above his head and throws it down heavily upon the center of the
wheel. The things that happen to that lump of clay when he touches it
and the wheel revolves seem like the work of magic. He presses his
thumbs into it from above and draws the walls up between his thumbs
and fingers. He clasps his hands around it, and it grows tall and
slender. He lays his finger on the top of the little column of clay,
and it flattens in a moment. He points his finger at it, barely
touching it, and a little groove appears, running around the whole
mass. He seems to be wasting considerable time in playing with it, but
all the while he is making sure that the clay is perfectly uniform and
that there are no bubbles of air in it. He holds a piece of leather
against the outside surface and a wet sponge against the inside, to
make them perfectly smooth; and in a moment he has made a bowl. He
holds his bent finger against the top of the bowl, and it becomes a
vase. With another touch of his magical finger the top of the vase
rolls over into a lip. If he makes a cup or a mug, he models a handle
in clay and fastens it in place with slip. When it is done, he draws a
wire deftly between the article and the table, and puts it on a board
to dry.
When you watch a potter at work, it all looks so simple and easy that
you feel sure you could do it; but see how skillfully he uses his
hands, how strong they are, and yet how lithe and delicate in their
movements. See into what odd positions he sometimes stretches them;
and yet these are plainly the only positions in which they could do
their work. See how every finger does just what he wishes it to do.
Notice all these things, and you will not be so certain that making
pottery is the easiest thing in the world.
No two pieces of hand work are exactly the same; and skillful as the
potter is, his pieces are not precisely alike. Many of them therefore
are passed over to the turner for finishing. He uses an ordinary
lathe, and with this he thins any place that may be a little too
thick, rounds the edge, and smooths it. The article is partly dried
when he takes it, and so its walls can be cut thinner. When it leaves
his lathe, all signs of hand work have vanished, but the dish is
exactly like the others of the set, and this is what the greater
number of people want. In some potteries there is hardly a throwing
wheel in use, and articles are formed in plaster of Paris moulds.
There are two ways of using these moulds. By one method, the mould is
put upon a "jigger," a power machine which keeps it revolving, and
clay is pressed against its walls from within. Above the mould is a
piece of iron cut in the shape of the inside curve of the bowl or
whatever is being made. This skims off all the extra clay from the
inside of the walls. Plates and saucers are made on a jigger. The
mould used for this work is a model of the top of the plate. The
workman makes a sort of pancake of clay and throws it upon the mould.
A second mould, shaped like half of the bottom of the plate, is
brought down close and revolves, cutting off all the extra clay and
shaping the bottom of the plate.
When the very finest ware is to be made, the mould is used in quite
another fashion. If a pitcher, for instance, is to be cast, the mould
is made in two sections and tied tightly together. Then the slip is
poured into it and left for a while. The plaster of Paris absorbs the
water and a layer of clay is formed all about the walls. When this
is thick enough, the liquid is poured out, and after the pitcher has
dried awhile, the mould is carefully opened and the pitcher is very
gently taken out. The handle is made in a little mould of its own and
fastened on with slip. "Eggshell" porcelain is made in this way. The
clay shell becomes smaller as it dries, so there is no trouble about
removing it from the mould--if one knows how. If a large article is to
be cast, the mould is made in sections. Of course this fine ware must
all be made by hand, especially as machines do not work well with the
finest clays; but cheap dishes are all made by machinery.
After any clay article is thrown, or moulded, or cast, it is passed
through a little doorway and set upon a shelf in a great revolving
cage. The air in this cage is kept at about 85° F.; but this heat is
nothing to what is to follow; and after the articles are thoroughly
dry, they are placed in boxes of coarse fire-clay, which are called
"saggers," piled up in a kiln, the doors are closed, and the fires are
lighted. For a day and night, sometimes for two days and two nights,
the fires burn. The heat goes up to 2000° or 2500° F. Every few hours
test pieces, which were put in for this purpose, are taken out. When
they are found to be sufficiently baked, the fire-holes are bricked up
and the furnace is left for two days longer to cool. The ware is then
called "biscuit."
Biscuit is dull and porous. It is soon to be glazed, but first whatever
underglaze decorating is desired may be done. Sometimes the decorations
are painted by hand, and sometimes they are printed on thin paper, laid
upon the ware, and rubbed softly till they stick fast. After a while
the paper is pulled off, but the colors remain. Gold must be applied
over the glaze, and the article fired a second time.
After this decorating, the ware is generally passed to a man who
stands before a tub of glaze, and dips in each article, though
sometimes he stands before the pieces of ware and sprays them with an
air brush. Many different kinds of glaze are used, made of ground
flint, feldspar, white clay, and other substances. Common sea salt
works exceedingly well, not in liquid form, but thrown directly into
the fire. The chief thing to look out for in making a glaze is to see
that the materials in it are so nearly like those in the ware that
they will not contract unevenly and make little cracks. This glaze is
dried in a hot room, then looked over by "trimmers," who scrape it off
from such parts as the feet of cups and plates, so that they will not
stick to the saggers in firing. Besides this, little props of burned
clay are used to hold the dishes up and keep them from touching one
another. These props have fanciful names, such as "spurs," "stilts,"
"cockspurs," etc. Often you can see on the bottom of a plate the marks
made by these supports.
[Illustration: IN THE POTTERY
Pieces of coarse pottery being delivered to the kiln for firing.]
The articles now are sent to a kiln to be fired. When they come out
there is another chance for decorating, for colors may be put on, and
another firing will make them look like underglaze painting If the
decorator wishes the ware to have the appearance of being ornamented
with masses of gold, he can trace his design in yellow paste, fire it,
cover it with gold, and fire it again. To make the "gilt-band china"
so beloved by the good housewives of the last century, the decorator
puts the plate upon a horizontal wheel, holds his brush full of gold
against it, and turns the wheel slowly. Sometimes the outlines of a
design are printed and the coloring put in by hand. When broad bands
of color are desired to be put around a plate or other article, the
decorator sometimes brushes on an adhesive oil where the color is to
go, and paints the rest of the plate with some water-color and sugar;
then when the oil is partly dry, he dusts on the color in the form of
powder. A plunge into water will wash away the water-color and leave
the oil with the powder sticking to it. Shaded groundwork is made with
an atomizer. Indeed, there are almost as many methods of decorating
wares of clay as there are persons who work at it. The results are
what might be expected from the prices; some articles are so cheap and
gaudy that any one will soon tire of them. Others are really artistic
and will be a "joy forever"--until they break.
VIII
HOW THE WHEELS OF A WATCH GO AROUND
If an electric automobile could be charged in fifteen seconds and then
would run for forty hours without recharging, it would be looked upon
as a great wonder; but to wind a watch in fifteen seconds and have it
run for forty hours is so common that we forget what a wonder it is.
When you wind your watch, you put some of the strength of your own
right hand into it, and that is what makes it go. Every turn of the
key or the stem winds up tighter and tighter a spring from one to two
feet long, but so slender that it would take thousands to weigh a
pound. This is the main spring. It is coiled up in a cup-shaped piece
of metal called a "barrel"; and so your own energy is literally
barreled up in your watch. The outer end of this spring is held fast
by a hook on the inside of the barrel; the inner end is hooked to the
hub of a wheel which is called the "main wheel," and around this hub
the spring is coiled.
This spring has three things to do. It must send the "short hand,"
or hour hand, around the dial or face of the watch, once in twelve
hours; it must send the "long hand," or minute hand, around once an
hour; and it must also send the little "second hand" around its own
tiny circle once a minute. To do this work requires four wheels. The
first or main wheel is connected with the winding arrangements, and
sets in motion the second, or center wheel, so called because it is
usually in the center of the watch. This center wheel revolves once
an hour and turns the minute hand. By a skillful arrangement of cogs
it also moves the hour hand around the dial once in twelve hours. The
center wheel moves the third wheel. The chief business of the third
wheel is to make the fourth turn in the same direction as the center
wheel. The fourth wheel revolves once a minute, and with it turns
the tiny second hand.
Suppose that a watch has been made with only the main spring, the four
wheels, and the three hands, what would happen when it was wound? You
can tell very easily by winding up a mechanical mouse or a train of
cars or any other toy that goes by a spring. It will go fast at first,
then more and more slowly, then it will stop. This sort of motion
might do for a mouse, but it would not answer for a watch. A watch
must move with steadiness and regularity. To bring this about, there
is a fifth wheel. Its fifteen teeth are shaped like hooks, and it has
seven accompaniments, the balance wheel, the hair spring, and five
others. This wheel, together with its accompaniments, is able to stop
the motion of the watch five times a second and start it again so
quickly that we do not realize its having been stopped at all. A tiny
arm holds the wheel firmly, and then lets it escape. Therefore, the
fifth wheel and its accompaniments are called the "escapement." This
catching and letting go is what makes the ticking.
A watch made in this way would run very well until a hot day or a cold
day came; then there would be trouble. Heat makes metals expand and
makes springs less elastic. Therefore in a hot day the watch would go
more slowly and so lose time; while in a cold day it would go too fast
and would gain time. This fault is corrected by the balance, a wheel
whose rim is not one circle, but two half-circles, and so cunningly
made that the hotter this rim grows, the smaller its diameter becomes.
In the rim of the wheel are tiny holes into which screws may be
screwed. By adding screws or taking some away, or changing the
position of some of them, the movement of the watch can be made to
go faster or slower.
All this would be difficult enough to manage if a watch was as large
as a cart wheel, with wheels a foot in diameter; but it does seem a
marvel how so many kinds of wheels and screws and springs, one hundred
and fifty in all, can be put into a case sometimes not more than an
inch in diameter, and can find room to work; and it is quite as much
of a marvel how they can be manufactured and handled.
Remembering how accurate every piece must be, it is no wonder that in
Switzerland, where all this work used to be done by hand, a boy had to
go to a "watch school" for fourteen years before he was considered
able to make a really fine watch. He began at the beginning and was
taught to make, first, wooden handles for his tools, then the tools
themselves, such as files, screw drivers, etc. His next work was to
make wooden watchcases as large as dinner-plates. After this, he was
given the frame to which the various wheels of a watch are fastened
and was taught how and where to drill the holes for wheels and screws.
After lessons in making the finer tools to be used, he was allowed to
make a watch frame. All this took several years, for he had to do the
same work over and over until his teachers were satisfied with it.
Then he was promoted to the second room. Here he learned to adjust the
stem-winding parts, to do fine cutting and filing, and to make watches
that would strike the hour and even the minute. Room three was called
the "train room," because the wheels of a watch are spoken of as "the
train." The model watch in this room was as large as a saucer. The
young man had to study every detail of this, and also to learn the use
of a delicate little machine doing such fine work that it could cut
twenty-four hundred tiny cogs on one of the little wheels of a watch.
In the fourth room he learned to make the escapement wheel and some
other parts; and he had to make them, not merely passably, but
excellently. In the fifth and last room, he must do the careful,
patient work that makes a watch go perfectly. There are special little
curves that must be given to the hair spring; and the screws on the
balance wheel must be carefully adjusted. If the watch ran faster when
it was lying down than when it was hanging up, he learned that certain
ones of the bearings were too coarse and must be made finer. In
short, he must be able to make a watch that, whether hanging up or
lying down, and whether the weather was hot or cold, would not vary
from correct time more than two and a half seconds a day at the most.
Then, and not till then, was the student regarded as a first-class
watchmaker.
The graduate of such a school knew how to make a whole watch, but he
usually limited his work to some one part. Every part of a watch was
made expressly for that watch, but sometimes a hundred different
persons worked on it. The very best of the Swiss watches were
exceedingly good; the poorest were very bad, and much worse to own
than a poor American watch because it costs more to repair a Swiss
watch than an American watch.
[Illustration: _Courtesy Waltham Watch Co._
WHERE WATCHES ARE MADE
Once a single man made a whole watch by hand. Now one watch may be
the product of a hundred hands, each man doing his particular part.]
Even though in America the parts of watches are made by machinery,
an apprentice has to undergo just as careful and just as extended
training here as in Switzerland. A poor watch is worse than none at
all, and careless work would not be tolerated in any watch factory.
Of late even Switzerland has been importing American machinery in order
to compete with the United States. These machines do such careful,
minute, intricate work that, as you stand and watch them, you feel
as if they must know what they are about. One of them takes the
frame,--that is, the plates to which the wheels are fastened,--makes
it of the proper thinness, cuts the necessary holes in it, and passes
it over to the next machine, which is reaching out for it. The feeder
gives the first machine another plate; and so the work goes on down
a whole line of machines. At length the plate is taken in hand by a
machine, or rather a group of machines, which can do almost anything.
Before they let it go, they actually perform one hundred and forty-two
different operations, each bringing it nearer completion. These
machines are automatic, but nevertheless they must be constantly
watched by expert machinists to keep them in order and make sure of
their turning out perfect work.
While one line of machines has been perfecting the plate, others have
been at work on screws and wheels and springs. As many of these as are
needed for one watch are put into a little division of a tray and
carried to another room for its jewels and the rest of its outfit.
The jewels, which are pieces of rubies, sapphires, garnets, or even
diamonds, are very valuable to a watch. When you know that the little
wheels are in constant motion, and that the balance wheel, for
instance, vibrates eighteen thousand times an hour, it is plain that
a vast amount of wear comes upon the spot where the pivots of these
wheels rest. No metal can be made smooth enough to prevent friction,
and there is no metal hard enough to prevent wear. The "jewels" are
smoother and harder. They are sawed into slabs so thin that fifty of
them piled up would measure only an inch. These are stuck to blocks
to be polished, cut into disks flat on one side but with a little
depression on the other to receive oil, bored through the center,
and placed wherever the wear is greatest--provided the purchaser is
willing to pay for them. A "full-jeweled" watch contains twenty-three
jewels; that is, in twenty-three of the places where the most severe
wear comes, or where friction might prevent the watch from going with
perfect smoothness, there will be practically no wear and no friction.
A low-priced watch contains only seven jewels, but if you want a watch
to last, it pays to buy one that is full-jeweled.
And now these plates and wheels and screws are to be put together, or
"assembled," as this work is called. This is a simple matter just as
soon as one has learned where the different parts belong, for they are
made by machinery and are sure to fit. After the assembling comes the
adjusting of the balance wheel and the hair spring. There is nothing
simple about this work, for the tiny screws with the large heads must
be put into the rim of the balance wheel with the utmost care, or
else all the other work will be useless, and the watch will not be
a perfect time keeper; that is, one that neither loses nor gains more
than thirty seconds a month.
It is said that the earliest watches made in Europe cost fifteen
hundred dollars and took a year to make. There has always been a
demand for a cheap pocket timepiece, and of late this demand has been
satisfied by the manufacture of the "dollar watch." Properly speaking,
this is not a watch at all, but a small spring clock. It has no
jewels, and its parts are stamped out of sheets of brass or steel by
machinery. The hair springs are made in coils of eight and then
broken apart; and the main springs are made by the mile. Twenty holes
are drilled at a time, and the factory in which "dollar watches" were
first manufactured is now able to turn out fifteen thousand a day.
IX
THE MAKING OF SHOES
Did you ever stop to think how many different qualities you expect
in a shoe? You want the sole to be hard and firm so as to protect
your feet in rough walking; and also soft and yielding so as to
feel springy and not board-like. You want the upper leather to
keep the cold air from coming in; and also porous enough to let the
perspiration out. Your feet are not exactly like those of any one
else; and yet you expect to find at any shoe store a comfortable shoe
ready-made. You expect that shoe to come close to your foot, and yet
allow you to move it with perfect freedom. You expect all these good
qualities, and what is more remarkable, it does not seem difficult for
most people to get them. There is an old saying, "To him who wears
shoes, the whole earth is covered with leather"; and although many
different materials have been tried in shoemaking, leather is the only
one that has proved satisfactory, for the sole of the shoe at least.
Of late, however, rubber and rubber combinations and felts and felt
combinations have been used.
Most hides of which soles are made come from the large beef
packing-houses or from South America. Goatskins come from Africa and
India. The greater part of a hide is made up of a sort of gelatine.
This easily spoils, and therefore it has to be "tanned"; that is,
soaked in tannin and water. When a man set out to build a tannery, he
used to go into the woods where he could be sure of enough oak trees
to supply him for many years with the bark from which tannin is made;
but it has been found that the bark of several other kinds of trees,
such as larch, chestnut, spruce, pine, and hemlock, will tan as well
as that of oak. Tannin is now prepared in the forest and brought to
the tanners, who put their tanneries where they please, usually near
some large city. The hides are first soaked in water, and every
particle of flesh is scraped away. They are laid in heaps for a while,
then hung in a warm room till the hair loosens and can be easily
removed, then soaked in tannic extract and water. The tannin unites
with the gelatine; and thus the hide becomes leather. This process
requires several months. Hides are also tanned by the use of
chemicals, in what is called "chrome" tanning. This process requires
only a few hours, but it is expensive.
In earlier times the shoemaker used to go from house to house with his
lapstone, waxed end, awl, and other tools. The farmer provided the
leather, which he had tanned from the hides of his own cattle. Now,
however, manufacturers can buy the soles of one merchant, the heels of
another, the box toe and stiffenings of another, and so on. In the
United States there are many factories which do nothing but cut soles,
or rather stamp them out with dies, a hundred or more in a minute.
These soles and also the less heavy inner soles go through machines
that make all parts of them of a uniform thickness. The traveling
shoemaker always hammered his sole leather to make it wear better; but
now a moment between very heavy rollers answers the same purpose.
Another machine splits the inner sole for perhaps a quarter of an inch
all the way around, and thus makes a little lip to which to sew the
welt. A number of layers or "lifts" of leather are cemented together
for the heel, and are put under heavy pressure.
The upper parts of a shoe, the "uppers," as they are called, are the
vamp or front of the shoe, the top, the tip, and (in a laced shoe)
the tongue. Nearly all the upper leather that shows when a shoe is
on is made from the hides of cattle, calves, goats, and sheep; but
besides the parts that show there are stiffeners for the box toe
and the counters to support the quarters over the heel; there are
linings, and many other necessary "findings," forty-four parts in all
in an ordinary shoe. Much experimenting and more thinking have gone
into every one of these forty-four parts; and much remembering that
shoes have harder wear than anything else in one's wardrobe. The
cotton linings, for instance, must be woven in a special way in order
to make them last and not "rub up" when they are wet with water or
perspiration. They are bleached with the utmost care not to weaken
them, and they are singed between red-hot copper plates to remove
all the nap.
Then, too, a good deal of metal is used in making a shoe, not only the
ornamental buckles on dress shoes and the heavy, useful buckles on
storm boots, but various pieces that help to make the shoe strong and
enduring. There are nails, shanks to strengthen the arch of the shoe,
metal shanks to the buttons, and eyelets. Not many years ago, eyelets
soon wore brassy, and then the shoe looked old and cheap. They are now
enameled, or the top of them is made of celluloid in a color to match
the shoe. The tags on lacings and the hooks for holding lacings are
also enameled. A "box-toe gum" is used to support the box-toe
stiffening. Cement covers the stitches; and many sorts of blacking
are used in finishing the work. It is by no means a simple operation
to make a pair of shoes.
At a busy shoe factory it is always "tag day," for when an order is
received, the first step in filling it is to make out a tag or form
stating how the shoe is to be made up and when it is to be finished.
These records are preserved, and if a customer writes, "Send me 100
pairs of shoes like those ordered October 10, 1910," the manufacturer
has only to read the record in order to know exactly what is wanted.
[Illustration: _Courtesy United Shoe Mchy. Co._
THE GOODYEAR PULLING-OVER MACHINE
This machine cost $1,500,000 and five years of experiment to perfect.
It shapes the forepart of the upper of a shoe over a wooden last.]