GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XL. June, 1852. No. 6.
Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
New York Printing Machine, Press, and Saw Works
Edith Morton
Ferdinand De Candolles
The Ghost-Raiser
Tom Moore—The Poet of Erin
A Life of Vicissitudes (continued)
Two Ways to Manage
The Master’s Mate’s Yarn (concluded)
The First Age (concluded)
Titus Quinctius Flamininus
Nelly Nowlan’s Experience
Review of New Books
Literary Gossip
Graham’s Small-Talk
Poetry and Music
A Farewell
Lines, Suggested by Rogers’ Statue of Ruth
What Dost Thou Work For?
April
I Woo Thee, Spring
Song
The Phantom Field
Shakspeare
The Actual
The Pledge
To A Beautiful Girl
The Orphan’s Hymn
Religion
Our Minnie’s Dream
Sonnet—Pleasure
To Adhemar
Hour of Fond Delight
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
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[Illustration: J. Hayter, W. H. Mote
ISADORE.
Graham’s Magazine, 1852.]
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE BROOME STREET MANUFACTORIES.]
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1852. No. 6.
* * * * *
NEW YORK PRINTING MACHINE, PRESS, AND SAW WORKS.
R. HOE & CO.
[Illustration: GOLD STREET WAREHOUSES.]
Had it been possible for any human intellect, at the close of the
eighteenth century, or the commencement of this its nineteenth
successor, so to grasp and comprehend the development of science, its
expansion and diffusion, and, above all, its application to the
every-day wants and conveniences of ordinary human life, as to predict,
only fifty years beforehand, any one of the almost incredible marvels
which have long ceased to move especial wonder, as being now established
facts, witnessed by all eyes, and of occurrence at all hours, the owner
of that intellect would not have been merely laughed at as a crazy,
crack-brained enthusiast, but would have run a very reasonable chance of
being consigned to the cell of a madhouse, as an incorrigible and
incurable monomaniac.
The writer of these lines, lacking several years yet of the completion
of his tenth lustre, clearly remembers how, within thirty years at
furthest, to assert an opinion of the feasibility of lighting streets by
gas was to be sneered at for a visionary, or regarded with suspicion as
a probable speculator in the _fancy_, even by the best informed, and
most enlightened classes.
To the youngest of his readers the _dictum_ of the then infallible
Doctor Dionysius Lardner against the possibility of Ocean Steam
Navigation—for, deny it now as he may, he can be clearly convicted of
its utterance—is familiar as a household word.
And now, what insignificant town, to say nothing of innumerable private
dwellings, innumerable factories and workshops, prison houses, as it
were, and _ergasteria_, would it were otherwise! of plebeian labor,
innumerable theatres, assembly-halls, and banquet-rooms, abodes of
patrician pleasure, are not ablaze through the murkiest midnight, and
light as the broadest day, with the released and radiant spirit, that
lay so long enthralled and unsuspected in the hard heart of the swart
coal mine?
And now, with what quarter of the world are we not in daily, if not
hourly, communication by the united agencies of those two most
irreconcilable powers, fire and water?
Hardly one century has elapsed since the American Franklin revealed to
the admiring world the scarcely suspected fact, that the subtle spark
elicited from the electrifying magazine, or from the hairs of a cat,
rubbed contrariwise to their direction, is identical with the sovereign,
all-pervading flash,
“Which issues from the loaded cloud,
And rives the oak asunder.”
And now, at this day, we sit quietly engaged in our study, or stand,
even, as it may be, laboriously plying our trade of manual labor, and
send that very lightning-flash, a tamed domestic influence, nay, but a
very slave and pack-horse to our will, to speed our tidings to New
Orleans, or to Newfoundland, and to bring us back the answer, before a
second hour has lagged round the dial.
Time was, nor very long ago, when to receive news from Europe within
thirty days, was esteemed a feat, if not a miracle, on the part of the
carriers. Now, or ere a second summer shall have passed, the electric
telegraph will be in operation to Cape Race, the south-easternmost point
of Newfoundland, and mail steamers will be cleaving the Atlantic far to
the northward, to and fro, from the green shores of Galway. Then, within
seven days at the utmost, the news of farthest Europe, news from the
Vistula, the Danube, and the Don; news from the Tartar and the Turk,
shall be sped, more swiftly than though they “had taken the wings of the
morning,” to the uttermost parts of America, shall be read almost
simultaneously on the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific, and sent far
aloof among the oceanic isles of the southern hemisphere, even to drowsy
China and remote Taprobane, by the almost unearthly powers of steam and
electricity, and last, not least, the press.
The word is out—we have said it—the press—a kindred, not
antagonistic, scarcely even rival, power to the two mighty elements we
have named—since it has pressed both into its service; and itself,
purely human in its origin, its influence, and its importance, purely
material in “its age and body, form and pressure,” derives most of its
incalculable puissance from the coöperation and subservience of the two
mightiest, most unearthly, most immaterial, and most spiritual of
essences, existing, or which have existed, in the universe.
But we are not about to write an essay on the power, the influence, the
utility of the press. These are too generally appreciated and
acknowledged, to render a single paragraph necessary. In the two first
particulars of power and influence, the press is incomparable—not to be
equaled by any instrument or agency of humanity that ever has existed.
The extent of its utility—although still unquestionable—is limited and
diminished, “cribbed, coffined,” and curtailed by the weakness, the
willfulness, and the wickedness of the very many men, unfit and
evil-minded, who have thrust themselves forward, assuming to conduct it,
and through it the public mind, with no ulterior object nobler or higher
than the misapplication of the weight and moral power with which it
invests them, to all sorts of immorality and wrong, to which avarice,
rapacity, ambition, and the insane desire of demagogueism may impel
them.
This is, however, only to admit that the press is an agency of time and
mortality; and as such liable, of a necessity, to be perverted. Perhaps
it is rather to be wondered, that there are _few_ base, dishonest,
licentious, and self-seeking journals in circulation, than that there
are any; and it is clear, that the general tone of the reading world is
so gradually and greatly improving, that few of those which now exist
receive any considerable support, unless where they have the skill to
introduce their false doctrines under cover of some specious sophistry,
making them to wear the semblance of reforms. Even these, it may be
observed, are daily becoming more and more transparent to the broad and
keen eye of the public; and, in proportion as they are comprehended,
lose their ill-acquired and abused popularity and power.
In one word, the utility of the press, its beneficial influences, its
charities, its diffusion of knowledge and true light, and its general
maintenance of the right, out-balance, as by ten thousand fold, the
occasional obliquities, injustice, falsehood, and advocacy of devil’s
doings here on earth, which periodically disgrace its columns.
For these the press is no more to be censured or condemned, than is the
Book of Common Prayer, or the Holy Bible; because—in the middle
ages—men, mad with too much, or too little learning—it matters not
whether—applied their most hallowed texts, read backward, to the
evocation of departed souls from Hades, or of evil spirits from the
abyss of very Hell.
It is not, however, of the moral influences, but of the mere material
powers of the press, as now existing in its wonderfully improved
condition, with all appliances of marvelous time-saving machinery, that
we would now speak—machinery born itself of machinery, self-developed
from the swart, unplastic ore, with, comparatively speaking, small
expense of human labor, though under the control of the all-contriving
human brain, into engines of strange and mysterious potency.
It is little to say that the efficiency, and of course the utility, of
the printing-press has been increased a thousand fold, that the facility
and consequent cheapness, of the reproduction of books has been improved
to such an extent that thousands and tens of thousands of volumes are
now printed, published, and put into circulation, where there was one
thirty years ago; and that too at prices, which bring it easily within
the means of all—but the very idlest and poorest—to become familiar
with the best thoughts of the brightest geniuses of all ages—That the
whole system of journalism, and journal publishing, has passed through a
complete revolution, reducing individual prices to a mere nominal
fraction, and referring the question of profits, and remuneration of
labor, to gross sales of tens of thousands of daily copies—the
consequence of which revolution is to place the whole news of the world,
including all discoveries of art or science, all arguments and
disputations of the first statesmen and orators, all lectures of the
most prominent literateurs and philosophers of the day, within the
hand’s reach of every farmer and farm-laborer, every artisan, mechanic,
clerk and shop-boy of the land, from the Aroostook to the Sacramento and
Columbia.
It is little to say this—yet this is something; for it is the first
step toward making those who do govern the land, fit to govern
it—namely, the people—toward enabling them to judge, unlike the
constituents of best European representative governments, not of men
only, but, mediately, of measures; toward giving them to judge and learn
for themselves, from the actual progress of recorded events, daily
occuring, something of the policy of foreign nations, something of the
interest of their own country; lastly, toward rendering the permanent
establishment of a falsehood, or the long suppression of the truth, an
impossibility.
And yet all this is to say little, as compared with what may be
said—namely, that the difference between the efficiency of the modern
printing-press and that of Guttenberg, Faustus and Schoffer, is almost
greater than the difference between that and the manuscript system,
which it superseded.
And all this is to be ascribed to the perfection of mechanics and
machinery, brought by the aid of every branch of science to what we
might well deem perfection, did not every coming day awake to
perfectionate what was last night deemed perfect.
In all branches of human labor, in all phases of human ingenuity, for
above half a century, this vast increase—both of the application and
the power of machinery—has been in progress; constantly awakening the
fears and jealousies, sometimes inducing the overt opposition and
illegal violence of the working classes, as cheapening their labor, and
about ultimately to subvert their trade and destroy their means of
subsistence.
Than these fears and jealousies, nothing can be more erroneous, not to
say absurd. For it is no longer a theory, but an established fact, that
consumption of, and demand for, any article grows almost in arithmetical
progression from the reduction of its price, to such a degree, as to
render it available to all classes.
Two examples, alone, will be sufficient to make this clear:—
Some twenty years ago, the renewal of the English East India Company’s
charter was refused by Parliament, and the tea-trade of Great Britain
opened to all British bottoms[1]. The price of tea was reduced by above
one-half, and the company exclaimed loudly, as companies ever do,
against the unjust legislation, which must needs ruin them.
Mark the result, however. The price of tea fell one-half; the
consumption of tea increased—we speak generally—almost ten-fold. The
company never were more prosperous than now.
Again—within the same period, inland postage in Great Britain was
reduced to a uniform rate of one penny sterling, not without much
opposition and strenuous contest, the opponents insisting that the
department must become a burden on the state, from sheer inability to do
the work of transportation at prices merely nominal. The results are
before the public, and not a boy but knows that they precisely reverse
the prediction.
The same thing is true of the growth of the cotton trade; of the growth
of agricultural productions: and last, not least, and most of all to the
purpose, of the growth of the so-called _penny_-press of New York, and
the United States in general. We use the term so-called, because though
nominally penny, most, if not all, of the very paying papers of this
class are really two-penny papers.
[Illustration: GOLD STREET WORKS. CITY, NEW YORK.
GROUND PLAN.]
While we were considering these matters, to which consideration we were
led by a visit to the extraordinary machine works of Messrs. Hoe & Co.,
the inventors and manufacturers of the great fast power-presses, which
have effected the revolution of which we have spoken, we accidentally
stumbled upon the following article from the columns of the New York
Tribune; and it is so entirely germane to the matter, that we have no
hesitation in quoting the former portion of it, without alteration or
comment.
The latter portion we omit, because we entirely disagree with Mr. Greely
in the deduction which he draws from the admitted facts, as we do with
most of his socialistic and communistic notions.
It is to the increase of demand, growing out of the increase and
cheapness of production, that he must look for employment and profit,
not to the catching at the empty bubble of ownership, or to the ambition
of governing, with none to serve under him.
“LABOR AND MACHINERY.
A thoughtful laborer—for wages—sends us an account he finds current in
the journals of the rapid progress of Printing by Machinery, as
illustrated by a single cheap daily newspaper. That paper now prints
48,475 sheets—or 101 reams—per day, which it is enabled by rapid
machinery to do from one set of types, whereas, if obliged to use the
Hand-Press of former days, it would be obliged to set up its type
_twenty-nine times_ over for each daily edition, employing 812
compositors instead of barely 28, and 116 pressmen instead of some ten
or twelve only. Hereupon our correspondent comments as follows:—
Mr. Greely:—It will be seen by the above, which I quote merely
as a convenient text to illustrate the matter in hand, that in
_one_ establishment a _difference_ is made of nearly or quite
_nine hundred_ men, in consequence of the invention or
improvement of machinery, which has taken place within a less
time than the last 25 years, from the number it would have been
necessary to have employed to prosecute the same amount of
business had no such progress been made. The same is true, I
suppose, to an equal extent, of _The Tribune_ and other journals
of large circulation. The same—i. e., _the alarming
encroachment which machinery is every day making on what has
heretofore been performed by human muscles alone_—is not
peculiar to any one branch of employment. The restless inquiry
and invention of the present is rapidly and surely intruding
_iron_ muscles, which do not become hungry, or experience the
depression of low wages and consequent low fare, into every
department of human industry, crowding out and setting adrift
thousands of the industrious, to seek new and untried means of
subsistence, from which soon again to be driven, by—what many
of them have come to look upon as their greatest, most
persevering and relentless enemy—machinery.
Whither, I would thoughtfully and anxiously ask, do these facts,
which stare us in the face from every quarter, tend? What is
their mighty significancy? The unprecedented increase of the
most cunningly adapted, durable, and economical machinery—on
the one hand—to perform, in great part, the work heretofore
done by us—the laborers; and—on the other hand—the sure and
certain increase of that most reliable portion of humanity which
we represent, and whose only capital is their muscles, and whose
hope of bread for themselves and children is in the performance,
to a large extent, of that same labor thus snatched from us by
the offspring of invention. What wonder that the honest laborer,
who knows no cunning but the use of the physical force which God
has given him, or the mechanic who plies his trade, should stand
aghast, and feel his heart sink within him, as he is forced from
his legitimate occupation, to another and still another, and at
last finds his employment altogether fitful and uncertain, from
the number of his fellows driven to the same condition as
himself. His labor is truly “a drug in the market,” and stern
necessity is fast putting him, if it has not already, wholly at
the mercy of capital. I could not but sadly ponder, as
one—while watching the nicely adjusted movements of a cheap
engine, which had ejected him and his fellow, in like condition,
from the place whence, for years, they had obtained a livelihood
for themselves and families—significantly observed to me that,
“the best thing that could be done with _that thing_ would be to
break it to pieces, and pitch it out of the window.” They saw
wood about town now, when they can get it to do, as the
_machinery_, which they have in such successful operation in
Chicago and some other cities for that purpose, has not yet been
introduced here. Their daughters, too, who have, till within a
six month back, had work at $2 50 per week, in the factories,
are now out of employ. This, you know, is but one of countless
similar illustrations which take place every day in poor
families.
H.
We have thus allowed our friend to state his whole case—though he only
submitted it that we might comment on its substance—and we now solicit
his attention to some thoughts by it suggested.
Why does our friend go back only to the Hand-Press to exhibit the
disastrous effects of Machinery on the interests of Labor? The
hand-press itself is a labor-saving machine of immense capacity—far
more so in its day than the power-press which is now extensively
superseding it. It threw wholly out of employment and reduced to
absolute destitution thousands upon thousands of skillful, accurate,
admirable penmen, who had given the best years of their lives to acquire
skill in a profession, or pursuit, which the press almost extirpated. To
be at all consistent, “H.” must demand, not the destruction of the
power-press only, but of all printing or copying presses whatever.
“Ah! but then there could be no newspapers?”—Nay; that does not follow.
Kossuth’s first gazette was not printed, but a carefully prepared
abstract of the sayings and doings of the Hungarian Diet, whereof copies
were made by scribes for general diffusion. There have been many such
instances of unprinted journals.
“Well; there could be no _such_ journals as we now have.” No, nor could
there be without the power-press. We could not afford such a paper as
_The Tribune_ now is for four times its present price, if we were
obliged to print it on hand-presses; in fact, no such paper could be
supported at all.
The subsisting truth, then, must be accepted and looked fairly in the
face. The mountain will not come to Mahomet; he must go to the mountain.
The existence and rapid progress of Machinery is a fact which cannot be
set aside; the world will not, cannot go backward: Machinery cannot be
destroyed; it cannot even be held where it is, but must move onward to
further and vaster triumphs. We may deplore this, but cannot prevent
it.”
* * * * *
The perusal of this article would have determined us, had we not been
resolved beforehand, to lay before our readers an account of the very
remarkable works to which we have before alluded, by the proprietors of
which the machinery mentioned in the letter of “the thoughtful laborer”
was of course manufactured, as by them it was invented; being no other
than the great eight-cylinder, type-revolving, fast-printing press.
Similar machines, though varying in the number of cylinders, are
employed by the New York Herald and Tribune, the eight-cylinder being
used by the Sun, the Philadelphia Ledger, and other journals in the
United States, as also by the Parisian La Patrie, the quasi organ of the
present Prince President, and, according to present appearances, future
Emperor of the French.
These works are in truth one of the most remarkable sights, if not the
most worthy of remark, of all that are shown to strangers in New
York—and yet to how few are they shown. The changes to which they have
already given birth are great enough, even now,
“To overcome us like a summer cloud,”
but the end of those changes is not yet, nor shall be, while we are.
What they shall be, we may not even conjecture—perhaps the
civilization, the christianizing of the world entire, and the reduction
of all tongues and dialects to one universal English language.
[Illustration: BROOME STREET MANUFACTORIES. (_Ground Plan._)]
To waste no more words, however, in mere speculation, but to come to
facts, the history of the origin and progression of these truly
wonderful works, of which more anon, is in itself by no means void of
interest—even of something of romance.
In the well-known and ill-remembered yellow-fever summer of New York, an
Englishman by birth, a carpenter by trade, landed in the city of the
plague, a stranger, friendless, sick, and but scantily provided with
what has been termed the root of all evil, which one-third of our
people, however, regard as the sole object and aim of exertion and
existence here and hereafter.
His good fortune, or rather—for we believe not in fortune—his good
providence brought him in contact with that most singular of geniuses,
Grant Thorburn. With him he boarded, with him struggled through the
terrors of the prevailing pest, by him was tenderly nursed, and from his
roof entered into business with Smith, the well-known machinist and
inventor of the hand-press which still bears his name; nor is it yet
superseded by more recent improvements. Their partnership terminated
only with the decease of Mr. Smith; from which time, under the sole
conduct of Mr. Hoe—for the stranger guest of Mr. Thorburn was no other
than the father of the energetic, inventive and enterprising gentlemen,
whose works we are about to describe—the business became permanently
established, and yearly advanced in popularity and reputation, which
constitute profits.
Still, greatly as he improved upon what had been before, at his death in
1834, the average annual sales of the concern did not exceed 50,000
dollars; they never now fall short of 400,000; and often amount to half
a million. Such are, and will ever be, the consequences of energy,
industry, probity and sobriety, joined to an earnest and sincere
application of that talent, which each one of us in some sort possesses,
to its true and legitimate increase and improvement—in other words, to
quote a book so much out of fashion—find the more the pity!—in these
piping times of progress, as the old church catechism, a quiet resolve
to “do our duty in that state of life to which it hath pleased God to
call us.”
Shortly after the death of Mr. Hoe, sen., his sons and successors,
finding the then premises insufficient, moved to the ground now occupied
by their great manufactories, occupying a hollow block four stories in
height, of two hundred feet front on Broome street, by one hundred in
depth on Sheriff and Columbia streets, as also a second lot on the other
side of Broome street, containing their saw works, hardening furnaces,
stables, and other necessary buildings. In these works, a bird’s eye
view of which is pre-fixed to this paper, and the ground plan of which
we here present, the Messrs. Hoe continually employ three hundred men,
some of them persons of great ability as draughtsmen, pattern-makers,
mechanicians, and the like—men literally of every nation, as nearly as
may be, under the sun; among whom are comprised several Armenians, said
to be persons of great intelligence and excellent deportment.
Besides this, their principal factory, they have another large and well
built establishment, containing ware-rooms, counting-house, blacksmith’s
shop, machine shop, and steam-engine room, in Gold street, nearly
adjoining Fulton. This, though in fact headquarters, we shall pass over
for the time being, premising only—in order to show the perfect method
and system of time and labor-saving with which every thing belonging to
this firm is conducted—that they have at their own expense, and for
their own private use, erected an electric telegraph, carried by the
permission of the proprietors over the roofs of houses, from the
counting-room to the up-town factories, by which the smallest message or
order is conveyed, and answered almost instantaneously. Nor are the
proprietors dissatisfied with the result, having found by experience
that the great original expense was very speedily compensated by the
gain of time, and yet more of precision which it introduced.
Returning up-town, therefore, we will descend into the vault under the
first yard, in which we shall find the moving puissance of all the vast
machinery of hammers, planes, lathes, drills, grindstones, tools and
devices, almost without name or number, which are constantly laboring
with their iron nerves, noiseless, tireless, indefatigable, through
every story of the great building—in the shape of the boilers and
steam-engine, which, beside furnishing all the motive power, supply
every part of the building, by a very ingenious application, with a
constant stream of evenly tempered, pure, heated air, at the same time
maintaining a thorough ventilation, and all without the slightest danger
of fire.
The spent steam is brought into a series of coiled pipes within a trunk,
through which a continual stream of pure external air flows without
intermission, and is carried by wooden tubes through every story and
room of the building; as is likewise an ample provision of Croton water,
as well a provision against fire, as for the cleanliness and comfort of
the men.
Of the engine there is nothing very special to be observed, as it is of
the old construction, and, though perfectly efficient, not now to be
imitated or adopted. It is a horizontal high pressure engine of about
forty horse power, under the head of steam usually employed, though
capable of exerting considerably more force, if called upon. There has
been recently attached to it a singularly ingenious little machine, in
the shape of a hydraulic regulator, of which great expectations are
entertained, and which, in the very short time it has been tested, works
to admiration, one week only having elapsed since its application. To
attempt to describe this, or in fact any other complicated machine, in
an illustrative article such as this pretends only to be, were an
absurdity; for the operations of the simplest engines can be rendered
thoroughly comprehensible, only—if at all—by thorough diagrams with
numerical references, and then comprehensible only to scientific
readers, conversant at least with the principles and working of the
motive power, and the forces to be exerted by it.
Ascending from the subterranean regions, which are, by the way, so
constructed under an open and little occupied court-yard that even in
case of any untoward accident the least possible damage would ensue, and
certainly no upheaval of whole edifices, as by the explosion of a powder
magazine, would be the consequence, we arrive next in the order of
production at the great foundery, occupying nearly one half of the
ground floor on the Broome street front.
[Illustration: OLD STEAM-ENGINE, BROOME STREET.]
Of this, although it furnishes the rude material, the first degree we
mean from the actual raw metal for the whole establishment, the saw
manufactory alone excepted, there is little to be noted worthy of
particular attention by those who are familiar with the operation of
furnaces, founderies and casting on a large scale, as in fact there is
nothing in it unusual or novel, unless it be what struck us as both
novel and unusual, the general absence of noise, confusion, din and
turmoil, not to mention ill sounds, ill savors, and oppressive heat,
which seems to pervade the whole establishment. This, ministering as it
does largely to the comfort and well-being of all concerned, detracts
somewhat, it must be admitted from the picturesque effect of the
scenery, and its adjuncts. Even the neatness and cleanliness of the
orderly and well conducted moving about each his own business
noiselessly, and obeying a sign or the wafture of a hand, diminished the
effect which we almost expect to feel in an iron foundery, a furnace, or
a machine shop.
We well remember the impression left on our mind years ago by a visit to
some gigantic iron works in Sheffield, an impression which made itself
felt for many a month in strange fantastic dreams and painful
nightmares—such influence, not on the imagination only but on the
nerves, had the dense murky gloom of the dim vaults, suddenly kindled,
as by magic, into a fierce incandescent glare by the lava-like torrents
of molten iron, the volumes of black smoke, the stifling heat of the
oppressed and exhausted atmosphere, and then the roar of unseen waters,
suggestive of those subterranean streams of Hades, Acheron and Cocytus,
the whirr and hurtling of unnumbered wheels, the terrible and deafening
clang of the huge trip-hammers, literally making the solid earth jar and
tremble; and last and most appropriate to the scene, the swarthy,
grim-visaged workmen, fit representatives of Vulcan and his Cyclops, now
glancing into lurid light, now vanishing into darkness, as the fitful
flashes rose and fell. Of a verity there can be no much more appropriate
representation of Pandemonium than an old-fashioned English iron works
on a large scale.
But there is no room for marveling or romancing after this fashion in
the machine works of Messrs. Hoe & Co., for all the rooms are well
aired, well lighted, and none the less adapted to their purpose for
being suitable to the accommodation of men who neither are slaves, nor
in anywise resemble devils.
[Illustration: GREAT FOUNDERY.]
From the foundery we proceed, across the open yard, to the smithy, a
large, lofty, well proportioned apartment, containing two enormous
steam-hammers, the speed and consequent impetus of which can be
modulated by a very easy application of manual force, at the pleasure of
the operator, so that they can be made either to rise and fall as slowly
as the maces of Gog and Magog on the great bell of Saint Dunstan’s, or
to impinge upon whatever is objected to their descent with a velocity
which almost mocks the eye. In this apartment and its adjunct forge
there are no less than eighteen stithies, the bellows of all which are
worked by the ubiquitous power of the engine, with anvils of all manners
and sizes in due proportion, and sturdy operatives plying them with
tranquil and regulated industry, worth five times the amount of human
force exerted unequally and impulsively, by fits and starts. These men,
for the most part, and, in fact, always when not called off by some
casual and unexpected pressure of business in some one department, are
kept constantly employed at that peculiar species of work with which
each is the most familiar, such method and system in the subdivision of
labor being found to insure not only the greatest excellence, but the
greatest celerity of workmanship.
[Illustration: SMITHY.]
In this shop all such portions of the engines, presses, large and small,
printing and inking machines, and of the machinery by the agency of
which the above machines themselves are created, as are composed of
wrought metal, are forged, welded, made new from the commencement, or
repaired in case of damage. For it is worthy of remark that, although
many of the labor-saving machines and tools are of English make—not a
few by the celebrated Whitworth, said to be the first tool-maker in the
world—there is not one that cannot, on emergency, be made, mended, or
altered, within the precincts of the establishment; while many of the
most admirable contrivances are patents and inventions peculiar to this
country and this firm.
Immediately adjoining the smithy, is the engine and machine shop, and on
the same floor the large lathe-room containing four enormous surface
lathes and two turning lathes, for drilling, boring, turning, and
finishing both circular and horizontal surfaces.
From this point, we shall proceed to the saw works, preferring to take
each separate department of work by itself, from the commencement to the
end, rather than to adhere to the precise order and position of the
several rooms, as situated in the building.
The first room devoted to this branch of manufacture, which is a very
considerable and important item in the business of Messrs. Hoe & Co.,
the annual sales amounting to not less than 140,000 dollars, in circular
saws, mill-saws, pit-saws, and crosscut-saws, for all parts of the
country, is known as the saw shop.
Herein is performed the business of smithing, teething, and blocking the
great saws; hundreds of thousands of which are at work, driven by water
or by steam-power in every portion of the boundless territories of the
United States, to which the enterprising foot and adventurous axe of the
white settler has found access—clearing with their restless and
indomitable teeth the solid and tenacious fibres of the gnarled
live-oaks in the pestilent swamps of Florida, and the dank “regions far
away, by Pascagoula’s sunny bay,” into the crooked knees of mighty
vessels, that shall set at naught the howling billows of the wild
Atlantic, and the blasts of the mad storm-wind, Euroclydon, riving into
planks and beams and timbers, that shall build up the palaces of
commerce, and the happy homes of our lordly cities, the white and
penetrable flesh of “those captive kings so straight and tall, those
lordly pines, which fell long ago in the deer-haunted forests of Maine,
when deep upon mountain and plain lay the snow.”
The machinery by which these various processes are accomplished is
exceedingly fine and worthy of notice, and vastly superior to that used
in England; in the dock-yards of which country the circular saws were
first brought into service, if we do not err; especially that for
cutting the teeth, which, worked by steam-power, does its duty with
great rapidity and incomparable precision.
[Illustration: SAW SHOP.]
This operation is performed by the vertical descent of a ponderous arm
of iron, terminating in a cutter of the form of the notch to be made in
the yet soft and smooth edge of the circular plate, which is made by the
same power to revolve horizontally upon an axis placed at such distance
from the impinging weight as the depth of the notch to be cut requires,
and traversing at a rate so timed in unison with the descent of the
cutters as to render the series of teeth perfectly continuous and equal;
each blow of the cutter forming the interval between two teeth, and each
full revolution of the plate completing a circular-saw. In the same way
is effected the teething of the straight saws, the motion being a direct
sliding action in a forward line, instead of a rotatory movement.
In the English saw works, owing to the influence of trade-unions,
operative-unions, and the like, the application of steam-power to this
machinery is prohibited, and the employer is restricted to the use of
hand labor—the cutter being jerked down by man power, and the edge of
the plate to be cut being subjected to the striker by hand, the
formation of the teeth not being regulated by any absolute scale, but
being executed by the calculation or guess-work of the artisan, and, of
course, varying in accuracy, depth and precision of cutting according to
the skillfulness or unskillfulness of the individual operator.
To the absence of these ingenious combinations, injurious alike to the
true interest of operators and employers, the superiority in many
respects of American to English machinery is in some degree due, and not
less to the over stringency of the patent laws of Great Britain, which
often prevent the application of really leading and most material
improvements, of a radical nature, to principles secured for the benefit
of the inventor.
We may here observe that the use of circular saws is very greatly on the
increase in this country, more especially in the western portion of it.
In the east, for some inexplicable reason, this admirable instrument is
far less generally used; and the writer of this article, several years
ago, when on a visit to the timber districts of Maine, on expressing his
surprise at the non-adoption of this most excellent and labor-saving
tool, could learn no adequate cause for the prejudice existing against
it, unless it were some crude and absurd ideas concerning its vibration
and consequent irregularity of cutting—objections not founded on facts,
nor confirmed by experience.
From the saw shop the circular plates, now teethed and in the incipient
stage of what Willis would call _sawdom_, are removed across Broome
Street into the other building, and introduced to the saw hardening
room, where they are converted into highly tempered steel.
[Illustration: SAW HARDENING ROOM.]
This process is effected by heating the metal in charcoal furnaces to a
white incandescent glow, and then cooling it by immersion in baths of
oil and other drugs, the combination of which is, we believe, a secret.
This done, the saws are ready for grinding which is effected in a
special apartment of the main building—the flat, straight saws by hand
application to a series of powerful grindstones, driven at a regular
speed by gearings worked from the engine, and the circular saws by a
very curious and effective patent machine, peculiar to this
establishment, and invented by Mr. Hoe himself.
The old method of grinding circular saws, and that still practiced in
all other works of this nature, is the application of them horizontally
to the great vertically-moving grindstones by the hand; and, when it is
considered that these great steel plates run up to six feet diameter and
eighteen of circumference, and that they consequently entirely conceal
the grindstone from the eyes of the operator who applies them, it will
be evident that the process is mere guess-work, and that no certainty
can be attained in regulating the thickness of the blades—in a word,
that nothing was effected beyond the superficial brightening and
abstersion of the surface.
[Illustration: GRINDING ROOM.]
The new machine causes the great circular plate to revolve vertically on
its access, while a “pad” to which is applied some sharp, detergent
mineral-powder, is moved forcibly over its surface with a triple action.
In the first place, the pad itself is made to revolve with great
velocity against the circular plane, in a direction perpendicular to its
line of motion. In the second place, it is driven forward against it
horizontally with a force increasing or diminishing, in proportion as it
may be desirable to render the saw-blades thicker or thinner in any
particular part of the circumference. It is usual to leave them thicker
at the centre, and to grind them away gradually toward the
circumference. Thirdly and lastly, the pad, while it revolves vertically
in a direction perpendicular to the revolving plane, and is forced
horizontally against it, is also driven laterally to and fro across its
surface; and the result is a degree of equability, or graduation of
thickness, as well as of superficial polish, scarcely otherwise
attainable. This machine is one of the special wonders and ornaments of
the establishment.
It will not be amiss here to add, that with the improvements of their
manufacture the demand for circular saws is continually on the increase;
and that a single house is in the habit of taking regularly six of these
powerful tools weekly from the Messrs. Hoes’ establishment.
[Illustration: IRON PLANING, AND CUTTING ENGINE ROOMS.]
Returning hence to the leading and principal feature of these works, the
manufacture, namely, of all the various instruments and appliances for
the art imprimatorial, we are next ushered into the iron planing and
cutting engine rooms, for the cutting the cogs of engine wheels, and
finishing the surfaces of whatever portions of the machinery must be
brought to a smooth and polished face. This is done by the propulsion of
the pieces of metal so to be planed, in a horizontal and longitudinal
direction against cutting edges, which again move horizontally across
the moving planes, and are pressed downward on them vertically, so as to
bring the planing to the requisite depth. The abraded portions are
thrown off from the surface, of cast iron in a sort of scaly dust, from
wrought iron in long, curled shavings, and the planes can be wrought up
to almost any desirable degree of finish and smoothness.
The cutting engine for the formation of cogged wheels, bears some
relation to that for the teething of saws, the cutter impinging
downward, with an action in some degree intermediate between that of
sawing and filing, upon the exterior circumference of the circular
wheels, which revolve on their axis under them in a rotation so
regulated to the fall of the striker as to insure absolute equality in
the width of the cogs or projections.
[_Conclusion in our next_
-----
[1] Ships.
* * * * *
A FAREWELL.
W. H. HOSMER.
Drifting on the darkened waters
Are Earth’s dying sons and daughters,
And, like ships that meet each other,
Brother gives a hail to brother:
Brief the pleasure of that meeting,
And forgotten oft the greeting.
Could I think that other faces
Would of me blot out all traces.
Though I cannot be thy lover,
Clouds my path would gather over;
From remembrance, then, endeavor
Not to blot me out forever.
Fare thee well! must now be spoken,
And another tie be broken;
Though the hour hath come to sever,
Lady! I’ll forget thee never,
But thy warmth of soul remember
Till extinct life’s wasting ember.
* * * * *
EDITH MORTON.
BY MISS S. A. STUART.
CHAPTER I.
Have you ever been, dear reader, in that sweet little village of A——,
in Virginia? Well, if you have not, you certainly have yet to see, the
most pleasant little Eden of this earth; where they have the purest air,
the most beautiful sunsets, and the bluest skies imaginable—Italy not
excepted—so I think. There lived my heroine; and _such_ a heroine, at
the time I have chosen to introduce her to you.
It was close upon sundown, on a lovely spring day, when a strikingly
handsome, _distingué_ looking young man, alighted from his buggy, at the
residence of Mrs. Morton, in the above mentioned village. Charles
Lennard—the young man spoken of—had been received as a boarder, for a
few months, into Mrs. Morton’s quiet family, as his health was too
delicate to allow him to trust to the precarious and uncertain kindness
shown by the landladies, in general, of thriving village inns. Some
moneyed affair had called him to A., and here he had arrived on this
lovely spring evening; and the skies wore their rosiest blush to greet
his coming.
“By all that’s pretty! ’tis a little Paradise,” was his muttered notice,
as he passed through the flower-garden, whose clinging vines, creeping
o’er the lattice supports, veiled the little bird-nest of white that
peeped out amid the rich green foliage, varied in color by a thousand
tinted flowers. “I hope Mrs. Morton has given me a room overlooking the
garden; ’twill be delightful to read here whilst these perfumes are
floating around one.”
The door was wide open, and a quiet, blue-eyed lady sat sewing in the
back part of the wide hall, who raised her soft, kind eyes inquiringly
to his face, as his shadow darkened the doorway.
“Mrs. Morton, I presume?” said he, as she approached him. “I am Mr.
Lennard, whom you were so kind as to admit—”
“I am happy to see you, Mr. Lennard,” interrupted she, hospitably
extending her hand to bid him welcome. “Walk into this room, sir. We are
very plain folks here, Mr. Lennard—but you must endeavor to make
yourself at home. Alec”—to a boy who entered—“take this gentleman’s
buggy and horse and put them up.”
Turning to her guest, she conducted him into her cosy parlor, now filled
with the golden moats of the glimmering sunbeams, that quivered through
the foliage that draped the windows; whilst the atmosphere of the room
itself breathed sweets unnumbered. They chatted of the weather, of his
journey, of the village, etc., till Mrs. Morton, remembering her duty as
hostess, begged her guest to excuse her, whilst she hurried off, “on
hospitable thoughts intent.” Charles threw himself dreamily and
indolently into the old-fashioned arm-chair, which stood invitingly in
the shadow of the window.
A young, glad voice, a light, bounding step, broke on his reverie; and,
as he glanced toward the door, whence the sound came—_bang!_ almost in
his face, fell a carpet-bag, half filled with books, and then an
exclamation of surprise from a young fairy, who just stopped long enough
to make him doubt whether she was mortal or angel—and then again
bounded off like a young, startled fawn. ’Tis our heroine—Edith
Morton—released from her duties at the village academy, wild with
repressed play and mischief, who has done him this favor! She returned
ere long with her mother, reluctant and blushing, to sanction by her
presence the apology uttered for her.
“You will excuse Edith, Mr. Lennard, I hope, for her carelessness. She
tells me that the light dazzled her eyes so much, that she was not aware
of your presence; she has been in the habit of throwing her books into
this room—the arm-chair which you now occupy being her morning study.
Edith, speak to Mr. Lennard, and tell him how sorry you are for your
rude greeting.”
“Do not trouble yourself, Miss Edith. Your apology is all-sufficient, my
dear madam; I, too, must apologize, for having unknowingly taken
possession of her study, which is indeed inviting. You must look upon me
as belonging to the family, and act without restraint; for I assure you,
the thought would be far from pleasant did I think I interfered in the
slightest degree with your settled habits. Miss Edith, you did right to
send me such a reminder at the outset, and I assure you I will be more
careful in future.”
A gleam of light, like a lurking smile, might be detected in the arch
eyes of Edith, as she received this apology from Lennard. And he
thought, without, however, giving utterance to it, “What a bewitching
little fairy.” Edith Morton, though she had not reached the age of
sixteen, was an exquisite specimen of girlish beauty, as impossible to
resist as to describe. Her charm did not lie in her regular features,
golden ringlets, or beautifully moulded and sylph-like form; though each
and every one of these adjuncts to female loveliness she possessed in a
preëminent degree, but her expression—arch, _spirituelle_! ’Tis useless
to endeavor to convey an idea of the impression she _must_ have made on
you with those divine eyes, lit up in their blue depths, with the
sunlight of her merry heart, or the piquant expression of her rosy
mouth, whose deeply-tinted portals, when wreathed with one of her
infectious, heart-beaming smiles, disclosing white, even, little pearls,
as Jonathan Slick says, shining like a mouthful of “_chewed_ cocoa-nut.”
Shy before strangers, from her secluded life, she was the life of the
circle in which she was known, and loved. Full of mischief, and the
ringleader in every school-girl frolick, her ringing, mellow laugh,
often echoed through the play-ground of the village school, or singing
merrily, as she was borne aloft in the swing, or dancing like a fairy on
the green. Many were the boy-lovers who bowed at her shrine, with their
simple, heartfull offerings; but none felt themselves signally
favored—for, young as she was, she seemed to have erected a standard of
excellence in her own mind, and her ideal hero was alone the loved.
Charles Lennard soon made himself perfectly at home with Mrs. Morton and
Edith; and his first evening with them passed pleasantly enough to him.
He felt himself much attracted by her exquisite beauty; and, as their
acquaintanceship progressed, when her mother left the room on household
duties, he was much amused by her piquant and original replies to his
questions. He found her, too, not uneducated, and, young as she was, a
reader and lover of many of his own favorite poets. At the close of the
evening, Mrs. Morton requested Edith to sing, and, with a startled look
toward Lennard, she left her seat to get the guitar from its case.
“Mother, ’tis dreadfully out of tune,” in a tone of entreaty.
“Well, Edith, that is soon remedied by your _will_. So, my daughter, do
not make any further excuse, but sing to me as usual. Mr. Lennard will
excuse the faults when he sees how willing you are to oblige.”
Edith bent low over the instrument as she tuned it, and looking up into
her mother’s face, as if her shyness was not yet overcome, waited for
that mother to tell her to commence.
“Are you ready? well, play then my favorite.”
And though the young voice was trembling, and not well drilled, yet she
warbled her “wood notes wild” with marvelous sweetness; and she blushed
with pleasure at Lennard’s seeming enjoyment of her simple music; and
her “good-night” to him was as charming as to an acquaintance of longer
date, accompanied as it was by such a sweet smile.
“What a nice little wife she will make for some one, in days to come,”
thought he, as standing by the window overlooking the garden, he found
himself musing on the singularly graceful and beautiful child whom he
had left.
Charles Lennard had no idea at that moment of ever loving Edith Morton.
She was too young, too unformed in mind to comprehend him, and to
follow, as a kindred spirit, through the abstruse and almost
transcendental range of thought, in which he often loved to engage.
Delicate in health as in organization, he contented himself for the
present to be a spectator in the world rather than actor, and in his
day-dreams now weaving bright pictures for the future—pictures in which
he was to play a most conspicuous part. We will not say but that a
vision also of dazzling eyes, dancing ringlets, and woman’s light form,
constituted a part of the reveries of the listless and dreamy student.
The neat breakfast-parlor of Mrs. Morton looked as fresh as herself as
Charles descended, the next morning, to that meal. And there sat Edith
in the old, deeply cushioned chair, book in hand, conning her morning
task most zealously, but ever and anon pushing her little foot out to a
kitten on the floor, as playful as herself, who, with its eyes distended
to a perfect circle, sat watching it most sagely, and then jumping
quickly to catch it, in retreat—so that the young girl would laugh most
merrily, and then again resume her book. Charles watched her from the
hall ere he entered, for on his entrance she drew herself up most
demurely, and cut the kitten’s acquaintance _instanter_.
“May I assist you with your map-questions, Miss Edith?”
“No, I thank you. I have finished studying them. Mother always insists
that if I rise early I will learn twice as fast, and also be prepared to
say them when the bell rings.”
“I know,” said Mrs. Morton, “she will be obliged to stop for play every
now and then. Yes, truly, Edith, you are a sad idler.”
“Ah, mother! but you should only see me in school. Here there is so much
to take up my attention. I mean I am obliged to kiss you, to tend the
flowers, and—and play with pussy;” and here, forgetting Mr. Lennard,
she caught up her little pet, and began smoothing its soft fur with her
white hand.
“For shame, Edith; will you always be a child? Come, Mr. Lennard,
breakfast is ready.”