Houses--The pyramids--Mechanical power--Carpenters'
tools--American machinery for building--Bricks--Slate--
Household fittings and furniture--Paper-hangings--
Carpets--Glass--Pottery--Improvements effected through
the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements.
The beaver builds his huts with the tools which nature has given him. He
gnaws pieces of wood in two with his sharp teeth, so sharp that the
teeth of a similar animal, the agouti, form the only cutting-tool which
some rude nations possess. When the beavers desire to move a large piece
of wood, they join in a body to drag it along.
Man has not teeth that will cut wood: but he has reason, which directs
him to the choice of much more perfect tools.
[Illustration: Pyramid and sphinx]
Some of the great monuments of antiquity, such as the pyramids of Egypt,
are constructed of enormous blocks of stone brought from distant
quarries. We have no means of estimating, with any accuracy, the
mechanical knowledge possessed by the people engaged in these works. It
was, probably, very small, and, consequently, the human labour employed
in such edifices was not only enormous in quantity, but exceedingly
painful to the workmen. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, a Greek
writer who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, hated the memory
of the kings who built the pyramids. He tells us that the great pyramid
occupied a hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection,
without counting the workmen who were employed in hewing the stones, and
in conveying them to the spot where the pyramid was built. Herodotus
speaks of this work as a torment to the people; and doubtless the labour
engaged in raising huge masses of stone, that was extensive enough to
employ a hundred thousand men for twenty years, which is equal to two
millions of men for one year, must have been fearfully tormenting
without machinery, or with very imperfect machinery. It has been
calculated that about half the steam-engines of England, worked by
thirty-six thousand men, would raise the same quantity of stones from
the quarry, and elevate them to the same height as the great pyramid, in
the short time of eighteen hours. The people of Egypt groaned for twenty
years under this enormous work. The labourers groaned because they were
sorely taxed; and the rest of the people groaned because they had to pay
the labourers. The labourers lived, it is true, upon the wages of their
labour, that is, they were paid in food--kept like horses--as the reward
of their work. Herodotus says that it was recorded on the pyramid that
the onions, radishes, and garlic which the labourers consumed, cost
sixteen hundred talents of silver: an immense sum, equivalent to several
million pounds. But the onions, radishes, and garlic, the bread, and
clothes of the labourer, were wrung out of the profitable labour of the
rest of the people. The building of the pyramid was an unprofitable
labour. There was no immediate or future source of produce in the
pyramid; it produced neither food, nor fuel, nor clothes, nor any other
necessary. The labour of a hundred thousand men for twenty years,
stupidly employed upon this monument, without an object beyond that of
gratifying the pride of the tyrant who raised it, was a direct tax upon
the profitable labour of the rest of the people.
"Instead of useful works, like nature great,
Enormous cruel wonders crush'd the land."
But admitting that it is sometimes desirable for nations and governments
to erect monuments which are not of direct utility,--which may have an
indirect utility in recording the memory of great exploits, or in
producing feelings of reverence or devotion,--it is clearly an advantage
that these works, as well as all other works, should be performed in the
cheapest manner; that is, that human labour should derive every possible
assistance from mechanical aid. We will give an illustration of the
differences of the application of mechanical aid in one of the first
operations of building, the moving a block of stone. The following
statements are the result of actual experiment upon a stone weighing ten
hundred and eighty pounds.
[Illustration: Portland Quarry.]
To drag this stone along the smoothed floor of the quarry required a
force equal to seven hundred and fifty-eight pounds. The same stone
dragged over a floor of planks required six hundred and fifty-two
pounds. The same stone placed on a platform of wood, and dragged over
the same floor of planks, required six hundred and six pounds. When the
two surfaces of wood were soaped as they slid over each other, the force
required to drag the stone was reduced to one hundred and eighty-two
pounds. When the same stone was placed upon rollers three inches in
diameter, it required, to put it in motion along the floor of the
quarry, a force only of thirty-four pounds; and by the same rollers upon
a wooden floor, a force only of twenty-eight pounds. Without any
mechanical aid, it would require the force of four or five men to set
that stone in motion. With the mechanical aid of two surfaces of wood
soaped, the same weight might be moved by one man. With the more perfect
mechanical aid of rollers, the same weight might be moved by a very
little child.
From these statements it must be evident that the cost of a block of
stone very much depends upon the quantity of labour necessary to move it
from the quarry to the place where it is wanted to be used. We have seen
that with the simplest mechanical aid labour may be reduced sixty-fold.
With more perfect mechanical aid, such as that of water-carriage, the
labour may be reduced infinitely lower. Thus, the streets of London are
paved with granite from Scotland at a moderate expense.
The cost of timber, which enters so largely into the cost of a house, is
in a great degree the cost of transport. In countries where there are
great forests, timber-trees are worth nothing where they grow, except
there are ready means of transport. In many parts of North America, the
great difficulty which the people find is in clearing the land of the
timber. The finest trees are not only worthless, but are a positive
incumbrance, except when they are growing upon the banks of a great
river; in which case the logs are thrown into the water, or formed into
rafts, being floated several hundred miles at scarcely any expense. The
same stream which carries them to a seaport turns a mill to saw the logs
into planks; and when sawn into planks the timber is put on shipboard,
and carried to distant countries where timber is wanted. Thus mechanical
aid alone gives a value to the timber, and by so doing employs human
labour. The stream that floats the tree, the sawing-mill that cuts it,
the ship that carries it across the sea, enable men profitably to employ
themselves in working it. Without the stream, the mill, and the ship,
those men would have no labour, because none could afford to bring the
timber to their own doors.
[Illustration: Timber Rafts of the Tyrol.]
What an infinite variety of machines, in combination with the human
hand, is found in a carpenter's chest of tools! The skilful hand of the
workman is the _power_ which sets these machines in motion; just as the
wind or the water is the power of a mill, or the elastic force of vapour
the power of a steam-engine. When Mr. Boulton, the partner of the great
James Watt, waited upon George III. to explain one of the improvements
of the steam-engine which they had effected, the king said to him, "What
do you sell, Mr. Boulton?" and the honest engineer answered, "What
kings, sire, are all fond of--_power_." There are people at Birmingham
who let out _power_, that is, there are people who have steam-engines
who will lend the use of them, by the day or the hour, to persons who
require that saving of labour in their various trades; so that a person
who wants the strength of a horse, or half a horse, to turn a wheel for
grinding, or for setting a lathe in motion, hires a room, or part of a
room, in a mill, and has just as much as he requires. The _power_ of a
carpenter is in his hand, and the machines moved by that power are in
his chest of tools. Every tool which he possesses has for its object to
reduce labour, to save material, and to ensure accuracy--the objects
of all machines. What a quantity of waste both of time and stuff is
saved by his foot-rule! and when he chalks a bit of string and stretches
it from one end of a plank to the other, to jerk off the chalk from the
string, and thus produce an unerring line upon the face of the plank, he
makes a little machine which saves him great labour. Every one of his
hundreds of tools, capable of application to a vast variety of purposes,
is an invention to save labour. Without some tool the carpenter's work
could not be done at all by the human hand. A knife would do very
laboriously what is done very quickly by a hatchet. The labour of using
a hatchet, and the material which it wastes, are saved twenty times over
by the saw. But when the more delicate operations of carpentry are
required--when the workman uses his planes, his rabbet-planes, his
fillisters, his bevels, and his centre-bits--what an infinitely greater
quantity of labour is economized, and how beautifully that work is
performed, which, without them, would be rough and imperfect! Every boy
of mechanical ingenuity has tried with his knife to make a boat; and
with a knife only it is the work of weeks. Give him a chisel, and a
gouge, and a vice to hold his wood, and the little boat is the work of a
day. Let a boy try to make a round wooden box, with a lid, having only
his knife, and he must be expert indeed to produce anything that will be
neat and serviceable. Give him a lathe and chisels, and he will learn to
make a tidy box in half an hour. Nothing but absolute necessity can
render it expedient to use an imperfect tool instead of a perfect. We
sometimes see exhibitions of carving, "all done with the common
penknife." Professor Willis has truly said, with reference to such weak
boasting, "So far from admiring, we should pity the vanity and folly of
such a display; and the more, if the work should show a natural aptitude
in the workman: for it is certain that, if he has made good work with a
bad tool, he would make better with a good one."
[Illustration: Boulton.]
The Emperor Maximilian, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
ordered a woodcut to be engraved that should represent the carpentry
operations of his time and country. This prince was, no doubt, proud of
the advance of Germany in the useful arts. If the President of the
United States were thus to record the advance of the republic of which
he is the chief, he would show us his saw-mills and his planing-mills.
The German carpenters, as we see, are reducing a great slab of wood into
shape by the saw and the adze. The Americans have planing-mills, with
cutters that make 4000 revolutions, and which plane boards eighteen feet
long at the rate of fifty feet, per minute; and while the face of the
board is planed, it is tongued and grooved at the same time--that is,
one board is made to fit closely into another. But the Americans carry
machinery much farther into the business of carpentry. Mr. Whitworth
tells us that "many works in various towns are occupied exclusively in
making doors, window-frames, or staircases, by means of self-acting
machinery, such as planing, tenoning, morticing, and jointing machines.
They are able to supply builders with various parts of the wood-work
required in building at a much cheaper rate than they can produce them
in their own workshops without the aid of such machinery."
[Illustration: Carpenters and their tools. (From an old German
woodcut.)]
By the use of those machines we are told that twenty men can make
panelled doors at the rate of a hundred a day--that is, one man can make
five doors. A panelled door is a very expensive part of an English
house; and so are window-frames and staircases. If doors and windows and
staircases can be made cheaper, more houses and better houses will be
built; and thus more carpenters will be employed in building than if
those parts of a house were made by hand. The same principle applies to
machines as to tools. If carpenters had not tools to make houses, there
would be few houses made; and those that were made would be as rough as
the hut of the savage who has no tools. The people would go without
houses, and the carpenter would go without work,--to say nothing of the
people, who would also go without work, that now make tools for the
carpenter.
We build in this country more of brick than of stone, because
brick-earth is found almost everywhere, and stone fit for building is
found only in particular districts. Bricks used to pay the state a duty
of five shillings and ten pence a thousand; and yet at the kilns they
were to be bought under forty shillings a thousand, which is less than a
halfpenny apiece. The government wisely resolved, in 1850, to repeal the
excise-duty on bricks. In 1845 the duty on glass was repealed. In 1847
the timber-duties were reduced; and in 1848 they were further reduced.
The ever-present necessities of the people--the absolute want of
house-accommodation for a population increasing so rapidly--rendered it
a paramount duty of the government no longer to let tax interfere with
the cheap building of houses. Every invention that adds to cheapness
acts in the same direction; for although the direct taxes cease to press
upon the various trades of building, the constant demand keeps bricks
and timber at a price almost as high as before the removal or mitigation
of the tax. But bricks, regarded as the production of a vast amount of
labour, are intrinsically cheap. And why? Because they are made by what
is truly machinery; as they were made three thousand years ago by the
Egyptians.
The clay is ground in a horse-mill; the wooden mould, in which every
brick is made singly, is a copying machine. One brick is exactly like
another brick. Every brick is of the form of the mould in which it is
made. Without the mould the workman could not make the brick of uniform
dimensions; and without this uniformity the after labour of putting
bricks together would be greatly increased. Without the mould the
workman could not form the bricks quickly;--his own labour would be
increased ten-fold. The simple machine of the mould not only gives
employment to a great many brickmakers who would not be employed at all,
but also to a great many bricklayers who would also want employment if
the original cost of production were so enormously increased.
[Illustration: Egyptian labour in the brick-field.]
There is another material for building which was little used at the
beginning of the century. The consumption of slate in London alone was,
in 1851, from thirty thousand to forty thousand tons per annum. The
quarries of Wales principally supply this immense quantity; but some
slates are shipped from Lancashire and Westmorland, and from Scotland
and Ireland. In the production of this one material, eight thousand
quarriers are employed in Great Britain. Slates are not only used for
roofing houses, but in slabs for cisterns and chimney-pieces. The great
increase of the supply of water to houses by machinery led to a demand
for a safer and cheaper material than lead for cisterns; and slate
supplied the want.
How great a variety of things are contained in an ironmonger's shop!
Half his store consists of tools of one sort or another to save labour;
and the other half consists of articles of convenience or elegance most
perfectly adapted to every possible want of the builder or the maker of
furniture. The uncivilized man is delighted when he obtains a nail,--any
nail. A carpenter and joiner, who supply the wants of a highly civilized
community, are not satisfied unless they have a choice of nails, from
the finest brad to the largest clasp-nail. A savage thinks a nail will
hold two pieces of wood together more completely than anything else in
the world. It is seldom, however, that he can afford to put it to such a
use. If it is large enough, he makes it into a chisel. An English joiner
knows that screws will do the work more perfectly in some cases than any
nail; and therefore we have as great a variety of screws as of nails.
The commonest house built in England has hinges, and locks, and bolts. A
great number are finished with ornamented knobs to door-handles, with
bells and bell-pulls, and a thousand other things that have grown up
into necessities, because they save domestic labour, and add to domestic
comfort. And many of these things really are necessities. M. Say, a
French writer, gives us an example of this; and as his story is an
amusing one, besides having a moral, we may as well copy it:--
"Being in the country," says he, "I had an example of one of those
small losses which a family is exposed to through negligence. For
the want of a latchet of small value, the wicket of a barn-yard
leading to the fields was often left open. Every one who went
through drew the door to: but as there was nothing to fasten the
door with, it was always left flapping; sometimes open, and
sometimes shut. So the cocks and hens, and the chickens, got out,
and were lost. One day a fine pig got out, and ran off into the
woods; and after the pig ran all the people about the place,--the
gardener, and the cook, and the dairymaid. The gardener first
caught sight of the runaway, and, hastening after it, sprained his
ankle; in consequence of which the poor man was not able to get
out of the house again for a fortnight. The cook found, when she
came back from pursuing the pig, that the linen she had left by
the fire had fallen down and was burning; and the dairymaid
having, in her haste, neglected to tie up the legs of one of her
cows, the cow had kicked a colt, which was in the same stable, and
broken its leg. The gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns,
to say nothing of the pain he suffered. The linen which was
burned, and the colt which was spoiled, were worth as much more.
Here, then, was caused a loss of forty crowns, as well as much
trouble, plague, and vexation, for the want of a latch which would
not have cost three-pence." M. Say's story is one of the many
examples of the truth of the old proverb--"for want of a nail the
shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of
a horse the man was lost."
Nearly all the great variety of articles in an ironmonger's shop are
made by machinery. Without machinery they could not be made at all, or
they would be sold at a price which would prevent them being commonly
used. Some of the finer articles, such as a Bramah lock, or a Chubb's
lock, could not be made at all, unless machinery had been called in to
produce that wonderful accuracy, through which no one of a hundred
thousand locks and keys shall be exactly like another lock and key. With
machinery, the manufacture of ironmongery employs large numbers of
artisans who would be otherwise unemployed. There are hundreds of
ingenious men at Birmingham who go into business with a capital acquired
by their savings as workmen, for the purpose of manufacturing some one
single article used in finishing a house, such as the knob of a lock.
All the heavy work of their trade is done by machinery. The cheapness of
the article creates workmen; and the savings of the workmen accumulate
capital to be expended in larger works, and to employ more workmen.
The furniture of a house, some may say--the chairs, and tables, and
bedsteads--is made nearly altogether by hand. True. But tools are
machines; and further, we owe it to what men generally call machinery,
that such furniture, even in the house of a very poor man, is more
tasteful in its construction, and of finer material, than that possessed
by a nobleman a hundred years ago. How is this? Machinery (that is
ships) has brought us much finer woods than we grow ourselves; and other
machinery (the sawing-mill) has taught us how to render that fine wood
very cheap, by economising the use of it. At a veneering-mill, that is,
a mill which cuts a mahogany log into thin plates, much more delicately
and truly, and in infinitely less time, than they could be cut by the
hand, two hundred and forty square feet of mahogany are cut by one
circular saw in one hour. A veneer, or thin plate, is cut off a piece of
mahogany, six feet six inches long, by twelve inches wide, in
twenty-five seconds. What is the consequence of this? A mahogany table
is made almost as cheap as a deal one; and thus the humblest family in
England may have some article of mahogany, if it be only a tea-caddy.
And let it not be said that deal furniture would afford as much
happiness; for a desire for comfort, and even for some degree of
elegance, gives a refinement to the character, and, in a certain degree,
raises our self-respect. Diogenes, who is said to have lived in a tub,
was a great philosopher; but it is not necessary to live in a tub to be
wise and virtuous. Nor is that the likeliest plan for becoming so. The
probability is, that a man will be more wise and virtuous in proportion
as he strives to surround himself with the comforts and decent ornaments
of his station.
It is a circumstance worthy to be borne in mind by all who seek the
improvement of the people, that whatever raises not only the standard of
comfort, but of taste, has direct effects of utility which might not at
first be perceived. We will take the case of paper-hangings. Their very
name shows that they were a substitute for the arras, or hangings, of
former times, which were suspended from the ceilings to cover the
imperfections of the walls. This was the case in the houses of the rich.
The poor man in his hut had no such device, but must needs "patch a hole
to keep the wind away." Till 1830, what, in the language of the excise,
was called stained paper, was enormously dear, for a heavy tax greatly
impeded its production. When it was dear, many walls were stencilled or
daubed over with a rude pattern. The paper-hangings themselves were not
only dear, but offensive to the eye, from their want of harmony in
colour and of beauty in design. The old papers remained on walls for
half a century; and it was not till paper-hangings became a penny a
yard, or even a halfpenny, that the landlord or tenant of a small house
thought of re-papering. The eye at length got offended by the dirty and
ugly old paper. The walls were recovered with neat patterns. But what
had offended the eye had been prejudicial to the health. The old papers,
that were saturated with damp from without and bad air from within, were
recipients and holders of fever. When the bed-room became neat it also
became healthful. The duty on paper was 1-3/4_d._ per yard, when the
paper-hanger used to paste together yard after yard, made by hand at the
paper-mill, and stamped by block. The paper-machine which gave long
rolls of paper enabled hangings to be printed by cylinder, as calico is
printed. The absence of tax, and the improvement of the manufacture by
machinery, have enabled every man to repaper his filthy and noxious room
for almost as little as its whitewashing or colouring will cost him.
Look, again, at the carpet. Contrast it in all its varieties, from the
gorgeous Persian to the neat Kidderminster, with the rushes of our
forefathers, amidst which the dogs hunted for the bones that had been
thrown upon the floor. The clean rushes were a rare luxury, never
thought of but upon some festive occasion. The carpet manufacture was
little known in England at the beginning of the last century; as we may
judge from our still calling one of the most commonly-woven English
carpets by the name of "Brussels." There are twelve thousand persons now
employed in the manufacture of carpets in Great Britain. The Scotch
carpet is the cheapest of the produce of the carpet-loom; and it may be
sufficient to show the connection of machinery with the commonest as
well as the finest of these productions by an engraving of the loom. One
of the most beautiful inventions of man, the Jacquard apparatus (so
called from the name of its inventor), is extensively used in every
branch of the carpet manufacture.
[Illustration: Scotch carpet-loom.]
Let us see what mechanical ingenuity can effect in producing the most
useful and ornamental articles of domestic life from the common earth
which may be had for digging. Without chemical and mechanical skill we
should neither have Glass nor Pottery; and without these articles, how
much lowered beneath his present station, in point of comfort and
convenience, would be the humblest peasant in the land!
The cost of glass is almost wholly the wages of labour, as the materials
are very abundant, and may be said to cost almost nothing; and glass is
much more easily worked than any other substance.
Hard and brittle as it is, it has only to be heated, and any form that
the workman pleases may be given to it. It melts; but when so hot as to
be more susceptible of form than wax or clay, or anything else that we
are acquainted with, it still, retains a degree of toughness and
capability of extension superior to that of many solids, and of every
liquid; when it has become red-hot all its brittleness is gone, and a
man may do with it as he pleases. He may press it into a mould; he may
take a lump of it upon the end of an iron tube, and, by blowing into the
tube with his mouth (keeping the glass hot all the time), he may swell
it out into a hollow ball. He may mould that ball into a bottle; he may
draw it out lengthways into a pipe; he may cut it open into a cup; he
may open it with shears, whirl it round with the edge in the fire, and
thus make it into a circular plate. He may also roll it out into sheets,
and spin it into threads as fine as a cobweb. In short, so that he keeps
it hot, and away from substances by which it may be destroyed, he can do
with it just as he pleases. All this, too, may be done, and is done with
large quantities every day, in less time than any one would take to give
an account of it. In the time that the readiest speaker and clearest
describer were telling how one quart bottle is made, an ordinary set of
workmen would make some dozens of bottles.
But though the materials of glass are among the cheapest of all
materials, and the substance the most obedient to the hand of the
workman, there is a great deal of knowledge necessary before glass can
be made. It can be made profitably only at large manufactories, and
those manufactories must be kept constantly at work night and day.
Glass does not exist in a natural form in many places. The sight of
native crystal, probably, led men to think originally of producing a
similar substance by art. The fabrication of glass is of high antiquity.
The historians of China, Japan, and Tartary speak of glass manufactories
existing there more than two thousand years ago. An Egyptian mummy two
or three thousand years old, which was exhibited in London, was
ornamented with little fragments of coloured glass. The writings of
Seneca, a Roman author who lived about the time of our Saviour, and of
St. Jerome, who lived five hundred years afterwards, speak of glass
being used in windows. It is recorded that the Prior of the convent of
Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, in the year 674, sent for French workmen to
glaze the windows of his chapel. In the twelfth century the art of
making glass was known in this country. Yet it is very doubtful whether
glass was employed in windows, excepting those of churches and the
houses of the very rich, for several centuries afterwards; and it is
quite certain that the period is comparatively recent, as we have
shown,[21] when glass windows were used for excluding cold and admitting
light in the houses of the great body of the people, or that glass
vessels were to be found amongst their ordinary conveniences. The
manufacture of glass in England now employs twelve thousand people,
because the article, being cheap, is of universal use. The government
has wisely taken off the duty on glass; and as the article becomes still
cheaper, so will the people employed in its manufacture become more
numerous.
Machinery, as we commonly understand the term, is not much employed in
the manufacture of glass; but chemistry, which saves as much labour as
machinery, and performs work which no machinery could accomplish, is
very largely employed. The materials of which glass is made are sand, or
earth, and vegetable matter, such as kelp or burnt seaweed, which
yield alkali. For the finest glass, sand is brought from great
distances, even from Australia. These materials are put in a state of
fusion by the heat of an immense furnace. It requires a red heat of
sixty hours to prepare the material of a common bottle. Nearly all
glass, except glass for mirrors, is what is called blown. The machinery
is very simple, consisting only of an iron pipe and the lungs of the
workman; and the process is perfected in all its stages by great
subdivision of labour, producing extreme neatness and quickness in all
persons employed in it. For instance, a wine-glass is made thus:--One
man (the blower) takes up the proper quantity of glass on his pipe, and
blows it to the size wanted for the bowl; then he whirls it round on a
reel, and draws out the stalk. Another man (the footer) blows a smaller
and thicker ball, sticks it to the end of the stalk of the blower's
glass, and breaks his pipe from it. The blower opens that ball, and
whirls the whole round till the foot is formed. Then a boy dips a small
rod in the glass-pot, and sticks it to the very centre of the foot. The
blower, still turning the glass round, takes a bit of iron, wets it in
his mouth, and touches the ball at the place where he wishes the mouth
of the glass to be. The glass separates, and the boy takes it to the
finisher, who turns the mouth of it; and, by a peculiar swing that he
gives it round his head, makes it perfectly circular, at the same time
that it is so hardened as to be easily snapped from the rod. Lastly, the
boy takes it on a forked iron to the annealing furnace, where it is
cooled gradually.
[Illustration: Glass-cutting.]
All these operations require the greatest nicety in the workmen; and
would take a long time in the performance, and not be very neatly done
after all, if they were all done by one man. But the quickness with
which they are done by the division of labour is perfectly wonderful.
The cheapness of glass for common use, which cheapness is produced by
chemical knowledge and the division of labour, has set the ingenuity of
man to work to give greater beauty to glass as an article of luxury. The
employment of sharp-grinding wheels, put in motion by a treadle, and
used in conjunction with a very nice hand, produces _cut_ glass. Cut
glass is now comparatively so cheap, that scarcely a family of the
middle ranks is without some beautiful article of this manufacture.
[Illustration: Sheet-glass making.]
But the repeal of the duty on glass, and of the tax upon windows, has
had the effect of improving the architecture of our houses to a degree
which no one would have thought possible who had not studied how the
operation of a tax impedes production. We have now plate-glass of the
largest dimensions, giving light and beauty to our shops; and
sheet-glass, nearly as effective as plate, adorning our private
dwellings. Sheet-glass, in the making of which an amount of ingenuity is
exercised which would have been thought impossible in the early stages
of glass-making, is doing for the ordinary purposes of building what
plate-glass did formerly for the rich. A portion of melted glass,
weighing twelve or fourteen pounds, is, by the exercise of this skill,
converted into a ball, and then into a cylinder, and then into a flat
plate; and thus two crystal palaces have been built, which have consumed
as much glass, weight by weight, as was required for all the houses in
one-fourth of the area of Great Britain in the beginning of the century.
[Illustration: Plate-glass Factory.]
There are two kinds of pottery--common potters' ware, and porcelain. The
first is a pure kind of brick; and the second a mixture of very fine
brick and glass. Almost all nations have some knowledge of pottery; and
those of the very hot countries are sometimes satisfied with dishes
formed by their fingers without any tool, and dried by the heat of the
sun. In England pottery of every sort, and in all countries good
pottery, must be baked or burnt in a kiln of some kind or other.
Vessels for holding meat and drink are almost as indispensable as the
meat and drink themselves; and the two qualities in them that are most
valuable are, that they shall be cheap, and easily cleaned. Pottery, as
it is now produced in England, possesses both of these qualities in the
very highest degree. A white basin, having all the useful properties of
the most costly vessels, may be purchased for twopence at the door of
any cottage in England. There are very few substances used in human food
that have any effect upon these vessels; and it is only rinsing them in
hot water, and wiping them with a cloth, and they are clean.
The making of an earthen bowl would be to a man who made a first attempt
no easy matter. Let us see how it is done so that it can be carried two
or three hundred miles and sold for twopence, leaving a profit to the
maker, and the wholesale and retail dealer.
The common pottery is made of pure clay and pure flint. The flint is
found only in the chalk counties, and the fine clays in Devonshire and
Dorsetshire; so that, with the exception of some clay for coarse ware,
the materials out of which the pottery is made have to be carried from
the South of England to Staffordshire, where the potteries are
situated.
The great advantage that Staffordshire possesses is abundance of coal to
burn the ware and supply the engines that grind the materials.
The clay is worked in water by various machinery till it contains no
single piece large enough to be visible to the eye. It is like cream in
consistence. The flints are burned. They are first ground in a mill, and
then worked in water in the same manner as the clay, the large pieces
being returned a second time to the mill.
When both are fine enough, one part of flint is mixed with five or six
of clay; the whole is worked to a paste, after which it is kneaded
either by the hands or a machine; and when the kneading is completed, it
is ready for the potter.
He has a little wheel which lies horizontally. He lays a portion of clay
on the centre of the wheel, puts one hand, or finger if the vessel is to
be a small one, in the middle, and his other hand on the outside, and,
as the wheel turns rapidly round, draws up a hollow vessel in an
instant. With his hands, or with very simple tools, he brings it to the
shape he wishes, cuts it from the wheel with a wire, and a boy carries
it off. The potter makes vessel after vessel, as fast as they can be
carried away.
[Illustration: The English Potter.]
The potter's wheel is an instrument of the highest antiquity. In the
book of Ecclesiasticus we read--"So doth the potter, sitting at his
work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully
set at his work, and maketh all his work by number: he fashioneth the
clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he
applieth himself to lead it over, and is diligent to make clean the
furnace."--(c. xxxix., v. 29, 30.) At the present day the oriental
potter stands in a pit, in which the lower machinery of his wheel is
placed. He works as the potter of the ancient Hebrews.
As the potter produces the vessels they are partially dried; after which
they are turned on a lathe and smoothed with a wet sponge when
necessary. Only round vessels can be made on the wheel; those of other
shapes are made in moulds of plaster. Handles and other solid parts are
pressed in moulds, and stuck on while they and the vessels are still
wet.
[Illustration: Potter's wheel of modern Egypt.]
The vessels thus formed are first dried in a stove, and, when dry,
burnt in a kiln. They are in this state called biscuit. If they are
finished white, they are glazed by another process. If they are figured,
the patterns are engraved on copper, and printed on coarse paper rubbed
with soft soap. The ink is made of some colour that will stand the fire,
ground with earthy matter. These patterns are moistened and applied to
the porous biscuit, which absorbs the colour, and the paper is washed
off, leaving the pattern on the biscuit.
[Illustration: Moulds for porcelain, and casts.]
The employment of machinery to do all the heavy part of the work, the
division of labour, by which each workman acquires wonderful dexterity
in his department, and the conducting of the whole upon a large scale,
give bread to a vast number of people, make the pottery cheap, and
enable it to be sold at a profit in almost every market in the world. It
is not ninety years since the first pottery of a good quality was
extensively made in England; and before that time what was used was
imported,--the common ware from Delft, in Holland (from which it
acquired its name), and the porcelain from China.
[Illustration: Mill-room, where the Ingredients for Pottery are mixed.]
The history of the manufacture of porcelain affords us two examples
of persevering ingenuity--of intense devotion to one object--which have
few parallels in what some may consider the higher walks of art. Palissy
and Wedgwood are names that ought to be venerated by every artisan. The
one bestowed upon France her manufacture of porcelain, so long the
almost exclusive admiration of the wealthy and the tasteful. The other
gave to England her more extensive production of earthenware, combining
with great cheapness the imitation of the most beautiful forms of
ancient art. The potteries of Staffordshire may be almost said to have
been created by Josiah Wedgwood. In his workshops we may trace the
commencement of a system of improved design which made his ware so
superior to any other that had been produced in Europe for common uses.
In other branches of manufacture this system found few imitators; and we
were too long contented, in our textile fabrics especially, with
patterns that were unequalled for ugliness--miserable imitations of
foreign goods, or combinations of form and colour outraging every
principle of art. We have seen higher things attempted in the present
day; but for the greater part of a century the wares of the
Staffordshire potter were the only attempts to show that taste was as
valuable a quality in association with the various articles which are
required for domestic use, as good materials and clean workmanship. It
was long before we discovered that taste had an appreciable commercial
value.
[Illustration: Wedgwood.]
We think that, with regard to buildings and the furniture of buildings,
it will be admitted that machinery, in the largest sense of the word,
has increased the means of every man to procure a shelter from the
elements, and to give him a multitude of conveniences within that
shelter. Most will agree that a greater number of persons are profitably
employed in affording this shelter and these conveniences, with tools
and machines, than if they possessed no such mechanical aids to their
industry. In 1851 there were a hundred and eighty-two thousand
carpenters and joiners; thirty-one thousand brickmakers; sixty-eight
thousand bricklayers; sixty-two thousand painters, plumbers, and
glaziers; eighteen thousand plasterers; a hundred thousand masons (some
of whom were paviours); forty-two thousand glass and earthenware makers;
besides an almost innumerable variety of subordinate trades--engaged in
the production of houses, their fittings, and their utensils.
[21] Chapter viii. pp. 85 and 87.