his abode in Derbyshire, he interested himself in the affairs of the county, and in 1786 had the honour of being elected High Sheriff. In that capa- city it fell to his lot to present an address to his Majesty George III., congratulating him on his escape from the attempt made on his life by Mar- garet Nicholson, and on that occasion he was knighted by the king. The malady from which he suffered during the greater part of his existence Fe wie= EEA = I= i. Hh | Milt Ht y i | p S—_ SS | —S= _—— 3 SSS == ———S—SSS—SSSS55 =H SS SSS - S=SSSSSSEH =a Higus’ SPINNING-JENNY, by his biographers. Of his second wife, Margaret Biggins, of Pennington, in the parish of Leigh, almost the only thing recorded is, that she refused to sanction the sale of some property which belonged to her in her own right, in order that her husband might with the money develop some of his ideas on cotton spinning. Some unpleasantness arose out of the refusal, and a separation took place. Ark- wright was a man of most industrious habits, and a strict economiser of time. When fifty years of age, he made attempts to overcome the defi- ciencies of his early education, and from the time usually allotted to sleep he dedicated one hour a 20 became complicated with other derangements of the system, and Sir Richard Arkwright’s busy and useful life closed in the year 1792, he being then in his sixtieth year. To his heirs he left, besides his mills, a fortune of about £500,000, and to his country a legacy the value of which can never be reckoned. His son Richard, who inherited much of his father’s sagacity and aptitude for business, was so successful in his undertakings that he was reckoned to be the wealthiest commoner in England. He died in 1843, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, leaving a large family. In proving his will, the per- sonalty was sworn to exceed one million sterling, 154 GREAT INDUSTRIES that being, however, a nominal sum, because the scale of stamp duty went no higher. The probate bore a stamp of £15,700. Though Arkwright did much for the cotton trade, and achieved a position of affluence for himself, there can be no doubt that the unfavourable criti- cisms of some of his biographers had some founda- tion. The fairest estimation of the man is, perhaps, that given by Mr. Baines, in his “ History of the Cotton Manufacture,” which is as follows :—“I have found myself compelled to form a lower esti- mate of the inventive talents of Arkwright than most previous writers, In the investigation I have prosecuted I have been guided solely by a desire to ascertain the exact truth. It has been shown that the splendid inventions, which even to the present day are ascribed to Arkwright by some of the ablest and best-informed persons in the kingdom, belong in great part to other and much less fortunatemen. In appropriating those inventions as his own, and claim- ing them as the fruits of his unaided genius, he acted dishonourably, and left a stain upon his character, which the acknowledged brilliance of his talents cannot efface. Had he been content to claim the merit which really belonged to him, his reputation would still have been high, and his wealth would not have been diminished. That he possessed in- ventive talent of a very superior order has been satisfactorily established; and in improving and perfecting mechanical inventions, in exactly adapt- ing them to the purposes for which they were intended, in arranging a comprehensive system of manufacturing, and in conducting vast and com- plicated concerns, he displayed a bold and fertile mind and consummate judgment ; which, when his want of education and the influence of an employ- ment so extremely unfavourable to mental expan- sion as that of his previous life are considered, must have excited the astonishment of mankind.” For the sake of enabling a comparison to be made between the processes carried on in Arkwright’s mills with those which may be witnessed in factories containing machinery of the latest device, to be described farther on, we give here an extract from a description of the treatment of cotton in one of Arkwright’s mills at Cromford, which was written by Mr. Strutt for “The Beauties of England and Wales,” published in 1802 :—“ When the cotton is sufficiently picked and cleaned (an operation that furnishes employment to a great number of women), it is carefully spread upon a cloth, in which it is afterwards rolled up in order to be'carded. To the carding machine belong two cylinders of different OF GREAT BRITAIN. diameters, the larger of which is covered with cards of fine wire, and over, and in contact with it, are fixed a number of stationary cards, that, in conjunc- tion with the revolving cylinders, perform the opera- tion of carding. The smaller cylinder is encompassed by fillet cards, fixed in.a spiral form, and is also provided with an ingenious piece of machinery called a crank. The roll of cloth before mentioned, being applied to the machine, is made to unroll very slowly by means of rollers, so that it may con- tinually feed the larger cylinder with its contents. When carded, the cotton passes from this to the smaller cylinder, which revolves in contact with the other, and is thence stripped off by the motion. of the crank, not in short lengths, but in continua- tion, and having the appearance of a very thin fleece, which, if not intended to pass a second time through the carding machine, is immediately con- tracted by passing betwixt a pair of rollers into what is called a row or length. The next part of the process is that of sizing. The machine by which this is performed has two pairs of rollers, that are placed at a proper distance from each other, and revolve with different velocities, arising either from the variation of size in the pairs of rollers, from their performing a different number of revolutions in the same space of time, or from both these causes united. When the lengths of cotton are brought from the carding machine, several of them together are applied to the rollers now men- tioned, and the effect produced is not only that the lengths thus applied in conjunction coalesce and come out single, but also that the fibres of the cotton are drawn out longitudinally by the different velo- cities and pressure of the rollers ; hence the cotton is now termed a drawing. This process is several times repeated, and several drawings are each time united by passing together betwixt the rollers, the number introduced being so varied that the last drawing may be of a size proportioned to the fineness of the thread into which it is intended to be spun. The cot- ton is now in a fit state for roving. This operation is performed by passing the last-mentioned drawing between two pairs of rollers, which revolve with different velocities, as in the former machine. It is then received into a round conical can revolving with considerable swiftness. This gives the drawing a slight twisting, and prepares it for winding, which is done by hand, upon large bobbins by the smaller children. When in this state, the cotton is applied to the spinning machine. Here it is passed between pairs of rollers, which, revolving with various degrees of velocity, draw it out, and reduce COTTON—HIGHS’ it to a proper degree of tenuity, at the same time it is sufficiently twisted by the revolving of spindles, upon which bobbins are placed; and the yarn thus twisted is caused to wind on the bobbins by the friction of their ends upon laths placed horizontally. These laths have another very essential office to perform, which is that of raising and falling the bobbins so that the yarn may be spread over their whole length, otherwise the thread would require to be moved very frequently, as is the case in the common spring wheel. When thus wound upon bobbins, the cotton is ready for use.” At the three mills which Arkwright built in Derbyshire, 1,150 persons were employed—namely, 150 men, 300 women, and 700 children. The establishments seem to have been models in every respect. The authority just quoted says of them :— * Proper attention is paid to the health and morals of the children, who are not admitted into the mills till they have been some time at school; and Sunday- schools are supported by Mr. Arkwright [son of Sir Richard] for their instruction afterward. The mills are not worked by night, and are constantly kept very clean and neat.” It was one of these mills that inspired the muse of Dr. Darwin to produce the description of cotton spinning which appears in “The Botanic Garden :”— cs Where Derwent guides his dusky floods, Through vaulted mountains and a night of woods, The nymph Gossypia treads the velvet sod, And warms with rosy smiles the wat’ry god: His pond’rous oars to slender spindles turns, And pours o’er massy wheels his foaming urns ; With playful charms her hoary lover wins, And wheels his trident while the monarch spins. First, with nice eye emerging naiads cull From leathery pods the vegetable wool ; With wiry teeth revolving cards release The tangled knots and smooth the ravell’d fleece ; Next moves the iron hand with fingers fine, Combs the wide card, and forms th’ eternal line ; Slow with soft lips the whirling can acquires The tender skeins, and wraps in rising spires ; With quicken’d pace successive rollers move, And these retain, and those extend the rove. Then fly the spokes, the rapid axles glow, While slowly circumvolves the lab’ring wheel below.” One of the witnesses brought forward against Ark- wright at the trial of his patent was Thomas Highs, of Leigh, a man of undoubted mechanical genius. INVENTIONS. 155 He claimed to be the inventor of the system of spinning by rollers which Arkwright had adopted and patented as his own; and professed that his machine had been made for him by Kay, of War- rington, in the year 1767, two years before the date of Arkwright’s first patent. Mi. Guest, in his “‘ Com- pendious History of the Cotton Manufacture,” takes up Highs’ case, and attributes to him the author- ship of the most important parts of the machinery used in working cotton. He even gives him credit for having anticipated Hargreaves with the spinning- jenny, and his book contains an engraving of the machine. The arrangement of its parts differed con- siderably from Hargreaves’ invention, the framework being perpendicular instead of horizontal. The spindles were arranged in the lower part, and the clasps which held the roving while being elongated were made to travel in grooves cut in the sides of two upright posts. Its mode of operation was this :— The clasp having been let down near to the spindles, a portion of roving sufficient for one draw was let The spindles were then set in motion, and by pulling a cord the clasps were drawn upward, and the spinning effected. In a general way the machine might be described as Hargreaves’ jenny set up on end; but the latter was a much more perfect machine. Indeed, Highs’ jenny appears to have been but a crude development of a valuable idea. This much is certain about Highs, however, that in the year 1771 he devised what was called a double jenny. The machine had twenty-eight spindles on each side, which were turned by a drum or roller placed in the centre. It was publicly exhibited in the Manchester Exchange in 1772, and was so easily managed that it was worked by a son of the maker ten years of age. So highly was the machine thought of that the manufacturers of the town subscribed a fund of £200, which was presented to Highs for his ingenuity. In the dis- putes which arose as to the originators of the various parts of cotton-preparing and spinning machinery, it seems beyond doubt that there was a good deal of hard swearing, and that some of the claims put forward were utterly without founda- tion. The life of an inventor is usually one of strange vicissitudes, and it is reasonable to suppose that the rewards did not always fall into the right hands. out. IRON - AND STEEL.—V. CASTINGS. By Wituram Dunpas Scorr-Moncrizrr, C.E. N the last paper, we gave an historical account of the various improvements which have been adopted for producing castings, and concluded with a short description of the apparatus employed in a foundry. Before describing the different kinds of castings, and the uses to which they are put, it may be well that the reader should clearly understand the difference between cast and malleable iron con- structively—that is, in their relation to structures. When dealing with the Blast Furnace, it was explained that the change which takes place when pig iron is converted into wrought iron arises from the carbon being extracted from it; and among the peculiarities which follow from this process, we pointed out that one of the most prominent was the alteration in the temperature of the melting-point of the two materials. This was illustrated by the case of a blacksmith’s forge, which is only capable of producing a welding-heat in malleable iron, but which would reduce cast iron to a fluid condition, if the heat were continuously applied. The most important difference in practice, however, is that of the great capability of cast iron for resisting crushing strains, or compressive strength ; and the capacity of wrought iron to resist strains in an opposite direc- tion, or tensile strength. Every structure, whether it be a house or a steam engine, depends for its stability and safety upon the manner in which the materials composing it are disposed in order to resist these forces; and the foundations of the sciences of engineering and architecture may be said to rest upon a knowledge of how to resist them with the least expense of material and labour. Any one who was ignorant of the difference that exists between cast and wrought iron, and who re- versed the materials employed in the construction of a steam engine, would find that the boiler, in the first place, would fly to pieces, and that if the engine itself were set in motion it would imme- diately follow. These facts must have been dis- covered by experience in a very remote period of the manufacture of iron; but it may be interesting to the reader to know something of the experi- ments that were made more recently, upon which the rules for disposing materials to their proper place in every structure depend. The most promi- nent authority upon this subject is the late Sir Wiliam Fairbairn, who made a series of experi- ments extending over many years, along with Professor Hodgkinson, at the request of the British Association. We will only refer to those that bear upon Castings. In the first place, to show the tensile strength of cast iron, which is very much less —about one-fourth—than that of wrought iron, a casting was made of a cruciform transverse section, very strong and solid at each end, so as to admit of a large ring being passed through for attaching it to the apparatus used for testing its strength. The larger castings were broken by the chain-testing machine belonging to the Corporation of Liverpool, and the smaller ones by means of levers. The result of these experiments showed that the tensilestrength of good cast iron varies from 6 tons to 8 tons per square inch—that is to say, a bar of cast iron one inch square in section, if it were secured at one end to a wall, and at the other to a weight passing over a pulley, would break when the strain on the bar reached 6 to 8 tons. From this it will be seen how unsuitable a material cast iron would be to make into chains, or any sort of appliance which requires to resist a tensile strain. When we come to the experiments that were made to show its resistance to compression, however, we find that the advan- tage is all on the side of cast iron. In building a house, it is merely a question of height whether the materials forming the foundations will remain solid, or be crushed to powder by the weight of the super incumbent mass; but if the material of which the house was built were blocks of cast iron, these ex- periments prove that there is practically no limit to the height to which you might build it, as many miles would be within the limit of safety, so far as the crushing of the materials went. In order to discover what the strength of cast iron is to resist compression, small cylinders were placed between parallel steel discs, which were crushed together by means of levers, and it was found that the resist- ance varied from 81,770lb. per square inch to 145,435 1b. per square inch—that is, from about 36 to 64 tons; while wrought iron could only stand a pressure of 8 tons; though any comparison between the two is really not reliable, as the tendency of the wrought iron to crumple up increased, of course, very greatly with the length or thinness of the material that was tested. The results of a vast number of experiments made upon different kinds IRON AND STEEL—TESTS FOR TENSION AND TORSION. of cast iron proved that the advantage lay with the pigs made from the old cold-blast process, in the following particulars: direct tensile strength, com- pressive strength, transverse strength, power to resist impact, stiffness, and specific gravity ; whilst the only advantage on the side of the hot blast is, that it bends somewhat farther than the cold blast before breaking. As cast iron, however, is generally required to bear strains that, to be safe at all, ought to be far within the limit of its strength, any little difference that may exist between hot and _ cold- blast pigs is of no practical importance. There are hardly any points that can be raised upon the different kinds of strains to which iron is subjected that have not been fully experimented upon by Sir William Fairbairn ; and among these is the strength to resist twisting or torsion. Of course, some sort of standard had to be fixed upon, as in the case of pounds on the square inch, with which different kinds of iron were compared in the previous experiments; and so an angle was taken of half a degree through which the iron was twisted, so as to give it a per- manent “set,” and it was found that just about half the strain was necessary in the case of mal- leable iron that was required in castings, and that much less was needed in the case of bronze. It had long been known that when iron has been*repeatedly melted it alters its character; but Sir William Fairbairn discovered that its greatest strength and elasticity were reached only at the twelfth melting, and that its resistance to compression went on in- creasing to the eighteenth melting, when it reached 88 tons on the square inch. As cast iron is con- stantly returning to foundries in the form of “scrap,” it is of importance to know how it is affected by repeated meltings; and these experi- ments showed that when the iron has been passed through the furnace more than twelve times it be- comes unsuitable for most of the purposes for which it is usually employed. Although nothing may appear to be more solid than the great iron bridges which span our rivers or ravines, and bear the weight of passing trains and the traffic of our great cities, it was discovered long ago that vibration had a very material effect upon the strength of these structures, and they had to be made much stronger upon this account. It was also found by experience, that changes in the amount of the load, as in bridges that are crossed by railway traffic, had the effect of weakening the structure, so that what appeared to be amply strong enough at first would become dangerous in the course of a few years. Upon examining iron that 157 has been subjected to repeated vibration, it is found that it has become altered in its character, and that tough, fibrous wrought iron becomes crystalline and brittle when repeatedly hammered at a low tem- perature. This is partly attributed to changes in its magnetic condition, and some scientific men believe that it is wholly to be attributed to this cause ; but whether this is the case or not, the effect of per- cussion and change of load is so great that it requires to be taken into account in all structures, whether they are made of wrought iron or castings. The breaking of axles of railway carriages is very often accounted for in this way, and the Commission upon Railway Structures tried to settle the question by direct experiment, when it was found that no casting (in the form of a bar) was able to withstand more than 4,000 blows, each of which was sufficient to bend the bar half- | way to the point at which it l y) would break by dead pressure, ' but that all the bars resisted the Hig. 1. same number of blows when they only deflected the bar one-third of the way to the point of frac- ture. In order to discover the effect of changes of load upon other kinds of beams, there was a very well-known experiment made upon one constructed as shown in the sketch (Fig. 1)— Depth of beam 16 inches. Weight . ; A c : 7 ewt. 3 qrs. Calculated breaking-weight . 12 tons. Distance between supports . 20 feet. One million changes of load were made, with weights varying from 1th to 2ths of the load that would break it. In the first series of experiments, which extended from the 26th of March to the 26th of July ensuing, the experiments were continuous till it broke; and the second series of experiments on the same beam after being repaired, sustained 3,000,000 additional changes, with a reasonable load when it broke.”* This shows how careful engineers should be to make full allowance in their calculations for the deterioration in the strength of beams and bridges by the constant passage of heavy trattic. We will now attempt to convey some idea of the place which castings take in the construction of machinery ; and as this depends entirely upon its relation to wrought iron, in the matter of these different strains, we trust the explanations already given will help to make the subject more readily Sir William Fairbairn’s ‘“‘Iron Manufacture,” p. 248, 158 GREAT INDUSTRIES understood. In all machinery—in a steam engine, for instance—there are some parts that arestationary and others that are in motion. Now, as most of the moving parts are subjected to tensile strains, or twisting strains, and as wrought iron is much stronger than castings in these respects, the moving parts are generally made of malleable iron ; and in nearly every case where the moving part is made of cast iron, as in a revolving spur wheel, the metal has to be disposed so as to take as much advantage as possible of its compressive strength or capacity for resisting crushing. The stationary parts, on the other hand, are generally subjected to strains of compression, or are so situated that additional weight, which is a drawback in moving parts, is not so much to be avoided, and can be conveniently added to resist any tensile strains that may exist, at the same time giving greater stability to the structure. This, then, is the general guide for disposing the different materials to their various duties: castings for compressive strains, wrought iron for tensile strains, and brass where there is any doubt of a casting being too complicated to be sound. In the old experiments made in the Baptist Mills at Bristol by John Darby, there were a great many difficulties found in substituting iron for brass, and these still exist so far that the more elaborate forms of moulds, especially when the metal requires to be thin, are generally filled with brass instead of iron, as the latter is very apt to run so as to form flaws that render the casting useless. In foundries that make a specialty of light castings, the pig iron is mixed in such a way that sound castings can be produced which would astonish the early pioneers of the industry; but in ordinary work, brass has a great advantage over iron in the soundness and toughness of the casting when it is thin or com- plicated. When the drawings of a piece of machinery have been fully made out, it will be understood now that one part of them will require to be carried out with wrought and the other with cast iron; some details being taken to the forge, or smithy ; others referring to the foundry; and others to the erecting shop, where the whole has to be put together. None of them, however, require to go to the foundry, because the first process in producing a casting is to make a “pattern,” from which it is modelled, and this makes the moulder independent of a drawing. The foundry itself is made up of build- ings that are high enough in the roof to admit of the introduction of large cranes for carrying heavy weights from one part to another. Outside, at a OF GREAT BRITAIN. convenient distance—very often close to the exterior wall, through which there is a hole to admit of the molten metal being taken off from the interior— there are one or more cupola furnaces, where the iron is melted, The floor consists of a considerable depth of sand. The very finest qualities only are employed, and there is a considerable trade at several points on the sea coast where it is found in sufficient quantities and of sufficient fineness to admit of its being exported or conveyed to industrial centres where it is in large demand. There is one part of the coast of Aberdeenshire which is famous for this commodity, and the castings that are made from it are well known for the smoothness of their surface and the excellence of their finish. This sand, although it is beautifully white, yellow, or pink when it reaches the foundry, is soon so impregnated with charcoal that it be- comes quite black. There is no grimier interior in any industry than that of a foundry—not even a coal pit. The castings which are made from moulds formed from this material are called “green-sand” castings, as opposed to ‘“dry-sand” or “loam” cast- ings, to which we shall presently refer. The making of the patterns from which the castings are moulded is a department of itself in every engineering establishment, and is superintended by a foreman who has had a special training. In the simpler forms the pattern is an exact fac-simile of the casting which is taken from it, except that a small allowance is made for the shrinking of the molten iron when it cools, so that the pattern is really a little larger. As this allowance is not more than 5th of an inch to the foot, it makes no difference in its appearance. We will now take a small cylinder that has to be reproduced in solid cast iron, and show how it is produced. The principal part of the plant of a foundry over and above the cranes and ladles by which the molten metal is conveyed, consists of “boxes.” These are made of cast iron, and are of a great variety of shapes and sizes, in order to meet the necessity of providing for the infinite variety of the castings which are moulded in them. Each of these boxes consists of an upper and lower half, and they are crossed with webs or thin plates of cast iron, to which the sand adheres by friction, so that it does not fall down when the box is in a perpendicular position. The lower half of the box is first laid upon the sandy bottom of the foundry, and after being partially filled with sand, the pattern is placed in it and packed all round, leaving the upper half exposed. The sand is then smoothed. IRON AND over to the centre line, and a little “ parting sand,” which is fine, sharp, and perfectly dry, sprinkled over the surface, so as to prevent the Fig. 2. sand of the upper box adhering to it. The upper box itself is then placed over the exposed half of the pat- tern, and adjusted accurately in its place by means of pins projecting from the outside of the lower box, as shown in the sketch (Fig. 2). When both halves are in their places, the upper box is then filled with sand through the top, which is open ; and this being well packed down, it takes the exact impression of the upper half of the pattern, after which it is removed. The pattern is then taken out of the lower box, leaving its impression ; and it can now be readily seen that when the upper half of the box is again placed in its former position, an exact mould has been formed, imto which the melted iron can be poured and allowed to remain till it becomes solid and cool. The art of the moulder consists chiefly in making good. any defects which invariably occur in removing the “ pattern,” as little bits of sand adhere to it or break away from the corners of the sandy mould. A great variety of neat little iron tools are used for this pur- pose, and require great practice and a steady hand to use them with precision. The finishing work before the mould is “poured,” is to dust the in- terior over with charcoal or lamp-black, and then rub the surfaces with a smoothing-tool, giving a sort of lustre that is reproduced to some extent in the casting. and waves, to be driven at high speeds in all weathers, to carry weights at least equal to its own weight, and often much greater than its own, and to sustain variations of strain such as are never brought upon any structure erected upon land. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary that this strength should be Bulb Plate. Secrions oF Bar Iron. IRON SHIPS. associated with the least possible weight of material. A ship afloat, and displacing a certain weight of water, can only have her total weight of hull and cargo equal to this weight of water dis- placed. Any increase in the weight of hull, therefore, leads to a diminished cargo-carry- ing power; while con- versely any saving on the weight of hull adds T-Bulb. Angle Bulb. Channel-Iron. Angle Iron. to the commercially remunerative carrying j power. The whole art - - of ship building may be summed up in the phrase —How best to associate ron. ; f strength with lightness. Flat. D It may, of course, be said that the civil en- gineer or the architect displays his skill most fully in a similar association of the maximum of strength with the minimum of material ; but it is certain that these workers are not bound to 182 GREAT INDUSTRIES follow out this policy by the same urgent con- siderations which influence the ship builder, nor is their task so difficult. The grand structures due to their genius are stationary, with founda- tions resting upon the solid earth. The mum strains which are brought upon these struc- tures are calculable, and can be provided against with a reasonable margin for safety. When once a good foundation has been secured, all the subsequent work can be advanced with a degree of exactness and certainty, as to the provision of the necessary strength, which cannot be rivalled And no one complains if additional weights of materials are employed to make the assurance of safety ‘doubly sure.” maxti- in ship building. Contrast these conditions with those for a ship— say a steamer, propelled by powerful machinery. Who can predict the vicissitudes of weather to Who can estimate the violence of the shocks she has to sustain in a sea- which she may be exposed } way | the magnitude and character of the strains sus- tained by her structure? At one instant perched high on a wave crest, with bow and stern in mid- air: a few seconds later with bow deep-buried in the wave slope, or astride a wave hollow. Rolling heavily, pitching deeply, heaving up and down with the waves, but all the while advancing steadily on her course, and carrying safely her precious freight of passengers and cargo, such a vessel undoubtedly represents one of the greatest triumphs of human skill and enterprise. Who can measure the changes occurring in Scientific investigation, un- aided by experience, could never have produced such a result; experiments could never be arranged to represent these varying conditions ; but the wisdom and experience obtained during many centuries, touched in recent times by the hand of modern invention and scientific analysis, have yielded these remarkable results, and promise to yield others no less remarkable. The development of steam navigation has been accompanied by a great increase in the sizes of ships, their lengths, and the ratios of length to breadth. All these changes have been favourable to the attainment of higher speeds and more regular ocean passages ; but they have also produced a con- siderable increase in the strains to which the struc- tures of ships are subjected. The structural wrangements which sufficed in the ships of the early part of this century have consequently become quite insufficient. Then a vessel 200 feet long was a marvel of size, and her beam would have been quite one-fourth of her length: now, vessels OF GREAT BRITAIN. 500 feet long are at work in the merchant service, the beam being only one-eleventh of the length. In 1838 the Great Western well deserved her name: she was only 210 feet long, and a wooden hull gave her sufficient strength; but no wooden hull would suffice for her successors on the trans- Atlantic service. In short, the use of iron hulls became a necessity for ocean steamers, because wood hulls could not be made strong enough; and although iron will, in its turn, probably give place to steel before many years have passed, this change will not take place because the limit has been reached to which the strength of iron hulls can be carried, but because steel is stronger than iron in proportion to its weight. Good qualities of iron used in ship building have a tensile strength of about 20 tons per square inch, and each cubic foot weighs 480 pounds ; whereas the steel now used has a tensile strength of about 30 tons, and a weight per cubic foot of 490 to 500 pounds. In their main characteristics and adaptability for ship construc- tion, iron and steel may be fairly classed together. Both of these materials are far better suited than wood for use in structures which are subjected to great and rapid variations of strain. Both can be produced by the manufacturer in varied forms, meeting the requirements of the builder, and both can be wrought into combinations possessing prac- tical rigidity of form, with the capability of resisting tensile, compressive, or torsional strains. Wrought iron used in ship building may be arranged in two groups—plate iron and bar iron. Every one knows what is meant by an iron plate ; and all that need be said about this class of iron is that the makers are continually increasing the dimensions of the plates that can be produced. In exceptional cases, plates 24 feet long and nearly 6 feet wide have been furnished to the builder, the cost having risen with the dimensions. Ordinarily, plates about half as long and half as broad would meet all requirements. Except for defensive pur- poses in war ships, the thicknesses of plates used in ship building would not exceed 1 inch, and they diminish by differences of =1,th of an inch down to + inch in thickness. Armour plating is a special manufacture, and single plates have been made no less than 22 or 24 inches in thickness, weighing from 25 to 30 tons. Twenty years ago an armour plate 42 inches thick and 3 tons in weight, was considered to be a remarkable production. The limit of progress in iron manufacture has not yet been reached, and it is a matter for congratula- tion that past experience with iron will be of SHIP BUILDING—AN IRON SKIN. great value in steel making and rolling, when the demand for the latter material becomes more wide- spread. In the sectional forms of “bar” iron, the ship builder now has a very extensive choice, and in the diagram (p. 181) a few of the chief sections are shown. That most commonly used is also the oldest—the simple ‘angle iron,” which at first formed the only means of stiffening the iron plating of boilers or ships. When two plates are placed at right angles to one another, or at some other inclination, the angle iron forms an efficient connection between them; association with plate iron, angle iron can be used to form beams or girders of great strength. Although it thus holds the first place, the angle iron is now frequently replaced as a stiffener by the T-iron, the Z-ron, or the channel iron, shown in the dia- gram. and, in The sections in the upper line are chiefly used for deck beams or girders; and in them we have an illustration of the tendency in the iron manufacture to produce finished sectional forms re- sembling those previously made up of plates and angle irons. Much work of a preparatory charac- ter is thus saved to the ship builder, who has, how- ever, to pay a higher price to the iron maker for the improved section, As an example, take the T-bulb beam in the diagram ; formerly this section was necessarily made up of a ‘ bulb plate ” with two angle irons riveted to the upper edge, and even now the difference in cost leads many builders to continue the old method of construction. Another case in point is that of the H-iron section, which can now be obtained from the manufacturer by any builder who does not object to its cost; but which is really an improvement upon the earlier beam, formed of a vertical web plate, with two angle irons riveted to each of its edges. A third example is found in the Z-iron, which even now is often formed by placing two angle irons back to back, and rivet- ing them together. In fact, where a stiffener requires to have considerable curvature given to it, the Z-iron or H-iron sections can only be obtained by combinations of plates and angle irons ; because, if produced in a single piece in the rolling mills, neither of these sections could be bent without considerable difficulty or possible damage. The “flanged” form of section illustrated in several of the sections on the diagram is pre-eminently adapted for associating strength with lightness ; and it is not one which can be successfully imitated in wood. The sectional forms shown on the lower line in the diagram require only a few remarks. Square 183 and round bars are used for forgings, pillars to decks, &e.; the tubular form is also largely used for pillars ; and the remaining sections are useful for some minor purposes. Plates and bars of iron are the forms in, which that material comes into the hands of the builder, whose duty it is to combine them as efficiently as possible into a strong and light hull. Taking the case of an ordinary iron merchant ship—such as that of which the structural arrangements are illustrated on page 185—it will be interesting to notice the principal features, and their comparative efficiency. The skin is an essential part of every ship. Its primary function is to form a water-tight envelope of the internal space required for accommodation and buoyancy ; and in some special vessels—such as the coracle or skin-coyered canoe—this is the only function of the skin. In nearly all classes of ships, however, the skin is a valuable element in the structural strength ; and in no class is this so true as in iron and steel ships. When iron first came into use for canal boats, the builders naturally con- structed the water-tight skins on the model of the shells of wrought-iron steam boilers ; and they could not have improved upon that plan in any important particular. Minor modifications have since been made, but, on the whole, it may be said that the method of constructing the skins of iron ships which was first adopted still remains in use—a fact which is sufficient evidence of the efficiency of the plan, seeing that many attempts have been made to improve upon it. An iron skin is made up of plates, arranged with their greatest measurement lengthwise in the ship, and placed in tiers or “strakes” from keel to gunwale. Common sizes for these plates are from 10 to 14 feet in length, and from 3 to 4 feet in breadth. Even in ships of the largest size, the thickness of the skin plating does not exceed 1 inch, and in small vessels it falls to a quarter of an inch or even less. Each tier or strake of plating, reaching from stem to stern, has to be made up of several plates : and the ends or “ butts” of adjacent plates are secured by means of butt straps, one of which is shown in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1). This strap is fitted inside the abutting plates, and secured to the end of each by iron rivets, which are first heated, then driven through holes in the strap and plates, and clenched or “knocked down” at the points. Two plates thus united can, of course, resist a considerable longitudinal strain tending to separate their butts: and the junction is also easily 184 GREAT INDUSTRIES made water-tight. The enlarged section im the drawing (marked “caulking of butt”) illustrates the simple plan which answers admirably for the skins of iron ships and for the shells of boilers. The caulker first cuts a slight score on either side of the joint, and close to it: afterwards with a Caulking of Butt. YUAN SS Lie Md, Fig, 1.—Burr Srrar: Dousite Cuan RIverING. special tool, he forces the portions of the plates between these scores and the joint into G:ose contact with one another, and this makes the jomt either water-tight or steam-tight. A strong con- nection is also made between adjacent strakes of the plating by overlapping the plate-edges and riveting through the laps: as shown in the sketch (Fig. 2) of a lap joint, which also illustrates how such a joint is simply caulked (see c in enlarged section). Caulking Fig. 2.—Eper Lap Joint: DousitEe RIVETING. This edge riveting of strake to strake not merely resists any tendency to distortion in the skin by longitudinal “ racking,” or the motion of one strake in relation to another, but also. resists any transverse strains tending to separate adjacent strakes. In fact, an iron skin, properly stiffened and kept to shape, is capable of resisting or trans- mitting strains in every direction. This fact is in OF GREAT BRITAIN. itself a great source of superiority to the iron ship as compared with one of wood, in which the skin is relatively weak, and easily distorted by racking strains unless specially strengthened against them. This distinctive feature of an iron skin has not always been recognised so fully as it now is; and it may be regarded as an advantage obtained rather by accident than intention, for the chief object in fitting butt straps and edge laps in earlier vessels was simply to secure water-tightness. Many persons, impressed with the belief that arrange- ments proved to be of value for wood ships must also be good for iron ships, have proposed to strengthen the skins of the latter by diagonal braces ; or, to form the skins of two or more layers of plating placed diagonally, the plates in one layer crossing those of the others. All such proposals, however, ignore the property explained above—viz., that an iron skin, as ordinarily worked, is itself capable of resisting or transmitting strains in all directions. Turning to the other side of the picture, mention must be made of a feature in which wood skins are superior to iron. Iron ships have thin skins, which are more easily penetrated than thicker wood planking when a vessel grounds on rocks, or is struck by sharp, hard substances. Formerly, great stress was laid upon this argument as affecting the safety of iron ships; now very little is said on the subject, and from this circumstance 1t may be inferred that experience with iron ships does not favour the older view. Asa matter of fact, iron ships have skin plating strong enough to withstand all but the most exceptional conditions of service; and against extraordinary risks they can be protected in a much more efficient manner than would be possible if their skins were merely thickened. Internal water-tight sub-division is the safe- guard for iron ships against the dangers re- sulting from perforation of the bottom. Sir William Fairbairn did much to remove this stigma from iron ships by a series of experi- ments, designed to test the force of the then popular objection to thin skins. ‘Taking cer- tain planks and plates, he arranged a “ punch- ing” apparatus which measured the force required to drive a hole through each specimen tested. An iron plate only + inch thick proved equal in resist- ance to a 3-inch oak plank, and a plate 1 inch thick was equal to a 6-inch plank. These results were highly favourable to the iron; but on the whole it may be admitted that a well-built wood ship will withstand rougher usage than an ordinary SHIP BUILDING—IRON SHIPS VERSUS WOODEN. iron ship when aground on a rocky bottom; and will not admit such large quantities of water into the hold. On the other hand, an iron ship is much more easily and cheaply repaired than a wood ship, if she can be floated off, although her bottom may have been more extensively perforated. The case of the Great Britain illustrates this difference. After visiting her in Dun- drum Bay, Mr. Brunel wrote as follows, in 1846 :—“ She is resting and working upon the rocks, which broken in at several places and forced up many parts of the bottom 12 or 18 inches ;” but he added that “even within 3 feet of the damaged part there is no strain or injury whatever.” a No wooden ship simi- have Te 185 rather than with the ultimate strains which would produce rupture. From this point of view the iron gains greatly, for it can be trusted to bear a strain equal to one-fourth of its ultimate strength, whereas the corresponding strain for wood is only one-eighth or one-tenth the ultimate strength. These are facts which cannot be overlooked in contrasting the strengths of wood and iron ships, and in en- deavouring to discover why the iron vessels can be made so much ° lighter. Each square foot of the janch iron skin would weigh 30 lb. ; each square foot of the 5-inch wood skin would weigh about 20 1b. But the “ work- load” which the iron skin could bear would be quite twice as great as that for the wood skin, allowance being made for the Lili » ing larly exposed would have escaped with damages that were greater thickness of the equally local, and so easily repaired. Against tensile and compressive strains the thin iron skin com- pares still more favour- ably with the much thicker wood © skin. Take, for example, two large merchant latter. The operations in- volved in preparing the skin plating for an iron ship require only a few words of ex- planation. The iron maker supplies the plates very nearly to the dimensions and ships of equal size: the bottom planking of the wood ship would be about 5 inches thick, against a bottom plating ? inch thick on the iron ship. The tensile strength of the iron would be about 20 tons per square inch of sectional area, that of the wood being about 3 to 4 tons. The difference in thicknesses is, therefore, roughly pro- portional to the differences in ultimate tensile strengths, the greater strength of the iron plate being a compensation for its less thickness. This would be probably true also of the ultimate resistances of the planking and plating to com- pressive strains. In practice, however, we are concerned with the strains that can be repeatedly brought upon a structure without distressing it, 24 Srcrion oF Hutt or Iron MERCHANT SHIP. forms required by the builder, whose work mainly consists in marking upon each plate the positions of the rivet-holes, punching or drilling these holes, planing the butt ends so that they may fit accurately against those of adjacent plates, and bending the plates to the proper curvilinear forms. All these operations are extremely simple, but care is necessary in order to make the work sound and good. A badly-arranged and badly-riveted skin can only be a source of trouble and weakness ; and faults of this kind are inexcus- able, because they involve a practical negation of the advantages obtainable with a properly con- structed iron skin. Even when a ship is floating at rest in still 6 GREAT INDUSTRIES ios) 1 water, her sides and bottom are subjected to con- siderable pressures, tending to produce alterations in the form, and a collapse of the skin at some places, or a “bulging out” at others where heavy weights are concentrated. At sea, considerably greater straining forces have to be resisted; and the most perfectly constructed iron skin is, if left to itself, so flexible and easily distorted that some kind of internal “framing” or “stiffening” is an OF GREAT BRITAIN. absolute necessity. In ordinary iron ships, as has. already been explained, the main frames or ribs are placed transversely (see the drawing on the previous page) ; but in many ships a different mode of framing is adopted. There are, it is perhaps scarcely ne- cessary to say, very various opinions respecting the merits of these rival methods of construction, and to some of these attention will be devoted in the following chapter. PERO NA N.D STEEL.—VI. MALLEABLE IRON. By Wurm Dvunpas Scorr-Moncnrizerr, C.H. ITHERTO we have only spoken of iron in the form which renders it suitable for being cast first into ‘“ pigs,” by the blast furnace, and next, into every variety of shape after a second melting in the cupola furnace. We now pass on to the subject of Malleable Iron, which we shall find to have been quite as much associated with the history of invention and with the lives and fortunes of inventors as the process of smelting. It is in its malleable form that this metal, so varied in its ap- plication, becomes capable of being drawn out into wires, or rolled into sheets and bars, of being bent and hammered, and hardened and softened. Al- though we introduced the blast furnace first, as the most natural order to take in the modern practice of the manufacture, enough has been said in the previous chapter for the reader to understand that “malleable” was far the earliest form assumed. The substitution of iron for bronze in the imple- ments of early races, marks a distinct epoch in the development of their civilisation, and we find that among the representative nations of bygone ages, improvements in the means of producing iron and rendering it serviceable keep pace with their advances in art and all other intellectual pursuits. It is only from iron in its malleable condition that we discover any clue to these early industries, and it seems probable that nothing was known of cast iron until within the comparatively recent period of which some account has already been given in the chapter on Fuel. Among the Greeks, the introduction of iron for the useful purposes to which it has since been subjected, spread with their civilisation; and between the period of the Homeric poems, which first refer to the method of forging it, and the time when Greece had become the representative of the highest social and intellec- tual development of the ancient world, there is ample evidence of its having been extensively employed. There is also abundant proof of its having displaced bronze in the advancing civilisa- tion of the Egyptians. Mr. Layard has enhanced the interest of the antiquarian collections of the British Museum by many specimens of the iron manufacture of Nineveh, the most interesting of these being tools that are still in common use—such as knives, hammers, picks, and even saws. There is one instrument of the last class which excited much curiosity at the time of its discovery, as it is almost: identical with that which is in vogue at the present day, in the form known as a two-handed cross-cut saw. It was found in the North-West Palace at Nimroud, and must be more that 2,500 years old. As we have already fully discussed the earlier pro- cesses employed in the production of cast iron, we will merely say, with regard to the malleable iron of prehistoric times, that it could cnly have been produced from the richest ores, in small quantities. at a time, and at the expense of a great amount of labour. It also seems evident that charcoal was. the only form of fuel that could have been used in the primitive apparatus that was employed. The further development of the industry must have taken place after the discovery of the manner in which combustion is increased by the application of a blast of air; and this led, no doubt, to the method employed at a very remote period, of placing the furnaces in an exposed situation, where they could be reached by the action of the winds. This: gaye rise to the term “air-bloomeries.” In Britain, these must have been carried on, principally by the Romans, on a very extensive scale. This is proved IRON AND by the waste heaps that surrounded them, from which the iron had been only very partially ex- tracted, having long afterwards become the mines from which more recent, but still ancient, manufac- turers obtained their supplies of the raw material. It appears that gradual improvements in the con- struction of the apparatus used for making malleable iron, led to the products of those furnaces assuming more and more the character of cast iron, and it also seems probable that this gradually gave rise to a separation between the first operation and the second, which would always become more necessary —namely, that of refining or converting cast into wrought iron. However that may be, it is not until the year 1783-4 that we find the invention apphed which really brought the method of pro- ducing malleable from pig iron into consonance with the practice of modern times. This process embodied what has since been known as “puddling,” and it may be looked upon as the foundation of the iron industries of the world. It is quite impossible to estimate in figures the enormous value which has accrued to this country from the invention referred to. The discoverer spent a large fortune upon the development of his ideas ; but although he entered into written agree- ments for the payment of royalties with several of the ironmasters of England and Wales, who afterwards amassed vast fortunes out of the new method, yet, they not only neglected to fulfil their obligations, but allowed the unfortunate genius and his family to live in beggary. There is _ no sadder story among the many that have occurred in the history of invention than that of poor Henry Cort. His first patent, which was obtained in 1783, deseribed “a peculiar method and process of pre- paring, welding, and working various sorts of iron, and of reducing the same into wses by machinery, and a furnace and other apparatus adapted to the same purpose.” A second patent was granted to him in 1784, for “Shingling, welding, and manu- facturing iron and steel into bars, plates, rods, and otherwise, of purer quality, in larger quantities, by a more effectual application of fires and machinery, and with a greater yield, than any method before put in practice.” In perfecting these new methods of manufacturing malleable iron, Cort expended a fortune of £20,000, which in those days repre- sented much greater wealth than it does in our own. In speaking of these improvements, Sir William Fairbairn seems to consider it as proved that the introduction of the system of rolling iron into plates and bars had its origin in the genius of Henry Cort; STEEL—CORT’S INVENTIONS. 187 but the process to which the country is most in- debted to him is that which first enabled the manufacturer to produce wrought iron on a large scale and at a comparatively trifling cost. There is some evidence of other inventors having worked in much the same direction as Cort, in the refinement of iron in ‘a reverberatory furnace, heated by coal,” which is the essence of the “puddling” pro- cess; but there is no doubt that he was the first to overcome the difficulties that lay in the way of its practical adoption. The description which is given in one of Cort’s patents of the manner in which he proposed to treat the iron, proves from its cor- rectness that he must have known and seen a great deal of the practice of puddling in the experiments which led up to it. The authority just referred to, in speaking ‘of Cort, says :—-“‘It would be a diffi- cult task to enumerate all the services rendered by Mr. Cort to the iron industry of this country, or sufficiently to express our sympathy with the relatives and desce1idants of a man to whose me- chanical inventions we owe so much of our national greatness. It is, perhaps, not generally known that Mr. Henry Cort expended a fortune of £20,000 in perfecting his inventions for puddling iron, and rolling it into bars and plates; that he was robbed of the fruit of his discoveries by the villany of officials in a high department of the Government, and that he was ultimately left to starve by the apathy and selfishness of an ungrateful country. When these facts are known, and it has been ascertained that Mr. Henry Cort’s inventions have conferred an amount of wealth on the country equivalent to sia hundred millions sterling, and have given employment to sia hundred thousand of the working population of our land for the last three or four generations, we are surely justified in referring to services of such vast importance, and in advocating the principle that such substantial proofs of the nation’s gratitude should be afforded to rescue from penury and want the descendants of such a benefactor.” Soon after the introduction of puddling and rolling, the invention of the steam engine by James Watt gave the same impetus to the production of malleable iron that it did to the smelting of the metal in the blast furnace, to which we referred in our first chapter, The conversion of “pig” or highly carburised iron into wrought iron, essentially consists of removing the carbon by exposing it to the action of currents of air and flame, in which the oxygen combines with it, at the same time allowing the 188 GREAT INDUSTRIES phosphorus and other injurious alloys to be carried away with the slag. When this is conducted on a large scale, it necessitates the employment of a great number of expensive appliances. These consist of steam hammers and other forms of noisy machinery, which, together with the din of falling plates and bars that ring upon the floors as they are removed from the rolls, make a malleable iron manufactory one of the industries which it is very difficult to describe orally on the spot, by reason of the uproar. The “pigs” that are chosen for conversion into malleable iron are those which contain the smallest \VY it amount of carbon, \ | and are known as \ white or “forge ~ pigs.” It is some- what unfortunate that this quality gene- rally greater contains a number of impurities than the NSS SIX _ OF GREAT BRITAIN. ing sectional sketch will sufficiently explain the construction of an ordinary puddling furnace. The peculiar shape of the arched roof brings the flame from the fireplace A over the bridge B, in such a way that the flame strikes down on the bottom gk, which contains the iron that is being subjected to the decarburisation that is necessary for converting it. The waste gases escape up the tall chimney D, at the top of which there is a damper, under the control of the puddler, enabling him to regulate the force of the heat at will. The operation of stirring the iron is carried on at the side of the furnace, through a door which is balanced by a counter weight. The tool which is used for the purpose is a rake or “rabble,” requiring great muscular strength on the part of the workmen to apply with sufficient rapidity at the critical period in the process, when the metal begins to boil. It is then that the “bloom” appears, and is worked about and rolled together in such a way that it is separated from the slag. Great practice is required to know how and when to regulate the heat, and when to remove i 1 VV Yj MMW (si SECTION OF A PUDDLING FURNACE, more highly carburised “ foundry pigs,” in which the larger quantity of carbon renders them more difficult to convert into wrought iron. Before charging the puddling furnace with the “ pigs,” they used gene- rally to be put through a refining process which partially deprives them of their carbon. This con- sisted of subjecting the cast iron to the action of a blast of air forced over it when at a sufficiently high temperature. The methods employed in the more modern practice of the manufacture enable the cast iron to be converted directly in the reverberat- ing or puddling furnace; but of these we shall have something to say in a future chapter. The advan- tages arising from the latter method are, that the iron is less subjected to contact with the impurities of the fuel, from which it is apt to absorb sulphur and other deleterious substances. The accompany- the molten mass to be pounded under the steam hammer. As the carbon becomes eliminated by the action of the air, the iron becomes gradually tougher and more cohesive, and then assumes the granular appearance of large grains of tapioca. During the process the silica and other impurities become melted and pour away, while, at the same time, various substances, such as hammer scales, salt, and limestone, are thrown in, which assist the oxidising of the carbon, and form a flux that helps In this manner a large ball of in diameter is to remove the slag. white-hot iron about 13 inches obtained by collecting the small granular masses with the “rabble ;” and when the lump has become sufficiently compact, it is removed from the furnace, and subjected to the action of a powerful steam hammer, which kneads it together like a mass of PuppLERS AT Work. 190 stiff dough. There is, perhaps, no apphance which has been a more constant subject of invention than the puddling furnace. The specifications of the patents that have been taken out for improvements upon it, would fill a large volume, and it still con- tinues to afford an ample field for further modifica- tions. As in other industries, the great object in the production of malleable iron is to save time, labour, and material, which all bulk very largely ag an element of cost ina rolling mill. It would occupy a complete and lengthy treatise to go into detail upon what has been done to bring about economy in “puddling.” Some inventors have devoted their attention to saving the arduous labour ‘of the puddler—whose work is so exhausting that it must be confined to a comparatively few years of his life—and many ingenious appliances have been invented with this object in view. The plan that has shown most promise of success—for the “puddler ” is still in general requisition—is making the furnace itself revolve, so that the molten con- tents are kept in a constant state of agitation which exposes them to the action of the flame. The great difficulty in the successful application of a me- chanical arrangement of this sort, is the very high temperature that requires to be guarded against. This is met as far as possible by covering the inside of the revolving furnaces by very “refractory ” substances which protect the outside casing from the action of the intense heat. Other ingenious methods are employed for the protection of the moving parts, or bearings, by keeping cold water circulating through pipes in contact with them, so as to keep the temperature as low as_ possible. Considerable success has attended these efforts, but the wear and tear are so great that many manu- facturers prefer to work with the more primitive appliances introduced by Henry Cort nearly a hundred years ago. Economy of fuel is another object that has hitherto afforded exercise for the in- genuity of inventors, but as this is a subject of itself, we hope to say something more about it at ano- ther time. The following is a list of the machinery required for producing finished wrought-iron plates and bars in a rolling mill such as that to which our a | tion will be given in a subsequent paper ; but, first, the processes through which the cotton has to pass before it is ready for the mule, will have to be explained and illustrated. Richard Roberts, the inventor of the self-acting He began life with many disadvantages, bat rose superior to them all, and achieved a high position among mechanicians. mule, was a remarkable man. His father was a shoemaker in an obscure village A i] rau hh His, “ LUT HH | j Pens sy ts ——— ail le Pegi THE SLUBBING-BILLY. considerable saving of waste in those processes. Mr. Roberts’s mule has been modified in various parts by successive inventors, but its leading prin- ciples remain untouched. Among the names of patentees of improvements in the mule, are those of Mr. Potter, of Manchester ; Messrs. Higgins and Whitworth, of Salford; Mr. Montgomery, of John- stone; Messrs. Craig and Sharp, of Glasgow ; Messrs. Parr, Curtis, and Madeley, of Manchester ; Messrs. Dobson and Barlow, and Messrs. P. and J. M‘Gregor, of the same city. If anything in the shape of mechanism can be pronounced perfect, the mule, as now constructed, is entitled to that designation. A full description of its parts and mode of opera- 26 in North Wales. For some reason, Richard was never sent to school, though. it is believed that his father gave him a little instruction at home in letters and figures. At an early age he was sent to work in a slate quarry; subsequently he was employed on a canal boat; and later he held the position of servant to a gentleman in the neighbourhood. It was while in the last-named situation that the youth’s latent genius was awakened. JRichard’s employer was an amateur turner, and the lad became fascinated by the lathe, seizing every opportunity of practising on it, until, at length, he became an expert turner. Having thus discovered how his natural capabilities lay, Richard 202 GREAT INDUSTRIES sought more congenial employment, and engaged himself to a machinist near Bolton, as a pattern- maker. Having gained experience in this, and other like occupations, he desired to improve his position by obtaining employment in some of the great work-shops of the metropolis ; and with this view he, in company with two young fellow- workers, walked all the way from Manchester to London. He succeeded in obtaining work in Maudslay’s famous establishment. Having acquired sufficient knowledge of his business to warrant his starting on his own account, he returned to Man- chester, and, hiring a small house in Water Street, fitted up one of the bed-rooms as a work-shop. He then publicly announced that he was prepared to execute mechanical work, and “screw cutting on reasonable terms.” One of his biographers, referring to this period, says :—“ His fly-wheel was in the cellar, and his lathe up-stairs in a bed-room. The strap passed through the living-room of the ground floor, and the power that turned the fly-wheel was Roberts’s first wife.” He found abundant employ- ment, and his fame as a producer of exact work became widely known, and his way to prosperity was assured. The invention of a gas meter, and the slide lathe, the slotting machine, and other engineer- OF GREAT BRITAIN. ing tools, secured for him a high position in the mechanical world. Business flourished apace, and ultimately Roberts became partner in one of the most important engineering firms in Manchester. Here he found full scope for his inventive powers, and it was as a member of this firm that he effected his well-known improvements on the locomotive engine, and invented the self-acting mule. Some of his leisure he devoted to scientific research, and constructed a large variety of ingenious appliances for experimental purposes. A selection of these, borrowed from the Salford Museum, was shown at the Exhibition of Scientific Instruments, at South Kensington, in 1877. The closing years of Roberts’s life were spent in London, whither he removed on the cessation of his partnership with Mr. Sharp, at Manchester. In the metropolis he followed the occupation of a consulting engineer, and by his advice many important inventions were carried through preliminary difficulties to success. He died in March, 1864, in the 75th year of his age, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. The funeral was a public one, at which many of the leading engineers, a large number of the deceased’s Manchester friends, and of his old workmen and pupils, were present. SHIP BUILDING.—VILI. SYSTEMS OF FRAMING FOR HE external form of a ship is governed by - considerations connected with her extreme dimensions, speed, and carrying power; and the builder has to make the structural arrangements conform to these ruling conditions. His object is to associate the water-tight skin with such internal framing as will secure practical rigidity in the struc- ture, under all conditions of service ; and with iron or steel as his material, this object can be attained. Two principal classes of straining actions have to be considered and provided against, in order that the form of a ship may remain unaltered. First and most important are the longitudinal strains, tending to make a vessel bend lengthwise; and of little less importance are the transverse strains, tending to produce racking or distortion in the athwartship sections. Longitudinal bending results from the unequal distribution of the weight and buoyancy along the length of a ship. Near the bow and stern, where the form of a ship is LRO NSS ILLES: made fine in order to lessen the resistance, the weights of certain portions of the length almost always exceed the buoyancy. At other parts, and usually near the middle of the length, the converse holds good, the weights of these portions being less than the corresponding buoyancy. And s0, finally, the structure is subjected to a series of upward and downward pressures, Which make its condition re- semble that of a beam supported at a series of points, and loaded between the supports. Amongst waves this inequality in the distribution of weight and buoyancy is exaggerated by the departure of the wave-profiles from the horizontal surface of still water; and the longitudinal bending strains are still further increased by the pitching motions im- pressed upon a ship. In fact, scientific investiga- tion has not succeeded hitherto in giving any quan- titative measure of the maximum longitudinal strains to which a ship may be subjected, and ship builders have to proceed largely upon methods. SHIP BUILDING—STRAINS AND FRAMES. of comparison and inference in providing for the longitudinal strength. As the lengths and propor- tions of ships have been increased, the cases have not been few in which weaknesses have displayed them- selves ; and out of the study of these cases of partial failure—the “morbid anatomy of ship building,” as it has been termed—have grown some of the chief improvements in subsequent practice. Even now there is room for further progress, all the lessons of experience not having been learnt; but it will appear, as we proceed, that commercial considera- tions naturally have great weight with the ship builder and ship-owner. A system of construction may be theoretically perfect, yet it will not displace a cheaper but inferior mode, so long as the latter answers ordinary requirements. To these general remarks on longitudinal strains, two definitions may A. ship is said to “hog” when her ends drop relatively to the middle of her length; and to “sag” when the middle drops relatively to the ends. The French comprehend both changes of form under the term “arching”; and this is found also in some of the older English books on naval architecture. The transverse strains experienced by ships are most severe when the vessels are rolling rapidly be added of technical terms in common use. in a sea-way, and reversing their motion every few seconds. A passenger standing on the deck of an iron-built ocean steamer, and noting her behaviour, is scarcely sensible of the “racking” strains which her structure has to resist each time that the end of a “swing” is reached. There may be no indica- tions externally of the fact; but if the same strains were brought upon a wood ship, there would be “ oroanings” and ‘ereakings” of planks and tim- bers, and probably sensible ‘“ working,” or relative motion, in some of the parts. Here also the condi- tions of behaviour and strain are so various, that science has not been able to give exact rules for practice ; and the ship builder arranges for the transverse strength chiefly in the light of expe- rience. in still water, calls are made upon her transverse strength ; the fluid pressures on her sides tend to Even when the vessel is floating at rest force them in, those on the bottom tend to push it upward; the concentrated weights of cargo, engines, &e., tend to push it down ; and in many other ways bending strains are produced. But none of these conditions compare in severity with that incidental to rolling at sea. A ship aground may be strained very severely both in the transverse and the longitudinal sense. In fact, many vessels which have stood for years 203 the stress of service afloat, have altogether failed when they have grounded. Not many years ago a curious case of this kind happened on the Mersey, in which an iron vessel took the ground nearly at the middle of her length ; and as the tide fell, leaving her ends almost unsupported, she literally “broke in two,” her skin plating being torn asunder from keel to gunwale. oS 267 ships in the mercantile marine can be compared in this respect with the Great Lastern; and if the outline sketches on page 264 are studied, the reader cannot fail to note how the necessities for stowage and accommodation are made to contribute (7. CZ. TLL CA CH) CZ. TTT) Z Cava, ZA GEB cx (4-4 TLELLL | GLALLZA MCLIZLIZTZL, are. SS ENLARGED SECTION OF THE UPPER DECK OF THE “‘ GREAT EASTERN.” and it would only be a waste of material to con- struct a strong deck which would be pierced at frequent intervals. Having provided for the longitudinal strength of the top and bottom of the ship by these arrange- ments, Mr. Brunel had to secure an efficient con- nection between top and bottom, a sufficiency of transverse strength, and a proper amount of stiff- ness for the nearly vertical portion of the side plating between the lower deck and the upper deck. Throughout the middle half of the length there are strong longitudinal bulk-heads, forming the sides of the engine room and stoke holds, and reaching from the upper deck to the bottom of the ship. These longitudinal bulk-heads add to the longitudinal strength, as well as connect the upper and lower parts of the structure. The transverse strength is almost entirely suppled by transverse bulk-heads, of which there are no less than ten. Hight of these extend to the upper deck, and two to the lower deck; the longitudinal frames dis- tribute their strength to the spaces intervening between the bulk-heads. This is a remarkable contrast to the common system of construction, exemplified on page 185, and previously described. ; but it has stood the test of actual service remark- ably ‘well, to the surprise of many persons who advocated the use of closely-spaced transverse ribs. These bulk-heads, both transverse and longitudinal, form water-tight partitions, and effect a sub-division of the hold space, which is most conducive to safety in case of a serious accident that should break through the inner as well as outer skins, and admit water into one or more compartments. Not many to this end. Water-tight sub-division in ordinary iron ships does not receive the attention it deserves, the general opinion being that stowage of the hold is seriously hampered by the introduction of numerous bulk-heads; but in passenger ships, at least, considerations of safety surely should be paramount. We shall recur to this subject here- after. The intermediate decks of the Great Hastern do not present any features calling for special mention; they are in fact treated mainly as platforms rather than as important contributaries to the structural strength. Not that they are of little value in the maintenance of the form of the ship; for they stiffen the sides, and tie together the parts to which the deck beams and plating are connected, besides distributing the strength of transverse bulk-heads. Further stiffness, in the vertical sense, is given to the sides where it is considered desirable by means of deep frames, or “ partial bulk-heads,” somewhat similar to those described on page 204; but these strengtheners are com- paratively few. These are the principal features in the structure of the Great Fastern; into the many interesting and special features of her outfit and equipment we have no space to enter. Nor can we dwell upon the magnitude of the operations of building and launching such a monster. It must be stated, however, that the stoppage in launching, which exercised so seriously prejudicial an effect upon the prospects of the ship, was due to the attempt to launch upon iron “ways,” or sliding surfaces, instead of the ordinary wood ways with well-greased surfaces. 268 GREAT INDUSTRIES Mr. Brunel no doubt hoped to have secured some advantages by his departure from precedent, and it is but fair to him to note that before deciding upon the plan adopted, numerous experiments were made, which promised satisfactory results, This promise was unfulfilled on the larger scale, and as a consequence, £120,000 is said to have been ex- pended on the launch before the ship floated. The estimated cost was only £14,000. When launched, the total weight to be moved was 12,000 tons— about twice as great a weight as has ever been launched in any other vessel. It has been estimated that no less than thirty thousand iron plates and three millions of rivets were used in building the ship! The contracts for hull and engines were made in 1853; the first attempt to launch was made in November, 1857; the ship floated on the 31st of January, 1858, and started on her first cruise in September, 1859, her completion having been delayed by the financial embarrassments of the company. She has been afloat, therefore, for twenty years ; and as no dock can accommodate her, repairs or cleaning of the bottom can only be accomplished by grounding her on a gridiron, as described at page 22. Yet even with this exceptional treatment, the iron hull has proved exceedingly durable ; and although for three OF GREAT BRITAIN. years past the ship has lain in Milford Haven, her rest has not been the result of incapacity for further service, but the lack of suitable employ- ment. Her period of greatest usefulness and success was from 1865 to 1875, when she was engaged in laying submarine telegraph cables ; but work of that kind is, of course, exceptional, and although the Great Hastern did it admirably, ‘smaller vessels specially built for the work can now perform it satisfactorily and at less expense. It is not easy to foresee what the future of the- great ship will be; but it is interesting to note that there is a prospect of her being better cared for than in the past. In connection with the docks now in process of construction at Milford, a dry dock is being built sufficiently large to ac- commodate her ; and when it is completed she will have in reserve facilities for cleaning and repairs never enjoyed before. This century is not likely to witness the construction of another Great Lastern, and it is to be hoped that she may long be pre- served, even if she cannot be profitably employed ; for she thoroughly deserves the praise accorded to her by one who was always opposed to her con- struction—“ She is a marvellous piece of work- manship; . . . a triumph of mechanical skill.” INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.—V. LORD ASHLEY ACCEPTS THE PARLIAMENTARY LEADERSHIP OF THE SHORT-TIME MOVEMENT—GREAT MEETING IN THE LONDON TAVERN—COMMISSION OF INQUIRY. By James Henprerson, onE or H.M. Assistant-InsprEctors oF FACTORIES. ADLER’S defeat at the general election of 1832 was regarded for a time as a great discourage- ment to those interested in the movement for limit- ing the hours of work in factories. The agitation, however, had now taken such a hold upon the country that it had long ceased to depend upon the exertions and energy of any single individual. The new Parliament, moreover, contained many tried friends of the cause of the factory children. Mr. Joseph Brotherton, who had laboured side by side with the first Sir Robert Peel, was elected for Salford, and Mr. John Fielden and Mr. William Cobbett, both of whom had distinguished them- selves by their public advocacy of a ten-hours Bill, were returned for Oldham. But by far the most valuable ally which the cause had yet secured was gained when Lord Ashley (the present Lord Shaftes- bury) consented to champion the cause of the op- pressed children in the reformed House of Com- mons. The idea of enlisting this nobleman in the work appears to have originated at a delegate meeting at which representatives were present from the various short-time committees then ex- isting in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Rev. G. S. Bull, a tried friend of the cause, was commis- sioned to go to London to confer with its friends there, as to the appointment of a new Parlia- mentary leader ; and in the course of a very short time Mr. Bull was enabled to send a circular to the different short-time committees, informing them that Lord Ashley had assented to take up Mr. Sadler’s Bill and make the measure his own. In accordance with this determination, his lordship at once gave notice that he would re-introduce ‘aTAVY) OLLNVILY FHL LAO DNIAVA « NUGLISV LVGIUY),, ANT, — = ————a=a=a>aQLaLVSSSSSEESS ! I i | 270 GREAT INDUSTRIES Mr. Sadler’s Bill on the 5th of March, 1833. From this date onward to the present time Lord Shaftes- bury has been more intimately associated with factory legislation than any other man; and as we traverse the history of the subject we shall find his name most prominently and most continu- ously connected with every effort made in this direction to improve the moral and social condition of the operative classes. A more desirable leader for a movement of this kind could not possibly have been obtained, and the wisdom of the selection made by the leaders of the short-time movement was soon manifested. When he consented to the Rey. Mr. Bull’s proposal, Lord Ashley assured him that so long as he was supported in his efforts by the operatives themselves, he would never flinch from the work; and right nobly did his lordship fulfil this pledge during the twenty years of earnest, untiring, and indefatigable labour which followed while he was engaged heart and soul in a cause which he practically came to make his own. The evidence taken by the Select Committee during the previous session, and over which Mr. Sadler presided, had exercised a considerable influ- ence on public opinion by this time, and the manu- facturers themselves were aroused to the know- ledge of the fact that some practical steps must be taken to restrain the gross abuses which it was clearly proved existed in no small proportion of the factories. An association was formed in London under the patronage of his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, which had for its object the im- provement of the condition of factory children, and an important meeting of this association was held in the London Tavern on the 23rd of February, 1833, a few days after Lord Ashley had given notice of his intention to re-introduce Mr. Sadler’s Bill. The Lord Mayor, Sir Peter Laurie, presided, and it is interesting at this distance of time to re- call the names of some of the more eminent men who took part in the proceeding. Among the speakers were—Lord Ashley, the Hon. Wm. Dun- sombe (Lord Faversham), Rev. G. 8. Bull, Mr. O'Connell, M:P., Mr. J. W. Helps, Col. Williams, M.P., Mr. G. Lyall, Mr. Oastler, Mr. H. Pow- nall, Mr. J. H. Freeze, and Mr. T. Sadler. Among other gentlemen on the platform on this occasion were—Colonel Torrens, M.P., Colonel Williams, M.P., Mr. Robinson, M.P., Mr. Wilks, M.P., Sir Edward Knatchbull, M.P., Sir Andrew Agnew, M.P., Mr. Robert Owen, Mr. Nathaniel Gould, and Mr. Labouchere. All shades of political and religious opinion were represented on this occasion, OF GREAT BRITAIN. and the proceedings excited a remarkable amount of interest throughout the country. One of the most interesting of the speeches delivered was that by Mr. Richard Oastler, who stated that in his dis- trict in Yorkshire, it was a common thing for children of seven years of age to be compelled to work for eighteen and in some cases even for twenty hours out of the twenty-four. ‘They were unable to exist under such labour, and the church- yards proved that this was the case. Such children, moreover, were frequently beaten with a heavy strap until breast and back were black. One little child, Mr. Oastler stated, he had himself seen, who, although under ten years of age, had been most unmercifully beaten for having, when tired out, spoiled a piece of yarn of some three inches in length. The evidence given before Mr. Sadler's committee more than corroborated the strongest statements made by those who desired to promote some restriction on the hours of work. The report, in fact, so teems with facts of this kind that it is difficult to make a selection. One witness—a clothier from Scholes, near Holmfirth, who stated that he had many opportunities of observing the treatment which children received in the woollen factories in his neighbourhood—on being asked a question upon this point, said, speaking of the children, “They are generally cruelly treated—so cruelly treated that they dared not hardly for their lives be too late at work in a morning. When I have been at the mills in the winter season, when the children are at work in the evening, the very first thing they inquire is, ‘ What o’clock is it?’ if I should answer, ‘Seven,’ they say, ‘Only seven! it is a great while to ten; but we must not give up till ten or past.’” This witness went on to say that his heart was ready to bleed for them when he saw them so fatigued that they were in such a state of apathy and insensibility as hardly to know what they were doing. Under these circumstances, they frequently made errors in their work, and for this they were most shamefully punished, being generally beaten with the “ billy roller ”—a heavy rod of iron from two to three feet long. This witness testified that he had seen the billy spinners take this danger- ous weapon and rap the little children on the heads till they made them crack so that the blow might be heard some distance off above the noise and din of the machinery. In some cases serious injuries were inflicted, which ultimately resulted in loss of life. Another witness, an operative, stated that when a boy he had been beaten with a billy roller, when drowsy after sixteen or seventeen hours of ROYAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY continuous labour, until he had repeatedly vomited blood. A volume, indeed, might be filled with . extracts from the evidence taken by this Com- mittee, as to the shameful cruelties practised upon the young children employed in factories. T1-fed, over-worked, and cruelly beaten, they were indeed fit objects of pity and compassion. Regarded from our present stand-point of view, it must be a subject of wonder and surprise to all who have read the shocking details laid before this Select Committee that those who sought to have this state of things amended by legislation should have had any difficulty whatever. Were such a tale of misery and woe laid before a Select Committee of the present day, the whole country would be up in arms at once to demand an immediate remedy. Nothing, perhaps, could more forcibly illustrate the contrast between the social condition of the people now and what it was some half a century ago than the fact that the disclosures made before Mr. Sadler’s Select Committee should have excited so little interest and so little sympathy for the miser- able victims of human avarice and cupidity. But the firm and decided attitude taken in the House of Commons by Lord Ashley, and the influence ex- ercised by the influential association which had been established to promote a short-time Bill, were not without effect, and the more reasonable among the employers in the textile manufactures became convinced of the necessity of something being done to remedy the grievances of the factory children. In their interest, Lord Morpeth gave notice of the introduction of a rival Bill, for limiting the hours of work. The operatives in- terested in the short-time movement dreaded no- thing so much as a compromise, and Lord Mor- peth’s movement was consequently very unpopular among them. Both proposals for immediate legislation, however, were set aside for a time by a suggestion for the appointment of a Royal Commission, to collect in- formation in the manufacturing districts with respect to the employment of children in factories, and to devise the best means for the curtailment of their labours. A motion to this effect was formally made in the House of Commons by Mr. Wilson Patten (now Lord Winmarleigh) on the 3rd of April, 1833. Lord Morpeth also sup- ported this motion, on the ground that the agree- ment between Mr. Sadler and the opponents of his Bill in the previous session had not yet been fulfilled. It was arranged that Mr. Sadler should first call his evidence, and endeayour to prove his INTO THE FACTORY QUESTION. 271 case, and then that his opponents should follow with theirs. The inquiry, however, had come to an abrupt conclusion, and before the latter had had this opportunity. Both Mr. Patten and Lord Morpeth earnestly disclaimed any desire to delay legislation, and there was certainly some show of reason in their arguments in favour of having the case of the opponents of the Bill thoroughly con- sidered. The leaders of the short-time movement, however, were bitterly opposed to the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, which they regarded simply as an excuse for delay. When the motion came on for discussion, Lord Ashley opposed it most strenuously, and although it was supported by the Government, he only failed to defeat it by one vote, the numbers on the division being 74 in favour of the appointment of the Commission, and 73 against it. The narrowness of this division no doubt had its influence with the Government. The commission was issued within little more than a fortnight after this division—on the 19th of April ; and the gentlemen named in it to conduct the proposed inquiry were :—Francis Bisset Hawkins, Thomas Southwood Smith, Sir David Barry, Tho- mas Tooke, Leonard Horner, John Elliot Drink- water, Robert Mackintosh, James Stuart, John Wilsford Cowell, Edward Carleton Tufnell, Alfred Power, Edwin Chadwick, Stephen Woolriche, John Spencer, and Charles Lowdon. Myr. John Wilson was appointed Secretary to the Commission. As there was a general desire that the question should be dealt with if possible during the currency of the session of 1833, the expedition with which the Commissioners got through their work may be judged of by the fact that the first report they presented was dated the 25th of June. They collected an immense amount of information, and although their labours were regarded with much jealousy and dissatisfaction by the factory opera- tives and their friends, yet they unquestionably contributed in a large degree to the formation of that public opinion which was expressed subse- quently in the Acts of the Legislature. In some towns in the North, the opposition offered to the Commissioners was absurd and unreasonable. For- mal protests against their proceedings were lodged with them at Manchester and Leeds. Mr. Richard Oastler absolutely refused to recognise the Com- mission when it reached the latter town, and declined to afford the members of it in their official capacity the slightest aid or assistance. Notwith- standing these discouragements, the work of the Commission appears to have been faithfully and GREAT INDUSTRIES conscientiously performed. Of course, the evidence submitted to them was very contradictory at times, but that the operatives had no cause for the want of confidence they displayed in the Commission, was made manifest when the reports were issued. The first, as we have just remarked, was presented to Parliament before the end of June, and was signed by Mr. Thomas Tooke, Mr, Edwin Chadwick, and Mr. Southwood Smith. The chief conclusions they arrived at, were thus summed up :— “Ist. That the children employed in all the principal branches of manufacture throughout the kingdom, work during the same number of hours as the adults. “2nd, That the effects of labour during. such OF GREAT BRITAIN. hours, are in a great number of cases permanent deterioration of the physical constitution, the pro- duction of disease wholly irremediable, and the partial or entire exclusion (by reason of excessive fatigue) from the means of obtaining adequate education and acquiring useful habits, or of profit- ing by those means when afforded. “ 3rd. That at the age when children suffer these injuries from the labour they undergo, they are not free agents, but are let out to hire, the wages they earn being received and appropriated by their parents and guardians. “We are therefore of opinion that a case is made out for the interference of the Legislature, in behalf of the children employed in factories.” HEMP, FLAX, AND JUTE.—VIII. KENDREW AND PORTHOUSES FLAX-SPINNING MACHINES—DRAWING. By Davin Bremner, Autuor or “ THe Inpustrigs oF SCOTLAND.” (ELE invention of Kendrew and Porthouse exer- cised such an important influence on the linen manufacture, not only of this country, but of all Europe, that it deserves more than the passing notice already accorded to it; and we reproduce the specification, with its accompanying drawings, as they appeared in “The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures,” published in the year 1802 :— “Specification of the patent granted to Mr. John Kendrew of Darlington, in the county of Durham, optic glass-grinder, and Mr. Thomas Porthouse of the same place, clockmaker, for a new mill or machine, upon new principles, for spinning yarn from hemp, tow, flax, or wool. “Dated June 19, 1787. “To all of whom these presents shall come, &c. Now know ye, that in compliance with the said proviso, they the said John Kendrew and John Porthouse do hereby describe and ascertain the nature of the said invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, as follows; that is to say: The machine may be worked or used by a water-mill, horse-mill, or any other kind of mill, and is made and used as hereafter described in the two drawings or plans added hereto, and figured 1 and 2, and severally marked. There is a cylinder marked a in the drawing Fig. 1, three feet diameter and ten inches broad, made of dry wood or metal, turned true, and covered on its circumference with a smooth leather, upon which are placed the rollers marked p, covered with leather, and supported in their situations by the slits in the curved piece of wood marked x, in which the iron axis of the rollers turn, but suffer them to press on the wheel marked a. There must be another piece similar to the above to support the other end of the rollers. These rollers are of different weights. The upper roller, marked pl, is two stone, the rest decreasing, to the least, which is only two pounds weight and one half. There is an iron fluted roller marked r, furnished with a toothed wheel at each end, and a wood one marked e, covered with cloth, and over it a smooth leather. There is an assisting roller, marked u, of fluted iron. These rollers are supported by their axis, turning in the slit marked 2 of the piece of wood marked m (Fig. 3), which is here separated from the end of the frame marked 8, to show the rollers which work. The rollers marked G and F are squeezed together by means of the lever marked p, and its weight, marked w (Fig. 3). The roller marked u is pressed to that marked G by its axis acting upon the inclined plane marked x (Fig. 3). There is a rubbing roller covered with woollen cloth, and on its axis is a small wheel, marked 1, driven by the wheel marked s. This roller rests upon the roller marked G, and by its motion prevents any dirt or fibres from adhering to it. There is a cloth, n, revolving over two rollers marked 00, which has motion given to it from the wheel marked c by means of another wheel marked p. This cloth moves at the same pace as the surface of the wheel marked a. There is a supporter, marked y (Fig. 4), of the axis of the wheels marked op, but is removed, in order to show them; it is fixed by its mortices in the tenons marked zz. The roller marked 8 is kept in action by its endeavour to slip down the inclined plane at the top of the piece marked y, thereby pressing against the revolving cylinder; and another piece, similar to this, must be understood to support the other end of the roller’s axis. By the side of this revolving cloth is a table placed, of the same length and breadth as the cloth is, to which belong two smooth cloths or leathers, of the same size as the table. The machine being thus prepared, the attendant or workman must take a quantity of hemp, tow, flax, or wool, more or FLAX—KENDREW AND PORTHOUSE’S SPECIFICATION. less, according to the fineness of the thread to be made, and lay or spread it evenly upon one of the smooth cloths on the table, then place it on the revolving cloth marked yn, motion being com- municated to the roller marked F by wheelwork, as used from a water, horse, or other kind of mill, which wheel- work is communi- cated to the wheel marked a, on whose axis is a nut, which turns the wheel marked c; and thereby the cylinder marked A moves, and with it all the rollers, by which motion the hemp, tow, flax, or wool, is drawn forward. The cloth turns down, but the hemp, tow, flax, or wool, go upon the cylinder marked a, under the roller marked z, and so forward under all the rollers marked p, then falls in between the rollers marked G Fr, turns under the roller marked c, and over the roller marked u, which, as it gives the rollers hold on the hemp, tow, flax, or wool in two places, enables them to drag forward the long fibres thereof, though many of them are to draw from under the 4th and 5th of the press- ing cylinders marked p; it then falls into the canister marked r, and as both wheel- work and rollers marked F G H move three times faster than the cloth and cylinder, the sliver must be three times longer than when presented. By the time this is drawing, the other cloth is filled with hemp, tow, flax, or wool, as before, and laid upon the 273 other on their passage through it to their passing the rollers, by which means they remain pressed side by side in the sliver, and will not entangle. These thick slivers are drawn smaller by similar processes, and in the same manner as used for cotton, but the ma- chines for drawing are all of the same structure as the above, except that they have no re- volving cloth. The sliver is held to the cylinder under the roler marked B, which draws it for- ward under all the M os an ii | nA DIAGRAMS ILLUSTRATING KENDREW AND PORTHOUSE’S SPECIFICATION. revolving rollers, and laying the end of the flax, tow, hemp, or wool, over the end of the other, which goes forward as before, and thus the continued sliver is pro- duced so long as_ the machine is in motion. But in order that this sliver may come out of the canister marked rx without entanglement, it must pass through an instrument marked 5 (Fig. 3), placed over the rollers marked Fr G, its open side marked r to the cylinder sup- ported by its ends, marked vv, in the slits marked w of the before-described piece marked x. The aperture marked x is so small as to press the fibres close to each 35 rollers as _ before described, drawing it out or lengthen- ing it over various machines through which it passes till it be small enough for the spinning machine. It must be remarked that the cylinders are made less in diameter according to the different smallness of the sliver intended to be drawn upon them at the first. ‘“‘The foregoing several letters or marks are in the machine figured 1. The spinning machine (Fig. 2), as to its drawing principle, is the same as the drawing machine. ‘The slivers are presented to it in canisters marked a, and drawn over the cylinder marked 8, covered with rollers marked p. The fibres which are to form the thread are drawn from the cylinder by the rollers marked c, the under roller of which is made of fluted iron, the others of wood, covered with leather. They move six or eight times faster than the cylinder marked 8 ; ————— =| are enabled to draw the =————| hemp, tow, flax, or wool, forward from under the pressing rollers marked p by being squeezed together by the weights and _ clocks marked a @ hooked to the small part of the rollers marked c. There is a belt of smooth cloth marked 8, moving on two rollers, which are turned by the wheel marked r, on the axis of the fluted roller, at the opposite end of which, at the mark c, is a nut, which turns the wheel marked u, on whose axis is another nut turning the wheel marked 1, and thereby the cylinder marked 8, with all its rollers. These rollers move in curved pieces of wood or metal, marked x, which, to prevent confusion, are not represented in their places. They have slits in them, in which the rollers’ axes are guided, but so deep as at all , (D 274 GREAT INDUSTRIES times to suffer the rollers to press upon the cylinder. These rollers are covered with'cloth and leather. The top roller is about 10 1b. weight, decreasing to the sixth roller, which is only about 11b. weight. ‘The yarn is turned by the spindles marked 1, and rubbed over the wet cloth belt, if spinning linen yarn, but if spinning worsted yarn the belt must be removed, that it may not touch it as it passes to the spool, which it coils round as fast as the rollers let it out. The spindles marked 1 are turned by a belt from the wheel marked m, which derives its motion from the mill, and by a wheel on its axis communicates it to the roller marked c, by the wheel marked r, and so to the rest, as above described. The hemp, tow, flax, or wool, is twined in the same manner as in cotton mills. “In witness whereof, &c.” Having secured their invention by a patent, Messrs. Kendrew and Porthouse at once proceeded to turn it to account, and with this view had a set of machines erected in a small building on the bank of the Skerne, at Darlington, which Kendrew occupied as a shop for grinding glass. Though neither had much, if any, knowledge of spinning, they succeeded so far as to attract the attention of several persons engaged in the linen manufacture, who, having satisfied themselves that the machines were capable of producing yarn more expeditiously than it could be done by hand spinning, obtained licenses to use the machines. Among the first in the field was Mr. John Marshall, of Leeds, the founder of what has long been one of the largest linen fac- tories in the world. In company with two partners, Mr. Marshall erected a mill, which was fitted with Kendrew and Porthouse’s machines. This was in 1788; and the mill, which was on what would now be considered an exceedingly small scale, was driven by water power. The concern did not realise the expectations of the firm; and Mr. Marshall, who had a clear knowledge as to what was requisite for the success of machine spinning, applied himself to The progress he made encouraged the firm to further enterprise ; and in 1791 a new mill, having a floor space of 1,000 square yards, was built at Holbeck, Leeds. In this case the machinery was also driven by a water wheel, supplied by an atmospheric engine. This arrangement was common in those days; and one looks back with wonder to a time when the steam engine had no higher task assigned to it than to pump water from a low to a high level, in order that it might be poured upon and give motion to a bucketed wheel. There was anything but economy in making the steam do its work in this roundabout way. My. Marshall’s first partners left him in 1793, at which time he had 900 spindles running at a satisfactory rate of profit. improving the machines. It is believed, in OF GREAT BRITAIN. fact, that this was the first really profitable flax- spinning mill in the kingdom. ‘Two years later, Mr. Marshall erected in the same locality a mill having 2,500 square yards of floor, besides ware- houses and other buildings. This enterprise must have met with remarkable encouragement, for in 1797 Mr. Marshall and ‘his partners built at Shrews- bury a large mill, fireproof throughout, which is still in the occupation of Messrs. Marshall and Co. In subsequent years the extensive establishments owned by the firm at Leeds were erected. Mr. Marshall’s example was followed by manufacturers in various parts of England and Scotland, and as the machines came under the notice of persons of superior mechanical skill, they were gradually im- proved. Mr. James Aytoun, of Kirkcaldy, con- tributed largely to this work. He had been sent. to Manchester to acquire a knowledge of cotton spinning, and while there heard of the invention of the flax-spinning machine. Shrewdly guessing that a fresh field of enterprise, in which he might use- fully engage, was about to be opened up by the invention, he proceeded to Darlington, and applied himself to studying the machines. He was not long there when the knowledge of cotton machinery which he possessed enabled him to suggest various improvements. Having accomplished the object of his visit, Mr. Aytoun obtained a license to work four spinning frames of thirty-six spindles each, and with this he returned to his native country, and established a factory at Kinghorn, where he had a long and prosperous career as a flax spinner. Kendrew and Porthouse, after working in partner- ship for a few years, embarked in separate enter- prises, the former building a mill at Houghton, and the latter acquiring a similar property at Cockham, both in the vicinity of Darlington. Porthouse, we are told, was a quiet, retired man, and left the management of the mill chiefly to his wife, who was an able, active woman. She attended the work daily, from morning till night, going about with tools in hand, shifting pinions, and doing other little and necessary pieces of work as an ordinary manager would. A good idea of the form of the earliest flax- spinning machines and their mode of operations, may be derived from the specifications and drawings ; how they have been improved upon will be learnt from the following description of the machines and processes now used in flax mills. From the hack- ling room the flax passes to the spreading, or first drawing machine, which consists of an endless feed apron, which conducts the flax to a pair of holding FLAX—MODERN MACHINES AND PROCESSES. rollers, where it is combed, and gradually drawn forward, by a series of travelling combs of peculiar construction, to two sets of drawing rollers, which elongate the sliver, and pass it on to the delivery rollers, whence it drops into a can. The apron is divided longitudinally into four sections, corre- sponding with the number of slivers to be formed. On each of these divisions the attendants of the machine placethe flax in an even layer, one end of each bundle over- laying the other to the extent of three-fourths of its length. As the flax is drawn along on the DEN ey Lae pas ITE] MOM i apron, it is seized by the first pair of rollers, which, moving at a slower rate than the other parts of the machine, hold the flax, as it were, and only give it off gradually. In front of the holding-rollers are the combs, which travel in a plane, and, disentangling the fibres and bringing them into parallel order, carry them forward to the drawing rollers. The combs are the most important part of the machine, and in their highest development display very considerable in- genuity. It is desirable that the flax should be subjected to the action of the comb at the nearest possible point to the holding rollers, so that the draw may take effect while the fibres are firmly retained in the grasp of the rollers, and to meet this requirement a variety of modes have been invented. One of the earliest of these was the chain-gill, in which the combs were attached at either extremity to an Tt 279 endless chain. This was followed by the screw-gill, which, after undergoing various modifications, may now be pronounced perfect. In this machine the combs are made to travel by the action upon their extremities of shafts furnished with a screw-thread. On reaching a point near the drawing rollers the combs drop in succession to a lower level, where they are received on a second pair of screw shafts and carried back to the holding rollers. Here they are raised by a pair of cams to the higher level, are at once brought to bear on theo: flax, and again travel to the drawing q if ATT aT Puan OF Frax Drawine MacHIneE, rollers. Their motion is nearly similar to what it would be if they were fixed in an endless chain, but it has the advantage of admit- ting the combs to begin their work at the closest possible point to the holding rollers. This ingenious con- trivance is the invention of Messrs, P. Fair- bairn and Co., Leeds, who have devoted much attention to the improvement of flax-working machines. In order to bring the fibres into fit condition for spinning, the slivers formed on the spreading machine are passed through the draw- ing machine several times. This machine is similar to thc spreader in every respect, except that itis fed with slivers instead of loose flax. Usually eight slivers are put through at a time, and elongated until they are reduced to the sizo which one of them presented originally. After the last drawing the slivers are fed into the roving machine, by which they are twisted into a soft cord, and made ready for the final operation of spinning. i RiOaNeteA SN: De; Se Eek Lex CEMENTATION——CAST STEEL. By Wriir1am Dunpas Scorr-Moncrisrr, C.E. ITHERTO we have spoken of the treatment of iron in its relation to carbon, either by the blast furnace or the Bessemer process; but there is another method of altering its character known as cementation, which is so interesting that we must devote a short space to a description of it. This process seems to have been unknown to the an- cients, and first acquired a scientific and commercial 276 GREAT INDUSTRIES importance in the early part of the last century, when it was much talked of as a wonderful dis- covery for converting bad iron into good. A number of adventurers, who became possessed of what they professed to be a great secret, made all sorts of proposals to capitalists by which they were to make fortunes as if they had discovered a new El Dorado, and even brought their projects under the notice of the French Court, which led to much discussion at the time. It seems to have been the unscientific manner in which the process was spoken of, and the unscrupulous character of the men who professed to understand it at this period, that led to a full inquiry having been made, in which Réaumur, the famous French philosopher, took a conspicuous part. In spite, however, of the attention which was given to the subject at that time, and the interest that has been attached to it ever since, on the part of the leading men of science in Europe, cementation still remains nearly as great a puzzle as ever. Al- though we are well acquainted with every detail of the process, we are still unable to say how it is that certain effects follow from their apparent causes. One of the most honest investigators who ever wrote upon this subject—Gay-Lussac—in criticising the views of certain persons who had come to rash con- clusions, states that he sees no reason to suppose that the process of cementation is altogether inexpli- cable, but at the same time he seems to be unable to explain it by any theory consistent with the state of knowledge at the time. Dr. Percy, whose authority we have so often had occasion to quote, was a pupil of Gay-Lussac, and bears testimony to the value of his master’s views; but though he himself made a long series of experiments, he was unable to arrive at any conclusion that pointed clearly to the way in which iron that has previously been deprived of its carbon becomes impregnated during cementation. Briefly described, the process is as follows :—Bars of wrought iron, upon the quality of which the value of the steel altogether depends, are packed together in a kind of retort, or brick chamber, so that the whole of their surfaces are in contact with charcoal. They are then subjected to a high temperature for several days, during which great experience and care are necessary, both in the regulation of the heat and the period of its continuance. After being allowed to cool slowly, the bars are withdrawn, and are then found to be covered over with blisters not unlike those produced upon the hands by rowing ; and at the same time the iron has been converted into what is known as “ blister-steel.” The difficulty that exists in the scientific explanation of the OF GREAT BRITAIN. process, arises from our ignorance of the manner in which the carbon becomes impregnated through the solid iron, as it never reaches the temperature of melting, and all the theories about the carbon being in a gaseous state quite fail to explain the puzzle. The ancients laid down a general proposition in physics which they accepted as a_ universal aphorism—that no substance in nature could act upon another substance unless they were dissolved or reduced to the fluid or gaseous state; but the process of cementation affords an instance of two solid bodies acting through their solid condition. Gay-Lussac, in summing up his remarks upon the process, says that we have no reason to suppose that the ancient proposition is true, but that all we can affirm is, that the solid state of matter is the one which is least capable of undergoing any change in its constitution. After the “blister” steel has been removed from the charcoal, it is cut into small pieces, and ham- mered very much in the same way as the scraps that we have already had occasion to speak of when describing the forge. When it has been drawn out again into bars, it is called “shear” steel, and when it has been again subjected to another course of treatment in contact with charcoal, and re-hammered, it is called ‘‘double-shear” steel. It was in this way that nearly all the steel used for the manu- factures of Sheffield goods was manufactured, till within the last fifty years, when another process was discovered. The product of this method is known as cast steel; and there is, perhaps, no de- partment of the iron trade that has led to a greater amount of invention, or that forms the subject of a larger number of patents. It was no sooner known that by melting fine Swedish wrought iron or “blister” steel in a crucible, and adding carbon while the contents were in a state of fusion, a finer quality of steel might be obtained, than almost every manufacturer, however ignorant, thought him- self justified in patenting some particular mixture, or some insignificant detail. The first inventor of the cast steel process seems to have been Benjamin Huntsman, who was born in 1704. He was a clock-maker of Doncaster, and retained the secret of the manufacture until it was discovered by a knave who disguised himself as a beggar, and found a night’s shelter in the casting house. As the process was conducted very much by rule of thumb, and as the most skilful workmen, who were best able to connect the appearances of the metal in a state of fusion with the quality of the material pro- duced, had an advantage over all theorists who were ‘STIVAT THELG PNITTON ii i : | iH i ! i | ; : bo 78 GREAT INDUSTRIES unacquainted with the practical working of the melting-pot, every master Lelieved himself to be able to produce better steel than any one else. It followed from this that the steel manufacture of Sheffield ceased altogether to be connected with the well-known advances which have been made in the science of metallurgy, and still remains to a great extent in the hands of empirics who have never depended upon any more reliable foundation for their business than the skill of a few highly-paid But although the steel manufacturers of Sheffield eagerly grasped at the new method, they refused to recognise the claims of another un- fortunate inventor, and formed one of the most workmen. scandalous combinations that ever existed to ruin the fortunes of the man to whom they were solely indebted for the discovery. The famous litigation which arose out of the patents of Heath, the in- ventor of the process for producing cast steel with manganese, is one of those instances—fortunately few—in which the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal in this country is open in its scientific aspect to the gravest criticism. It afforded opportunities for at least one learned and famous judge to prove the truth of the proverb that in science, as in other things, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the only reasonable conclusion to be arrived at now is, that if the scientific know- ledge of the Bench had been sounder, its decision would have been different, and that one of the most deserving inventors that ever made this country his debtor would have obtained a well-merited reward. It is not easy to convey to the mind of the general reader any very clear idea of the issue involved in this famous law-suit, but, briefly stated, it may be put in this way :—While Heath discovered that by adding a mixture of carbon and manganese, which may be called carburet of manganese, to “ blister ” steel or Swedish iron while in a state of fusion, fine cast steel could be produced, he patented the pre- paration as it was before being thrown into the crucible, It was discovered by another steel maker that the same result was obtained by adding the substances separately to the molten contents, and it was upon this that the combination was formed for the purpose of opposing Heath’s claim. It appears, however, that the only possible way of accounting for the similar results that follow either from first mixing the substances or putting them separately in the melting-pot is, that the same combination occurs in both cases, and that there- fore any value that Heath’s patent may have had was equally applicable to either method. The OF GREAT BRITAIN. analysis of molten metal is, however, somewhat beyond the capacity of even the most skilful ex- perimentalists, and so a presumption, which never really existed, was introduced with the effect of throwing out the unfortunate inventor altogether. Within a short period of the discovery of Heath’s method, various modifications of the substances to be added to the molten charge were proposed ; but his discovery is the only one that has remained of permanent value. As the dimensions of the apparatus necessary for producing cast steel are regulated more or less by the size of the ingots which are cast and hammered, and as these are generally small, a cast-steel work does not imply any very extensive application of machinery. The crucibles in which the “blister” steel, or Swedish iron, is melted, are generally about 9 inches in diameter across the mouth, and about 18 inches in height. They are made in moulds of some refractory material—such as plumbago, which is capable of resisting a very intense heat—and require great care in dressing, as any cracks are, of course, fatal to their usefulness. The furnaces consist of square chambers sunk below the level of the floor of the casting house, and are placed round a tall chimney, with which they communicate. Each of these chambers is capable of containing one or two crucibles, and is provided with fire-bars at the bottom. The crucible is filled with small pieces of iron and steel that have been previously weighed; and great import- “ance is attached to the proportions of the different kinds of material, as it is believed that an equally good quality of steel may be produced from an inferior charge if the proper “mixture” is made. This is not likely to be the case, however, as any of the deleterious substances, such as sulphur or phosphorus, which exist in bad iron, are probably never got rid of in the melting-pot. This is so far carried out by a saying of the trade, that if the “devil goes into the pot, he is sure to come out again.” When the crucible is placed in the furnace or chamber already referred to, it is packed round with coke, the combustion of which soon raises the heat sufficiently to melt the charge. From time to time the lid of the furnace, which is on the level of the floor of the casting house, is removed for the purpose of inspecting the melting contents of the crucible, and also for the purpose of adding fuel. The workman whose office it is to attend to the cast- ing of the ingots, is generally possessed of more than ordinary skill and experience, from the fact that the appearance which the melted contents of IRON AND STEEL—BARS. the crucibles present during the process of “ con- verting,” is the only means of judging of the proper time to add the carbon and manganese, or to remove the pot from the furnace altogether. This last operation is performed by means of a_peculiar- shaped pair of tongs, with which the crucible is clasped. While held in this way, the melted con- tents are poured into a cast-iron chamber, not unlike a large and elongated bullet mould. As soon as its contents are sufficiently cooled, the mould, which is formed in halves, is removed, and the ingot is then ready for further treatment. This consists only of being heated and hammered. An open hearth, not unlike a blacksmith’s, but inclosed as much as possible by coverings of sheet iron, to protect the workmen from the heat, is the apparatus ordinarily employed for heating the ingots to a temperature that renders them capable of being drawn out under the blows of the steam hammer. Jé is this drawing process that taxes the skill of the workman more than any other operation with which the writer is acquainted. The ingots require to be drawn out into bars of various lengths and of different sections, according to the purposes to which they are to be afterwards applied. The most common shapes are round, oval, square, octagonal, flat, and flattened oval. It is, of course, necessary that the bars should be perfectly symmetrical, and some idea may be formed of the amount of skill and practice which are necessary for producing them, from the fact of their being produced solely from the blows of the hammer; and although an assistant stands ready with a gauge to enable the hammerman to know when the proper diameter of the bar has been reached, still all the fairness and finish are due to the correctness of his eye and the dexterity of his hands. To enable the bar to be passed rapidly backwards and forwards under the blows of the hammer, the hammerman is provided with a seat suspended from the roof, with which he can swing himself rapidly to and fro, with his feet just touching the ground, and being, in this way, able to sway himself speedily backwards and forwards, all the irregularities are gradually eliminated. In the old days, before the introduction of the steam hammer, the drawing out of steel bars was performed principally by water power acting upon the helve hammers, which have already been de- scribed in a previous chapter. The blows required being so frequent, a modification of the ordinary steam hammer was soon introduced, for the benefit of this particular industry. It consisted of making 279 it self-acting, so that when certain valves are ad- justed in a particular manner, the steam, acting upon the hammer, causes it to act continuously at any desired number of strokes per minute, and with any intensity that may be required from time to time, according to the nature of the work. In this way the attendant, instead of moving a lever at each blow of the hammer, simply adjusts the self- acting mechanism at the signal of the hammerman ; and in finishing a bar of cast steel, when the lustre of surface peculiar to this process is brought out, the hammer is vibrating at as much as two hundred strokes per minute, and falling so lightly as not to produce the slightest mark or flaw. For square bars nothing is needed but a smooth anvil; but for round or octagonal bars, blocks are used that give the necessary form. It would be impossible to give anything like a full list of the purposes to which cast steel is applied, as they include the whole range of every article that comes under the head of cutlery, not to speak of the tools of nearly every trade or handi- craft in the civilised world. For the inferior sorts there is an immense demand in masons’ tools, which wear out very rapidly under the constant blows of the mallet; and also for the larger tools required by quarrymen, in the shape of picks and “jumpers” or pointed rods with which holes are drilled in rocks for the introduction of gunpowder or dy- namite. The picks, for the most part, are made of iron pointed with steel—generally “blister” steel, obtained from the process of cementation, as it is more capable of being welded to iron than cast steel; though there is one description of the latter, known as “welding cast,” which is best of all. In granite quarries immense quantities of steel are used, as the hardness of the material soon wears out even the best tools; and there are no men better judges of the practical merits of good steel than the smiths whose constant labour it is to keep the tools of a large granite quarry in repair. By some causes that are by no means easily accounted for, the manufacture of cast steel and blister steel is almost entirely confined to Sheffield. This, no doubt, arose at one time from the secret manner in which it was conducted, as all who were anxious to get information naturally went to the only town where it could be obtained; but even now it seems to be the natural home of the industry. In Scotland, where the iron trade has become so extensive, till within the last few years there was only one small steel work in existence, and that was worked by water power only. Since then 280 GREAT INDUSTRIES the partners of the old concern have become con- nected with two other establishments, both very favourably situated ; but neither of them give any promise of being able to establish a footing that will ever compete with the importations of Sheftield in respect to quantity. At present good cast steel is the most expensive of all forms of iron, that which is used for engineers’ tools costing from £60 to £70 per ton. This arises from the high quality of the material necessary for OF GREAT BRITAIN. manufacturing it, which is almost invariably Swedish charcoal iron, and also from the laborious manner in which the bars require to be hammered, It is, however, just within the range of possi- bility that improved methods may lead to its becoming much cheaper; and there is none that would affect the cost more materially than the process of rolling, which has done so much in other departments, and which forms the subject of our illustration. WOOL AND WORSTED.—VITII. CARPETS AND HEARTHRUGS, By Witi1im Gipson. TUDENTS and antiquaries differ widely from the general run of men as to the objects and places round which centre veneration and affection. To the former the etymology of a word, an aged ruin, or the mark upon a piece of faded china, opens vast vistas of visionary verbiage, whereas the latter don’t care who built the Great Pyramid, and sleep none the less soundly though they are unable to decide between disputants round an Etruscan vase, as to the true reading of some queer hiero- glyphic. The word “carpet” would mount the memory of the former on the fleet wings of fancy, and the wondering listener would hear gorgeous descriptions of the palaces of the Pharaohs, the temples of Heliopolis, the interiors of Babylon, the royal residence at Shushan, the castles of India, the harems of Moslem kaliphs, the palatial homes of the aristocracy of Greece, or the artistic decorations on wall and floor of the houses of the patricians of Rome. They would tell how the Egyptian priesthood had their sacred rugs to adorn the sacraria of their marvellous god-houses ; how the proud rulers of that ancient land trod on “velvet pile” of ingenious and cunning work ; how in the palaces of Babylon the guests of despotic sovereigns lounged upon rich carpets, and walked over price- less works of textile art; how the great men in the times of blind Homer laid down spotless wool- work on their rich marble floors; how that thought- less spendthrift Iphicrates, as Ptolemy Philadelphus informs us, at one of his most lavish banquets, underneath two hundred golden couches “strewed purple carpets of the finest wool with patterns on both sides, laid handsomely broidered rugs of the same material, enriched with beautifully elaborated figures, over dais, stool, and table ; and covered the centre of the floors, where the guests sauntered with beauty hanging on thei arm, with thin Persian mats, having upon them accurate repre- sentations of men, animals, and fabulous monsters, cunningly worked by nimble fingers.” They would wax eloquent on the glories of Tyrian and Sardinian dyes that shimmered “beneath the ivory-footed couches purple cushioned,” referred to by Plautus, and the rarest learning and profoundest research would be exhausted in order to convince the lis- tener that in art, deftness, and genius, these so- called rude and primitive men were our superiors in almost all branches of architectural design, and decorative furniture. But all that would be worse than Greek to the matter-of-fact Englishman, and he might turn upon such rhapsodies and declare that to him the prosaic factory, built of red brick, standing in one of our Lancashire towns, and send- ing out annually thousands of yards of “ Brussels,” erring at once against all laws of taste and design, was dearer to him than ‘the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces” of far-off times, because in that commonplace building had laboured a man whose name is loved or respected by every Briton—honest John Bright, “the People’s Tribune.” Our Saxon forefathers were content to strew their floors with sweet rushes (Acorus calamus), and down to the time of the seventh Harry little other covering was popular. There were excep- tions, however, made in respect of presence chambers of kings, private rooms of nobles, and the sanctum of the abbot. These were covered at first with carpets made first of all by long thongs of leather interlaced, and then by pieces of cloth treated in WOOL AND WORSTED—CARPETS. the same way. In one of the most valuable MSS. in the British Museum—Sir John Lydgate’s Life of St. Edmund, profusely illustrated with coloured drawings—we find the bed-room of the saint covered with a checkered carpet of green and black—like a chess-board ; and a hearthrug of Gothic design, in gold and black, before the roaring wood fire. As this vellum book was written in the fourteenth century, we know that carpets were already in use; but it was the Moors who introduced the Oriental floor coverings into Western Europe, and the Belgians and French that popularised the excellent imitations of scarce and costly Indian and Persian work. Henry VIII. tried to naturalise the tapestry manufacture in England, but failed. His successor, the first James, had a flourishing factory at Mortlake ; but it was not till 1750, when the Duke of Cumberland’s concern at Paddington was in full swing, that the carpet industry of this kingdom had its birth. But carpet weavers have taken very long strides indeed since the brown Egyptian, the tawny Babylonian, or the Indian workman erected his loom between two adjacent trees, and through weary months, and, even years, perseveringly knotted tuft after tuft of coloured wools on the perpendicular warp threads of his primitive machine till the finished carpet stood forth a marvel of design and a thing of beauty. Axminster, Kidderminster, and other places took carpets in hand last century, and faithfully copied Eastern designs; but now Halifax, Rochdale, Edin- burgh, Kilmarnock, and Glasgow, by the aid of the Jacquard and other looms, and by Whytock’s and Templeton’s patents, have thrown those early en- deavours completely in the shade. From being a luxury of the wealthy and great, carpets have become a necessity to all, and there are few cottage houses whose best room cannot now boast a bit of “tapestry,” “ Kidderminster,” ‘ Brussels,” or more homely “ drugget.” Jacquard revolutionised a good many textile in- dustries by his ingenious loom. Silk, velvet, woollen, carpet, linen, cotton, muslin, and other manufac- turers, owe much to him; and Mr. Bigelow, of America, by the introduction of his power looms— though the original patent has been much improved since—wrought a stili more wonderful transforma- tion in this and other lands. Without these, carpets and a good many other things might be enviously re- garded by the industrious poor, but never possessed ; and it is to these and other inventors that so many thousands of the labouring classes are indebted for the means of daily earning an honest livelihood 36 281 The Jacquard loom long held undisputed sway at Wilton, Kidderminster, and elsewhere, and on it were woven the double, treble, fourfold, and even “six-frame Brussels,” or the cheaper but no less durable “ Kidderminster.” The word “carpet,” philologists tell us, comes from the Italian carpetta or perhaps from the Dutch karpet ; and certainly the best and earliest makers in Western Europe, both of carpets and tapestries, came from the flat strip of land along the eastern shore of the North Sea known as “the Low Countries.” “ Brussels” carpet was first made at Wilton, where it was introduced from Tournai, in Bel- gium, rather more than a century and a quarter ago, and it has always held its own in public esteem. It was woven on Jacquard looms, and consists of one to six thicknesses of woollen thread wrought on a hemp or other strong back. Two, three, four, or five thicknesses, however, are most general, and these usually indicate the number of colours used in forming the pattern. ] 3 2 GREAT INDUSTRIES bet comes still nearer to a complete separation of the gaseous and solid elements of the fuel ; but although a solid residue is saved, it is not afterwards em- ployed as an essential part of the process, which only deals with the gases. This improvement consists of passing highly-heated air through the coal, so as to rob it of its gas, the necessary heat being obtained from regenerators, the temperature of which is entirely dependent upon the passage of the waste - heat that would otherwise be lost. The elaborate details of the Siemens furnaces are arranged with the object of taking advantage of every chemical and mechanical combination that can possibly add to the heating value of the fuel, and the great economy obtained from the application of this system entitles its inventors to the foremost place among those who have attempted a solution of the difficult problem of complete combustion. The very number of these details is, however, one of the great defects of the system, as they are necessarily accompanied by a large amount of wear and tear, with much corresponding expenditure. The simplest method of obtaining the full effect of the waste heat in furnaces such as those which are used for puddling and heating iron seems to be that already suggested by my own experiments. In this way the gas is removed from the fuel, and the high temperature it receives from the waste heat is rendered available for the furnace, while the solid residue is preserved, and can be added to the combustion of the gas as it is required. As we have already explained at some length, the greatest improvement that has been made in the direction of economising fuel in the iron trade is the hot blast, which has done more than all other appliances put together. It was very evident, how- ever, that a great deal had still to be done, so long as the flames of the blast furnace and all the products of combustion, including an immense amount of heat, were allowed to pass freely into the open air, where they were lost for ever. As generally happens, we find that the pressure of necessity was the first mother of improvements in the utilisation of the waste gases of blast furnaces, and that the earliest steps were taken where the pressure was most severe. As may be supposed, this was not likely to be in a country so well sup- plied with fuel as our own, and, accordingly, it is to France that we must look for the first efforts to utilise the waste heat of the smelting process. So early as 1811, M. Aubertot, who was the proprietor of iron works in the Department of Cher, obtained a patent for making use of the waste heat of blast OF GREAT BRITAIN. furnaces, by employing it for the burning of lime or bricks, and also for the cementation of steel. He reserved only the latter application as his monopoly, and offered the rest of his invention to the iron trade, at the same time stating his readiness to give every information in his power. M. Aubertot had ample means at his disposal for testing the merits of his invention, as he possessed several iron works, or managed them; and before long there was a considerable interest excited with regard to its application. The result of actual trials proved that the heat obtained from the waste gases arose not only from their high temperature, but from their capacity for combustion when exposed to a supply of air under suitable conditions. It does not appear how far the practice of M. Aubertot, and the interest which it had excited in France, led to the development of the system in this country, but we find that a patent was taken out by a Mr. Moses League so long ago as 1832, in which he proposed to apply the waste heat to the ovens of the hot blast iron, to save the fuel ordinarily employed for this purpose. A few years afterwards steam was successfully raised in boilers at the blast furnaces at Rustrel, in France, under the superintendence of an English engineer, and an arrangement of valves was then introduced which proved that the proper admixture of common air with the escaping gases was a necessary condition of success. In this country the principal credit of introducing this important source of economy rests with the veteran ironmaster, Mr. Budd, of Ystaly- fera, in South Wales. He first made use only of the high temperature of the waste gases, as this was sufficient to heat the air required for the hot blast of the furnaces without their combustion. He after- wards employed the combustion of the gases for raising steam in the boilers required for driving the blowing engines, and his success led him to write as follows in 1848 :—“It would appear to be more profitable to employ a blast furnace, if as a gas generator only, even if you smelted nothing in it, and carried off its heated vapours by flues to your boilers and stoves, than to employ a separate fire to each boiler and each stove. These considerations irresistibly suggest to me a great revolution ir metallurgical practice ; a new management, in fact, of furnaces and works, by which considerably above £1,000,000 a year might be saved in the iron trade alone.” This was written in 1848, and has since proved to be a correct prediction ; but in-spite of that, the open-mouthed furnace is still in vogue, belching 314 GREAT INDUSTRIES out flames and fumes, and will probably continue to do so until the generation that owns them has passed away for ever beyond the power of controlling their construction. The most approved plan now adopted for remoy- ing the waste gases is that of drawing them off by means of a large pipe, formed of malleable iron plates riveted together, which branches away from near the top of the blast furnace ; and the method of supplying the fuel and the charge of ores and limestone is that which has already been illustrated in the third chapter of this series. This is known as the cup and cone, and is exceedingly simple in its construction. It consists of a large cone of iron, which forms a sort of lid to the furnace, on the outside of which the proper amount of fuel and ironstone are allowed to rest until the moment the cone is lowered, when they all slp down for want of support, and fall into the furnace beneath. The raising and lowering of this cone is greatly aided by the back weight which is attached to the lever from which it is suspended, and the time occupied in the introduction of a new charge of fuel and ore is not more than a few seconds. The brazier, which is always kept burning over the top OF GREAT BRITAIN. of the furnace, is placed there for the purpose of igniting the gases when they escape when the cone is lowered, as they would otherwise explode when mixed with a certain proportion of common air. There seems to be little doubt that in furnaces using the hot blast, and with a proper arrangement for consuming the waste gases so as to heat the ovens and raise steam in the boilers, the highest possible amount of economy is attainable, as there is nothing in the process which is inconsistent with the true principles of combustion. The solid residue of fuel in this case is, of course, required for the re- duction of the iron ores to a molten state, and this goes on in the furnace itself. It is sincerely to be hoped, for the sake of those whose lives are now spent in regions that are darkened by smoke and begrimed by soot, that ‘some equally intelligent applications to science will be adopted in the other branches of the iron trade, as well as in every industry that requires the consumption of coal. And it is much to be desired that the welfare and comfort of the popula- tion should be at least as great an incentive to improvement in the future as the love of gain has been in the past. WOOL AND WORSTED.—IX. SHODDY AND MUNGO. By Wit114M Gipson. AG-PICKERS are coeval with the paper manu- facture, but this class of persons until the pre- sent century always carefully avoided rags made of wool, or even mixtures of wool and cotton, or wool and any other fibre, for the simple reason that they were considered almost valueless. But as paper- making progressed, and became remunerative, specu- lators began to ask themselves why the only rags to yield fortunes should be cotton ones. Was it not possible, for instance, to utilise cast-off coats, stockings, woollen hosiery, worn-out blankets, and discarded trousers? This question led to trials being made with the hitherto neglected materials, and, in course of time, to the establishment of an altogether new industry—the shoddy, mungo, and felt trades, and various occupations more or less intimately connected with them. Among the latter may be noted the numerous class of rag merchants all over the world, who, in their various localities, gather together the raw material—worn-out gar- ments of all kinds, blankets, hosiery, &e.—and _ for- ward it to the manufacturing centres ; the shoddy dealers in the commercial districts who receive the - various consignments from agents widely scattered ; and rag sorters who prepare the material for the manufacturers, of whom there are in the Batley district several hundreds, all employing a consider- able number of hands. These last-mentioned form an important factor in the shoddy trade. It is their business to sort the rags according to their colours, quality, hard- ness or softness; and, in case the consignment consist of garments, to cut out the seams, which they do rapidly and efficiently. It may, indeed, broadly be said that these work-people are, in the branch of manufacture with which we are dealing, as indispensable as the wool sorters in other branches of textile fabrication. So far as we know, there is no direct evidence as to the person who first ground or tore up woollen WOOL AND WORSTED—SHODDY AND MUNGO. rags, and it is equally unknown at what precise date the operation was first undertaken. Probably many enterprising persons tried what they could make out of woollen rags, and not having succeeded, ceased further endeavours. What we do know is, if meagre, at least authentic. Some few furniture manutac- turers—chiefly makers of bedding, mattresses, and stuffed furniture, in and around London, the chief seat of the paper manufacture of this country—and a few saddlers in the metropolis itself, used larger or smaller quantities of woollen “ flocks” to mix with hair and other materials in their business. But up to the year 1813, nobody ever thought of applying the product to the cloth trade, until a Yorkshire manufacturer, merely by accident, saw a saddler employing it to stuff a piece of harness.. The manu- facturer referred to was Mr. Benjamin Law, who carried on business in Batley. Having occasion while in Londor to call upon a saddler, he saw one of the workmen using a material, totally new to him, of a long, woolly fibre resembling the material with which he was so familiar. On taking a handful from the heap to examine it, he found it really was wool, and he was led to ask a few questions as to where it came from and who manufactured it. He learned to his surprise that it was the outcome of old stockings, hosiery, or blankets, He thought it was capable of being spun, and, with the view of trying the experiment, sent an order to the person who sold it, and upon mixing it with a small per- centage of new wool, wove it into a piece of cloth. This was in the year 1813. My. Law found a ready sale for his new product, at once invested the whole of his capital in the enterprise to which he had been led by a chance visit, and became the founder of the shoddy trade. My. Law was a native of Great Gomersal, a village near Bradford, and was born in the year 1772. Finding that he could pro- duce more than he could dispose of in the English market, he sent his son John with a large consign- ment of goods to- America, where he met with a ready sale at a good profit. A second venture in the same direction was agreed upon, and into this the original shoddy manufacturer put all his energy and all his money. His son started, no doubt with high hopes of success, and Mr. Law himself, in all likelihood, looked forward to securing the means of extending his business. Weeks passed away, but Mr. Law heard nothing of his son; and at length, fearing that he had died, or that some accident had happened which prevented his writing, determined to go out in search of the young man and his precious freight. He went to America, sought high and low, 315 but no trace of his son or the goods could be found, and he returned home comparatively a ruined man. He died in Stockport in 1837, and was buried in the churchyard of Batley.* But the trade once started, many were willing to carry it on, and the result is that a large and continually increasing population has been drawn to Batley and the neighbouring villages, which are chiefly engaged in the shoddy manufacture. Another name in connection with this branch of trade must be mentioned—that of Mz. Samuel Parr. To this gentleman belongs the honour of having introduced to the world the material known by the name of “mungo.” This differs considerably from shoddy. Shoddy, properly so called, is a term applied to soft woollen rags, originaily made of worsted, that have been torn to tatters, or ground into a sort of pulp in the “devil.” Mungo is the name given to the same sort of material obtained from woollen rags, whether old coats, vests, trousers, or tailors’ clippings. Mr. Parr introduced mungo in the year 1834. He offered a quantity of it for sale at Ossett, near Wakefield. Nobody cared about buying it, and one person is reported to have remarked to Mr. Parr, “I doubt it winnot goa.” “Winnot goa!” replied the persistent salesman ; “but it mun goa at som price.” And “goa” it did; since when it has been known by the name of mungo. And aithough shoddy was first in the field, Mr. Parr’s discovery has completely out-distanced it in the race of popularity, nine-tenths of the cloth now made in Batley and the district being of this material. People used to have the notion that shoddy was a sort of felt, but that is not the case ; others appear to think that it is entirely composed of old material worked up, and this is equally an error. All shoddy cloths have a larger or smaller percentage of new wool in them, and the better kinds are manufactured entirely from new lastings, tailors’ clippings, and wool never used before. Shoddy really is only the short scraps that leave the “devil,” although the materal in which it forms an ingredient bears the generic title. Shoddy or mungo reaches Batley in bales, and, so to speak, in naturalibus, with all its greasy and dirty admixtures. These bales are opened out, and the contents spread before women, who sort or pick them. The value of the rags varies, those brought from France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and * The writer is indebted to Mr. John Law, architect, Batley, gr. t-grandson of the founder of the trade, for many of the facts in this sketch. 316 GREAT INDUSTRIES “eotland bemg the cleanest, while those imported fiom Ireland are the worst. These, mended, darned, dirty, and filthy to the last degree, give the pickers the greatest trouble ; while the others for the most part are compafatively clean, and when “seamed” are ready for the next operation. The pickers sit upon low stools, almost hidden among mounds of rags, which they expeditiously assort according to quality and colour. Grinding is the next stage in the manufacture. The machine by which this operation is performed m the shoddy trade is popularly called a “devil” Uy yf,’ Hy Mj OF GREAT BRITAIN. and descending revolution of the “swift” or spiked drum, the rags are now only torn in front of it, or at the centre of its ascending motion. But the reachines in use to-day are much more efficient, because the number of teeth in the “swift” is greater, its speed has been largely increased, and the mechanical fans, for driving off the dust as the rags are torn asunder, much improved. The “swift” now contains as many as 12,000, and even 15,000 teeth, when. used for mungo, and revolves at the rate of from 700 to 1,000 times per minute. The grinding, indeed, is mainly accomplished by the rapidity of revolution, and the number of teeth which the piece of rag meets in its pas- sage through the machine. Properly blended with the pro- portion of new wool to make up the class of goods intended, the mixed shoddy is ready for subse- Ny | fll) If i =p = 77 {| ll i \| | Wf |o Tim We [TM ay | il \" A I fh MUAY i [, | IK — {~~ ! 7 Tue “ DrviL”? Raa Macuine, —probably because it is a roaring lion devouring the pieces of cloth or worsted placed in its maw. Its function is to tear the cloth to tatters, and reduce it to something like the condition in which tt was before originally being spun. The rag machine, or “devil” as it is sometimes called, now in use in the Batley district, differs con- siderably from those with which Mr. Law and his contemporaries introduced shoddy to the world. The original machines were conical in shape, and the rags were torn to pieces by teeth set in plates in the interior, somewhat resembling doffing plates. When sufficiently “ ground,” they fell into a chamber through which a fan caused a stream of uir to be driven. The material difference in the new machines is rather in detail than principle. Tnstead of being torn at the level of the ascending quent processes, which are identical with those characteristic of the cloth trade. The advantage of this coarser kind of cloth is that “shorts” and “noils,” which would be useless in the worsted manufacture, are utilised here. “Shorts” are the coarser and shorter portions of fleeces used in the worsted trade unfit for combing, and “ noils” are the refuse combings both of coarse and fine wools. Be- sides this, many coarse species of wool from Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and other countries, which worsted or woollen manufacturers could not use, are worked into the lower classes of shoddy fabrics. Of late years a large quantity of union cloths—composed of cotton warp and shoddy weft—have been manu- factured, so that a considerable quantity of cotton thread is demanded in the district. ; When the old clothes or rags have been “seamed ” WVOL AND WORSTED—SHODDY STATISTICS. for devilling, the seams are not thrown away. In- deed, nothing in the bales is wasted. The seams, after having been rotted, are used for manure, and sent particularly to the hop-grounds of Kent, and a selection of those from the best goods are ground to stuff mattresses and furniture. Shoddy dust, which comes from the rags while being “devilled,” and that which falls from the “ willy shaker,” satu- rated with oil, form rich manure. More recently, the dry dust has been applied in the manufacture of what is known as “flock” paper hangings, and with it the best descriptions are obtained. Even shoddy after being worn is re-manufactured, espe- cially the better sorts. Union cloth, however, was for a long time unable to be worked up again, the eotton warp being a barrier to the manufacture. Modern science has solved the problem, and to-day either the cotton can be destroyed by the help of acids, leaving the wool uninjured; or, should the cotton be the more valuable part of the cloth, the wool is singed into a cinder, while the former re- mains unaffected, and, of course, capable of doing fresh service. These processes of extraction have given the title of “extract” to the residue. Shoddy is manufactured into many kinds of cloth, and, young as the trade is, some sorts made years ago have since been totally discarded. Among the kinds still most largely made are friezes, sent parti- cularly to Ireland and America; witneys, either plain or in fancy styles, or in imitation of fur, chiefly used for ladies’ cloaks and jackets ; pilots— the staple of the shoddy trade—are made of various colours, but principally blue, black, and brown. They have a fine finish, are close cropped, and in great demand. The price ranges from one to ten shillings per yard, but most of the medium quality is sold. Army cloth—the sort from which soldiers’ great-coats are made—en- gages many manufacturers; reversibles, or fancy cloth, much the same on both sides, and used for coatings, is extensively fabri- cated; cheviots and tweeds, of mixed colours, are produced to a _ considerable extent ; and low-class cloth, for horse-rugs, linings, mop-cloth, floor-cloth, &c., occupies the attention of various firms. Batley, so recently as 1841, had not more than 7,000 inhabitants ; in 1860 it had risen to nearly 13,000; and in 1871 it was 20,871. Dewsbury, which had 8,000 souls in 1831, had 14,000 in 1851, and 24,764 in 1871. Heckmondwike had 4,500 in 1851, and in 1871 no less than 8,300. These figures indicate the strides which the shoddy trade 317 has made; and this is still further borne out when we refer to the factory returns. Those for 1875 show that in England and Wales there were 123 factories, running 101,134 spinning spindles and 1,437 power looms, with 3,424 factory operatives. These, of course, only represent a small section of the work-people, for it may be said that at least one- fourth of the population of the districts in which the trade is carried on are directly engaged in it. Taking the years between 1871 and 1875, we find the following results :—-In 1871 there were imported 24,219 tons of woollen rags, valued at £498,754; in 1872, 29,302 tons, worth £534,329; in 1873, 24,827 tons, at £468,556; in 1874, 25,581 tons, valued £547,399 ; and in 1875, 25,415 tons, worth £599,402. Probably we must add one-third at least to these figures, to allow for the home production, which will bring the total for 1875 up to 33,886 tons of rags, of the value of £799,202. Taking the details of the year 1875, we find that Germany sent us 6,899 tons, at £159,320; Denmark, 1,328 tons, at £27,086 ; Holland, 3,309 tons, at £87,947 ; Belgium, 4,500 tons, at £142,867; France, 7,335 tons, at £138,413; Italy, 360 tons, at £8,663; the United States, 397 tons at £8,660; and other countries, 1,377 tons, at £26,446—or an average of £23 10s. per ton. Perhaps a few words ought to be said here about felted cloth, which is closely affiliated to the shoddy trade, inasmuch as it deals with the same sort of raw material. This manufacture is largely carried on at Leeds. Felted cloth is used for table covers, upholstery cloths, crumb cloths, carpets, and various other purposes. The processes of manufacture are When the rags have been comparatively simple. properly ground, scoured, and cleaned, the wool is passed to immense carders, which deliver the mate- rial not in many narrow strips, but in one broaa “sliver” or band several feet wide, and very little thicker than a cobweb. As the doffer knife frees it from the machine, it is wound on to a broad roller. A number of these rollers are then taken to a warping machine, where they are unwound simultaneously, the “sliver” of the second falling 318 GREAT INDUSTRIES on the first, and so on, till the required thicl- ness has been obtained. For most materials this warping is seldom less than an inch thick. As this thick, soft band leaves the warping machine, it is made to pass between a pair of feed-rollers attached to a trough, a section of which is shown in the accompanying figure. The feeding rollers are at A, and the band passes between a set of rollers marked B and ¢, partially immersed in hot soapy water. Those marked B are hollow, charged with steam, and those marked c of solid wood, The rollers B simply revolve on their axis, but the others besides this have a “shog- ging” motion from side to side laterally, so as to rub the “sliver” and induce the fibres of the wool to felt. The sliver passes out at D fine thin felt. This is dried, pressed, printed in machines similar to those used by calico printers with the required pattern, or dyed one colour, as the case may be, pressed, and sent to market. The most inferior wools, noils, rags, and even admixtures of old flax and cotton, can be utilised by this process. This naturally leads us to the manufacture of felt hats. Formerly the felting was done by hand pres- ste upon a mould shaped like a cone, with the apex round instead of diminishing to a point; but now one of the best machines is a very simple contri- vance. Fed by an endless apron, the wool is carried OF GREAT BRITAIN. into a chamber through which a strong current of hot air is forced by a mechanical fan. As only a very small portion of wool is admitted into this chamber at a time, in its course fibre is blown from fibre, till at the other end it is ejected a shower of wool. Close to the orifice by which it escapes 1s a huge perforated cone, round topped, and covered with a wet blanket, from the intericr of which the air, as it revolves, is gradually pumped. This cone, or mould, revolves rapidly on its axis vertically, and the shower of wool as it leaves the hot-air chamber falls in flakes round the sides cf the mould. The withdrawal of the air from the cone causes the fibres of wool to cling to the blanket, till a sufficient thickness has been obtained. The cone is now removed, and subjected to mechanical pressure in a hot bath till the clinging wool fibres have become a solid piece of cloth, when it can be moulded to the shape required. The bath, if the felt is to be soft, is merely soap and water; and if stiff, contains a glutinous substance, which binds the particles of wool during the process of felting, leaving it to retain its phability long enough to admit of the future hat beimg moulded to the required shape. This branch of trade gives em- ployment to a considerable number of people— felters, finishers, and women who sew on the bind- ing, linings, &e., as well as those who fabricate the boxes used by hatters. FOREIGN RIVALRIES.—V. COTTON MANUFACTURE. By H. R. Fox Bourne. HOUGH wool was in former times the staple article of textile manufacture in Great Britain, with linen and silk in competition with it, cotton is now of far greater importance than all three put together. Of the entire produce of our textile manufactories the value of the cotton goods and yarns constitutes more than 67 per cent., while that of woollen and worsted materials, including carpets and the like, is only 23 per cent.; that of linen of all sorts, barely 7 per cent.; and that of silken fabrics considerably less than 3 per cent. The growth of our cotton industries during the past two or three generations is, indeed, one of the marvels of the history of trade. In 1820 our country pro- duced over 108,000,0001b. of cotton yarn. That quantity was nearly quadrupled by 1840, and increased ninefold by 1860, when, on the eve of the cotton famine, the yield was about 966,000,000 Ib. Since then, the advance has not been great, but in 1876 it exceeded 1,131,000,0001b., about a fourth of which, as in former years, was exported, the rest being retained for working up at home. In 1850, again, we exported about 1,000,000,000 yards of cotton cloths, besides all that were consumed at home ; and from that time, in spite of the disasters of the cotton famine, and the trade depressions of subsequent years, the quantity has increased on an average by just 100,000,000 yards a year. In 1876 it amounted to 3,669,404,374 yards, and had a declared value of £54,859,535. Taking piece goods and yarns together, we find that whereas in 1851 the total value of our exports was £30,088,836, it FOREIGN RIVALRIES—INDIAN COTTON. had risen in 1871 to £72,678,945 ; and there was hardly any country in the world for which we did not cater very much more in the latter than in the former year. Our supply to Egypt was increased more than sixfold ; to China and Japan, about four- fold ; and to India, Australia, and many other parts about threefold ; the European countries, as a whole, taking from us fully twice as much. In 1871, it has been estimated, each inhabitant of the world, including our own country, spent on British-made cotton goods, upon an average, nearly Is. 2d., the proportion ranging from 13d. in Russia, to 10s. 1d. in Australia, and being as high as 4s. 7d. in Mexico and the West Indies, 4s. 10d. in British North America, 5s. 9d. in South America, and 5s, 2d. in Germany, the last-named being our largest cus- tomer, with the exception of India and Ceylon. With such figures before us as those from which we have taken the above illustrations, and with the knowledge that, if the spread of civilisation and the low price at which cotton garments can now be produced, have encouraged vast numbers of people to clothe themselves, there are vast numbers yet waiting to acquire this commendable habit, it may be thought that there is little ground for alarm as to much real injury coming to England from foreign competition in cotton manufactures. All the facts that we have to deal with, however, are not con- solatory, and some of them, though they may not justify all the fears they have excited, are at any rate full of warning. It is quite clear, in the first place, that Great Britain has lost the overwhelming supremacy, almost amounting to a monopoly, which it till lately enjoyed over the other countries of Europe. India has, of course, carried on from remote times an important cotton manufacture, though inadequate in quantity and unsuited in character to meet the wants of its own people. For many centuries after the introduction of the craft into Europe, England shared with some of the Continental nations the advantage of obtaining small quantities of Indian fibre to be spun and woven at home ; and in recent times the demand for more cotton than the United States could furnish, especially during and since the period when the American civil war put a check upon the trans-Atlantic supplies, has given a great stimulus to the cultivation of the plant south of the Himalayas, in order that its produce may be sent to Europe. Neither of this Indian cotton nor of the exportations from Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere, however, has England ever received a very great share. Large portions of them have gone to meet the 319 wants of other countries, and, till lately, those wants were in large measure satisfied by importations from the East. It was different with the cotton grown in the West Indies, and afterwards to a very much greater extent in Virginia and other parts of the United States. Cultivated especially to answer the requirements of our own country, nearly all of this cotton was for a long time sent to it. This is Out of the 4,615,383 bales of cotton produced in the United States in 1876, nearly 30 per cent. was retained in the country itself; 10 per cent. went to France ; more than 10 per cent. to the North of Europe ; and more than 4 per cent. to other parts. England received only 45 per cent. That supply, it is true, exceeded 2,000,000 bales, to which was added, after deducting the quantity re- exported in a raw state, about 1,000,000 more bales, obtained from the East and West Indies, Brazil, and Egypt, so that the whole stock used up in England—3,095,000 bales, or about 60,000,000 Ib. in all—was more than twice as great as that in all the rest of Europe, and about four times as great as that in the United States. It was hardly less, moreover, than the supplies of the previous four years, and far more than the country had been able to use up in earlier times; but this does not lessen the significance of the fact that the United States and several Continental countries have been increasing their importations, while England has barely maintained its level. In 1875—6, while it is estimated that in Great Britain there were 39,000,000 spindles, the following were the num- bers set down for the other cotton-manufacturing countries in Europe :— France, 5,000,000; Germany, 4,650,000 ; Russia and Poland, 2,500,000 ; Switzer- land, 1,854,091; Spain, 1,750,000; Austria, 1,555,000; Belgium, 800,000; Italy, 800,000 ; Sweden and Norway, 305,000; and Holland, 230,000. The number of spindles in the United States was 9,500,000—as many as those of the most active countries in Europe, France and Germany, put together. Tt is not at all strange that the great American republic, having such rich stores of raw cotton at its hands, should endeavour to make up into cloth- ing a sufficient quantity to supply, at any rate, the wants of its own people; and that it will do this in time, if it does no more, may be counted upon. The rapid progress made in recent years, however, has been altogether artificial, being due to the protec- tive policy of the Government, which, if causing some injury to England, has done even yet greater harm to the country itself. On this subject some no longer the case. 320 GREAT INDUSTRIES sentences from the message of the Governor of New York, to the Legislature of that State, in 1877, are worth quoting. Referring to the trade depression consequent on the civil war, he said, ‘‘ Individuals and corporations engaged in the various branches of manufacture, taking advantage of the necessities of the Government, rushed to congress, and by every means in their power, procured each for its own benefit the levy of what were called protective duties, under the false pretence of raising revenue for the Government, but really to compel con- sumers to pay exorbitant prices for the favoured articles. Under the stimulus of this so-called pro- tection, new enterprises were undertaken, new and extensive factories built, and armies of labourers allured by high wages from fields of agriculture and other sober and rational employments of life. The few notes of warning raised against this wild over- action were unheeded. Extravagance of expendi- ture, the absence of everything like frugality and economy, obtained in all directions. The empty and delusive bubble thus raised could not endure, and although kept afloat by the whole power of the Government, so long as it was possible, it met at last the inevitable day of doom. Imaginary fortunes vanished in a moment, ill-advised schemes were suspended, and tens of thousands of innocent and unfortunate labourers were left without employ- ment or the means of subsistence.” Under the influence of these pernicious arrangements, America has lately manufactured cotton goods, chiefly of the rougher sorts, not only for the use of its own people, but also for sale in other countries. Its export trade in such cotton goods, during the past few years, has, indeed, increased with amazing rapidity. In 1872 it sent abroad, chiefly to the Kast Indies and South America, 11,704,000 yards ; in 1874 the quantity had risen to 17,837,000 yards ; in 1876, to 75,807,000 yards; and in 1877, to 105,831,000 This steady movement requires some other explanation than that of the English optimists who assert that the goods which the Americans dispose of in English markets, at prices lower than English makers can afford, are only surplus stocks, which they find it better to part with at heavy loss than to keep idle in their warehouses. But it does not justify all the alarm which in some quarters it has stirred up ; and, on the other hand, it must be borne in mind that America still finds it necessary to obtain from Europe, in large quantities, the finer fabrics which the native factories are unable to supply. “As regards their own markets,” says Mr. Isaac Watts, of Manchester, “the manu- yards. OF GREAT BRITAIN. facturers of the United States hold the supremacy, not on account of the superior excellence or greater cheapness of their goods, but solely through the rigid exclusion of foreign and competing fabrics, Their tariff is arranged expressly to prevent com- petition, and to insure to native producers a complete monopoly, so that if English-made goods appear in these markets, the purchaser must pay for them from 30 to 50 per cent. more than he otherwise would do. This addition of 50 per cent. more or less, is not to be attributed merely to the greed of the American manufacturers—it is not so much extra profit which he obtains at the expense of the consumers—but it is owing chiefly to his inability to produce the goods as cheaply as his foreign rival, and the remedy is obtained by keep- ing that rival altogether out of the market. As regards America, therefore, it is not a question of competition at all, but of exclusion and prohibition ; and whenever this shall cease, and equal terms be secured, England will have no reason to be afraid of the issue. She is not now beaten in the contest, but only kept out of the field by impenetrable barriers. The policy itself is sufficient indication of the views which prevail in America as to the ability of England to compete with her manu- facturers. Neither in the raw material, machinery, skill, nor cost of labour, have American manufacturers any special advantages, whilst in some respects they are less favourably circumstanced than their English rivals. Nothing but abandonment of the system of exclusion, now so rigidly upheld, is wanted to render the trade with America as extensive and . important as that which England carries on with any part of the globe.” If that anticipation is somewhat too sanguine, it may be taken for granted that when the Americans have discovered the folly of their protective policy, affairs will so far right themselves as to give England a sure footing in the honourable competition between the two nations, In Germany and the other Continental countries which rely especially on protective duties to assist their trade in cotton goods, the main conditions are to a great extent the same as in the United States. As regards France, our chief Continental rival in this branch of manufacture, and such other countries as Switzerland and Belgium, the case is different. Mr. Hugh Mason, a great practical authority on this subject, though hardly to be implicitly followed in his economical views, published in March, 1877, the results of his inquiries into the condition of the French as compared with the English cotton trade. “The French spinner, he said, “is at no disadvantago FOREIGN RIVALRIES—ENGLISH whatever in the cost of building his factory and of fixing such plant as steam engines, boilers, and main gearing. When the factory has been built and fitted up, it must be fitted with machinery ; and there is no doubt that French machinery of the present day is in all respects as good and as cheap as the English spinner can buy. Indeed, in a very few important appliances in the carding room the French have lately taught the English some useful and practical lessons. Up to the point of the factory being ready to card the cotton and to ‘spin the yarn, the French spinner is on a par with his English rival.” In some other respects he ap- pears to have a distinct advantage. It is unfair, of course, to compare the wage rates of the two countries without taking account of the working capacities of the inhabitants. But no one can sup- pose that the services of an English grinder at 24s. a week, are as cheap as those of a Frenchman at 10s., or that a French roller coverer is not likely to do more than 63 per cent. as much work in a week, for which he is paid 19s., as an Englishman, who receives 30s. “In a factory of 50,000 spindles,” says Mr. Mason, “30 minders will be required, giving 1,680 spindles to one minder. There is no difference in the two countries in the number of spindles put under the control of one minder. The French pay their 30 minders in wages the sum of £1,852 a year. The English pay their 30 minders £2,652 a year. Let the same tests be applied to other departments of labour, and the result will show that the French capitalists will make good profits when the English capitalists would be ruined. I have made this comparison, so far very un- fortunate to the English spinner, on the basis that the English and French factories are equal in hours of labour. When, however, the actual hours of work are counted, the contrast becomes startling. The English factory works 56 hours a week, or 2,912 hours a year. The French factory works 66 hours a week, or 3,432 hours a year. Here it is that the dead weight of high-priced labour becomes so burdensome to the English spinner. The French pay the 30 minders £1,852 for working 3,432 hours, and the English pay £3,125 for the same number of hours. This is in one department of labour.” After saying much else to strengthen his argument, Mr. Mason adds :—“In my comparison of English and French factories, I have not taken extreme cases; I have compared a well-managed modern factory in Oldham with a similar factory in a well- known town in France, and my comparison will be found to be a fair one for three-fourths of the 40* ° AND FRENCH COTTON TRADE. 321 entire trade in the two countries.” It must be remembered, however, that if the lower wage rate in France helps to make French cottons cheap, a much more important item in the calculation is the fact that the lower rate of interest in France com- pels the French employer to be satisfied with smaller profits than would content an English capitalist. If the industrial supremacy of England has hitherto given it an advantage over not only France, but all other countries as well, and has thus induced both employers to look for greater profits, and workmen to look for higher wages, than are elsewhere to be obtained, until their very elements of success have become sources of weakness to our cotton trade in its competition with that of other countries, it must be remembered that what- ever danger hangs over it is still more due to other causes. High wages may be cheaper than low wages, if the workman to whom they are paid makes adequate return for them by showing supe- — rior skill and energy in his craft, and large profits may be safely insisted upon if they are earned by the shrewdness and honesty of the employer. In these respects both masters and men in England may at the present time be as deserving as they or their fathers were in former years ; and yet both will suffer if foreigners learn to vie with them in the exercise of these qualities. There can be no doubt that, though improvements in machines may give special advantages to those who start them, they tend, as they come into general use, to reduce the relative value of physical, if not also of intel- lectual and even moral, superiority. Good tools lessen the inequality between a bad workman and a good one; and the possession of the best machi- nery may, to a great extent, supply its owner's lack of brains. If that is true of individuals, it is as true of nations. Whether or not there is still among Englishmen as much superiority in industrial capacity as they used to be credited with, machinery has greatly assisted other people in competing with them. ‘Testimony to this effect might be given in abundance ; but a few sentences from official re- ports made to our Government will suffice, Mr. Redgrave, the factory inspector, who went a few years ago on a special visit of inquiry to France and Belgium, for instance, speaking of ‘the in- creased and increasing size of factories” in those countries, says that “a few years have made a great difference, and now the commercial arrange- ments of a French and Belgian factory bear no mean comparison with our own.” In Switzerland, Mr. Gosling reports, though machinery and coal are GREAT INDUSTRIES much dearer than in England, the skilful use of water power more than compensates for this, so that “the balance seems to be greatly in her favour, and under present circumstances cannot fail to be- come still greater from day to day.” In Germany, protection cripples the trades it is meant to culti- vate, but they make progress in spite of it. ‘The producing power of the Prussian spinning and weaving factories is decidedly on the increase,” says one authority, the reason being that ‘“machi- nery has been generally much improved.” In Bavaria, according to another, there are “ factories supplied with the best and newest machinery, in which only about half the number of workmen are required for the same amount of production as were necessary twenty years ago with the machinery then in use.” From other countries the reports are to the same effect. There is so much resemblance, in some respects such identity, between the conditions of cotton manufacture and those under which other textile fabrics are produced, that our notice of some ele- ments of rivalry may be conveniently deferred until those other fabrics are treated of. In the manipu- lation of silk and linen, for instance, we see more plainly than in that of cotton the disadvantages under which England competes with some other countries through want of artistic refinement and through inaptness in catering for the peculiar tastes, good or bad, of foreign customers. There is one danger ahead, however, which applies especially to cotton manufacture, and which, though it has nothing to do with art, partly arises from unwise efforts to satisfy a more or less perverted taste. In endeavour- ing to produce showy goods at the lowest possible cost, manufacturers are encouraged to resort to tricks of all sorts, which, however profitable at the moment, are sure to be prejudicial in the end; but which, for all that, there is a fatal temptation to emulate. Discreditable as the fact is, it is still a fact that the reputation formerly acquired by England for the excellence of its goods is now often used only to palm off goods of inferior quality. OF GREAT BRITAIN. If this continues, the result cannot be uncertain, and in some instances it is already showing itself very plainly. Thus, Mr. A. J. Wilson writes as follows, in his able work on “The Resources of Modern Countries,” which appeared early in 1878: —“«China is our second best customer for plain cotton fabrics, coming next to India, and the loss of her trade, or any part of it, would be assuredly most seriously felt. Several causes, independent of the financial position and of our own folly, combine to render our hold of the trade and our power to expand it much less assured than it was a few years ago. Chief of them appears to be our own dishonesty. We have in the greedy, unscrupulous competition which modern business habits have in- troduced into all departments of trade, made and sold to the Chinese bad, heavily-sized fabrics, to an extent that has discredited our productions as against both the coarser but cheaper and stronger home- made tissues and the better-made cottons of the United States. The Chinese are large growers of cotton, and probably about four-fifths of the entire consumption of cotton cloths are still of home manu facture—in the interior of China, at all events. Whatever depreciates the character of our goods must necessarily perpetuate the disposition to prefer the home-made fabrics to ours. In time, however, this mischief of dishonest fabrics would perhaps cure itself by the ruin of the mischief-makers, were there no other element of danger to fight against than native competition. But both the Americans and the Dutch, and to some extent the Germans, now compete with us in the Chinese markets, and, though none of them make much way, both the Americans and the Germans appear to compete with at least a promise of success.” It is for English manufacturers to consider whether, besides all the legitimate obstacles that they have to over- come in this competition with foreigners, they will, by forfeiting their old character for honesty and good workmanship, inflict upon themselves far greater injury than the worst that can result from other causes. END OF VOLUME I. a