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.
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.