Mind and Hand: Manual Training the Chief Factor in Education

by Charles H. Ham

Now the school-room is a smithy and yet it is not. It is neither very hot nor very smoky, for there is an exhaust fan in operation which vitalizes the circulation. But the atmosphere resounds with the clangorous strokes of a dozen sledges, mingled with the sullen roar of as many forge-fires; and there are traces of soot on the walls, and pale smoke-wreaths creep along the ceilings, and hide in corners, and circle about columns in fantastic shapes. It is a smithy, but a smithy adapted, by its extraordinary neatness, to the manufacture of watch-springs, palate-arbors, and Damascus blades.

The faces of the students are aglow with the flush of health-giving exercise; their brows are “wet with honest sweat,” their heart-beats are full and strong, and the crimson life-currents surge hotly through every vein to their very finger-tips. They strike out the anvil chorus in all the keys and in every measure of the scale, and the burning sparks fly whizzing through the air.

At a sign from the instructor there is a pause. The students stand at ease and the work is inspected. This is the time for more questions if any student is in doubt; and the rest of five minutes affords opportunity for a brief lecture on the subject of the early history of the fraternity of smiths.

Mythology gives the highest place in its pantheon to Vulcan, the God of Fire. For notwithstanding he is represented as bearded, covered with dust and soot, blowing the fires of his forges and surrounded by his chief ministers, the cyclops, he is given Venus to wife and made the father of Cupid. Among the Scythians the iron sword was a god. When Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians they made captives of all the smiths and other craftsmen of the city—a more grievous act than the thousand million dollar tribute levied upon France by Germany at the close of the war of 1870. For to be deprived of the use of iron is to be relegated to a state of barbarism.

The vulgar accounted for the keenness of the first sword-blades on the score of magic, and the praises of the smiths who forged were sung with the chiefs of chivalry who wielded them. So highly was this mysterious power regarded by Tancred, the crusader, that in return for the present of King Arthur’s sword, Excalibar, by Richard I., he paid for it with “four great ships and fifteen galleys.”

The smith was a mighty man in England in the early time. “In the royal court of Wales he sat in the great hall with the king and queen, and was entitled to a draught of every kind of liquor served.” His person was sacred; his calling placed him above the law. He was necessary to the feudal state; he forged swords “on the temper of which life, honor, and victory in battle depended.” The smith, after the Norman invasion, gained in importance in England. He was the chief man of the village, its oracle, and the most cunning workman of the time. His name descended to more families than that of any other profession—for the origin of the name Smith is the hot, dusty, smoky smithy, and however it may be disguised in the spelling, it is entitled to the proud distinction which its representatives sometimes seek to conceal.

Mr. Smiles draws the following graphic picture of the versatility of the smith of the Middle Ages:

“The smith’s tools were of many sorts, but the chief were his hammer, pincers, chisel, tongs, and anvil. It is astonishing what a variety of articles he turned out of his smithy by the help of these rude implements. In the tooling, chasing, and consummate knowledge of the capabilities of iron he greatly surpassed the modern workman. The numerous exquisite specimens of his handicraft which exist in our old gate-ways, church doors, altar railings, and ornamented dogs and andirons, still serve as types for continual reproduction. He was, indeed, the most ‘cunning workman’ of his time. But besides all this he was an engineer. If a road had to be made, or a stream embanked, or a trench dug, he was invariably called upon to provide the tools, and often to direct the work. He was also the military engineer of his day, and as late as the reign of Edward III. we find the king repeatedly sending for smiths from the Forest of Dean to act as engineers for the royal army at the siege of Berwick.”

But the most signal triumph of the art, both of the smelter and the smith, is found in the famous swords of Damascus, whose edge and temper were so keen and perfect that they would sever a gauze veil floating in the air, or crash through bones and helmets without sustaining injury. These Damascus blades, long renowned in the East, but first encountered by Europeans during the crusades, in the hands of the followers of Mahomet, were made of Indian steel or “wootz.” This steel, produced in the form of little cakes weighing about two pounds each, in the neighborhood of the city of Golconda, in Hindostan, was transported on the backs of camels two thousand miles to the city of Damascus, and there converted into swords, sabres, and scimitars.

This smith’s work has never been excelled, if equalled. Millions of dollars have been expended in efforts to produce the equal of Indian steel. Among the investigators of the subject the most noted was a Russian general, Anossoff, who died in 1851. His experiments were of a very elaborate and exhaustive character. They occupied a lifetime, and resulted in the establishment of works in the Ural Mountains, on the Siberian border, for the production of Damascus steel by a process of his own invention. After General Anossoff’s death the quality of the steel produced at his works deteriorated.