A still more satisfactory view of an eighteenth century foundry is to be found in the Universal Magazine of 1750. This engraving, of which our frontispiece is a facsimile, represents the interior of Caslon’s foundry, with the processes of casting, breaking-off, rubbing, setting-up, and dressing, all in operation. The casting is specially interesting, in the light of Moxon’s graphic account of the attitudes and contortions of the caster. Unlike their French brethren, each of Caslon’s casters stands partitioned off from his neighbour, with a furnace and pan to himself. One of them is dipping his ladle in the pot for a new cast; the next holds his mould lowered, at the commencement of a “pour”; the third has evidently completed the upward jerk necessary to force the metal into the matrix; and the fourth, with his mould again lowered, is apparently throwing out the type and preparing for the next casting.

A set of three views of the interior of a French foundry, from an Encyclopædia[191] of about this date, presents a few interesting points of contrast between foreign and English methods. In the first view the process of punch-cutting is displayed.[192] One man is finishing a punch with his file; another is striking a counter-punch (with perhaps undue energy) into the steel face of a punch; while the third, at a large forge, is hammering a piece of steel in readiness for the engraver. The second view shows metal making, casting, breaking-off, and {117} rubbing, in operation. There are two men at the large furnace, one watching the melting of antimony in a crucible, the other pouring off the mixed metal into ingots. At the small metal pot with three divisions, in the centre of the room, are three casters, one of whom is about to cast, another has finished his “throw,” and the third is loosening his spring so as to open the mould. At the table in the rear sit two girls, one breaking off, the other rubbing. The third view represents a dressing-room, where a girl is setting up the rubbed types on a stick. The dresser is ploughing the “break” from the foot of a stick of types, which is placed in the blocks, not lengthways along the bench, but across it. An apprentice sitting at the table completes the dressing, holding one end of the stick tilted while he passes his scraper over the front and back of the row of types. Drawings of all the tools and parts of tools used in typefounding complete the illustration.

Fournier, the French Moxon, in 1764 devoted the latter part of vol. i of his Manuel Typographique[193] to the appliances and instruments used in type-casting. His work enters in detail into the form and use of every tool used in every department of the trade, from the cutting of the punch to the storage of the finished types, giving careful and accurate woodcuts of each. Allowing for a few national peculiarities, and certain improvements in casting, there is scarcely anything but the date of the book to distinguish it from a mechanical handbook to typefounding in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The operations of punch-cutting and justifying appear to have been kept a mystery from the earliest days of the trade. To lay minds, the one work of the founder was to cast types; but the preliminary operations on which his whole reputation as a founder depended, were little understood by any but the founder himself. And even he, as in the case of the first two Caslons, carried on this part of the mystery stealthily, and with closed doors even against his own apprentices. In many cases, especially with the originators of the great foundries, Caslon, Cottrell and Jackson, it was the master himself who designed and cut his own punches. It was not till the unusual demand for artists at the close of last century broke down this exclusiveness that outsiders arose to work for the trade in general. And even these, it was the policy and endeavour of each founder to attach to himself, treating him as a gentleman at large, and free from the obligations imposed on his other workmen.

The Rules and Regulations of Thorne’s Foundry, printed about the year 1806, give an interesting glimpse into the internal economy of a foundry of that period. After fixing the prices to be paid for work (for casting, rubbing, and kerning were {118} all paid by “piece”), they provide that the dressers shall have 25s. a week, “abiding by the old custom of leaving work at four o’clock on Mondays. Each man to dress after four casters.” The fines for “foot-ale” imposed on new hands are ordered to be deposited with the master, who is to keep an account of the same, and divide it equally among the men at Christmas. The foundry hours are from six in the morning to eight in the evening in summer, and from seven to eight in winter, “beginning when candle-light commences.” The dressers are to work from seven to eight in summer, and eight to eight in winter. Any man losing or damaging a mould, matrix, or tool, to make good the loss on the following Saturday. Any man leaving his lamp or candle alight after hours is to pay 6d., and the master for a similar offence is to fine himself 1s. Rubbers must grind their stones once a fortnight, “if requested to do so either by the master or foreman.” No work to be taken out of the foundry. Casters and rubbers must take their turn at carrying in metal. Breaking-off and setting-up boys shall earn 10d. a week for each man they set-up after. Many of these customs are traditional, and survive at the present time.

Conservatism, indeed, has been a marked feature in the history of British letter-founding. Between 1637 and 1837 the number of important foundries rarely exceeded the limit prescribed by the Star Chamber decree of the former year. The methods and practice of the art, as we have seen, remained virtually unchanged during the whole period. The traditional customs, the trade argot, the relations of men to men, and men to masters, even the tricks and gestures of the caster, suffered nothing by the lapse of two centuries. The relations of the founders among themselves during the period underwent more vicissitudes. At all times jealous of their mystery, they mistrusted in turn the printers and one another. As the new school of Caslon and his apprentices rose up to oust the old Dutch school of James, mutual antagonism was the order of the day. The literary duel between the Caslons and the Frys was perhaps the least injurious outcome of this spirit. This antagonism resolved itself, at the close of last century, into a combination of London founders against their rising Scotch competitors. An Association was formed in 1793, which continued for three years. In 1799 it was re-formed, and this time lasted four years; and again in 1809 it was revived and continued till 1820, when it terminated. In the early days of this Association the lady Caslons took a prominent part in its deliberations, which, however, frequently consisted of little more than the imposition of fines for non-attendance. The prices of type during this period, chiefly owing to the fluctuations in the value of metals during the French war, were constantly changing. Pica in 1793 was 1s. 1 ½d. a pound, in 1800 1s. 4d., in 1810 3s., and in 1816 (after the price of antimony had gone down from £400 to £200 a {119} ton), 2s. The Scotch founders, however, joined presently by the Sheffield houses, continued to underbid the London founders in their own market; and at one time a combination of all the English houses existed in opposition to the unfortunate new foundry of the Frenchman, Pouchée.

Our survey does not extend beyond the year 1830, but before concluding this hasty outline of the progress of letter-founding as a mechanical trade, it will be interesting to notice the gradual changes in the process of casting which led to the final abandonment of the venerable hand-mould in favour of machinery.