Elihu Burritt

“ What woman is to dough in a private household, she is to clay in these sheds. Whether the wives and daughters of Israel under the Pharaohs were also consigned to this unwomanly work in the brick-yards of Egypt, is a question which the Scriptures do not enable us to decide. If they were not sentenced to the same toil as their husbands and brothers, then the brick-makers of The Black Country have improved upon the industrial ethics and economy of the Egyptians, and availed themselves of the cheapness and necessities of female labour, in producing the building material of the country. ”

“ The establishment embraces the latest improvements in brick-making, and all the mechanical forces are utilized to their utmost capacity. The steam-engine, for instance, draws up on an inclined tramway from the bottom of the pit a huge coal-scuttle full of the clay, enough to make 500 bricks, and tips it over at the top of the line into a hopper, whence it goes down through successive kneading-troughs, and is at last forced out of an iron cylinder by a piston all ready to be made into loaves for the oven. ”

“ The question will naturally be asked what is the cause of all this Poverty and Distress in the Trade. I answer to a vast extent the truck system which is a nefarious Robbery to the Workman and a Disgrace to the trade. This Worm has Been gnawing at the Root a great Number of years till he has assumed the form of a giant. When the Workman goes to the Warehouse of this monster, he has to submit to an extra Balance on the Weight side, and sometimes he Robs him of his tale, a Practice known only too well by the Work-man. He comes to the Books and then he has to suffer very often another injustice. ”

“ Even our horse-nails, which most need to be hammered, are coming to be produced largely by machinery. Then cheap and abundant as is hand labour in England, in every other country in Europe it is cheaper. Especially the competition of Belgian operatives presses more and more heavily upon the English workman in the nail trade. In 1851, it was estimated that they produced hand-made nails to the amount of from eight to nine thousand tons per annum, and it is said to have been increasing since that time. The manufacture of tea-chest nails used to be a large business in itself for this district ”

“ She had been set to work with the hammer when only eight years old, and had never been able to learn to read since.
I always love to walk about in the villages of the nail-makers. The clinking of hundreds of their little hammers supply the aria to the great concerts and oratorios of mechanical industry. ”

“ In the red and blue brick-works the girls are harder worked and worse paid than in the white brick-yards, which are not nearly so numerous. In the latter, the clay instead of being ground in a mill, has to be tempered by the women with their lands and naked feet. It is estimated that upwards of 1,200 females are employed at the various brick-fields of the district.
Leaving this scene of motley labour, so novel and strange to an American eye, we continued our walk to Halesowen, an ancient town squatting down among the hills on the little Stour. ”

“ The nail-master or merchant furnishes the iron in bundles to the nail-maker, weighing sixty pounds each, and allows him from six to twenty-eight pounds for waste per bundle, according to the size of the nails; the largest size, of course, wasting less iron per pound produced. The nailer has to run his own risk as to the quality of iron furnished him. Sometimes several rods will be almost useless.
The land-made nail trade has been sadly depressed for nearly half a century, and from various causes. ”

“ As he and his family generally make only one size of nails all their lives, he needs only one heading-tool to each hammer. He utilizes every square foot of space at and around his forge. If he and his wife or daughter are the only members of his family to use it, he often lets one or two stalls to his neighbours for 8d. each per week. That is, for this rate of rentage he lets a neighbour heat his rod in the same fire and make nails on the other side of the forge. I have seen four girls of about sixteen years of age standing around the same forge at once, each with her rod in the fire. ”

“ First, the competition with machinery has greatly diminished the production of the hammer, as well as depressed its price. In 1830 it was estimated that about 50,000 persons were employed in the manufacture; whereas, the present number thus employed is put at 20,000. The earnings of a family of man, wife, son or daughter will possibly average about twenty shillings per week, out of which they must pay for their coal, and the extra rent charged for their shop. Many skilled and industrious men will earn this amount alone without other labour ”

“ Small dealers, "on their own hook," continue to intercept the nailers' small earnings, by taking advantage of their pressing necessities. A writer thoroughly acquainted with their present condition and habits, states that "Numerous workmen prefer to sell their nails at the truck-shop every day, and in many instances at every meal. It is a well-known fact that, at present, more than one-half of the handmade nails are paid for in 'truck;' but such nails are of very inferior quality, thereby injuring the prestige of the English hand-made nails in foreign markets." ”

“ Thus the whole business becomes a domestic industry or house employment for the family, and frequently every member, male or female, young or old, has his or her rod in the fire all the day long and often far into the night. Although they earn but little, they earn it at home, and the whole social operation and aspect of their industry is rather interesting. These little house-shops are scattered far and wide over the district, sometimes in little villages and hamlets, but often on high and breezy hills and behind the hedges of green and rural lanes. ”

“ The house itself is of moderate dimensions, with outside walls of what some call dash-and-splash work, or a coarse brick surface rough-cast with small pebbles and sand and then painted. In a word, it was a comfortable looking mansion, which a prosperous ironmaster would be satisfied with for its intrinsic worth and convenience as a residence ”

“ I always love to visit their busy hamlets and hear the music of their little clicking hammers, which do not disturb the birds, but seem to set them singing around the lowly roofs and cosy little gardens of the nailers with extra glee. ”

“ We have officers of Excise and Inspectors of Nuisances and yet not an Inspector of tommy Shops to see that the law as it now stands is carried out to the very letter and crush and annilate this abominable and nefarious traffic which is bringing Hundreds to a Premature grave and is a Disgrace to the Nation. ”

“ Now this Class of men have found their way into the market and are underselling our honourable. Ready money Paying Masters, and Ruining the trade. The question is asked What is to be done to save the trade from Destruction. If a Workman lays an information he is looked upon 25 a Rogue and Vagabond, in the mean time he is Protecting his Fellow Workmen as well as himself. I ask now is there any Wonder that Poverty and distress exists in the Nail trade. Our Government have made a law, but that law has failed to meet the Requirements Demanded by the trade, there is so many intricacies. ”

“ The ovens or kilns are of prodigious capacity, and the heat necessary to produce bricks almost as hard as cast-iron, is equal to that of the furnaces in which that metal is fused from the ore. One of these is a smaller oven, in which a little batch of two or three thousand of any pattern may be baked at the shortest notice to supply a special order. ”

“ While the engine is doing all this multifarious work with one hand for the clay ovens, it is doing a similar work with the other for those of the common household. Behind a thin partition it is grinding grists of wheat and other grain for the farmers around, and for the proprietor of the works, who purchases enough to keep the mill running when local wants cannot do it. The partition wall is dust-tight, so that there is no possible transfusion of the clay on one side into the flour on the other ”

“ They are poorly-paid and have to work long and hard to earn bread in competition with machinery. Indeed, it shows the superabundance and exigencies of labour that nails should be made at all by hand at this late day of mechanical improvements. But thousands of families in this district have inherited the trade from several generations of their ancestors, and they are born to it, apparently with a physical conformation to the work. ”

“ The coal used must be lighter and more smokeless than the common sea-coal, which is apt to form a crust over the fire, which does not admit small rods easily. They, therefore, use a kind of coke, or what they call breezes, but which doubtless should be spelt brisées, or broken bits of coal that has already passed through the fire. ”

“ The nail-maker pays on an average 2s. 6d, a week for his cottage and shop. He must find his own tools, which are rather simple and few in number. His anvil is generally a small piece of hardened steel driven into a cast-iron block, and not more than twice as large as the face of his hammer. ”

“ In all the brick-fields the girls are required to turn on Sunday morning the bricks made on the previous day. The wages paid to the young girls vary from 8d, to 10d, per day, according to the amount of work they are able to perform, for the piece-work system generally prevails in the brick-yards. ”

“ Each moulding woman has two, sometimes three, of these girls to serve her, one to bring the clay, the other to carry away the bricks when formed. What may be just, but equally unfortunate, they are generally her own children if she has any of suitable size and strength ”

“ The nailers have "struck" for higher wages frequently, and endeavoured to win them by virtue of self-imposed suffering, but apparently in this age of machinery and cheaper foreign labour, there is but little improvement possible. ”

“ A woman with her two or three pages will mould 3,000 bricks in a day by extra exertion; she is paid 2s. 8d. per thousand. Out of this she pays about 2s. per day to the girls that serve her; so she can really earn large wages at this man's work, when well hardened to it, with requisite skill. Indeed she has the easiest task of the three at the moulding bench. ”

“ Grounds which had been lawns of exquisite surface and verdure had been found more profitable for pasturage of cows as well as sheep, and now presented that warty, humpy surface of cropped and uncropped herbage which such grazing always produces without the requisite attention in early spring. ”

“ So they in the majority of cases really make comfortable little homes for honest and contented labourers, far better and more morally healthy than most of the tenements of better-paid mechanics in large towns. ”

“ The sun was looking its last half hour upon the scene as we reached the Leasowes, and ascended the winding walks over stream and pool and under overarching trees, which the artistic poet laid out with so much genius and taste more than a hundred years ago. Our imagination was stimulated naturally to picturesque conception, and if the grounds were not all we could have fancied, we were confident they were that and more in the poet's day. It was evident that men had occupied them who could not honestly have written on their monuments what Maj. ”

“ The distinction he attained as a landscape and garden artist, indicates how common and tasteless must have been the best ornamental grounds in England when he first brought his genius to bear upon them. ”