gleaming forges, each with its appointed smiths, whose hammers rise
and fall in rhythmic strokes, and who manufacture the minor portions
of the incipient locomotive. Here is a machine the central part of
which resembles a great corkscrew or spiral constantly revolving. A
weight is affixed to its inclined plane, and is carried up to the
required height by the revolution of the screw, to be let fall upon
a piece of red-hot iron, which in that moment becomes a bolt, with
its projecting head or cap. Though they do not properly belong to
our subject, the great marine boilers in course of construction in
the adjoining department cannot be overlooked, even if only for
their size--vast cylinders of twelve feet diameter. Next comes the
erecting shop, where the various parts of the locomotive are fitted
together, and it is built up much as a ship from the keel. These
semi-completed engines have a singularly helpless look--out of
proportion, without limbs, and many mere skeletons. Close by is the
department where engines out of repair are made good. Some American
engineer started the idea of a railway thirty feet wide, an idea
which in this place is partially realized. The engine to be repaired
is run on to what may be described as a turn-table resting upon
wheels, and this turn-table is bodily rolled along, like a truck,
with the engine on it, to the place where tools and cranes and all
the necessary gear are ready for the work upon it. Now by a yard,
which seems one vast assemblage of wheels of all kinds--big wheels,
little wheels, wheels of all sizes, nothing but wheels; past great
mounds of iron, shapeless heaps of scrap, and then, perhaps, the
most interesting shop of all, though the least capable of
description, is entered. It is where the endless pieces of metal of
which the locomotive is composed are filed and planed and smoothed
into an accurate fit; an immense building, with shafting overhead
and shafting below in endless revolution, yielding an incessant hum
like the sound of armies of bees--a building which may be said to
have a score of aisles, up which one may walk with machinery upon
either side. Hundreds of lathes of every conceivable pattern are
planing the solid steel and the solid iron as if it were wood,
cutting off with each revolution a more or less thick slice of the
hard metal, which curls up like a shaving of deal. So delicate is
the touch of some of these tools, so good the metal they are
employed to cut, that shavings are taken off three or more feet
long, curled up like a spiral spring, and which may be wound round
the hand like string. The interiors of the cylinders, the bearings,
those portions of the engines which slide one upon the other, and
require the most accurate fit, are here adjusted by unerring
machinery, which turns out the work with an ease and exactness which
the hand of man, delicate and wonderful organ as it is, cannot
reach. From the smallest fitting up to the great engine cranks, the
lathes smooth them all--reduce them to the precise size which they
were intended to be by the draughtsman. These cranks and larger
pieces of metal are conveyed to their lathes and placed in position
by a steam crane, which glides along upon a single rail at the will
of the driver, who rides on it, and which handles the massive metal
almost with the same facility that an elephant would move a log of
wood with his trunk. Most of us have an inherent idea that iron is
exceedingly hard, but the ease with which it is cut and smoothed by
these machines goes far to remove that impression.
The carriage department does not offer so much that will strike the
eye, yet it is of the highest importance. To the uninitiated it is
difficult to trace the connection between the various stages of the
carriage, as it is progressively built up, and finally painted and
gilded and fitted with cushions. Generally, the impression left from
an inspection is that the frames of the carriages are made in a way
calculated to secure great strength, the material being solid oak.
The brake-vans especially are made strong. The carriages made here
are for the narrow gauge, and are immensely superior in every way to
the old broad-gauge carriage, being much more roomy, although not so
wide. Over the department there lingers an odour of wood. It is
common to speak of the scented woods of the East and the South, but
even our English woods are not devoid of pleasant odour under the
carpenter's hands. Hidden away amongst the piles of wood there is
here a triumph of human ingenuity. It is an endless saw which
revolves around two wheels, much in the same way as a band revolves
around two drums. The wheels are perhaps three feet in diameter, and
two inches in thickness at the circumference. They are placed--one
as low as the workman's feet, another rather above his head--six or
seven feet apart. Round the wheels there stretches an endless narrow
band of blue steel, just as a ribbon might. This band of steel is
very thin, and almost half an inch in width. Its edge towards the
workman is serrated with sharp deep teeth. The wheels revolve by
steam rapidly, and carry with them the saw, so that, instead of the
old up and down motion, the teeth are continually running one way.
The band of steel is so extremely flexible that it sustains the
state of perpetual curve. There are stories in ancient chronicles of
the wonderful swords of famous warriors made of such good steel that
the blade could be bent till the point touched the hilt, and even
till the blade was tied in a knot. These stories do not seem like
fables before this endless saw, which does not bend once or twice,
but is incessantly curved, and incessantly in the act of curving. A
more beautiful machine cannot be imagined. Its chief use is to cut
out the designs for cornices, and similar ornamental work in thin
wood; but it is sufficiently strong to cut through a two-inch plank
like paper. Every possible support that can be afforded by runners
is given to the saw; still, with every aid, it is astonishing to see
metal, which we have been taught to believe rigid, flexible as
indiarubber. Adjoining are frame saws, working up and down by
steam, and cutting half a dozen or more boards at the same time. It
was in this department that the Queen's carriage was built at a
great expenditure of skill and money--a carriage which is considered
one of the masterpieces of this particular craft.
There rises up in the mind, after the contemplation of this vast
workshop, with its endless examples of human ingenuity, a conviction
that safety in railway travelling is not only possible, but
probable, and even now on the way to us. No one can behold the
degree of excellence to which the art of manufacturing material has
been brought, no one can inspect the processes by which the wheel,
for instance, is finally welded into one compact mass, without a
firm belief that, where so much has been done, in a little time
still more will be done. That safer plans, that better designs, that
closer compacted forms will arise seems as certain and assured a
fact as that those forms now in use arose out of the rude beginnings
of the past; for this great factory, both in its machine-tools and
in its products, the wheels and rails and locomotives, is a standing
proof of the development which goes on in the mind of man when
brought constantly to bear upon one subject. As with the development
of species, so it is with that of machinery: rude and more general
forms first, finer and more specialized forms afterwards. There is
every reason to hope, for this factory is a proof of the advance
that has been made. It would seem that the capability of metal is
practically infinite.
But what an enormous amount of labour, what skill, and what
complicated machinery must be first employed before what is in
itself a very small result can be arrived at! In order that an
individual may travel from London to Oxford, see what innumerable
conditions have to be fulfilled. Three thousand men have to work
night and day that we may merely seat ourselves and remain passive
till our destination is reached.
This small nation of workers, this army of the hammer, lathe, and
drill, affords matter for deep meditation in its sociological
aspect. Though so numerous that no one of them can be personally
acquainted with more than a fractional part, yet there is a strong
_esprit de corps_, a spirit that ascends to the highest among them;
for it is well known that the chief manager has a genuine feeling of
almost fatherly affection for these his men, and will on no account
let them suffer, and will, if possible, obtain for them every
advantage. The influence he thereby acquires among them is
principally used for moral and religious ends. Under these auspices
have arisen the great chapels and places of worship of which the
town is full. Of the men themselves, the majority are intelligent,
contrasting strongly with the agricultural poor around them, and not
a few are well educated and thoughtful. This gleaning of
intellectual men are full of social life, or, rather, of an interest
in the problems of social existence. They eagerly discuss the claims
of religion _versus_ the allegations of secularism; they are shrewd
to detect the weak points of an argument; they lean, in fact,
towards an eclecticism: they select the most rational part of every
theory. They are full of information on every subject--information
obtained not only from newspapers, books, conversation, and
lectures, but from travel, for most have at least been over the
greater part of England. They are probably higher in their
intellectual life than a large proportion of the so-called middle
classes. One is, indeed, tempted to declare, after considering the
energy with which they enter on all questions, that this class of
educated mechanics forms in reality the protoplasm, or living
matter, out of which modern society is evolved. The great and
well-supplied reading-room of the Mechanics' Institute is always
full of readers; the library, now an extensive one, is constantly in
use. Where one book is read in agricultural districts, fifty are
read in the vicinity of the factory. Social questions of marriage,
of religion, of politics, sanitary science, are for ever on the
simmer among these men. It would almost seem as if the hammer, the
lathe, and the drill would one day bring forth a creed of its own. A
characteristic of all classes of these workmen is their demand for
meat, of which great quantities are consumed. Nor do they stay at
meat alone, but revel in fish and other luxuries at times, though
the champagne of the miner is not known here. Notwithstanding the
number of public-houses, it is a remarkable fact that there is very
little drunkenness in proportion to the population, few crimes of
violence, and, what is more singular still, and has been often
remarked, very little immorality. Where there are some hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of young uneducated girls, without work to occupy
their time, there must of course exist a certain amount of lax
conduct; but never, or extremely rarely, does a girl apply to the
magistrates for an affiliation order, while from agricultural
parishes such applications are common. The number of absolutely
immoral women openly practising infamy is also remarkably small.
There was a time when the workmen at this factory enjoyed an
unpleasant notoriety for mischief and drunkenness, but that time has
passed away, a most marked improvement having taken place in the
last few years.
There appears, however, to be very little prudence amongst them. The
man who receives some extra money for extra work simply spends it on
unusual luxuries in food or drink; or, if it be summer, takes his
wife and children a drive in a hired conveyance. To this latter
there can be no objection; but still, the fact remains prominent
that men in the receipt of good wages do not save. They do not put
by money; this is, of course, speaking of the majority. It would
almost seem to be a characteristic of human nature that those who
receive wages for work done, so much per week or fortnight, do not
contract saving habits. The small struggling tradesman, whose income
is very little more than that of the mechanic, often makes great
exertions and practises much economy to put by a sum to assist him
in difficulty or to extend his business. It may be that the very
certainty of the wages acts as a deterrent--inasmuch as the mechanic
feels safe of his weekly money, while the shopkeeper runs much risk.
It is doubtful whether mechanics with good wages save more than
agricultural labourers, except in indirect ways--ways which are
thrust upon them. First of all, there is the yard club, to which all
are compelled to pay by their employers, the object being to provide
medical assistance in case of sickness. This is in some sense a
saving. Then there are the building societies, which offer
opportunities of possessing a house, and the mechanic who becomes a
member has to pay for it by instalments. This also may be called an
indirect saving, since the effect is the same. But of direct
saving--putting money in a bank, or investing it--there is scarcely
any. The quarter of a million annually paid in wages mostly finds
its way into the pockets of the various trades-people, and at the
end of the year the mechanic is none the better off. This is a grave
defect in his character. Much of it results from a generous, liberal
disposition: a readiness to treat a friend with a drink, to drive
the family out into the country, to treat the daughter with a new
dress. The mechanic does not set a value upon money in itself.
The effect of the existence of this factory upon the whole
surrounding district has been marked. A large proportion of the
lower class of mechanics, especially the factory labourers, are
drawn from the agricultural poor of the adjacent villages. These
work all day at the factory, and return at night. They daily walk
great distances to secure this employment: three miles to and three
miles back is common, four miles not uncommon, and some have been
known to walk six or twelve miles per day. These carry back with
them into the villages the knowledge they insensibly acquire from
their better-informed comrades, and exhibit an independent spirit.
For a radius of six miles round the poorer class are better
informed, quicker in perception, more ready with an answer to a
question, than those who dwell farther back out of the track of
modern life. Wages had materially risen long before the movement
among the agricultural labourers took place.
Where there was lately nothing but furze and rabbits there is now a
busy human population. Why was it that for so many hundreds of years
the population of England remained nearly stationary? and why has it
so marvellously increased in this last forty years? The history of
this place seems to answer that interesting question. The increase
is due to the facilities of communication which now exist, and to
the numberless new employments in which that facility of
communication took rise, and which it in turn adds to and fosters.
UNEQUAL AGRICULTURE
In the way of sheer, downright force few effects of machinery are
more striking than a steam-ploughing engine dragging the shares
across a wide expanse of stiff clay. The huge engines used in our
ironclad vessels work with a graceful ease which deceives the eye;
the ponderous cranks revolve so smoothly, and shine so brightly with
oil and polish, that the mind is apt to underrate the work
performed. But these ploughing engines stand out solitary and apart
from other machinery, and their shape itself suggests crude force,
such force as may have existed in the mastodon or other unwieldy
monster of the prehistoric ages. The broad wheels sink into the
earth under the pressure; the steam hissing from the escape valves
is carried by the breeze through the hawthorn hedge, hiding the red
berries with a strange, unwonted cloud; the thick dark brown smoke,
rising from the funnel as the stoker casts its food of coal into the
fiery mouth of the beast, falls again and floats heavily over the
yellow stubble, smothering and driving away the partridges and
hares. There is a smell of oil, and cotton-waste, and gas, and
steam, and smoke, which overcomes the fresh, sweet odour of the
earth and green things after a shower. Stray lumps of coal crush the
delicate pimpernel and creeping convolvulus. A shrill, short scream
rushes forth and echoes back from an adjacent rick--puff! the
fly-wheel revolves, and the drum underneath tightens its hold upon
the wire rope. Across yonder a curious, shapeless thing, with a man
riding upon it, comes jerking forward, tearing its way through
stubble and clay, dragging its iron teeth with sheer strength deep
through the solid earth. The thick wire rope stretches and strains
as if it would snap and curl up like a tortured snake; the engine
pants loudly and quick; the plough now glides forward, now pauses,
and, as it were, eats its way through a tougher place, then glides
again, and presently there is a pause, and behold the long furrow
with the upturned subsoil is completed. A brief pause, and back it
travels again, this time drawn from the other side, where a twin
monster puffs and pants and belches smoke, while the one that has
done its work uncoils its metal sinews. When the furrows run up and
down a slope, the savage force, the fierce, remorseless energy of
the engine pulling the plough upwards, gives an idea of power which
cannot but impress the mind.
This is what is going on upon one side of the hedge. These engines
cost as much as the fee-simple of a small farm; they consume
expensive coal, and water that on the hills has to be brought long
distances; they require skilled workmen to attend to them, and they
do the work with a thoroughness which leaves little to be desired.
Each puff and pant echoing from the ricks, each shrill whistle
rolling along from hill to hill, proclaims as loudly as iron and
steel can shout, 'Progress! Onwards!' Now step through this gap in
the hedge and see what is going on in the next field.
It is a smaller ground, of irregular shape and uneven surface.
Steam-ploughs mean _plains_ rather than fields--broad, square
expanses of land without awkward corners--and as level as possible,
with mounds that may have been tumuli worked down, rising places
smoothed away, old ditch-like drains filled up, and fairly good
roads. This field may be triangular or some indescribable figure,
with narrow corners where the high hedges come close together, with
deep furrows to carry away the water, rising here and sinking there
into curious hollows, entered by a narrow gateway leading from a
muddy lane where the ruts are a foot deep. The plough is at work
here also, such a plough as was used when the Corn Laws were in
existence, chiefly made of wood--yes, actually wood, in this age of
iron--bound and strengthened with metal, but principally made from
the tree--the tree which furnishes the African savage at this day
with the crooked branch with which to scratch the earth, which
furnished the ancient agriculturists of the Nile Valley with their
primitive implements. It is drawn by dull, patient oxen, plodding
onwards now just as they were depicted upon the tombs and temples,
the graves and worshipping places, of races who had their being
three thousand years ago. Think of the suns that have shone since
then; of the summers and the bronzed grain waving in the wind, of
the human teeth that have ground that grain, and are now hidden in
the abyss of earth; yet still the oxen plod on, like slow Time
itself, here this day in our land of steam and telegraph. Are not
these striking pictures, remarkable contrasts? On the one side
steam, on the other the oxen of the Egyptians, only a few
thorn-bushes between dividing the nineteenth century B.C. from the
nineteenth century A.D. After these oxen follows an aged man, slow
like themselves, sowing the seed. A basket is at his side, from
which at every stride, regular as machinery, he takes a handful of
that corn round which so many mysteries have gathered from the time
of Ceres to the hallowed words of the great Teacher, taking His
parable from the sower. He throws it with a peculiar _steady_ jerk,
so to say, and the grains, impelled with the exact force and skill,
which can only be attained by long practice, scatter in an even
shower. Listen! On the other side of the hedge the rattle of the
complicated drill resounds as it drops the seed in regular
rows--and, perhaps, manures it at the same time--so that the plants
can be easily thinned out, or the weeds removed, after the magical
influence of the despised clods has brought on the miracle of
vegetation.
These are not extreme and isolated instances; no one will need to
walk far afield to witness similar contrasts. There is a medium
between the two--a third class--an intermediate agriculture. The
pride of this farm is in its horses, its teams of magnificent
animals, sleek and glossy of skin, which the carters spend hours in
feeding lest they should lose their appetites--more hours than ever
they spend in feeding their own children. These noble creatures,
whose walk is power and whose step is strength, work a few hours
daily, stopping early in the afternoon, taking also an ample margin
for lunch. They pull the plough also like the oxen, but it is a
modern implement, of iron, light, and with all the latest
improvements. It is typical of the system itself--half and
half--neither the old oxen nor the new steam, but midway, a
compromise. The fields are small and irregular in shape, but the
hedges are cut, and the mounds partially grubbed and reduced to the
thinnest of banks, the trees thrown, and some draining done. Some
improvements have been adopted, others have been omitted.
Upon those broad acres where the steam-plough was at work, what tons
of artificial manure, superphosphate, and guano, liquid and solid,
have been sown by the progressive tenant! Lavishly and yet
judiciously, not once only, but many times, have the fertilizing
elements been restored to the soil, and more than restored--added to
it, till the earth itself has grown richer and stronger. The
scarifier and the deep plough have turned up the subsoil and exposed
the hard, stiff under-clods to the crumbling action of the air and
the mysterious influence of light. Never before since Nature
deposited those earthy atoms there in the slow process of some
geological change has the sunshine fallen on them, or their latent
power been called forth. Well-made and judiciously laid drains carry
away the flow of water from the winter rains and floods--no longer
does there remain a species of reservoir at a certain depth,
chilling the tender roots of the plants as they strike downwards,
lowering the entire temperature of the field. Mounds have been
levelled, good roads laid down, nothing left undone that can
facilitate operations or aid in the production of strong, succulent
vegetation. Large flocks of well-fed sheep, folded on the
corn-lands, assist the artificial manure, and perhaps even surpass
it. When at last the plant comes to maturity and turns colour under
the scorching sun, behold a widespread ocean of wheat, an English
gold-field, a veritable Yellow Sea, bowing in waves before the
southern breeze--a sight full of peaceful poetry. The stalk is tall
and strong, good in colour, fit for all purposes. The ear is full,
large; the increase is truly a hundredfold. Or it may be roots. By
these means the progressive agriculturist has produced a crop of
swedes or mangolds which in individual size and collective weight
per acre would seem to an old-fashioned farmer perfectly fabulous.
Now, here are many great benefits. First, the tenant himself reaps
his reward, and justly adds to his private store. Next, the property
of the landlord is improved, and increases in value. The labourer
gets better house accommodation, gardens, and higher wages. The
country at large is supplied with finer qualities and greater
quantities of food, and those who are engaged in trade and
manufactures, and even in commerce, feel an increased vitality in
their various occupations.