Handwork

“ The ingenuity and unyielding tenacity of our managers, foremen, and operatives had introduced a thousand and one devices for making by machine garments that used to be considered possible only as the product of handwork. ”

“ No effort should be made, before six years, to produce finished products. Technique or skill in production do not belong to this period. Vividness, self-expression, development of motor control of arms and hands, coördination of eye and hand, the joy of workmanship, the confidence in creating,—these are the purposes of handwork in early childhood. ”

“ In handwork, too, at this stage, practice takes an important place: a child is willing to hem, to try certain brush strokes, to cut evenly, and later on to use his cardboard knife to effect for the sake of a future result if he has already experimented freely. ”

“ Tool equipment. The choice of tools in any particular shop best comes out of long experience. Some teachers prefer to emphasize certain processes or methods, others lay stress on different ones. The following tentative list is suggested for a full equipment for twenty-four students. One bench and its tools may be added for the teacher. ”

“ Manual training takes on quite a new meaning as you move about, watching the boys in the carpenter-shop making desks or tables, or cabinets for the botany collections, or book-racks for the library, sending them on to the paint-shop when they have finished; boys in the sheet-metal shop hammering zinc for the roof; young electricians repairing bells; a couple of plumbers tinkering with pipes; little groups of serious and absorbedly interested boys in foundry and forge and pattern-making shop, all coöperating like the parts of a well-ordered factory. ”

“ Wherever it can be introduced as a substitute for manual labour, it is universally and willingly resorted to; of this the facts stated in my report contain many conclusive proofs, but I may here specially refer, as examples, to plough making, where eight men are able to finish thirty per day; to door making, where twenty men make 100 panelled doors per day; to last making, the process of which is completed in 11⁄2 minutes; to sewing by machinery, where one woman does the work of twenty; to net making, where one woman does the work of 100. ”

“ The cost of manual labour, and that skilled labour of the highest kind, in working iron, very easily led the way to the use of machine-tools, while the softer material, wood, was left to the skill of the workman. ”

“ These Handybooks have been written to supply information for Workmen, Students, and Amateurs in the several Handicrafts, on the actual Practice of the Workshop, and are intended to convey in plain language Technical Knowledge of the several Crafts. In describing the processes employed, and the manipulation of material, workshop terms are used; workshop practice is fully explained; and the text is freely illustrated with drawings of modern tools, appliances, and processes.
THE METAL TURNER'S HANDYBOOK. A Practical Manual for Workers at the Foot-Lathe. ”

“ All the apprentices learn also to sketch bits of machinery or even entire machines, figure the sketch from actual measurement, and then with rule and compass draw them carefully to scale. There are two principal workshops, one devoted to the workers in iron, the other to workers in wood. The trades actually taught are forging, metal-turning, fitting, carpentry, wood-turning, and pattern-making. A small workshop for teaching the manufacture of philosophical instruments has also just been organized. ”

“ And, in the shop where metals are wrought cold (which, for want of a better name, we call our machine-shop) , every new exercise is like a delightful trip into a new field of thought and investigation. Every exercise, if properly conducted, is both mental and manual. Every tool used and every process followed has its history, its genesis, and its evolution. ”

“ With the acquisition of skill in himself comes the ability and willingness to recognize skill in his fellows. When once he appreciates skill in handicraft, he regards the workman with sympathy and respect.”
Considerable progress in manual training has been made in the State agricultural colleges of the country. In twelve of these colleges drawing and tool practice have been introduced. Generally the tool practice covers pattern-making, blacksmithing, moulding and founding, forging and bench-work, and machine-tool work in iron. ”

“ Making money and getting soft snaps seem to be the objectives of most human beings. [Pg 120]
The labor-saving devices take away exercise. The machine does the work. The artisan simply feeds the hopper, puts in a new roll, or drops in the material. He sits down and watches the wheels go around, likely smoking a cigarette the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the sporting sheet of a yellow newspaper.
Possibly few of my readers have given the matter serious thought, and they will be astounded at the changed work conditions which have come into our modern life. ”

“ Ready to use head forms, pinked rug and robe trimming, artificial tongues and ear forms, and even paper head and neck forms for the mounting of large game heads are some of the time and labor saving supplies they list. If you cannot attain to these, emergency supplies can be had of the dealer in hardware and dry goods, and one who cares for the art will rise superior to the material at his hand. What you "stuff 'em with" is of small consequence provided you use brains in the job. ”

“ The hand tool is frequently a lively and decorative symbol of a society at a given time—a symbol, which, according to the judges at London's Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851, gives "indications of the peculiar condition and habits of the people whence they come, of their social and industrial wants and aims, as well as their natural or acquired advantages." [8] The hand tool, therefore, should be considered both as an object of appealing shape and a document illustrative of society and its progress.
Figure 15.—18th century: Cabinetmaker's dividers of English origin. ”

“ These craftsmen were highly skilled workers, employing hand tools, and hence, often termed handicraftsmen. 212. Are there any such workmen now? Very few, if any. Most of the present day crafts are no more than sub-divisions of the old time trades. The mechanical tool displaces skill without dispensing with it so far as the production of commodities is concerned. That is to say that the individual workman does not require that versatility of skill in machine production which was indispensable to the handicraftsman. ”

“ The work of the hand—as apart from that of the machine—is more and more in demand, and decorative needlework, even in our shops, is becoming more to be desired, for unique and personal characteristics and expression, than it has been for a very long period. ”

“ In some cases machine shop practice, sheet metal working, woodworking, forging, printing, painting, electrical wiring, and the like are offered for boys; and cooking, sewing, including dressmaking and designing, millinery, drawing, with emphasis upon design and interior decoration, music, machine operating, pasting, and the like are provided for girls. ”

“ A clever filer makes 200 strokes in a minute; a skilled comb-maker can make in a day from 60 to 70 combs of such fineness that there are from 40 to 48 teeth to the inch in them; eight Liege brick-makers, working together, produce 4,800 bricks per day; children employed in a needle manufactory, in making the eyes of needles, grow so skillful at it that they can make a small hole in the finest hair and draw another hair through it. Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 115. The old proverb, “practice makes perfect,” is followed even by thieves in their great division of labor. ”

“ There must be a good forge and fire, an anvil, and proper tools, all in the hands of a workman of some experience and skill. Successful forge work can hardly be considered among the handicrafts easily adapted to the needs of the amateur working without instruction and with poor equipment. But with good tools, proper equipment, and a little experience any clever boy will be able to design and fashion many useful articles for the home which have real artistic merit. ”

“ Art, technique, skill of head and hand immediately find a wide field of activity. All departments in the building of machinery, in the fashioning of tools, in architecture and in the branches of work connected with the internal equipment of houses have the amplest opportunity. ”

“ Upon arriving at their places of work, the employees perform various preliminary duties, such as putting on aprons and overalls, removing shirts, taping or greasing their arms, putting on finger cots, preparing the equipment for productive work, turning on switches for lights and machinery, opening windows and assumbling and sharpening tools. ”

“ You have already discovered by practise that wood has a grain which sets bounds to the possibilities of technique. You have yet to learn that it has also an inordinate capacity for swallowing light. Now, as it is by the aid of light that we see the results of our labor, it follows that we should do everything in our power to take full advantage of that helpful agency. It is obvious that work which can not be seen is only so much labor thrown away. ”

“ But come up-stairs to the first of the present workshops, and you may note among the colour-stampers, sitting on their high stools before the dies and presses, cases of more decided deformity or of crippling by accident. These boys follow an artistic, pretty business, and visitors may do worse than give a small or a large order for notepaper and envelopes, stamped with crest, motto, or quaint design. So well is the work executed, that the Home has orders constantly in hand for the trade, and some of the dies are really beautiful examples of engraving. ”

“ Among the several boasts of the present age one is, that of making machinery, as a working power in delicate operations, so true, as if it had been quickened with a life and will and power all its own: mechanism applied to weaving is, at least for the speed of plain work, most marvellous ”

“ In shop after shop I moved about amongst these women, saw them pulling levers, turning hand-wheels, sliding cutters to and from their exact positions, handling complicated-looking lathes and presses and machines as if they had been born and reared to the job, although actually 99 per cent. had never had hand on any machine more intricate than a washhouse79 mangle. They are doing work, too, that a good many men would hesitate about tackling. ”

“ I thereupon visited houses and institutions where men do work with their fingers, viz., where carvers in wood and ivory, in steel, copper, and stone, painters and draughtsmen, watchmakers and fine mechanists, spinners and weavers, printers and compositors, &c., drive their trade, and after that, people who are in the habit of writing much, and even the whole day, such as authors, copyists, clerks, stenographers, lithographers, as well as sempstresses and workwomen;—in short, all those who have much finger-work, or earn their living by their fingers. ”

“ And one of these—nor that the least—when superadded to the increasing purposes and enlarged principles of the times—will be found, I believe, in the necessity arising from the general use of complicated machines, which is compelling the mechanic and hand-laborer to educate his head as well as to harden his hands; to develop his soul as well as his sinews, and to become himself head-worker no less than handy-craftsman. ”

“ What is said of hand labor applies also, though to a slighter extent, to homework and hand-work done in the factory. The division of labor in the production of a single article among innumerable working-men paves the way for the introduction of machinery. ”

“ I find that good work is being done in the various workshops, viz., printing, bootmaking, tailoring, carpentry, blacksmithing, tinsmithing, etc., but, the system of bookkeeping in regard to the consumption of material requires revising. ”

“ The discipline of the handicraft industry enforces an habitual apprehension of mechanical forces and processes in terms of manual workmanship,—muscular force and craftsmanlike manipulation. This discipline touches238 first, and most intimately and coercively, the classes engaged in the manual work of industry, but it also necessarily pervades the community at large and gathers in its net all individuals and classes who have to do with the facts of industry, near or remote. ”

“ Wood-work, carving, work in metal or leather, pottery, basket-plaiting, bookbinding, needlework and embroidery, knitting, netting hammocks and so forth—the only limit to the number of such crafts is the limit to the knowledge and energy of those who can start and direct them, and to the space available, as some can only be carried on in rooms reserved for such work. ”

“ The workshops are fully equipped with machinery of the best and most modern type. Students will be trained in carpentry, turning, pattern-making, smith-work, molding and casting, and in machine tool-work. ”

“ What a picture of the influence of tools upon civilization! It is through the use of tools that man has [8] reached the place of absolute supremacy among animals. As he increases his stock of tools he recedes from the state of savagery. The great gulf between the aboriginal savage and the civilized man is spanned by the seven hand-tools—the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the chisel, and the file. These are the universal tools of the arts, and the modern machine-shop is an aggregation of them rendered automatic and driven by steam. ”