Knowledge is Power Part 9

The furniture of a house, some may say--the chairs, and tables, and bedsteads--is made nearly altogether by hand. True. But tools are machines; and further, we owe it to what men generally call machinery, that such furniture, even in the house of a very poor man, is more tasteful in its construction, and of finer material, than that possessed by a n.o.bleman a hundred years ago. How is this? Machinery (that is ships) has brought us much finer woods than we grow ourselves; and other machinery (the sawing-mill) has taught us how to render that fine wood very cheap, by economising the use of it. At a veneering-mill, that is, a mill which cuts a mahogany log into thin plates, much more delicately and truly, and in infinitely less time, than they could be cut by the hand, two hundred and forty square feet of mahogany are cut by one circular saw in one hour. A veneer, or thin plate, is cut off a piece of mahogany, six feet six inches long, by twelve inches wide, in twenty-five seconds. What is the consequence of this? A mahogany table is made almost as cheap as a deal one; and thus the humblest family in England may have some article of mahogany, if it be only a tea-caddy.

And let it not be said that deal furniture would afford as much happiness; for a desire for comfort, and even for some degree of elegance, gives a refinement to the character, and, in a certain degree, raises our self-respect. Diogenes, who is said to have lived in a tub, was a great philosopher; but it is not necessary to live in a tub to be wise and virtuous. Nor is that the likeliest plan for becoming so. The probability is, that a man will be more wise and virtuous in proportion as he strives to surround himself with the comforts and decent ornaments of his station.

It is a circ.u.mstance worthy to be borne in mind by all who seek the improvement of the people, that whatever raises not only the standard of comfort, but of taste, has direct effects of utility which might not at first be perceived. We will take the case of paper-hangings. Their very name shows that they were a subst.i.tute for the arras, or hangings, of former times, which were suspended from the ceilings to cover the imperfections of the walls. This was the case in the houses of the rich.

The poor man in his hut had no such device, but must needs "patch a hole to keep the wind away." Till 1830, what, in the language of the excise, was called stained paper, was enormously dear, for a heavy tax greatly impeded its production. When it was dear, many walls were stencilled or daubed over with a rude pattern. The paper-hangings themselves were not only dear, but offensive to the eye, from their want of harmony in colour and of beauty in design. The old papers remained on walls for half a century; and it was not till paper-hangings became a penny a yard, or even a halfpenny, that the landlord or tenant of a small house thought of re-papering. The eye at length got offended by the dirty and ugly old paper. The walls were recovered with neat patterns. But what had offended the eye had been prejudicial to the health. The old papers, that were saturated with damp from without and bad air from within, were recipients and holders of fever. When the bed-room became neat it also became healthful. The duty on paper was 1-3/4_d._ per yard, when the paper-hanger used to paste together yard after yard, made by hand at the paper-mill, and stamped by block. The paper-machine which gave long rolls of paper enabled hangings to be printed by cylinder, as calico is printed. The absence of tax, and the improvement of the manufacture by machinery, have enabled every man to repaper his filthy and noxious room for almost as little as its whitewashing or colouring will cost him.

Look, again, at the carpet. Contrast it in all its varieties, from the gorgeous Persian to the neat Kidderminster, with the rushes of our forefathers, amidst which the dogs hunted for the bones that had been thrown upon the floor. The clean rushes were a rare luxury, never thought of but upon some festive occasion. The carpet manufacture was little known in England at the beginning of the last century; as we may judge from our still calling one of the most commonly-woven English carpets by the name of "Brussels." There are twelve thousand persons now employed in the manufacture of carpets in Great Britain. The Scotch carpet is the cheapest of the produce of the carpet-loom; and it may be sufficient to show the connection of machinery with the commonest as well as the finest of these productions by an engraving of the loom. One of the most beautiful inventions of man, the Jacquard apparatus (so called from the name of its inventor), is extensively used in every branch of the carpet manufacture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Scotch carpet-loom.]

Let us see what mechanical ingenuity can effect in producing the most useful and ornamental articles of domestic life from the common earth which may be had for digging. Without chemical and mechanical skill we should neither have Gla.s.s nor Pottery; and without these articles, how much lowered beneath his present station, in point of comfort and convenience, would be the humblest peasant in the land!

The cost of gla.s.s is almost wholly the wages of labour, as the materials are very abundant, and may be said to cost almost nothing; and gla.s.s is much more easily worked than any other substance.

Hard and brittle as it is, it has only to be heated, and any form that the workman pleases may be given to it. It melts; but when so hot as to be more susceptible of form than wax or clay, or anything else that we are acquainted with, it still, retains a degree of toughness and capability of extension superior to that of many solids, and of every liquid; when it has become red-hot all its brittleness is gone, and a man may do with it as he pleases. He may press it into a mould; he may take a lump of it upon the end of an iron tube, and, by blowing into the tube with his mouth (keeping the gla.s.s hot all the time), he may swell it out into a hollow ball. He may mould that ball into a bottle; he may draw it out lengthways into a pipe; he may cut it open into a cup; he may open it with shears, whirl it round with the edge in the fire, and thus make it into a circular plate. He may also roll it out into sheets, and spin it into threads as fine as a cobweb. In short, so that he keeps it hot, and away from substances by which it may be destroyed, he can do with it just as he pleases. All this, too, may be done, and is done with large quant.i.ties every day, in less time than any one would take to give an account of it. In the time that the readiest speaker and clearest describer were telling how one quart bottle is made, an ordinary set of workmen would make some dozens of bottles.

But though the materials of gla.s.s are among the cheapest of all materials, and the substance the most obedient to the hand of the workman, there is a great deal of knowledge necessary before gla.s.s can be made. It can be made profitably only at large manufactories, and those manufactories must be kept constantly at work night and day.

Gla.s.s does not exist in a natural form in many places. The sight of native crystal, probably, led men to think originally of producing a similar substance by art. The fabrication of gla.s.s is of high antiquity.

The historians of China, j.a.pan, and Tartary speak of gla.s.s manufactories existing there more than two thousand years ago. An Egyptian mummy two or three thousand years old, which was exhibited in London, was ornamented with little fragments of coloured gla.s.s. The writings of Seneca, a Roman author who lived about the time of our Saviour, and of St. Jerome, who lived five hundred years afterwards, speak of gla.s.s being used in windows. It is recorded that the Prior of the convent of Weymouth, in Dorsetshire, in the year 674, sent for French workmen to glaze the windows of his chapel. In the twelfth century the art of making gla.s.s was known in this country. Yet it is very doubtful whether gla.s.s was employed in windows, excepting those of churches and the houses of the very rich, for several centuries afterwards; and it is quite certain that the period is comparatively recent, as we have shown,[21] when gla.s.s windows were used for excluding cold and admitting light in the houses of the great body of the people, or that gla.s.s vessels were to be found amongst their ordinary conveniences. The manufacture of gla.s.s in England now employs twelve thousand people, because the article, being cheap, is of universal use. The government has wisely taken off the duty on gla.s.s; and as the article becomes still cheaper, so will the people employed in its manufacture become more numerous.

Machinery, as we commonly understand the term, is not much employed in the manufacture of gla.s.s; but chemistry, which saves as much labour as machinery, and performs work which no machinery could accomplish, is very largely employed. The materials of which gla.s.s is made are sand, or earth, and vegetable matter, such as kelp or burnt seaweed, which yield alkali. For the finest gla.s.s, sand is brought from great distances, even from Australia. These materials are put in a state of fusion by the heat of an immense furnace. It requires a red heat of sixty hours to prepare the material of a common bottle. Nearly all gla.s.s, except gla.s.s for mirrors, is what is called blown. The machinery is very simple, consisting only of an iron pipe and the lungs of the workman; and the process is perfected in all its stages by great subdivision of labour, producing extreme neatness and quickness in all persons employed in it. For instance, a wine-gla.s.s is made thus:--One man (the blower) takes up the proper quant.i.ty of gla.s.s on his pipe, and blows it to the size wanted for the bowl; then he whirls it round on a reel, and draws out the stalk. Another man (the footer) blows a smaller and thicker ball, sticks it to the end of the stalk of the blower's gla.s.s, and breaks his pipe from it. The blower opens that ball, and whirls the whole round till the foot is formed. Then a boy dips a small rod in the gla.s.s-pot, and sticks it to the very centre of the foot. The blower, still turning the gla.s.s round, takes a bit of iron, wets it in his mouth, and touches the ball at the place where he wishes the mouth of the gla.s.s to be. The gla.s.s separates, and the boy takes it to the finisher, who turns the mouth of it; and, by a peculiar swing that he gives it round his head, makes it perfectly circular, at the same time that it is so hardened as to be easily snapped from the rod. Lastly, the boy takes it on a forked iron to the annealing furnace, where it is cooled gradually.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gla.s.s-cutting.]

All these operations require the greatest nicety in the workmen; and would take a long time in the performance, and not be very neatly done after all, if they were all done by one man. But the quickness with which they are done by the division of labour is perfectly wonderful.

The cheapness of gla.s.s for common use, which cheapness is produced by chemical knowledge and the division of labour, has set the ingenuity of man to work to give greater beauty to gla.s.s as an article of luxury. The employment of sharp-grinding wheels, put in motion by a treadle, and used in conjunction with a very nice hand, produces _cut_ gla.s.s. Cut gla.s.s is now comparatively so cheap, that scarcely a family of the middle ranks is without some beautiful article of this manufacture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sheet-gla.s.s making.]

But the repeal of the duty on gla.s.s, and of the tax upon windows, has had the effect of improving the architecture of our houses to a degree which no one would have thought possible who had not studied how the operation of a tax impedes production. We have now plate-gla.s.s of the largest dimensions, giving light and beauty to our shops; and sheet-gla.s.s, nearly as effective as plate, adorning our private dwellings. Sheet-gla.s.s, in the making of which an amount of ingenuity is exercised which would have been thought impossible in the early stages of gla.s.s-making, is doing for the ordinary purposes of building what plate-gla.s.s did formerly for the rich. A portion of melted gla.s.s, weighing twelve or fourteen pounds, is, by the exercise of this skill, converted into a ball, and then into a cylinder, and then into a flat plate; and thus two crystal palaces have been built, which have consumed as much gla.s.s, weight by weight, as was required for all the houses in one-fourth of the area of Great Britain in the beginning of the century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate-gla.s.s Factory.]

There are two kinds of pottery--common potters' ware, and porcelain. The first is a pure kind of brick; and the second a mixture of very fine brick and gla.s.s. Almost all nations have some knowledge of pottery; and those of the very hot countries are sometimes satisfied with dishes formed by their fingers without any tool, and dried by the heat of the sun. In England pottery of every sort, and in all countries good pottery, must be baked or burnt in a kiln of some kind or other.

Vessels for holding meat and drink are almost as indispensable as the meat and drink themselves; and the two qualities in them that are most valuable are, that they shall be cheap, and easily cleaned. Pottery, as it is now produced in England, possesses both of these qualities in the very highest degree. A white basin, having all the useful properties of the most costly vessels, may be purchased for twopence at the door of any cottage in England. There are very few substances used in human food that have any effect upon these vessels; and it is only rinsing them in hot water, and wiping them with a cloth, and they are clean.

The making of an earthen bowl would be to a man who made a first attempt no easy matter. Let us see how it is done so that it can be carried two or three hundred miles and sold for twopence, leaving a profit to the maker, and the wholesale and retail dealer.

The common pottery is made of pure clay and pure flint. The flint is found only in the chalk counties, and the fine clays in Devonshire and Dorsetshire; so that, with the exception of some clay for coa.r.s.e ware, the materials out of which the pottery is made have to be carried from the South of England to Staffordshire, where the potteries are situated.

The great advantage that Staffordshire possesses is abundance of coal to burn the ware and supply the engines that grind the materials.

The clay is worked in water by various machinery till it contains no single piece large enough to be visible to the eye. It is like cream in consistence. The flints are burned. They are first ground in a mill, and then worked in water in the same manner as the clay, the large pieces being returned a second time to the mill.

When both are fine enough, one part of flint is mixed with five or six of clay; the whole is worked to a paste, after which it is kneaded either by the hands or a machine; and when the kneading is completed, it is ready for the potter.

He has a little wheel which lies horizontally. He lays a portion of clay on the centre of the wheel, puts one hand, or finger if the vessel is to be a small one, in the middle, and his other hand on the outside, and, as the wheel turns rapidly round, draws up a hollow vessel in an instant. With his hands, or with very simple tools, he brings it to the shape he wishes, cuts it from the wheel with a wire, and a boy carries it off. The potter makes vessel after vessel, as fast as they can be carried away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The English Potter.]

The potter's wheel is an instrument of the highest antiquity. In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read--"So doth the potter, sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number: he fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over, and is diligent to make clean the furnace."--(c. x.x.xix., v. 29, 30.) At the present day the oriental potter stands in a pit, in which the lower machinery of his wheel is placed. He works as the potter of the ancient Hebrews.

As the potter produces the vessels they are partially dried; after which they are turned on a lathe and smoothed with a wet sponge when necessary. Only round vessels can be made on the wheel; those of other shapes are made in moulds of plaster. Handles and other solid parts are pressed in moulds, and stuck on while they and the vessels are still wet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Potter's wheel of modern Egypt.]

The vessels thus formed are first dried in a stove, and, when dry, burnt in a kiln. They are in this state called biscuit. If they are finished white, they are glazed by another process. If they are figured, the patterns are engraved on copper, and printed on coa.r.s.e paper rubbed with soft soap. The ink is made of some colour that will stand the fire, ground with earthy matter. These patterns are moistened and applied to the porous biscuit, which absorbs the colour, and the paper is washed off, leaving the pattern on the biscuit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Moulds for porcelain, and casts.]

The employment of machinery to do all the heavy part of the work, the division of labour, by which each workman acquires wonderful dexterity in his department, and the conducting of the whole upon a large scale, give bread to a vast number of people, make the pottery cheap, and enable it to be sold at a profit in almost every market in the world. It is not ninety years since the first pottery of a good quality was extensively made in England; and before that time what was used was imported,--the common ware from Delft, in Holland (from which it acquired its name), and the porcelain from China.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mill-room, where the Ingredients for Pottery are mixed.]

The history of the manufacture of porcelain affords us two examples of persevering ingenuity--of intense devotion to one object--which have few parallels in what some may consider the higher walks of art. Palissy and Wedgwood are names that ought to be venerated by every artisan. The one bestowed upon France her manufacture of porcelain, so long the almost exclusive admiration of the wealthy and the tasteful. The other gave to England her more extensive production of earthenware, combining with great cheapness the imitation of the most beautiful forms of ancient art. The potteries of Staffordshire may be almost said to have been created by Josiah Wedgwood. In his workshops we may trace the commencement of a system of improved design which made his ware so superior to any other that had been produced in Europe for common uses.

In other branches of manufacture this system found few imitators; and we were too long contented, in our textile fabrics especially, with patterns that were unequalled for ugliness--miserable imitations of foreign goods, or combinations of form and colour outraging every principle of art. We have seen higher things attempted in the present day; but for the greater part of a century the wares of the Staffordshire potter were the only attempts to show that taste was as valuable a quality in a.s.sociation with the various articles which are required for domestic use, as good materials and clean workmanship. It was long before we discovered that taste had an appreciable commercial value.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wedgwood.]

We think that, with regard to buildings and the furniture of buildings, it will be admitted that machinery, in the largest sense of the word, has increased the means of every man to procure a shelter from the elements, and to give him a mult.i.tude of conveniences within that shelter. Most will agree that a greater number of persons are profitably employed in affording this shelter and these conveniences, with tools and machines, than if they possessed no such mechanical aids to their industry. In 1851 there were a hundred and eighty-two thousand carpenters and joiners; thirty-one thousand brickmakers; sixty-eight thousand bricklayers; sixty-two thousand painters, plumbers, and glaziers; eighteen thousand plasterers; a hundred thousand masons (some of whom were paviours); forty-two thousand gla.s.s and earthenware makers; besides an almost innumerable variety of subordinate trades--engaged in the production of houses, their fittings, and their utensils.

[21] Chapter viii. pp. 85 and 87.

CHAPTER XV.

Dwellings of the people--Oberlin--The Highlander's candlesticks--Supply of water--London waterworks-- Street-lights--Sewers.

It is satisfactory to observe that the increase of houses has kept pace with the increase of population. In 1801, in Great Britain, there was a population of ten million five hundred thousand persons, and one million eight hundred thousand inhabited houses. In 1851 there were twenty million eight hundred thousand persons, and three million eight hundred thousand inhabited houses. The numbers, in each case, had, as nearly as may be, doubled.

But it is not equally satisfactory to know that the improvement in the quality of the houses in which the great body of those who labour for wages abide is not commensurate with the increase in their quant.i.ty. It is not fitting, that, whilst the general progress of science is raising, as unquestionably it is raising, the average condition of the people--and that whilst education is going forward, slowly indeed, but still advancing--the bulk of those so progressing should be below their proper standard of physical comfort, from the too common want of decent houses to surround them with the sanct.i.ties of home.

In the great business of the improvement of their dwellings the working-men require leaders--not demagogues, whose business is to subvert, and not to build up--but leaders like the n.o.ble pastor, Oberlin, who converted a barren district into a fruitful, by the example of his unremitting energy. This district was cut off from the rest of the world by the want of roads. Close at hand was Strasburg, full of all the conveniences of social life. There was no money to make roads--but there was abundant power of labour. There were rocks to be blasted, embankments to be raised, bridges to be built. The undaunted clergyman took a pickaxe, and went to work himself. He worked alone, till the people were ashamed of seeing him so work. They came at last to perceive that the thing was to be done, and that it was worth the doing. In three years the road was made. If there were an Oberlin to lead the inhabitants of every filthy street, and the families of every wretched house, to their own proper work of improvement, a terrible evil would be soon removed, which is as great an impediment to the productive powers of a country, and therefore to the happiness of its people, as the want of ready communication, or any other appliance of civilization. The enormity of the evil would be appalling, if the capability of its removal in some degree were not equally certain.

Whatever a government may attempt--whatever munic.i.p.alities or benevolent a.s.sociations--there can be nothing so effectual in the upholding to a proper mark the domestic comfort of the working-men of this country, as their firm resolve to uphold themselves.

Still, unhappily, it is an undoubted fact that the most industrious men in large cities are too often unable to procure a fit dwelling, however able to pay for it and desirous to procure it. The houses have been built with no reference to such increasing wants. The idle and the diligent, the profligate and the prudent, the criminal and the honest, the diseased and the healthful, are therefore thrust into close neighbourhood. There is no escape. Is this terrible evil incapable of remedy? To discover that remedy, and apply it, is truly a national concern; for a.s.suredly there is no capital of a country so worth preserving in the highest state of efficiency as the capital it possesses in an industrious population. There is a n.o.ble moral in a pa.s.sage of Scott's romance, 'The Legend of Montrose.' A Highland chief had betted with a more luxurious English baronet whom he had visited, that he had better candlesticks at home than the six silver ones which the richer man had put upon his dinner-table. The Englishman went to the chief's castle in the hills, where the owner was miserable about the issue of his bragging bet. But his brother had a device which saved the honour of the clan. The attendant announced that the dinner was ready, and the candles lighted. Behind each chair for the guests stood a gigantic Highlander with his drawn sword in his right hand, and a blazing torch in his left, made of the bog-pine; and the brother exclaimed to the startled company--'Would you dare to compare to THEM in value the richest ore that ever was dug out of the mine?'

We may naturally pa.s.s from these considerations to a most important branch of the great subject of the expenditure of capital for public objects.

The people who live in small villages, or in scattered habitations in the country, have certainly not so many _direct_ benefits from machinery as the inhabitants of towns. They have the articles at a cheap rate which machines produce, but there are not so many machines at work for them as for dense populations. From want of knowledge they may be unable to perceive the connexion between a cheap coat, or a cheap tool, and the machines which make them plentiful, and therefore cheap. But even they, when the saving of labour by a machine is a saving which immediately affects them, are not slow to acknowledge the benefits they derive from that best of economy. The Scriptures allude to the painful condition of the "hewers of wood" and the "drawers of water;" and certainly--in a state of society where there are no machines at all, or very rude machines--to cut down a tree and cleave it into logs, and to raise a bucket from a well, are very laborious occupations, the existence of which, to any extent, amongst a people, would mark them as remaining in a wretched condition. Immediately that the people have the simplest mechanical contrivance, such as the loaded lever, to raise water from a well, which is found represented in Egyptian sculpture, and also in our own Anglo-Saxon drawings, they are advancing to the condition of raising water by machinery. The oriental _shadoof_ is a machine. In our own country, at the present day, there are not many houses, in situations where water is at hand, that have not the windla.s.s, or, what is better, the pump, to raise this great necessary of life from the well. Some cottagers, however, have no such machines, and bitterly do they lament the want of them. We once met an old woman in a country district tottering under the weight of a bucket, which she was labouring to carry up a hill. We asked her how she and her family were off in the world.

She replied, that she could do pretty well with them, for they could all work, if it were not for one thing--it was one person's labour to fetch water from the spring; but, said she, if we had a pump handy, we should not have much to complain of. This old woman very wisely had no love of labour for its own sake; she saw no advantage in the labour of one of her family being given for the attainment of a good which she knew might be attained by a very common invention. She wanted a machine to save that labour. Such a machine would have set at liberty a certain quant.i.ty of labour which was previously employed unprofitably; in other words, it would have left her or her children more time for more profitable work, and then the family earnings would have been increased.