The boilermakers are a bold and hardy class, sturdy in their views and outlook, and very independent. As in the case of the fitters, smiths, and other journeymen, they have travelled far and wide and become acquainted with many workshops and sets of conditions. Very often they will have tramped the whole country, from end to end, in search of employment, for though as a class they are indispensable their ranks are often over-crowded, and when trade is slack the services of many of them are dispensed with. As with the majority of other journeymen, if they are thrown out of employment, though they may be idle for a long time and reduced to dire straights, they seldom deign to do other work, but shift from place to place and beg food along the highways and through the villages. Though verging on starvation they cannot, even for a short period, be prevailed upon to abandon the idea of their trade, but still crowd around the factory doors and hope for a revival of the industry.
A short time ago a party of boilermen, who had been discharged from the town, made weekly visits to the villages round about pretending that they had walked from Sunderland and Newcastle — where a big strike had been declared — and calling themselves a deputation empowered to collect money for their mates at home in the North. The spokesman, a voluble and impudent scoundrel, told impressive stories of hardships and suffering and drew a great many coins from the credulous and sympathetic rustics. By and by, however, a second party, with exactly the same story, came on the scene and professed to be highly indignant on being told that they had been anticipated in their office as collectors. The second batch of visitors did not solicit money; they demanded it, and any who refused were subjected to abuse and threatening language. At last the suspicions of the villagers were aroused. They doubted the genuineness of the tales of distress and of the long march from far-off Sunderland, and closed their doors to the importunate strangers. Very soon trade in the railway town revived; the majority of the men were reinstated and the countryside knew them no more.
The iron foundry is but a few yards from the boiler shed; you may very quickly be introduced to it, with the noise of the hammers and the clatter of the pneumatic apparatus still ringing loudly in your ears. After the din of the boiler shop the quietude of the foundry will be the more remarkable. Here are no plates to be beaten, no rapidly revolving pulleys and shafting, and no uproar. All that can be heard is the dull roar of the blast furnace half-way up the shed, and the subdued noise of the traversing table in the roof above you. The floor is of soft, yielding sand, similar to that of which the moulds for the castings are made, and it is noiseless under the feet. The men sit or kneel on the ground, with their patterns beside them, and construct the duplicates to receive the molten metal. As soon as the moulds are finished the dark, grimy labourers bring the molten liquid, either carrying it in a thick iron vessel lined with firebricks and having a spout on one side — as you would carry a stretcher — or wheeling it along in a big cauldron that swings like a pot, and pour it in through a small space left for that purpose.
The chief interest to the visitor centres in the furnace that contains the molten fluid. This is a large, cylindrical structure, enclosed in a steel frame, towering high into the roof and emitting a terrific heat all around. Near the top is a large platform, reached by an iron stairway, up which you are invited to mount by the grimy furnaceman, more often in jest than in earnest, for the heat there is overpowering. The handrail of the stairway seems nearly red-hot, and the air, puffed out from the furnace, strikes you full in the face, so that you are almost suffocated with it. On the platform is the feeding-place where the fuel and metal are charged — coke to produce the heat and material for the molten fluid, either old broken up castings, or bars of new pig iron. Both iron and coke are thrown in and fused up together. The fluid metal collects and flows out in front, while the debris of the coke — what little remains after combustion — is ejected through a small aperture at the rear. The iron, by its weight, sinks to the floor of the furnace, while the filth and ashes of the coke remain floating on the top — there is no fear of the two intermixing. An iron conduit, working on a hinge, conveys the liquid metal into the pots for the moulds. When the vessels are filled the shoot is raised, and this stops back the metal that goes on accumulating till the next pot is in position.
There is a great attractiveness in the operation of filling the vessels with the molten fluid that, yellowish-white in colour, flows like water from the interior, sparkling and spluttering as it drops into the receptacle beneath. The heat is very intense at all times, and the toil continuous; hundreds of moulds are waiting to be filled from the furnace. Having occasion to visit the shed recently I pushed a way through the crowd of labourers waiting to have their pots filled and stood beside the furnaceman as he was running out the metal. He took no notice of my presence, but kept his eyes fixed upon the conduit.
“Very hot to-day!” I shouted.
“Yes, ’tis,” he replied, without turning round.
“How much metal does the furnace hold?”
“Don’ know.”
“What’s your heat?”