Mr. Gillott, who is one of the very first in the steel-pen trade, rose by his own mechanical talents and prudent industry from a very humble station. He was, we believe, a working mechanic, and invented the first machine for making steel pens, which for a long period he worked with his own hands; he makes a noble use of the wealth he has acquired; his manufactory is in every respect a model for the imitation of his townsmen, as we shall show when we say a few words about the condition of the working population; a liberal patron of our best modern artists, he has made a collection of their works, which is open to the inspection of any respectable stranger.
The following description of his manufactory, which is not open to strangers without special cause shown, will be found interesting in a social as well as a commercial and mechanical point of view.
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GILLOTT’S STEEL-PEN FACTORY.—In the first department, sheets of steel received from Sheffield are passed through rolling mills driven by steam, under charge of men and boys, until they are reduced to the thinness of a steel pen, to the length of about thirty inches, and the breadth of about three inches. These steel slips are conveyed to a large roomy workshop, with windows at both sides, scrupulously clean, where are seated in double rows an army of women and girls, from fourteen to forty years of age, who, unlike most of the women employed in Birmingham manufactories, are extremely neat in person and in dress. A hand press is opposite each; the only sound to be heard is the bump of the press, and the clinking of the small pieces of metal as they fall from the block into the receptacle prepared for them. One girl of average dexterity is able to punch out one hundred gross per day. Each division is superintended by a toolmaker, whose business it is to keep the punches and presses in good working condition, to superintend the work generally, and to keep order among the workpeople.
The next operation is to place the blank in a concave die, on which a slight touch from a concave punch produces the shape of a semitube. The slits and apertures which increase the elasticity of the pen, and the maker’s or vendor’s name, are produced by a similar tool.
When complete all but the slit, the pens are soft and pliable, and may be bent or twisted in the hand like a piece of thin lead. They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, rapidly revolving, extracts the last drop of moisture from the pens, on a principle that has been successfully applied to drying sugar, salt, and a vast number of other articles of the same nature. By this invention Mr. Gillott saves in oil from £200 to £300 a-year.
The pens having been dried are placed in other cylinders, and polished by mutual friction, produced by reverberatory motion. They are then roasted or annealed, so as to procure the requisite temper and colour, whether bronze or blue. The last process is that of slitting, which is done by women, with a sharp cutting tool. One girl, with a quick practised finger, can slit as many as 28,800 pens in a day. They are now ready for the young girls whose duty it is to count and pack them in boxes or grosses for the wholesale market.
It has lately been stated by one of a deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the subject of the paper duties, that steel pens for the French market are sent in bags instead of arranged on cards to the loss of paper makers and female labour, in consequence of the heavy excise duty on card board.
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BRASSWORK.—Birmingham is by far the greatest producer of ornamental and useful brasswork. In the directory will be found a list which affords some idea of the number and varieties of the brass trade, as all these employ a certain number of working hands, varying from two or three apprentices to many hundred skilled workmen. It includes bell-founders, bottle-jack makers, brass founders, bronze powder makers, brass casters, clasp makers, coach lamp furniture, ornament makers, cock founders, compass makers, copper-smiths, cornice pole makers, curtain ring, bronze wire fender, gas-fitting, lamps, chandeliers (partly brass, partly glass), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern, letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military ornament, brass nail, saddlers’ ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers, tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other trades less directly connected with brass.