THE FOUNDING LABORATORY.
The Iron Age. -- Iron the King of Metals. -- Locke’s Apothegm. -- The
Moulder’s Art is Fundamental. -- History of Founding. -- Remains of
Bronze Castings in Egypt, Greece, and Assyria. -- Layard’s
Discoveries. -- The Greek Sculptors. -- The Colossal Statue of Apollo
at Rhodes. -- The Great Bells of History. -- Moulding and Casting a
Pulley. -- Description of the Process, Step by Step. -- The Furnace
Fire. -- Pouring the Hot Metal into the Moulds. -- A Pen Picture of
the Laboratory. -- Thus were the Hundred Gates of Babylon cast. --
Neglect of the Useful Arts by Herodotus. -- How Slavery has degraded
Labor. -- How Manual Training is to dignify it.
As we enter the Founding Laboratory we recall Locke’s apothegm: “He who
first made known the use of that contemptible mineral [iron] may be
truly styled the father of arts and the author of plenty.” We reflect,
too, that the mineral that has given its name to an age of the
world--our age--is worthy of careful study.
The Founding Laboratory, like all the laboratories of the school, is
designed for twenty-four students. There are twenty-four
moulding-benches, combined with troughs for sand, and a cupola furnace
where from five hundred to one thousand pounds of iron may be melted.
The students we lately parted from in the Wood-turning Laboratory are
here. Their training has been confined to manipulations in wood; they
are now to be made acquainted with iron--iron in considerable masses.
They should know something, in outline, of the history of the king of
metals in the Founding Laboratory. The instructor speaks familiarly to
them, somewhat as follows:
The art of the founder is fundamental in its nature. The arts of
founding and forging are, indeed, the essential preliminary steps which
lead to the finer manipulations entering into all metal constructions.
Whether forging preceded founding or founding forging is immaterial;
both arts are as old as recorded history--much older indeed. Moulding,
which is the first step in the founder’s art, should be among the oldest
of human discoveries, since man had only to take in his hand a lump of
moist clay to receive ocular evidence of his power to give it any
desired form.
Moulding for casting is closely allied to the potter’s art. The potter
selects a clay suitable for the vessel he desires to mould, and the
founder prepares a composition of sand and loam of the proper
consistency to serve as a matrix for the vessel he desires to cast.
The art of founding was doubtless first applied to bronze. The ruins of
Egypt and Greece abound in the remains of bronze castings, an analysis
of which reveals about the same relative proportions of tin and copper
in use now for the best qualities of statuary bronze. The bronze
castings of the Assyrians show a high degree of art. Many specimens of
this fine work of the Assyrian founder have been rescued from the ruins
of long-buried Nineveh--buried so long that Xenophon and his ten
thousand Greeks marched over its site more than two thousand years ago
without making any sign of a knowledge of its existence, and Alexander
fought a great battle in its neighborhood in apparent ignorance of the
fact that he trod on classic ground. But there, delving beneath the
rubbish and decayed vegetation of four thousand years or more, Layard
found great treasures of art in the palaces of Sennacherib and other
Assyrian monarchs--vases, jars, bronzes, glass-bottles, carved ivory
and mother-of-pearl ornaments, engraved gems, bells, dishes, and
ear-rings of exquisite workmanship, besides arms and a variety of tools
of the practical arts.
In Greece, in the time of Praxiteles, bronze was moulded into forms of
rare beauty and grandeur. The colossal statue of Apollo at Rhodes
affords an example of the magnitude of the Greek castings. It was cast
in several parts, and was over one hundred feet high. About fifty years
after its erection it was destroyed by an earthquake. Its fragments lay
on the ground where it fell, nearly a thousand years; but when the
Saracens gathered them together and sold them, there was a sufficient
quantity to load a caravan consisting of nine hundred camels. One of the
finest existing specimens of ancient bronze casting is that of a statue
of Mercury discovered at Herculaneum, and now to be seen in the museum
at Naples.
During the era of church bells the founder exercised his art in casting
bells of huge dimensions. Early in the fifteenth century a bell weighing
about fifty tons was cast at Pekin, China. This bell still exists, is
fourteen and a half feet in height and thirteen feet in diameter. But
the greatest bell-founding feat was, however, that of 1733, in casting
the bell of Moscow. This bell is nineteen feet three inches in height
and sixty feet nine inches in circumference, and weighs 443,772 pounds.
The value of the metal entering into its construction is estimated at
$300,000. It long lay in a pit in the midst of the Kremlin, but Czar
Nicholas caused it to be raised, mounted upon a granite pedestal, and
converted into a chapel. The methods of casting employed by the founder
of this king of bells are not known. The bell has outlived the Works
where it was cast. The melting and handling of two hundred and twenty
tons of bronze metal certainly required appointments, mechanical and
otherwise, of the most stupendous character; and the existence of such
Works presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the most minute details
of the founder’s art, since the natural order of development is from the
less to the greater. That is to say, the founder who could manipulate
scores of tons of metal in a single great casting could doubtless
manipulate a few pounds of metal; or, the founder who could cast a bell
weighing two hundred and twenty tons, could cast pots and kettles and
hundreds of other little useful things. What we hope to do in this
school Founding Laboratory is to gain a correct conception of great
things by making ourselves thoroughly familiar with many forms of little
things in moulding and casting.
The lesson of the day is the moulding and casting of a plain pulley. In
the Pattern Laboratory each student has already executed a pattern of
the pulley to be cast, and the pattern lies before him on his
moulding-bench. Now the instructor, at the most conspicuous bench in the
room, proceeds to execute the first part of the lesson, which consists
of moulding. Taking from the trough a handful of sand, he explains that
it is only by the use of sand possessing certain properties, as a degree
of moisture, but not enough to vaporize when the metal is poured in, and
a small admixture of clay, but not enough to make of the compound a
loam, that the mould can be saved from ruin through vaporization, and,
at the same time, given the essential quality of adhesiveness and
plasticity. In the course of this explanation he remarks that the sand
used in some parts of the mould is mixed with pulverized bituminous
coal, coke, or plumbago, in order to give a smoother surface. Now he
takes the “flask”--a wooden apparatus containing the sand in which the
mould is made--and explains its construction and use. From this
point--the sifting of facing sand on the turn-over board, to the final
one of replacing the cope and securing it with keys or clamps--every
step of the process is carefully gone through with and explained.
[Illustration: THE FOUNDING LABORATORY.]
Meantime, before the moulding lesson has proceeded far, a fire is
kindled in the furnace and it is “charged;” that is to say, filled with
alternate layers of coal and pig-iron, with occasional fluxes of
limestone. During the process of charging the furnace the instructor
explains the principle of its construction, and shows how it operates.
At every subsequent rest in moulding the students surround the furnace
to witness the progress of the fire, the position of the layers of coal,
and the state of combustion. They pass the furnace in procession, and
each peeps in through the isinglass windows upon the glowing fire, asks
a question, or a dozen questions, perhaps, and gives place to the next
student in line. In the intervals of these visits to the furnace the
work of making twenty-four moulds goes on under the eye of the
instructor, the students explaining each step in advance. He is
omnipresent, answering a question here, preventing a fatal mistake
there, cheering, inspiring, and guiding the whole class, but never
insisting upon a slavish adherence to strict identity in processes. And
it is to be noted that there is in moulding more latitude for
independence than in almost any other mechanical manipulation. Certain
essentials there are, of course, but these being secured, the student
may exercise his ingenuity in the execution of many minor details. That
there is considerable individuality in the class may be seen by
observation of the different methods employed by the several young
moulders to compass various details of the same general process.
The moulds are nearly completed. The instructor assists a student who is
found to be a little behind in his work, and interposes a warning
against haste at the critical moment. Within a period of ten minutes the
twenty-four patterns are “tapped,” loosened, and lifted from their beds,
imperfections are carefully repaired with the trowel, or some other
tool, channels to the pouring holes are cut in the surfaces, the pieces
remaining in the copes are removed, the particles of loose sand are
blown from the surfaces of the moulds, and the twenty-four copes are
replaced, and secured in their correct positions with keys or clamps.
A final visit is now made to the furnace. The fusion is found to be
complete; the “pigs” are converted into a molten pool. It only remains
to pour the hot metal into the moulds. The instructor seizes an iron
ladle lined with clay, holds it under the spout of the furnace reservoir
until it is nearly filled with the glowing fluid, lifts and carries it
carefully across the room, and pours the contents into a mould. Then the
students, in squads, after having been cautioned as to the deadly nature
of the molten mass they are to handle, follow the example of their
instructor. At this moment the laboratory appeals powerfully to the
imagination. The picture it presents is weird in the extreme. From the
open furnace door a stream of crimson light floods the room. The
students wear paper caps and are bare-armed; their faces glow in the
reflected glare of the furnace-fire; they march up to the furnace one by
one, each receiving a ladleful of steaming hot metal, and countermarch
to their benches, where they pour the contents of their ladles into the
moulds.
[Illustration: COURSE IN THE FOUNDING LABORATORY.]
Still holding his empty ladle in his hand, the instructor watches the
progress of the lesson with keen interest until the last stream of metal
has found its way into the throat of the last mould. He recalls the
story of Vulcan, the God of Fire, and of all the arts and industries
dependent upon it, and wonders why he was not depicted pouring tons of
molten metal, in the foundery, rather than sledge in hand at the forge.
Then he regards the class with a benignant expression of pride, begs for
silence, and says, “Thus were the hundred brazen gates of ancient
Babylon cast long before the beginning of the Christian era.” Herodotus
did not think to tell us much of the state of the useful arts in the
early time of which he wrote, but the brazen gates attracted his
attention, and he described them: “At the end of each street a little
gate is found in the wall along the river-side, in number equal to the
streets, and they are all made of brass, and lead down to the edge of
the river.” Could Herodotus have foreseen what a deep interest his
readers of this remote time would take in the history of the useful
arts, he would have written less about the walls, palaces, and temples
of Babylon, and more about the artificers. He would have begged
admission to the forges and founderies of the city; he would have
visited the Assyrian founder at his work, questioned him about his
processes, and set down his answers with painstaking care. Then he would
have sought an introduction to the smithy, and from the grimy forger
learned what he could tell of his art and of kindred arts. So the father
of history might have made an enduring record of the real things which
throughout all time have contributed to the advancement of the human
race, rather than of events growing out of the ambitions and passions of
men--the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, the varying fortune of
battle, the treacheries, crimes, and brutalities of rulers, and the
cringing submission of millions of subjects. But, alas, the founders and
smiths, and all the other cunning artificers of the vast empire of
Syria, were slaves! and through their ancestry for unnumbered
generations the stigma of slavery had attached to labor. Ay, on the bare
backs of the founders of Babylon’s brazen gates the popular scorn of
labor had doubtless left its livid brand.
With these pariahs of Assyrian society, these outcasts of the social
circle, the great Greek historian could not even speak. Descended from a
long line of noble Halicarnassian families, Herodotus felt all the
prejudices of the hereditary aristocracy of his country. Hence he
dilates upon the wonders of Babylon, but is silent as to its architects
and artisans. He describes with great minuteness of detail the tower of
Jupiter Belus, but gives no hint of the name of its designer and
builder. He declares that Babylon was adorned in a manner surpassing any
city of the time, but in regard to the artificers through whose
ingenuity and skill such pleasing effects were produced he gives no
sign.
The silence of Herodotus on the subject of the useful arts in Babylon
does not indicate a want of appreciation of their value, but merely
shows contempt of the Assyrian artisan, and this not because he was an
artisan, but because he was a slave. The story of Solon and Crœsus,
which antedates Herodotus, whether true or a myth, shows that iron and
artisanship were appreciated by both Greeks and barbarians. When Crœsus
had exhibited to the Greek sage his vast hoard of treasures, Solon
said, “If another comes that hath better iron than you he will be master
of all this gold.” Here is a recognition of the immense value of the
arts of smelting and forging, coupled with a contemptuous silence
regarding as well the smelter and the smith as the rank and file of the
armies who should wield the swords and spears drawn by science from the
recesses of the earth, and by art wrought and tempered at the forge.
Through all the early ages the brand and scorn of slavery adhered to
labor, while the arts, the products of labor, were often deified. Thus
the Scythian, who from a grinning skull drank the warm blood of his
captive, regarded with superstitious awe as a god the iron sword with
which he cut off his captive’s head.
It was only with the revival of learning, after the intellectual and
moral gloom of the Dark Ages, that labor began slowly to lift its bowed
head and assert itself. But it does not yet stand erect. It still stoops
as if in the presence of a master. Every now and then it winces and
cringes as if the sound of the descending lash smote its ear. It remains
for you, students in this school of the arts--all the arts that make
mankind good and great--it remains for you to brush away from the
tear-stained face of labor all the shadows accumulated there through all
the dead ages of oppression and slavery. It remains for you to make
labor bold by making it intelligent. It remains for you to dignify and
ennoble labor by bestowing upon it the ripest scientific and artistic
culture, and devoting to its service the best energies of body and
mind.