After the delicate little filings (which must be done by hand) are all finished, the articles must be well washed, dried in box-wood sawdust, and finally hand-polished with rouge. The people in one apartment look grotesque enough—two women powdered over with rouge, and men of various dirty hues, all dressed alike, in an over-all garment of brown holland. A washerwoman is maintained on the establishment expressly to wash these dresses on the spot—her soap-suds being preserved, like all the other washes, for the sake of the gold-dust contained in them. Her wash-tubs are emptied, like every thing else, into the refinery.
In the final burnishing room, we observe a row of chemists's globes—glass vases filled with water, ranged on a shelf. A stranger might guess long before he would find out what these are for. They are to reflect a concentrated blaze from the gas-lights in the evening, to point out specks and dimnesses, to the eyes and fingers of the burnishers. What curious finger-ends they have—those women who chafe the precious metals into their last degree of polish! They are broad—the joint so flexible that it is bent considerably backwards when in use; and the skin has a peculiar smoothness: more mechanical, we fancy, than vital. However that may be, the burnish they produce is strikingly superior to any hitherto achieved by friction with any other substance.
In departing, the sense of contrast comes over us once more. We have just seen all manner of elegancies in ornament, from the classical and dignified to the minute, fanciful, and grotesque; in going out, we give a look to the unfinished engine-house, and the smiths' shop. All this hard work; all those many dwellings thrown into one establishment; all these scores of men, and women, and children, busy from year's end to year's end; all those diggers far away in California; all those lapidaries in Germany; all those engineers in their studies; all those ironmasters in their markets; all those miners in the bowels of the earth—all are enlisted in making gold chains; and some of us have no more knowledge and no more thought than to call the product "Brummagem shams!" Well! the price charged for them in London shops, where they are as good as French, is something real; and it is a real comfort to think how swingingly some fine folks pay, though the bulk of the profit comes, not to the manufacturer, but to the middlemen. Of these middlemen there are always two; the factor and the shopkeeper—often more. Their intervention is very useful, of course, or they would not exist; but somebody or other makes a prodigious profit of Birmingham jewelry, after it has left the manufacturer's hands. It was only yesterday that we saw, among a rich heap of wonderful things, a pair of elegant bracelets—foreign pebbles, beautifully set. We were told the wholesale price they were to be sold for; which was half the shop price. The transference to the London shop was to cost as much as the whole of the previous processes: from the digging of the silver and the collecting of the pebbles, through all the needful voyages and travels, to the burnishing and packing at Birmingham!
We have seen, however, something which may throw a little light on the prejudice against Birmingham jewelry. It is not conceivable that any one should despise such an establishment as we have been describing. But, we found ourselves, the other day, passing through a little dwelling where the housewife, with a baby on her arm, and where more than half-a-dozen children were housed; and then crossing a little yard, and mounting a flight of substantial brick steps with a stout hand-rail, and entering the most curious little work-room we ever were in. It would just hold four or five people, without allowing them room to turn round more than one at a time. In one corner, was a very small stove. A lattice-window ran along the whole front, and made it pleasant, light, and airy. A work-bench or counter was scalloped out, in the same way as in larger establishments, so as to accommodate three workers in the smallest possible space. The three workers had each his stool, his leathern pouch on his knees, and his gas-pipe. A row of tools bristled along the whole length of the lattice; and there was another row on a shelf behind. The principal workman was the father of those many children below. One son was at work at his elbow, and the remaining workman was an apprentice. This working jeweller was as thorough a gentleman, according to our notions, as anybody we have seen for a long time past. Tall, stout, and handsome; collar white and stiff; apron white and sound; his whole dress in good repair; his voice cheerful as his face; his manner open and courteous; his information exactly what we wanted. We could not help wishing that some rural grandee, who avows that he hates all manufacturers, could see this fair specimen of an English handicraftsman. As for his work, he told us he supplies the factors to order. It would not answer for him to keep a stock. The factors would not buy what he should offer, but dictate to him what he shall make. Fashions change incessantly, and he has only to keep up with them as well as he can. It is not for him to invent new patterns and get steel dies made for them; but to get the same steel dies that other makers are procuring. These dies are, of course, for the metallic part of his work. The boxes of lockets and hair brooches (now vehemently in fashion), and devices, and colored stones, he procures at "the French shops" in the town; and he showed us some variety of these, ready for setting. Then came out the "Brummagem" feature of the case; showing us how the gold setting that he was preparing—perforating and filing—was to be backed by a blue stone. He observed that it was not thought worth while to get costly stones for a purpose like that; for blue glass would do as well. I certainly thought so, considering that the stone was to be only the back-ground of his work. Of the specimens I saw in that airy little workshop, some were in excellent taste, and all, I believe, of good workmanship. These small masters are as punctilious about employing only regularly qualified workmen, as any members of any guild in the country. Their journeymen must all have served an apprenticeship; not only because they are thus best fitted for their business, but because the value of apprenticeship is thus kept up; and these small capitalists will not part with the advantage of having journeymen, under the name of apprentices, completely under their command during the last two or three years of their term.
One of the most remarkable sights, to those who knew Birmingham a quarter of a century ago, is such a manufacture as that of Messrs. Parker and Acott's ever-pointed pencils. Those of us whose fathers were in business in the days of the war, when the arts were not flourishing, may remember the bulky pocket-book, with its leather strap (always shabby after the first month), and its thick cedar pencil, which always wanted cutting; always blackening whatever came near it; always getting used up; the lead turning to dust at the most critical point of a memorandum. There was a fine trade in cedar pencils at Keswick in those days. It seemed a tale too romantic to be true, when we were told of ever-pointed pencils. First, we, of course, refused to believe in their existence;—what improvement have we not refused to believe in? Then, when we found there was a screw in the case, and that the pencil was not ever-pointed by a vital action of its own, we were sure we should not like it. We grew humble, and were certain we could never learn to manage it. And now, what have we not arrived at? We are so saucy as to look beyond our improved pencils; beyond pen and ink; beyond our present need of a cumbrous apparatus to carry about with us; ink that will spill and spot; leads that will break and use up; pens, paper, syllables, letters, pot-hooks, dots and crossings, and all the process of writing. Perhaps the electric telegraph has spoiled us: enabling us to imagine some process by which thoughts may record themselves; some brief and complete method of making "mems," without the complicated process of writing down hundreds of letters, and scores of syllables, to preserve one single idea. All this, however, is as romantic now as ever-pointed pencils seemed to be at first; and instead of dreaming of what is not yet achieved, let us look at the reality before our eyes.
Here is something wonderful enough, on our very entrance. Here is a silver pencil-case, neat and serviceable, though not of the most elegant form; handsome enough to have been praised for its looks, thirty years ago. This pencil-case carries two feet of lead. It is intended to be the commercial traveller's joy and treasure. It will last him his life, unless he take an unconscionable amount of orders. Unscrewing the top, we see that the upper end of the tube is divided into compartments,—which look like the mouth of a revolver; and here, protected from each other, the leads are bestowed, safe—despite their great length, through their owner's roughest travelling.
Some drawers in a counter are pulled out. One is divided into compartments, each of which holds a handful of something different from all the rest. This drawer contains one hundred gross of pencil-cases in parts; the tube, the rack and barrel, the propelling wire, the slide, the top, the various chambers, and screws, and niceties. In another drawer, there is a dazzling and beautiful heap of pure amethysts and topazes from far countries, of vast aggregate value: and, farther on, we see the elegant onyx and white cornelian from South America (a very recent importation), and the sardonyx, now in high favor for seals and the tops of pencil-cases. Its delicate layer of white upon red, (or the reverse,) the undermost color coming out in the engraving, makes it singularly fit for the purpose. Then, there is a paperful of small turquoises, which are poured out and handled like a sample of lentils. These are from Persia; and they have to be re-cut in England, the Persian tools being of the roughest. Then, there are bloodstones, and pebbles out of number, and pints of glittering fragments of Californian gold; rich materials tossed together, to be drawn out for use at the bidding of capricious fashion; for, fashion seems to be as capricious here, among these stones and ores that have required cycles of ages to compose, as in the milliner's shop, where the materials are drawn from the pods of a season and the insects of a summer. On shelves against the walls, are ranged rows and piles of steel dies,—that pretty and costly piece of apparatus, which we find in almost all these manufactories—together with the inexhaustible stamping and cutting machines, the blow-pipe, the borax, and soft metal for solder, the pumice-stone and wirebed, the turning wheel, the circular saw, and the bath of diluted aquafortis, and the pan of box-wood sawdust, in which the pretty things are dried when they come out of "pickle." From buttons to epergnes, we find this apparatus every where. The steel dies are an everlasting study: the block, like the conical weight of a pair of warehouse scales, seeming very large for the little figure indented in the upper surface. Here, in this manufactory, the figures are of the bugle, a favorite form of watch-key—the deer's foot, (a pretty study for the same purpose,) and a large variety of patterns—the tulip, the acanthus, and other foliage, flowers or fruit, climbing up the summit of the pencil-case, as if it were a little Corinthian capital.
And now for the process. The silver or gold comes from the rolling-mill, and is passed in slips through a series of draw-plates, each smaller than the last, and finally through the one which is to give it its fluted or other pattern. Soldering at the joint, filing away the roughness left by the solder, washing in an aquafortis bath come next. A slit for the slide is then made; the rims and screws and slides are added, and you have a pencil-case complete. We observed that a large proportion of the tops are hexagonal, or of some angular form, to prevent their rolling off the table.
Some of the pencil-cases are so small, and some of the watch-keys are so elaborate, that it requires a moment's consideration to decide which is which; and again, ladies' crochet-needles, of gold, diversely ornamented, are very like pencil-cases. Some of each kind are specked over with turquoise or garnets; and all appear to be designed for ornament, rather than for use. It is quite a relief to turn the eye upon a shovelful of the yellow sawdust, where substantial pencil-cases, fit for manly fingers, are drying. On the whole, perhaps, the most striking feature is the prodigious extent of the production. We ask where all these can possibly go; for a pencil-case is a thing which lasts half a century, as the manufacturer himself observes. These do not go to America; for, in such things, the Americans are our chief rivals. They supply their own wants, and a good deal more. We send our pencil-cases and trinkets over a good part of the world, however; and the caprice of fashion causes a great adventitious demand at home. In reply to our remark about this vast production, the manufacturer observes, "Yes, we cut up gold and silver as the year comes in, and as the year goes out." Something of a change, this, since the old days of cedar pencils!
Here is a steel die with an elegant pyramidal pattern; the half of a watch-key. We see the inch of metal stamped; and then another inch, for the other half: and then the filing and snipping of the edges; and then the laying in of the solder inside; and the binding together of the two halves with wire; and the repose on the bed of wire on the pumice-stone, to be broiled red-hot; and the neat cleaning when cool; the polishing, and the leaving certain parts of the pattern dead, while others are burnished; and the firing of the steel cylinder at the point, and the turning of the rims. All this for a watch-key! But, we are shown another, which does not look like anything very studied; and we are told, and are at once convinced, that it consists of no less than thirteen parts. Other keys, which look more fanciful, consist of ten, eight, or seven. None are the simple affair that a novice would suppose, now that we require the convenience of being able to wind up our watches without twisting the chain or ribbon with every turn of the key.