Wheelbarrow

“ A wheelbarrow is a lever of the second kind; the fulcrum being the point at which the wheel presses on the ground, and the weight being that of the barrow and its load, collected at their centre of gravity. ”

“ There is a cobweb of wheeled vehicles of all sorts, from a cab to a hybrid construction something between a wheelbarrow and a costermonger’s shallow. There is much bawling and flinging, shoving, hoisting, pulling and dragging of parcels; all the horses’ heads seem to be turned the wrong way; everybody’s off-wheel seems locked in somebody else’s ”

“ Of course, the wheelbarrow is worth far more than the plank, but true, friendship never notices things like that. Pray get it at once, and I will set to work at my barn this very day.’
“‘Certainly,’ cried little Hans, and he ran into the shed and dragged the plank out.
“‘It is not a very big plank,’ said the Miller, looking at it, ‘and I am afraid that after I have mended my barn-roof there won’t be any left for you to mend the wheelbarrow with; but, of course, that is not my fault. And now, as I have given you my wheelbarrow, I am sure you would like to give me some flowers in return. ”

“ Four on each team, two drivers and two passengers. Wheelbarrows are all set at the starting point with passengers No. 1 sitting in them and drivers No. 1 all ready to go. At the signal they are off to the goal and return, the drivers dumping their passengers without ceremony, and turning their wheelbarrows over to drivers No. 2, who hustle their passengers into the wheelbarrows and repeat the performance. It is always surprising to note how many men have forgotten how to propel a wheelbarrow, and even more surprising to see how few people can ride in one easily and comfortably! ”

“ There is here no risk lest the steady-going coolie who propels the vehicle should shy at a sheet of paper, or lamp-post, or bolt with his burden. For all this, the wheelbarrow is not in much favour with the foreign residents, and at one time, indeed, was threatened with abolition, as the screeching of the wheels on the dry axles disturbed the even flow of business in the offices of the foreign residents. ”

“ During the afternoon I changed places for a bit with the coolie between the front handles, and while I would not care to adopt barrowing as a profession while some less confining source of livelihood remains to me, the thing ran, on the level at least, more like a perambulator than the most optimistic could have imagined. The Chinese are adepts in the art of balancing, and the wheelbarrow, like the rickshaw and the “Peking cart,” is so adjusted as to call for less exertion than the sight of it suggests. ”

“ One of the handiest things in a garden is a wheelbarrow, and one of the prettiest for the young carpenter to exercise his ingenuity upon. To make one, take a wide plank or board about an inch and a quarter thick. Proceed to your bench, and having fitted it to its proper position, take your jack plane and plane off the rough, next use your smoothing plane to make it smooth. Then take your pencil and draw upon its side the figure of a wheelbarrow. Then take your compass saw and cut round the marks you have made: to do this you will have to fix your board in the screw of your bench. ”

“ A little wheelbarrow can be nicely made out of a match or cardboard box. The legs and handles are of matches, and may be fixed on with mucilage and held steady with large strong stitches. The support for the wheel is made of a strip taken from the lid of the matchbox and narrowed at one end where it supports the wheel. The wheel may be made of a slice of cork or a button mould fixed on with a piece of wire bent into a knot at each end to prevent it being pulled through the support. ”

“ A vehicle used in the cultivation of the land on the slopes of the skirts of Dartmoor in Devonshire, has three wheels of solid wood; it resembles a huge wheelbarrow, with two wheels behind, and one in front of it, and has two long handles like the handles of a plough, projecting behind for the purpose of guiding it. ”

“ We had counted as many as fifty wheelbarrow men passing a given point on the street in quick succession, each carrying 300 to 500 pounds of the green rape and moving so rapidly that it was not easy to keep pace with them, as we learned in following one of the trains during twenty minutes to its destination. During this time not a man in the train halted or slackened his pace. ”

“ The young men of a place, when they know that a person is paying attention to a girl or woman, seize hold of him, place him [166] in a wheelbarrow, in which they wheel him up and down until they are tired, when they upset him on the nearest pile or in a pond. ”

“ The passenger wheelbarrows of Shantung are of two kinds,—small and large, city and country, short or long distance, according to the individual choice of dividing line. In town they are merely two cushioned, straight-backed benches on either side of the high wooden wheel, on which six or eight crippled women may ride comfortably, sitting sidewise. But for cross-country work a larger, sturdier breed is used, with room for several hundredweight of baggage and a pair of the owners thereof stretched out upon it, feet forward, like a sultan on his divan. ”

“ You have scarcely by a sudden spring saved your shoulders from the pole of a carriage, when a wheelbarrow makes a similar attack on your legs. You make spring the second, and in all probability your head comes in contact with the uplifted hatchet of a wood-cutter. ”

“ There is very little mention made by historians of steel springs, but they were first applied to wheel carriages about 1670. At this period a vehicle drawn by men, and called a Brouette (or wheelbarrow) was introduced at Paris. [Plate 19.] It was a sedan chair, to hold one person, with the door in front like the sedan chairs are now made, but on two wheels, about 3 ft. 6 in. high, and with two poles or shafts projecting forward, between which one man ran, whilst another pushed behind if the weight required it. ”

“ Ned trundled a wheelbarrow laden with lumber, and the others each carried a couple of two-by fours or planks. Ned’s load also included a paper bag of iron spikes, two hammers, and a hatchet. They chose Ash Street in preference to the busier thoroughfares [217] and, because the lumber on the wheelbarrow was continually falling off and the burdens on the boys’ shoulders required frequent shifting, their progress was slow. The rain wasn’t hard, but it was steady, and Ned, who had arisen in a depressed state of mind, grumbled alternately at the weather and the wheelbarrow. ”

“ Two-wheeled cabs, drawn by a single horse, take the place of the chair to some extent in Pekin, but there are many streets where the cabs cannot circulate. In Shanghai the wheelbarrow is a rival of the chair; it is cheaper and more uncomfortable, and its use is almost entirely confined to the natives. It has no springs, the pavement is rough, the man between the shafts is generally far from strong, and altogether the wheelbarrow of Northern China is not to be recommended. ”

“ Six men were regularly employed in conveying a wheelbarrow filled with two spadefuls of soil. There was one man to each handle, two in front to pull when the road rose, and one on each side to give a helping hand and keep the barrow steady. ”

“ If the job is long and complicated, it may be analyzed while the timing is going on, and the elementary units entered then instead of beforehand. In wheelbarrow work as illustrated in the example shown on the note sheet, the elementary units consist of "filling barrow," "starting" (which includes throwing down shovel and lifting handles of barrow) , "wheeling full," etc. These units might have been further subdivided—the first one into time for loading one shovelful, or still further into the time for filling and the time for emptying each shovelful. ”

“ This time I used still another of Shantung’s many modes of locomotion,—a bicycle. It has its advantages in a flat country where the roads are often narrow paths, and where a vehicle that cannot be lifted about by hand now and then is limited in its range. But when it chances that a raging head wind blows both going and coming, and the contrivance between one’s aching legs emanates from a Chicago mail-order house, there are certain things to envy the traveler by wheelbarrow. ”

“ Wheels so constructed I have seen in the west of England, in Ireland, and in France. A recent traveller in Moldo-Wallachia relates that the people of the country go from place to place mounted on horses, buffaloes, or oxen; but among the Boyards it is "fashionable" to make use of a vehicle which holds a position in the scale of conveyances a little above a wheelbarrow and little below a dung-cart. It is poised on four wheels of solid wood of two feet diameter, which are more or less rounded by means of an axe. ”

“ Every idea of comfort must, however, be set aside by those who are willing to conform themselves to the common method of riding post. A kind of vehicle is given which is not unlike a very small crate of earthenware fastened to four small wheels by means of wooden pegs, and altogether not higher than a common wheelbarrow. It is filled with straw, and the traveller sits in the middle of it, keeping the upper part of his body in an erect position, and finding great difficulty to cram his legs within. ”

“ A missionary along the line between Hankow and Peking says that he now makes a 200-mile trip in five hours which formerly took him nineteen days. Before the railway came he had to go by wheelbarrow, ten miles a day, his luggage on one side the wheel, and himself on the other. Thousands of these wheelbarrows, doing freight and passenger business, are in use in Shanghai and the regions roundabout. A frame about three feet wide and four feet long is built over and around the wheel, and a coolie will carry as much as half a ton on one of them. ”

“ We also arranged that the other boat should wait for us, even if we could not get back that night, so that we might not be detained for want of a boat in case of returning later. We then put our books into two bags, and with a servant who always accompanied us on these occasions, set off for the city, distant about seven miles. Walking was out of the question, from the state of the roads, so we availed ourselves of wheelbarrows, the only conveyance to be had in these parts. A wheelbarrow is cheaper than a sedan, only requiring one coolie ”

“ Jourdanet asserts his belief that, in countries where cold is not of itself an obstacle to life, rarefaction of the air will prevent the founding of durable states at a level higher than 4,000 metres.
Chinese Wheelbarrows.—In commenting on an improved style of wheelbarrow, a correspondent of the Gardener's Chronicle praises the Chinese for the ingenuity they display in diminishing to the last degree the labor of the man who propels the barrow. The Chinese barrow has but one wheel, but it is large, and placed in the centre of the bed of the vehicle ”

“ But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. ”

“ Trains are passing with every known thing therein—first thousands of soldiers, then wagons of provisions, cannon, boats for pontoon bridges mounted on wheels ready for unloading, material for building, trucks of hay, portable houses and in one car were hundreds of tiny wheels sticking up which we discovered belonged to wheelbarrows. It is a droll procession, that never ceases before one's eyes. ”

“ The wheelbarrows seem to be best off. They fill such a middle rank between bipeds and quadrupeds, that they lay claim to the privileges of both, and hold on their way rejoicing, commanding respect equally from men and horses. ”

“ The wheel itself suffered severely in this encounter, and on setting it in motion the next morning its dizzy efforts to perform its stated task were pitiable to behold, and we found it necessary to strengthen it by passing a strip of hoop iron round its whole circumference.
Sunday, the 15th, there was a slight shower, accompanied by heavy thunder, the first we had ever heard in California. [Pg 231] Monday, our wheel worked to our entire satisfaction, but not so with the Tom. A hundred wheelbarrows, equal to six hundred buckets, yielded only sixteen dollars instead of thirty; Tertium and St. ”

“ However, these vagaries were never indulged in for long, and as soon as they found that the wheels went round, and that their labour was lightened by the use of them, they always took kindly to the wheelbarrows. As the men went barefooted or wore thin sandals they could not work well with a spade, but they soon became skilful with a shovel. ”

“ But if one’s mind has that queer and no doubt reprehensible quirk which makes the picturesque more interesting than standardized efficiency, the wheelbarrows are strong competitors for the attention. In Peking and the north these are less used, and not at all for passengers. In Tzinan they carry a much larger proportion of the population than do the rickshaws. ”

“ Go to your father and ask him to give you a wooden wheel-barrow, and a bear’s skin. When you have got them bring them to me, and I will touch them with my magic wand. The wheel-barrow will then move of itself, and will take you at full speed wherever you want to go, and the bear’s skin will make such a covering for you, that no one will recognise you.’
So the princess did as the witch advised her. The king, when he heard her strange request, was greatly astonished, and asked her what she meant to do with a wheel-barrow and a bear’s skin. ”