Part 7 (1/2)
In each case, however, it has acquired the property upon which the keenness of the knife depends; and the chief difference between the cast steel, and the steel that can bear to be hammered is, that cast steel takes a keener edge, but is more easily broken.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Shear and Tilt Hammers: Steel-manufacture.]
The property which it has acquired is that of bearing to be tempered.
If it be made very hot, and plunged into cold water, and kept there till it is quite cooled, it is so hard that it will cut iron, but it is brittle. In this state the workman brightens the surface, and lays the steel upon a piece of hot iron, and holds it to the fire till it becomes of a colour which he knows from experience is a test of the proper state of the process. Then he plunges it again into water, and it has the degree of hardness that he wants.
The grinding a knife, and the polis.h.i.+ng it, even when it has acquired the requisite properties of steel, if they were not done by machinery, would cost more than the whole price of a knife upon which machinery is used. A travelling knife-grinder, with his treadle and wheels, has a machine, but not a very perfect one. The Sheffield knife-maker grinds the knife at first upon wheels of immense size, turned by water or steam, and moving so quickly that they appear to stand still--the eye cannot follow the motion. With these aids the original grinding and polis.h.i.+ng cost scarcely anything; while the travelling knife-grinder charges two pence for the labour of himself and his wheel in just sharpening it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: File-cutters.]
The ”Sheffield whittle” is as old as the time of Edward III., as we know from the poet Chaucer. Sheffield is still the metropolis of steel. It is in the change of iron into steel by a due admixture of carbon--by hammering, by casting, by melting--that the natural powers of Sheffield, her water and her coal, have become of such value. Wherever there is a stream with a fall, there is the grinding-wheel at work: and in hundreds of workshops the nicer labour of the artificer is fas.h.i.+oning the steel into every instrument which the art of man can devise, from the scythe of the mower to the lancet of the surgeon. The machinery that made the steel has called into action the skill that makes the file-cutter. No machine can make a file. The file-cutter with a small hammer can cut notch after notch in a piece of softened steel, without a guide or gauge,--even to the number of a hundred notches in an inch. It is one out of many things in which skilled labour triumphs over the uniformity of operation which belongs to a machine. The cutting of files alone in Great Britain gives employment to more than six thousand persons. This is one of the many instances in which it is evident that the application of machinery to the arts calls into action an almost infinite variety of handicrafts. An ordinary workman can obtain a knife for the price of a few hours' labour. The causes are easily seen. Every part of the labour that can be done by machinery is so done. One turn of a wheel, one stroke of a steam-engine, one pinch of a pair of rollers, or one blow of a die, will do more in a second than a man could do in a month. One man, also, has but one thing to do in connexion with the machinery; and when the work of the hand succeeds to the work of the wheel or the roller, the one man, like the file-cutter, has still but one thing to do. In course of time he comes to do twenty times as much as if he were constantly s.h.i.+fting from one thing to another. The value of the work that a man does is not to be measured in all cases by the time and trouble that it cost him individually, but by the market value of what he produces; which value is determined, as far as labour is concerned, by the price paid for doing it in the best and most expeditious mode.
And does not all this machinery, and this economy of labour, it may still be said, deprive many workmen of employment? No. By these means the iron trade gives bread to hundreds, where otherwise it would not have given bread to one. There are more hands employed at the iron-works than there would have been if there had been no machinery; because without machinery men could not produce iron cheap enough to be generally used.
The machinery that is now employed in the iron trade, not only enables the people to be supplied cheaply with all sorts of articles of iron, but it enables a great number of people to find employment, not in the iron trade only, but in all other trades, who otherwise could not have been employed; and it enables everybody to do more work with the same exertion by giving them better tools; while it makes all more comfortable by furnis.h.i.+ng them with more commodious domestic utensils.
There are thousands of families on the face of the earth, that would be glad to exchange all they have for a tin kettle, or an iron pot, which can be bought anywhere in the three kingdoms for a s.h.i.+lling or two. And could the poor man in this country but once see how even the rich man in some other places must toil day after day before he can sc.r.a.pe or grind a stone so as to be able to boil a little water in it, or make it serve for a lamp, he would account himself a poor man no more. An English gipsy carries about with him more of the conveniences of life than are enjoyed by the chiefs or rulers in countries which naturally have much finer climates than that of England. But they have no machinery, and therefore they are wretched.
Great Britain is a country rich in other minerals than iron-stone and coal. Our earliest ancestors are recorded to have exchanged tin with maritime people who came to our sh.o.r.es. They had lead also, which was cast into oblong blocks during the Roman occupation of the island, and which bear the imperial stamp. At the beginning of the eighteenth century we worked tin into pewter, which, in the shape of plates, had superseded wooden trenchers. But we raised and smelted no copper, importing it unwrought. The valuable tin and copper mines of Cornwall were imperfectly worked in the middle of the last century, because the water which overflowed them was only removed by hydraulic engines, the best of which was introduced in 1700. When Watt had reconstructed the steam-engine, steam-power began to be employed in draining the Cornwall mines. In 1780, 24,443 tons of copper-ore were raised, producing 2932 tons of copper. In 1850, 155,025 tons of ore were obtained, producing 12,254 tons of copper. The tin-mines produced 1600 tons in 1750, and 10,719 tons in 1849. The produce of the lead-mines has not been accurately estimated.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Entrance to the Mine of Odin, an ancient Lead-mine in Derbys.h.i.+re.]
In all mining operations, conducted as they are in modern times, and in our own country, we must either go without the article produced, whether coal, or iron, or lead, or copper, if the machines were abolished,--or we must employ human labour, in works the most painful, at a price which would not only render existence unbearable, but destroy it altogether. The people, in that case, would be in the condition of the unhappy natives of South America, when the Spaniards resolved to get gold at any cost of human suffering. The Spaniards had no machines but pickaxes and spades to put in the hands of the poor Indians. They compelled them to labour incessantly with these, and half the people were destroyed. Without machinery, in places where people can obtain even valuable ore for nothing, the collection and preparation of metals is hardly worth the labour. Mungo Park describes the sad condition of the Africans who are always was.h.i.+ng gold-dust;--and we have seen in Derbys.h.i.+re a poor man separating small particles of lead from the limestone, or spar, of that country, and unable to earn a s.h.i.+lling a day by the process. A man of capital erects lead-works, and in a year or two obtains an adequate profit, and employs many labourers.
It may enable us, in addition to our slight notices of quant.i.ties produced, to form something like an accurate conception of the vast mineral industry of this country, if we give the aggregate of men employed as miners and metal-workers, according to the census of 1851.
Of coal-miners there were 216,366; of iron-miners, 27,098; of copper-miners, 18,468; of tin-miners, 12,912; of lead-miners, 21,617.
This is a total of 296,461. In the manufacture of various articles of iron and steel, in addition to the iron and coal miners, who cannot be accurately distinguished, there are employed 281,578 male workers, and 18,807 female; and in the manufacture of articles of bra.s.s and other mixed metals, 46,076; of which number 8370 are females. The workers in metal thus enumerated amount to 542,922. We may add, from the cla.s.s of persons engaged in mechanic productions, in which we find 48,050 engine and machine makers, and 7429 gunsmiths, a number that will raise the aggregate of miners and workers in metals to 600,000 persons. The boldness of some of the operations which are conducted in this department of industry, the various skill of the labourers, and the vastness of the aggregate results, impress the mind with a sense of power that almost belongs to the sublime. The fables of mythology are tame when compared with these realities of science. Vulcan, with his anvils in aetna, is a feeble instrument by the side of the steam-hammer that forges an anchor, or the hydraulic press that lifts a bridge. A knot of Cupids co-operating for the fabrication of their barbed arrows is the poetry of painting applied to the arts. But there is higher poetry in that triumph of knowledge, and skill, and union of forces, which fills a furnace with fifty thousand pounds of molten iron, and conducts the red-hot stream to the enormous mould which is to produce a cylinder without a flaw.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cupids forging arrows. From Albani.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Coal-Railway from South Hetton to Seaham Harbour, with the ascending and descending Trains.]
[20] See a table by Professor Ansted in the Great Exhibition Catalogue, vol. i. p. 181.
CHAPTER XIII.
Conveyance and extended use of coal--Consumption at various periods--Condition of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--Advantages of good roads--Want of roads in Australia--Turnpike-roads--Ca.n.a.ls--Railway of 1680--Railway statistics.
We have seen how by machinery more than thirty-five million tons of coal--now become one of the very first necessaries of life--are obtained, which without machinery could not be obtained at all in the thousandth part of the quant.i.ty; and which, consequently, would be a thousand times the price--would, in fact, be precious stones, instead of common fuel.
Engines or machines, of some kind or other, not only keep the pits dry and raise the coals to the surface, but convey them to the s.h.i.+p upon railroads; the s.h.i.+p, itself a machine, carries them round all parts of the coast; barges and boats convey them along the rivers and ca.n.a.ls; and, within these few years, railways have carried the coals of the north into remote places in the southern and other counties, where what was called ”sea-coal,” from its being carried coastwise, was scarcely known as an article of domestic use. The inhabitants of such places had no choice but to consume wood and turf for every domestic purpose.
Through the general consumption of wood instead of coal, a fire for domestic use in France is a great deal dearer than a fire in England; because, although the coal-pits are not to be found at every man's door, nor within many miles of the doors of some men, machinery at the pits, and s.h.i.+ps and barges, and railways, which are also machinery, enable most men to enjoy the blessings of a coal fire at a much cheaper rate than a fire of wood, which is not limited in its growth to any particular district. Without the machinery to bring coals to his door, not one man out of fifty of the present population of England could have had the power of warming himself in winter; any more than without the machines and implements of farming he could obtain food, or without those of the arts he could procure clothing. The sufferings produced by a want of fuel cannot be estimated by those who have abundance. In Normandy, very recently, such was the scarcity of wood, that persons engaged in various works of hand, as lace-making by the pillow, absolutely sat up through the winter nights in the barns of the farmers, where cattle were littered down, that they might be kept warm by the animal heat around them. They slept in the day, and were warmed by being in the same outhouse with cows and horses at night;--and thus they worked under every disadvantage, because fuel was scarce and very dear.
Coals were consumed in London in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but their use was, no doubt, very limited. Shakspere, who always refers to the customs of his own time, makes Dame Quickly speak of ”sitting in my Dolphin-chamber at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week.” But Mrs. Quickly was a luxurious person, who had plate and tapestry and gilt goblets. Harrison, in his 'Description of Britain,' at the same period, says, that coal is ”used in the cities and towns that lie about the coast;” but he adds, ”I marvel not a little that there is no trade of these into Suss.e.x and Southamptons.h.i.+re; for want thereof the smiths do work their iron with charcoal.” He adds, with great truth, ”I think that far carriage be the only cause.”
The consumption of coal in London in the last year of Charles II. (1685) amounted to three hundred and fifty thousand tons. This was really a large consumption, however insignificant it may sound when compared with the modern demand of the metropolis. In 1801 there were imported into London about a million tons of coals. In 1850, three million six hundred thousand tons were brought to the London market. The average contract price in the ten years ending 1810 was 45_s._ 6_d._; in the ten years ending 1850 it was 18_s._ 6_d._ But in 1824 the oppressive duty of 7_s._ 6_d._ per ton on seaborne coals was reduced to 4_s._; and in 1831 the duty was wholly repealed. It is the boast of our present fiscal system that the chief materials of manufacture, and the great necessaries and conveniences of life, are no longer made dear by injudicious taxation.
The chief power which produces coal and iron cheap is that of machinery.
It is the same power which distributes these bulky articles through the country, and equalizes the cost in a considerable degree to the man who lives in London and the man who lives in Durham or Staffords.h.i.+re. The difference in cost is the price of transport; and machinery, applied in various improved ways, is every year lessening the cost of conveyance, and thus equalizing prices throughout the British Islands. The same applications of mechanical power enable a man to move from one place to another with equal ease, cheapness, and rapidity. Quick travelling has become cheaper than slow travelling. The time saved remains for profitable labour.