Bear in mind that I have shown neither of these locks as samples of high-class goods, but as samples of the furniture fixed in the houses of the working and middle classes of this country; and when I tell you that the American lock, fitted with the mineral furniture, is at least 25 per cent cheaper than the English abortion I have shown to you, you will begin to realize what our English markets have to fear from the Americans.
Here is a common, cheap English mortise lock, and you will naturally ask why the outside of this lock is ground bright, when it is buried in the door and never seen except it has to be taken out for repairs. I have asked the same question, and for 20 years have paused for a reply. This lock is not reversible, the follower is not bushed, and the inside is rough and cheap. Contrast it with this neat American lock, and notice again the bosses to receive the wear; notice also that the bolts are brass; the latch-bolt is, of course, reversible—I never saw an American lock which was not. The body of the lock is cast iron; and, seeing that there are no strains upon a mortise lock, it is quite as good as if it was of wrought iron. There is no unnecessary grinding, but the iron is japanned, and the japan is as much superior to the English compound as is the lacquer ware of the Japanese to that which is executed in Birmingham and palmed upon the ignorant buyer as Japanese work. In fact, as you can see for yourselves, the English japan looks almost like gas tar beside the American. This American lock is a two-lever, and there is no sham about the key, which is made of some kind of white metal and is small and neat. This lock is only 2½ per cent higher in price than the English.
Before leaving these locks, let me say a word or two upon the relative wear upon their different portions, and their relative safety. The English maker appears to ignore the fact that nineteen-twentieths of the wear of a lock is upon the latch, spindle, and follower; the amount of actual wear upon the rest of the lock is comparatively slight. Let any of you consider the number of times you open and close a door, compared with the times you lock it. Our drawbacks and large rim locks are used about once a day; the great bulk of our mortise locks are not used, except as latches, once a week. One argument used by our manufacturers against the American lock is that, being made by machinery, there is necessarily a great duplication of parts, and a consequent lowering of the standard of security; while their own locks, being made by hand, are not alike, and therefore cannot be so easily opened.
Let any of you put this argument to proof, by trying how many front doors you can open with one key in a row of workmen's dwellings such as are found in Manchester, ranging up to £25 rentals, and the result will astonish you. If our own manufacturers made their locks sufficiently well to give this security, there would be some force in what they say; but so far as security is concerned, they might as well make their locks by machinery as make them in the way they do.
I now show you two thumb latches, one of American and one of English make. Notice the general finish of the American latch; the shape, the mode of construction, and everything about it proves that brains were used when it was designed and made. The English "Norfolk latch," on the other hand, is ill designed, uncomfortable in hand, clumsily finished, the japan hangs about it in lumps, the latch is clumsy, the catch is clumsier, and the keeper, a rough piece of hoop iron, seems as if designed to "keep" the latch from doing its duty. In this case the American latch is 25 per cent cheaper than the English one; and the English latch is of the same pattern as the one that was in use when I was a boy, only that it is a greatly inferior article.
I will now introduce you to the well known nuisance which we have been accustomed to use for fastening our cupboard doors—the cupboard turn—and without further comment, ask you to compare it with this neat and simple latch of American make, costing about 5 per cent more, twice as efficacious, and five times as durable. In this case no improvement has been made in the English fastener. It is just as it was when I went to the trade, about 28 years ago, and although many attempts have been made to improve it they have added so much to its cost as to prevent the improved articles from coming into general use.
The difference between the English and American inventor and designer seems to consist in this—that while an Englishman devotes all his energies to the improvement of an existing shape, the American throws the old article under his bench and commences de novo.
I think I have made out a case against the English hardware manufacturer, but when I have pointed these matters out to merchants and ironmongers, I have been met with various reasons for this manifest inferiority. I do not know how far these excuses may be valid, but one man says that the reason, as regards locks, is somewhat as follows: The locksmiths of the district wherein they are made in many cases work at their own homes; one man making one part of a lock, while other men make other parts. This goes on generation after generation, and the men become mere machines, not knowing how the entire lock is constructed, and not caring to know. Another attributes it to the influence of the trades-unions, and says that if a manufacturer wants a different kind of lock, the price for the work is immediately put higher, even though the actual labor may not be increased. A third says it is due to the drunkenness of the hands, and their consequent poverty and physical and social demoralization, which prevents them from rising to such an intellectual level as will enable them to see the evils of their system, and adopt the right means to remove them. A fourth boldly says, "We make these goods because our customers want them." How far the reasons assigned by the first three are correct I am unable to say, but for the fourth, the extent to which the builders of England have patronized the Americans is a complete answer.
This defense, "Our customers want them," is as old as the hills, and has been used to cover every kind of deception and inferior article ever manufactured. Our Lancashire manufacturers use it when they are charged with sending china clay and mildew (and call it calico) for the mild Hindoo and the Heathen Chinee to dress themselves in. Our butter merchants use it when they make up grease and call it butter; and our hardware merchants use it when they send us sham locks, and call them brass bushed, etc.
It is the duty of the manufacturer to invent for his customers, and it is preposterous to say that the builder would prefer that embodiment of fraud—the English rim-lock, which I showed to you—to the American lock, which, at any rate, was an honest article, especially when the latter had the great advantage of being considerably cheaper. I am afraid that the swindling and greed of our merchants is having the effect of thrusting us out of the markets of the world, including our home markets; and when it is too late, these men who are making the name of English goods a byword and a reproach, even among the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the untutored savages of the South Sea Islands, will find that "honesty is the best policy."