Life in a Railway Factory
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Title: Life in a Railway Factory
Author: Alfred Williams
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE IN A RAILWAY FACTORY ***
LIFE IN A RAILWAY FACTORY
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
THE READERS’ LIBRARY
50 VOLUMES PUBLISHED
_Full list of Titles can be had from
the Publishers_
DUCKWORTH & CO.
COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
LIFE IN
A RAILWAY FACTORY
BY
ALFRED WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF
‘A WILTSHIRE VILLAGE’
‘VILLAGES OF THE WHITE HORSE’
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
_First Published 1915
Published in the Readers’ Library 1920_
_Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_
TO MY FRIEND
ALFRED E. ZIMMERN
PREFACE
My object in penning “Life in a Railway Factory” was to take advantage
of the opportunities I have had as a workman, during twenty-three years’
continuous service in the sheds, of setting down what I have seen and
known for the interest and education of others, who might like to be
informed as to what is the actual life of the factory, but who have no
means of ascertaining it from the generality of literature published
upon the matter.
The book opens with a short survey of several causes of labour unrest
and suggestions as to its remedy. Then follows a brief description of
the stamping shed, which is the principal scene and theatre of the drama
of life exhibited in the pages, the central point from which our
observations were made and where the chief of our knowledge and
experience was acquired. After a glance into the interior we explore the
surroundings and pay a visit to the rolling mills, and watch the men
shingling and rolling the iron and forging wheels for the locomotives.
Continuing our perambulation of the yard we encounter the shunters,
watchmen, carriage finishers, painters, washers-down, and
cushion-beaters. The old canal claims a moment’s attention, then we pass
on to the ash-wheelers, bricklayers, road-waggon builders, and the
wheel-turning shed. Leaving them behind we come to the “field,” where
the old broad-gauge vehicles were broken up or converted, and proceed
thence into the din of the frame-building shed and study some portion
of its life. Next follows an exploration of the smithy and a
consideration of the smith at work and at home, his superior skill and
characteristics. From our study of the smiths we pass to that of the
fitters, forgemen, and boilermakers, and complete our tour of the
premises by visiting the foundry and viewing the operations of the
moulders.
The early morning stir in the town and country around the sheds, the
preparations for work, the manner in which the toilers arrive at the
factory, and the composition of the crowd are next described, after
which we enter the stamping shed and witness the initial toils of the
forgemen and stampers, view the oil furnace and admire the prowess of
“Ajax” and his companions. The drop-hammers and their staff receive
proportionate attention; then follows a comparison of forging and
smithing, a study of several personalities, and an inspection of the
plant known as the Yankee Hammers. Chapter XI. is a description of the
first quarter at the forge expressed entirely by means of actual
conversations, ejaculations, commands, and repartees, overheard and
faithfully recorded. Following that is a first-hand account of how the
night shift is worked, giving one entire night at the forge and noting
the various physical phases through which the workman passes and
indicating the effects produced upon the body by the inversion of the
natural order of things. The remainder of the chapters is devoted to
the description and explanation of a variety of matters, including the
manner of putting on and discharging hands, methods of administration,
intimidating and terrorising, the interpretation of moods and feelings
during the passage of the day, week and year, holidays, the effects
of cold and heat, causes of sickness and accidents, the psychology of
fat and lean workmen, comedy, tragedy, short time and overtime, the
advantages--or disadvantages--of education and intelligence, ending up
with a review of the industrial situation as it was before the war and
remarks upon the future outlook. A table of wages paid at the works is
added as an appendix.
The site of the factory is the Wiltshire town of Swindon. This stands
at the extremity of the Upper Thames Valley, in the centre of a vast
agricultural tract, and is seventy-seven miles from London and about
forty from Bristol. Its population numbers approximately fifty thousand,
all largely dependent upon the railway sheds for subsistence. The
inhabitants generally are a heterogenous people. The majority of the
works’ officials, the clerical staff, journeymen, and the highly skilled
workers have been imported from other industrial centres; the labourers
and the less highly trained have been recruited wholesale from the
villages and hamlets surrounding the town. About twelve thousand men,
including clerks, are normally employed at the factory. A knowledge of
the composition of the inhabitants of the town is important, otherwise
one might be at a loss to account for the low rate of wages paid, the
lack of spirited effort and efficient organisation among the workers,
and other conditions peculiar to the place.
The book was never intended to be an expression of patriotism or
unpatriotism, for it was written before the commencement of the
European conflict. It consequently has nothing directly to do with
the war, nor with the manufacture of munitions, any more than it
incidentally discovers the nature of the toils, exertions, and
sacrifices demanded of those who must slave at furnace, mill,
steam-hammer, anvil, and lathe producing supplies for our armies
and for those of our Allies in the field. It is not a treatise on
economics, for I have never studied the science. If I had set out
with the intention of theoretically slaughtering every official
responsible for the administration of the factory I should have
failed signally. I never contemplated such a course. Instead I
wished to write out my own experiences and observations simply,
and from my own point of view, mistaken or otherwise, without fear
or favour to any. I have my failings and prejudices. What they are
is very well known to me, and I have no intention of disavowing
them. Whoever disagrees with me is fully entitled to his opinion.
I shall not question his judgment, though I shall not easily
surrender my own. I am not anxious to quarrel with any man; at
the same time I am not disposed to be fettered, smothered, gagged
or silenced, to cower and tremble, or to shrink from uttering what
I believe to be the truth in deference to the most formidable
despot living.
A. W.
_24th July 1915._
A portion of Chapter XIII. has appeared in the _English Review_. My
thanks are due to the Editor for his courteous permission to reproduce
it in the volume.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
LABOUR UNREST 1
CHAPTER II
THE STAMPING SHOP--GENERAL ENVIRONMENT--THE “COALIES”--THE
ROLLING MILLS--PUDDLING AND SHINGLING--ACCIDENTS AT THE
ROLLS--THE SCRAP WAGGONS--WASTE 9
CHAPTER III
THE SHUNTERS--WATCHMEN--DETECTING A THIEF--FIRES--CARRIAGE
FINISHERS--PAINTERS--WASHERS-DOWN--CUSHION-BEATERS--CHANGES
AND INNOVATIONS--DEPARTMENTAL RELATIONS 25
CHAPTER IV
THE OLD CANAL--THE ASH-WHEELERS--THE BRICKLAYERS--RIVAL
FOREMEN--THE ROAD-WAGGON BUILDERS--THE WHEEL SHED--BOY
TURNERS--THE RUBBISH HEAP 44
CHAPTER V
“THE FIELD”--“CUTTING-DOWN”--THE FLYING DUTCHMAN--THE FRAME
SHED--PROMOTION--RIVET BOYS--THE OVERSEER 63
CHAPTER VI
THE SMITHY--THE SMITH--BUILDING THE FIRE--GALLERYMEN--
APPRENTICES--THE OLDEST HAND--DEATH OF A SMITH--THE
SMITH’S ATTITUDE TO HIS MATES--HIS GREAT GOOD-NATURE
--THE SMITHS’ FOREMAN 82
CHAPTER VII
FITTERS--THE STEAM-HAMMER SHED--FORGEMEN--THEIR
CHARACTERISTICS--BOILERMAKERS--THE FOUNDRY--THE
BLAST FURNACE--MOULDERS 100
CHAPTER VIII
GETTING TO WORK--THE AWAKENING IN THE COUNTRY--STEALING
A RIDE--THE TOWN STIR--THE ARMY OF WORKMEN--“CHECKING”--
EARLY COMERS--CLERKS AND DRAUGHTSMEN--FEATURES OF THE
STAFF 120
CHAPTER IX
FIRST OPERATIONS IN THE SHED--THE EARLY DIN--ITS EFFECT ON
THE WORKMEN--CHARGING THE HEATS--THE OIL FURNACE--THE
“AJAX”--HARRY AND SAMMY--THE “STRAPPIE”--HYDRAULIC
POWER--WHEEL-BURSTING 136
CHAPTER X
STAMPING--THE DROP-HAMMER STAFF--ALGY AND CECIL--PAUL AND
“PUMP”--“SMAMER”--BOILERS--A NEAR SHAVE 153
CHAPTER XI
FORGING AND SMITHING--HYDRAULIC OPERATIONS--“BALTIMORE”--
“BLACK SAM”--“STRAWBERRY” AND GUSTAVUS--THE “FIRE
KING”--“TUBBY”--BOLAND--PINNELL OF THE YANKEE PLANT 169
CHAPTER XII
FIRST QUARTER AT THE FORGE 187
CHAPTER XIII
THE NIGHT SHIFT--ARRIVAL IN THE SHED--“FOLLOWING THE
TOOL”--THE FORGEMAN’S HASTE AND BUSTLE--LIGHT AND
SHADE--SUPPER-TIME--CLATTER AND CLANG--MIDNIGHT--
WEARINESS--THE RELEASE--HOME TO REST 206
CHAPTER XIV
INFERIORITY OF WORK MADE BY THE NIGHT SHIFT--ALTERING
THE GAUGES--THE “BLACK LIST”--“DOUBLE STOPPAGE
CHARLIE“--”JIMMY USELESS”--THE HAUNTED FORGE AND COKE
HEAP--THE OLD VALET--THE CHECKER AND STOREKEEPER 225
CHAPTER XV
SICKNESS AND ACCIDENTS--THE FACTORY YEAR--HOLIDAYS--“TRIP”--
MOODS AND FEELINGS--PAY-DAY--LOSING A QUARTER--GETTING
MARRIED 241
CHAPTER XVI
COLD AND HEAT--MEALS--FAT AND LEAN WORKMEN--WAYS AND
MEANS--PRANKS--ALL FOOLS’ DAY--NEW YEAR’S EVE 258
CHAPTER XVII
GETTING A START--THE NEW HAND--TOWN AND COUNTRY WORKMEN--
PROMOTION--DISCHARGING HANDS--LANGUAGE OF THE SHED--
EDUCATION--THE EDUCATED MAN NOT WANTED--GREASING
THE FORGE 274
CHAPTER XVIII
SHORT TIME AND OVERTIME--“BACK TO THE LAND”--THE TOWN
INFLUENCE--CHANGES AT THE WORKS--GRIEVANCES--THE
POSITION OF LABOUR--ILLS AND REMEDIES--THE FUTURE
OUTLOOK 292
APPENDIX
TABLE OF WAGES PAID AT THE WORKS 309
INDEX 311
LIFE IN A RAILWAY FACTORY
CHAPTER I
LABOUR UNREST
Someone once asked the Greek Thales how he might best bear misfortune
and he replied--“By seeing your enemy in a worse condition than
yourself.” He would have been as near the truth if he had said “friend”
instead of “enemy.” Everyone appears to desire to see every other one
worse off than himself. He is not content with doing well; he must do
better, and if his success happens to be at the expense of one less
fortunate he will be the more highly gratified. This lust of dominion
and possession dates from the very foundation of human society. It is a
feature of barbarism, and one that the wisest teaching and the most
civilising influences at work in the world have failed to remove or even
very materially to modify. The idea behind the _Sic vos non vobis_ of
Virgil has always been uppermost in the minds of the powerful. This it
was that doomed the captives of the Greeks and Romans to a life of
wretchedness and misery in the mines. This was responsible for the
subjugation of the English peasants, and their reduction to the order of
serfs in feudal times. And this is what would enslave the labouring
classes in mine, field, and factory to-day. It must not be permitted.
There is a way to defeat it. That is by law. Not a law made by the
depredators but by the workers themselves. They have the means at their
disposal. If they would summon up the courage to make use of them they
might shatter the power of the capitalist at a stroke and free
themselves from his domination for ever.
A principal cause of trouble everywhere between the employer and the
employed is the lack of recognition of the worker. I mean this in its
broadest sense. I do not mean merely that great and powerful
combinations do not want to recognise Trade Unions. We all know that. It
is a part of their policy and is dictated by pride and the spirit of
intolerance. But they make a much more serious and fatal mistake. They
refuse to recognise a man. All kinds of employers are guilty of this.
The mineowner, the trading syndicate, the railway or steamship company,
municipal authorities, the large and small manufacturer, the farmer and
shopkeeper are equally to blame. If they would recognise the man they
might be led to a consideration of his legitimate needs. They must first
admit him to be equally a member of the human family and then recognise
that, as such, he has claims as righteous and sacred as they. That is
where the representative of capital invariably fails. He will not admit
that the one under his authority has any rights of his own. To him the
worker is as much a slave as ever he was, only he is conscious that his
treatment of him must be subject to the limitations imposed by the
modern laws of the land. And as he flouts the individual so he contemns
the collective organisations of the men. He is determined not to
recognise them. He considers this to be a proof of his strength. In
reality it is a badge of his weakness. Sooner or later it will prove his
undoing.
I will give an illustration. Several years ago, working in the same
shed as myself, was a grey-headed furnaceman. He was not an old man; he
could have been no more than fifty. One day he met with a serious
accident. While attending to his furnace, in a stooping position,
someone in passing accidentally pushed him. This caused him to lose his
balance and he slipped on the plate and fell head-first into a boshful
of boiling water underneath the fire hole. His head and shoulders were
severely scalded, and he was absent on the sick list for two months.
When he came in again he was not allowed to resume work at the furnace
but was put wheeling out ashes from the smiths’ fires. To my
steam-hammer an oil furnace had recently been attached and several
managers came daily to experiment with it. One morning, while they were
present, the ex-furnaceman came to wheel away the debris. Then a manager
turned to me and said--
“Who’s that? What’s he doing here?”
I explained who the man was and what he was doing.
“Pooh! What’s the good of _that thing_! He ought to be shifted outside,”
replied he.
In a short while afterwards the furnaceman was discharged.
There is something even worse than this and much more serious in effect.
That is a result of too great recognition. I am referring to the common
fault of interfering with and penalising men of superior mental and
intellectual powers. There is even a certain advantage in a man’s
ability to escape attention. Especially if he is of a courageous turn of
mind, has views and ideas of his own, and is able to influence others.
He will live the more easy for it. Left to himself he can work away
quietly, informing the minds and leavening the opinions of those round
about him. If he can escape recognition. But he cannot. He is soon
discovered, gagged, smothered, or got rid of. The safest way to
strengthen a flame is to fan it. And if you want to intensify a man’s
dissatisfaction with a thing attempt to prevent him by force from giving
expression to it. That is a sure means of provocation and will bear
fruit a hundredfold.
We hear a great deal about the “discontent” of the workers, and a degree
of censure and reproach is usually conveyed with the expression. It is
not half general enough. The average working man is too content. He is
often lazily apathetic. Is the mineowner, the manufacturer, or the
railway magnate content? Of course he is not. Strength is in action.
When I hear of a man’s being satisfied I know that he is done for. He
might as well be dead. I wish the workers were more discontented, though
I should in every case like to see their discontent rationally expressed
and all their efforts intelligently directed. They waste a fearful
amount of time and energy through irresolution and uncertainty of
objective.
The selfishness, cruelty, and arrogance of the capitalist and his agents
force the workers into rebellion. The swaggering pomposity and fantastic
ceremony of officials fill them with deserving contempt. Their impudence
is amazing. I have known a foreman of the shed to attack a man by reason
of the decent clothes he had on and forbid him to wear a bowler hat. Not
only in the workshop but even at home in his private life and dealings
he is under the eye of his employer. His liberty is tyrannically
restricted. In the town he is not allowed to supplement his earnings by
any activity except such as has the favour of the works’ officials. He
must not keep a coffee-shop or an inn, or be engaged in any trading
whatever. He may not even sell apples or gooseberries. And if he happens
to be the spokesman of a labourers’ union or to be connected with any
other independent organisation, woe betide him! The older established
association--such as that of the engineers--is not interfered with. It
is the unprotected unskilled workman that must chiefly be terrorised and
subjugated.
The worker is everywhere exploited. The speeding-up of late years has
been general and insistent. New machinery is continually being installed
in the sheds. This is driven at a high rate and the workman must keep
pace with it. The toil in many cases is painfully exacting. There may be
a less amount of violent physical exertion required here and there,
though much more concentration of mind and attention will be needed. The
output, in some instances, has been increased tenfold. I am not
exaggerating when I say that the actual exertions of the workman have
often been doubled or trebled, yet he receives scarcely anything more in
wages. In some cases he does not receive as much. He may have obtained a
couple of shillings more in day wages and at the same time have lost
double the amount in piecework balance. Occasionally, when the foreman
of the shed has mercilessly cut a man’s prices, he offers him a sop in
the shape of a rise of one or two shillings. On the hammers under my
charge during the last ten years the day wages of assistants--owing to
their being retained on the job up to a greater age--had doubled, and
the piecework prices had been cut by one half. As a result the gang lost
about £80 in a year. A mate of mine, whose prices had been cut to the
lowest fraction, though offered a rise, steadily refused it on the
ground that he would be worse off than before. Though slaving from
morning till night he could not earn his percentage of profit. In many
cases where the workman was formerly allowed to earn a profit of 33 per
cent. on his day wages he is now restricted to 25 per cent., and the
prices have been correspondingly reduced. Even now the foreman is not
satisfied. He will still contrive to keep the percentage earned below
the official figure in order to ingratiate himself with the managers and
to give them the impression that he is still engaged in paring the
prices.
At the same time, a marvellous lack of real initiative is discovered by
the factory staff. Things that have been so are so, and if any sharp and
enterprising workman sees the possibility of improvement anywhere and
makes a suggestion he is soundly snubbed for his pains. In their
particular anxiety to exact the last ounce from the workman in the
matter of labour the managers overlook multitudes of important details
connected with their own administration, but which the workman sees as
plainly as he does the nose on his face. They often spend pounds to
effect the saving of a few pence. They lavish vast sums on experiments
that the most ordinary man perceives have no possible chance of being
successful, or even useful if they should succeed. Men’s opinions upon a
point are rarely solicited; if offered, they are belittled and rejected.
Where an opinion is asked for it is usually intended as a bait for a
trap, the answer is carefully recorded and afterwards used to prove
something to the other’s disadvantage.
But those ideas which are most valuable, provided they are not complex
and the simple-minded official can readily grasp them--which is not
always the case--he secretly cherishes and stealthily develops and
afterwards parades them to his superior with swaggering pride as his own
inventions. It is thus Mr So-and-so becomes a smart man in the eyes of
the firm, while, as a matter of fact, he is a perfect blockhead and an
ignoramus. Meanwhile, the very workman whose idea has been purloined and
exploited is treated as a danger by the foreman; henceforth he must be
watched and kept well in subjection. The cowardly overseer sees in him a
possible rival, and is fearful for his own credit. This is one of the
worst ills of the manufacturing life, and has crushed many a brave, good
spirit, and smothered many a rising genius. The disadvantage is twofold.
There is a loss to manufacture in not being assisted with new and bright
ideas, and another to the individual, who is not only deprived of the
fruits of his inventive faculty but is systematically punished for the
possession of an original mind. In a word, officialism at the works is
continually straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel.
What means are to be adopted in order to do away with the anomaly? One
of the first things to do would be to recognise the individual. We want
a better understanding and a new feeling altogether. The worker does not
need a profusion of sentiment; he claims justice. He is willing to give
and take. He knows that enormous profits are made out of his efforts and
it is but natural that he should demand to receive a fair amount of
remuneration and equitable conditions. My companion of the next
steam-hammer, by means of a new process, in one week saved the railway
company £20 in the execution of a single order. He had to work doubly
hard to do it but he received not a penny extra himself. The piecework
system as it stands is grossly unfair. All the profits accrue to one
side and when the worker demands what is, after all, an insignificant
participation in them he is described as being unreasonable and
discontented. Where day wages have risen all round on piecework jobs the
prices should be increased in proportion, otherwise the workman is
simply paying himself for his additional efforts out of his own pocket.
Better wages and shorter hours are desired in every sphere of labour
and especially in factories. The worker is not greatly concerned as to
whether he is employed by the State or by a syndicate as long as he
obtains justice. It is no more trouble for Parliament to formulate a law
for a private concern than for a Government department. Forty-eight
hours a week is long enough for any man to work. I would have the
factory week completed in five turns. There is no need of the half-day
Saturdays. It is a waste of time. It is expensive for the employers and
unprofitable for the men. They can neither work nor play. If forty-eight
hours were divided out into five turns the expense of steaming for the
half-turn on Saturday would be saved. The amount of work produced would
not fall very far below that made at present, and the men would be
better satisfied. They would at least be able to have a clear rest and
come to work fresh and fit on the Monday. I would even go further and
suggest forty-five hours--that is, five turns of nine hours each--as a
working week for factories in the future. This is not so impossible nor
yet as unreasonable as it may appear. The proposal will doubtless strike
some as being amazing. Nevertheless, I recommend it to them for their
leisurely consideration. By aiming high we shall hit something. But
there are obstacles to remove and difficulties to overcome.
CHAPTER II
THE STAMPING SHOP--GENERAL ENVIRONMENT--THE “COALIES”--THE
ROLLING MILLS--PUDDLING AND SHINGLING--ACCIDENTS AT THE
ROLLS--THE SCRAP WAGGONS--WASTE
The Stamping Shop is square, or nearly so, each lateral corresponding to
a cardinal point of the compass--north, south, east, and west, the whole
comprising about an acre and a quarter. That is not an extensive
building for a railway manufactory. There are some shops with an area of
not less than five, six, and even seven acres--a prodigious size! They
are used for purposes of construction, for carriages, waggons,
locomotives, and also for repairs. The premises used for purely
manufacturing purposes, such as those I am now speaking of, are
generally much smaller in extent.
The workshop is modern in structure and has not stood for more than
fifteen years. Before that time the work proceeded on a much smaller
scale, and was carried on in a shed built almost entirely of wood and
corrugated iron--a dark, wretched place, without light or ventilation,
save for the broken windows and rents in the low, depressed roof. With
the development of the industry and general expansion of trade this
became altogether inadequate to cope with the requirements of the other
sheds, and a move had to be made to larger and more commodious premises.
Thereupon a site was chosen and a new shop erected about a quarter of a
mile distant. The walls of this are of brick, built with “piers” and
“panels,” thirty feet high, solid, massive, and substantial, with no
pretence to show of any kind. The roof is constructed in bays running
north and south, according to the disposition of the long walls, and
presents a serrated appearance, like the teeth of a huge saw. Of these
bays the slopes towards sunrise are filled in with stout panes of glass;
the opposite sides are of strong boards covered with slates, the whole
supported by massive sectional principals and a network of stout iron
girders.
The roof is studded with hundreds of wooden ventilators intended to
carry off the smoke and fumes from the forges. Above them tower numerous
furnace stacks and chimneys from the boilers, with the exhaust pipes of
the engines and steam-hammers. Towards summer, when the days lengthen
and the sun pours down interminable volumes of light and heat from a
cloudless sky, or when the air without is charged with electricity and
the thunder bellows and rolls over the hills and downs to the south, and
the forked lightning flashes reveal every corner of the dark smithy so
that the heat becomes almost unbearable, a large quantity of the glass
is removed to aid ventilation; the heat, assisted by the ground current,
rises and escapes through the roof. But when the rain comes and the
heavy showers, driven at an angle by the wind, beat furiously through
upon the half-naked workmen beneath, even this is not an unmixed
blessing. Or when the sun shoots his hot arrows down through the
openings upon the toilers at the steam-hammers and forges, as he always
does twice during the morning--once before breakfast, and again at about
eleven o’clock--it is productive of increased discomfort; the sweat
flows faster and the work flags. This does not last long, however.
Southward goes the sun, and shade succeeds.
The eastern and western ends of the shed are almost half taken up with
large sliding doors, that reach as high as to the roof. These rest on
wheels which are superimposed upon iron rails, so that a child might
push them backwards and forwards. Through several of the doors rails are
laid to permit of engines and waggons entering with loads of
material--iron and steel for the furnaces--and also for conveying away
the manufactures. A narrow bogie line runs round the shed and is used
for transferring materials from one part to another and to the various
hydraulic presses and forges. Here and there are fixed small turn-tables
to enable the bogies to negotiate the angles and move from track to
track.
Southward the shed faces a yard of about ten acres in extent. This is
bounded on every side by other workshops and premises, all built of the
same dingy materials--brick, slate, and iron--blackened with smoke,
dust, and steam, surmounted with tall chimneys, innumerable ventilators,
and poles for the telephone wires, which effectually block out all
perspective. To view it from the interior is like looking around the
inner walls of a fortress. There is no escape for the eye; nothing but
bricks and mortar, iron and steel, smoke and steam arising. It is ugly;
and the sense of confinement within the prison-like walls of the factory
renders it still more dismal to those who have any thought of the hills
and fields beyond. Only in summer does it assume a brighter aspect. Then
the sun scalds down on the network of rails and ashen ground with deadly
intensity; the atmosphere quivers and trembles; the fine dust burns
under your feet, and the steel tracks glitter under the blinding rays.
The clouds of dazzling steam from the engines are no longer visible--the
air being too hot to admit of condensation--and the black smoke from
the furnaces and boilers hangs in the air, lifeless and motionless, like
a pall, for hours and hours together.
But when the summer is over, when the majesty of July and August is past
and gone and golden September gives place to rainy October, or, most of
all, when dull, gloomy November covers the skies with its impenetrable
veil of drab cloud and mist day after day and week after week, with
scarcely an hour of sunshine, the utter dismalness and ugliness of the
place are appalling. Then there is not a vestige of colour. The sky,
roofs, walls, the engines moving to and fro, the rolling stock, the
stacks of plates and ingots of iron and steel, the sleepers for the
rails, the ground beneath--everything is dark, sombre, and repellant.
Not a glint upon the steel lines! Not a refraction of light from the
slates on the roof! Everything is dingy, dirty, and drab. And drab is
the mind of the toiler all this time, drab as the skies above and the
walls beneath. Doomed to the confinement from which there is no escape,
he accepts the condition and is swallowed up in his environment.
There is one point, and only one, a few paces west of the shed, from
which an inspiriting view may be had. There, on a fine day, from between
two towering walls, in the little distance, blue almost as the sky and
yet distinct and well-defined, may be seen a great part of Liddington
Hill, crowned with the _castellum_, the scene of many a lively contest
in prehistoric days, and the holy of holies of Richard Jefferies, who
spent days and nights there trying to fathom the supreme mystery that
has baffled so many great and ardent souls. When the sky is clear and
the air free from mist and haze--especially as it appears sometimes in
the summer months, under a southern wind, or before or after rain--so
distinct does the sloping line of the hill show, with its broad front
towards you, that you may even perceive the common features and details
of it. Then you may plainly view the disposition of the stone walls
running from top to base, with the white chalk-pits gleaming like snow
in the distance, and tell the outer wall of the entrenchment. In short,
you might imagine yourself to be standing within the mound and looking
out over the magnificent valley--north, east, and west; towards Bristol,
over Cirencester, and beyond Witney and Oxford. But in the winter even
this is denied. Then the dark lowering clouds sweep along the downs and
shut them out of view, or grey mist fills the intervening valley, or the
rain, falling in torrents or driving in the furious south-west gale,
hides it completely; or if it is at all visible under the cold sky, it
seems so far removed and the distance so intensified as to lose all
resemblance to a hill and to look like a dim blue cloud faintly seen on
the horizon, and which is no more than a suggestion, a shape phantasmal.
Everywhere about the yard is evidence of industry and activity; there
all is suggestive of toil, labour, and power. On the right, stretching
for a quarter of a mile, are hundreds upon hundreds of wheels, tyres,
and axles for carriages and waggons, in every phase and degree of
fitness; some fresh from the rolling mills--from Sheffield and
Scotland--some turned and fitted in the lathe, huge jointless tyres
newly unladen waiting to take their turn in the operation of fitting
them to the wheels, and others finished, wheels, tyres, and axle
compact, dipped in tar--except the journals--to prevent them from
rusting, and all ready to be placed underneath the waggons. There are
wheels of solid steel, wheels with spokes, and wheels of oak, teak, and
even of paper composition, of many sorts and sizes, for smooth-running
carriages. One would think there were enough of them to stock the whole
railway system, but a few weeks of steady consumption would thin them
down, and the yard would soon be bare and empty if fresh consignments
were not every day arriving.
In front of the wheels, in rows and lines, are the huge cast-iron blocks
and dies used for punching and pressing by the hydraulic machines. They
are of all shapes and dimensions, puzzling to the eye of the stranger,
but easily identified by those who are accustomed to use them, and who
have been acquainted with them perhaps from boyhood. There are sets for
“joggling” and “up-setting,” and others for shaping and levelling. In
the midst of them stands a stout, three-legged machine called a “sheer
legs.” To this is attached strong pulley blocks for lifting the sets
from the ground--many of them weigh considerably more than a ton;
afterwards a stout bogie is run underneath and the blocks are lowered
and so carried off to the field of operations.
Many an accident has happened in the conveyance of blocks and dies to
and from their destination; many a bruised foot or broken limb has
resulted from a lack of carefulness and attention on the part of the
workmen. The slightest disregard may lead to injury. The bogie may slip,
or the block slide, and woe be to the individual who chances to be in
the way of the falling mass. Unassuming, and even valueless as this
collection of dies may appear to the uninitiated, it is really worth a
huge sum, for manufacturing tools are of a very expensive character.
Close on the left is a long line of waggons laden with coal fresh from
the Welsh pits, and near by is a large bunk into which it is emptied to
allow of the speedy return of the vehicles--an important item in railway
administration. Here the dark and grimy coal heavers, with faces as
black as the mineral they are handling, grunt and sweat, their eyes
obtaining peculiar prominence from being inset in a ground of ebony, and
their teeth glistening pearly white through the blackened lips,
appearing the more remarkable if they should smile at you. For even they
will brighten up sometimes. Hard and laborious as their toil is, they
will now and then relax into pleasantry and relieve the tedium of work
with a snatch of song and hilarity.
The coalies are not highly paid. Their day wages are eighteen shillings
or a pound a week, but, as all the work of the shed is done at the piece
rate, they are enabled to earn a few shillings above that sum. The
dullest men--those whose misfortune it is to have missed the right
education, or those who are naturally slow and awkward--are usually
selected for coal-heaving. Very often, however, shrewd and capable,
smart and intelligent men, who might be more profitably employed than in
shovelling coal from the truck to the bunk or wheel-barrow, are put at
the task. Perhaps this is the result of carelessness on the part of the
overseer, or it may be dearth of hands, and very likely it is
intentional. The man is out of favour and has been clapped there as a
punishment.
Near the coal station stand piles upon piles of iron and steel, in
plates, bars, and ingots, some six and some ten feet high, in large
square stacks, and the long bars disposed between uprights to keep them
together and separate those of different lengths and sizes. The chief
part of this comes in from “abroad,” that is, from the midlands and the
north of England, for very little iron ore is now manufactured on the
premises. A small amount of pig iron is imported and worked up at the
local rolling mills, but the greater part of the metal is purchased of
the big firms and dealers away from the town.
The chief occupation of the factory rolling mills now is to receive the
iron scrap from the various workshops, such as clippings, shearings,
punchings, and drillings, with all the old iron proceeding from the
breaking up of worn-out engines and vehicles. This is first of all
reduced to convenient shape and then set up in “piles” on thin pieces of
wood to enable of its being placed in the furnace on the peels used for
the purpose. In the making of piles the flat pieces of metal are placed
around the outside, leaving a hollow within, which is filled up with
punchings and drillings, old rivets, nuts, bolts, and other similar
scrap. The pile is set in the furnace and heated, when it coalesces into
a mass; afterwards it is brought out to the heavy steam-hammer and
beaten into rough bars or slabs, several feet in length. This process is
called “shingling.” When the iron has become fairly solid and of
convenient length, the bars, still spluttering and fizzing--for they
have not been under the hammer for more than two or three minutes--are
hurried off to the rolls. There they are received by the men in charge,
who stand stripped to the waist, with tongs in hand, and dexterously
guide the rough ingots into the ponderous rollers that revolve at speeds
suited to the size and weight of the bars, and always with a loud
clanking noise.
As soon as the bar is rolled through--already drawn out to two or three
times its original length--the rolls stop and instantly revolve in the
other direction. The bar is again guided into the channel of the rollers
and emerges on the other side, longer and smoother. This process is
continued four or five times until the bars are finished; then other
small rollers in the floor are set in motion and the bars travel along
the ground to the steam saws, where they are cut up into the lengths
required. There they are loaded on iron bogies and carried off, or
rolled along as before to the weighing machines; everything is paid for
according to the weight of the finished material.
Punchings and drillings are also treated by the process known as
“puddling.” In this case, the furnaces will have a cavity in the floor,
into which the small scrap material is shovelled or tipped. The door is
now made fast and the heat applied, which must not be too fierce,
however, or the whole mass would soon be burned and spoiled. When the
drillings and chippings have cohered, the puddler, by an aperture
through the iron door, inserts a steel bar, curved at the end, and
prises the lump and turns it over and over. This is called “balling up.”
By and by, when the iron is thoroughly heated and fairly consistent, it
is brought to the “shingler,” who soon gives it shape and solidity. At
the first few blows a terrific shower of sparks shoots around, which
travel for a great distance, burning everything they meet. To protect
themselves against this the shinglers wear heavy iron jackboots,
reaching above the knees, with an iron veil over their eyes and faces.
As the steam-hammer block upon which the pounding is done is only a few
inches above the floor level and the sparks and splinters fly out with
the precision of shot from a gun barrel, the danger is confined to a
space within two feet of the floor.
When the heats come from the puddling furnaces they look soft and spongy
and soon become dull on the outer parts, so that a stranger might think
them not sufficiently hot to beat up, but after the first light blow or
two he will find himself mistaken. First of all the huge hammer--able to
strike a blow equal to a hundred tons pressure--is merely allowed to
squeeze the mass, without beating it. Then it rises gently and travels
up and down, scarcely touching the metal. Gradually the blows fall
harder and harder until the piece is fully consistent; then it is
rapidly drawn away to the rolls. Very rarely are the hammers required to
expend their full powers upon the melting slabs, unless they happen to
be of steel, which is very hard, even when whitehot. Then the blows fall
terrific. The steam spouts, roars, and hisses; the chains jingle and the
ground under your feet shakes as though in an earthquake.
When a better quality of iron is required the punchings, bolts, and
rivets are placed in a large drum which is afterwards set in motion and
continues to revolve for several hours. By this means all the rust,
paint, and dirt are removed from the metal, and when it is taken from
the cylinder it shines like silver. Special regard is had for this in
the furnaces. Care is taken to save it from over-heating and waste, and
when it finally emerges from the rolls it is set apart by itself and
labelled for its superior quality.
Various prices, ranging from 15s. to 50s. a ton, are paid for shingling
and forging. These depend upon the weight of the piece and the degree of
finish required. The shingler is clever and expert, and he is not highly
paid at the works, considering his usefulness, for he is a great
manufacturer. Thousands of tons of metal must pass through his hands in
the course of a year, and the work is very hot and laborious. By the age
of fifty the shinglers and forgemen are usually worn out and superseded
at the forge. When they can no longer perform their duties at the
steam-hammer they are removed from the manufacturing circle and
presented with a broom, shovel, and wheel-barrow. Their wages are cut
down to that of a common labourer, and thus they spend their few
remaining years of service. At an early age they drop off altogether,
and their places are filled by others who have gone through the same
experience.
The running of the iron from the furnace to the steam-hammer and back
again to the rolls is chiefly performed by boys and young men. The
majority of these come from the villages round about, for the town lads,
as a rule, are much too wideawake for the business; the work is too hard
for them. Living close to the factory they know by report which shops to
avoid, and if, by misadventure, they happen to get a start in such a
place they are very quickly out of it. Accordingly the more laborious
work usually falls upon those who dwell without the town. It is the same
with the men. Those who live in the borough nearly always obtain the
easier berths; John and George do the heavy lifting and heaving.
Accidents are frequent at the rolling mills. Burns are of common
occurrence, and they are sometimes very serious and occasionally fatal.
Great care is requisite in moving about amid so much fire and heated
material, for everything--the floors, principals, rollers, the bogie
handles, tools and all--is very hot. Some of the carrying is done with a
kind of wheel-barrow that requires a special balance. The least
obstruction will upset it, and a little awkwardness on the part of the
workman is sufficient to bring the weltering burden down to the ground.
Not long ago, as a youth was drawing a large, whitehot pile from the
furnace to the steam-hammer, he slipped on the iron floor and fell at
full length on his back upon the ground. As he fell the bogie inclined
forward and the huge pile slid down and lodged on his stomach,
inflicting frightful injuries. He was quickly rescued from his tortuous
position, but there was no hope of recovery from such an accident, and
he died a day or two afterwards. He, too, was of the neighbouring
village.
You can always tell these young men of the steam-hammer or rolling
mills, whenever you meet them. They are usually lank and thin and their
faces are ghastly white. Their nostrils are distended; black and blue
rings encircle their eyes. Their gait is careless and shuffling, and
their dress, on a holiday, is a curious mixture of the rural and urban
styles. On week-days they are as black as sweeps, and the blacker they
are the better, in their opinion, for they take pride in parading the
badge of their profession and are not ashamed of it as are their
workmates who dwell in the town.
I have said that formerly much more iron was manufactured on the
premises than is the case at this time. Then the steam-hammer shed, in
which nothing but forging is done, was a flourishing place. All the
wheels for the engines and waggons, together with piston rods, driving
gear, axles, and cranks, were made there. These are obtained elsewhere
now, some in England and Scotland, and other parts from abroad. Steel
has superseded iron in a great degree, too, being harder, tougher,
stronger and cheaper. The combined skill of the chemist and scientist
has simplified the manufacture of it, and it is to be obtained in large
quantities. But steel rusts much more quickly than iron, and does not
last nearly as long in exposed positions on the vehicles.
Formerly all wheels were made of wrought iron and a great part of the
work was done by hand. First of all the sections were made under the
steam-hammer, in “=T=” pieces and boss ends, and shut in the middle.
These were for the spokes. Then the “=T=” ends were incurved and joined
together all round till the rim of the wheel was finished. After that,
there remained to form the centre and make the “boss” solid and compact.
As the boss sections were made to fit together in the middle, they only
required to be heated and welded. Accordingly they were placed on an
open forge, built round with damp coal-dust to contain and concentrate
the heat, the boss being exactly over the centre of the fire. Another
forge, close at hand, contained a large round iron washer, similarly
placed, to which was attached an iron bar for lifting it from the fire.
Both heats were prepared simultaneously. Then the wheel, lifted by a
crane, was quickly removed from the forge, turned upside down and placed
on the steam-hammer block. The washer was brought out at once and
clapped on smartly, and down came the heavy monkey. Half-a-dozen blows
were sufficient to make the weld. Then it was removed from the
steam-hammer and laid on an iron table and the smiths set about it with
their tools to finish it off, three or four men striking alternately on
one “flatter” or “fuller,” with perfect rhythm and precision, the chief
smith directing operations and working with the rest.
Those were the palmy days for the smithy. Wages were high and the prices
good, and the work made was solid and strong. Now all wheels are
manufactured of cast steel and with little hand labour. The molten metal
is simply poured into moulds, allowed to cool and afterwards annealed in
special furnaces. One can easily imagine the immense amount of labour
saved in the operation, though the wheels are not as elastic and
durable.
Situated near the piles of new material are the scrap bunks. These are
old waggons that have served their turn on the railway and, instead of
being broken up, have been lifted bodily from the sets of wheels and
deposited on the ground as receptacles for the large quantities of scrap
made in the workshop. What miles these old waggons have gone! What storm
and stress they have endured! What burdens they have borne! East and
west, north and south, over hills and bridges, through valleys, past
miles upon miles of cornfields and meadows, green and gold, red and
brown by turn, in rain and snow, winter frost and summer sunshine, by
day and night, year after year together.
These waggons, if they could speak, would tell you they have visited
every station and town on the system. They have crossed the Thames, the
Severn, the Kennet, the Upper and Lower Avon, the Wye, the Dee, the
Towy, the Parrot and the Tamar, times out of number. They have gone
through dark tunnels, over dizzy viaducts, past cathedral cities and
quaint old market-towns, villages, and hamlets, sleeping and waking, at
all hours of the day and night, drawn on, and on, and on by the tireless
iron steeds, piled up with all sorts of goods and commodities for the
use of man--stones to build him houses, iron to strengthen them, corn to
feed him and his family, and materials to clothe them. They would tell
you of many lovely woods and forests through which they have journeyed,
and seaside towns, with the strong blue ocean in view, sometimes running
perilously near the beach, at others hidden in deep cuttings, where the
banks are blue with violets, and yellow with the pale gold of the
cowslip, followed by the endless array of the ox-eyes, toadflax, and
sweet wild mignonette. And they would tell you of long, dark, winter
nights, when the tempest howled madly through the trees and bridges and
sang shrilly in the telegraph wires; when the rain fell in a deluge from
the inky sky, or the sleet and snow drove in blinding clouds and was
piled upon the weatherproof tarpaulins. Or again they would relate of
running smoothly on summer nights under the pale southern moon, or when
the stars glittered in the frosty heavens, or dense fog, so troublesome
and dangerous to the ever-watchful and valiant old driver, shut
everything out of view, signals and all, so that their very whereabouts
were only known and identified by paying close attention to the loud,
shot-like explosions of the detonators placed along the line by the
fogmen.
Now all these things are at an end. They have run their race, and grown
old in the service. They have fulfilled their period of usefulness on
the line and, like old veterans returned from the war, they have come
back to their native town to end their days. Being fairly sound of
constitution and having escaped the shocks of collision and accident,
they were adjudged too solid to be broken up yet, so, as a last use,
they were placed here to receive the punchings and trimmings from the
shears and presses, and ingloriously waste away in their old age,
exposed to all the inclemencies and caprices of the weather.
The scrap, made daily, soon amounts to hundreds of tons. It is of all
shapes and sizes. There is plate from an eighth of an inch to an inch
and a half thick from the presses, ends and trimmings of rods and bars
from the shears and steam-hammers, burs from the stamping plant and
scrag ends from the forgings. In addition to this there are scores of
tons of old iron and steel, brought from all over the system to be cut
up at the hydraulic shears--sole-bars of waggons, stanchions and
“diagonals,” “=T=”-iron plates, and hundreds of old draw-bars and
buffers. The iron and steel are carefully observed and kept separate and
huge piles soon accumulate, far more than the waggons can hold. The iron
refuse is by and by passed on to the rolling mills, while the steel
scrap awaits a purchaser. No attempt is made to utilise that on the
premises. There are secrets in the manufacture of steel which are never
betrayed to outsiders, and it would be a waste of time and money for
the local furnacemen and forgers to attempt to do anything with it.
However carefully the furnaceman tends it in the fire he cannot get it
to cohere well in the piles, and if it is at all over-heated it bursts
and scatters in all directions, brittle and glassy, as soon as the
steam-hammer touches it with a gentle blow.
There is, at the same time, enormous waste in the matter of scrap iron
and steel, which intelligent supervision would certainly lessen.
Material that might economically be used in the workshop is
indiscriminately passed out with the rubbish and sold away at a cheap
rate--at a fraction of its real value. Tons of metal--good solid iron,
often of the highest quality--which might be used for forging and
stamping, are rejected and scrapped because it would take a trifle
longer to handle. Other large scrap material might be slabbed and used
without sending it to the mill, and thus large profits would accrue to
the shed; for the rolling mills people will only purchase,
theoretically, at trade prices, that is, at about two pounds a ton for
scrap iron.
CHAPTER III
THE SHUNTERS--WATCHMEN--DETECTING A THIEF--FIRES--CARRIAGE
FINISHERS--PAINTERS--“WASHERS-DOWN”--CUSHION-BEATERS--CHANGES
AND INNOVATIONS--DEPARTMENTAL RELATIONS
A short way off in the yard, in a small space clear of the confusing
network of lines that cross and recross here and there, running in every
direction and connecting the various workshops together, are two old
railway coaches dispossessed of their wheels and lodged upon baulks of
timber let into the ground. Like the old scrap waggons, they have had
their day in active service, and, coming home in fairly good condition,
though antiquated in style and useless for passenger traffic, have yet
been found convenient as occasional storehouses and shelters. They are
now used as cabins, one for the shunters, who conduct their operations
round about, and the other for watchmen, and they are fitted with stoves
for warming the men’s food, and for drying their clothes in wet weather.
The roofs and windows are intact, and some of the original seats still
remain. These are of bare wood and are not padded and upholstered in the
comfortable and luxurious style now required and expected by the railway
traveller.
These old carriages are at this time very rarely met with and are nearly
extinct. For years after they disappeared from the general
traffic--superseded by more commodious and comfortable vehicles--the
best of them were kept stored up in sheds and yards in out-of-the-way
places to await the time of trippers and excursionists. Then they were
regularly hauled out to accommodate the multitude. The windows were
hastily wiped over and the interiors dusted out; they were ready to
receive the people. Goods engines of the old type were brought up to
draw them along. The trippers squeezed themselves inside, and, with the
shrieking of steam whistles and hooters and the playing of concertinas
and melodions, the trains started off and went jolting and jogging away
to their destinations. At the end of the tripping season the coaches
were again stored away in the yards and sidings, until they became too
crazy and dangerous to run on the main line, when they were either
utilised for storehouses and shelters, or broken up. The refuse wood
from the destruction of old worn-out rolling stock is sawn up and used
for lighting the fires in the furnaces and boilers, and is distributed
throughout the system. A large quantity is also sold to the workmen, who
use it both for firing and for the construction of outhouses.
The shunters of the yard are a hard-working body of men, and they are
exposed to many dangers. The hours are long and they must cover many
miles during the day by running up and down the lines. It is their duty
to transfer the carriages and waggons from road to road and from one
workshop to another, to dispose of the old ones brought in for repairs,
to lead out the new, and distribute the various stores--iron and steel,
coal, coke, and timber--at several points. Whatever the weather may be
they must be up and doing, or the traffic in the yard would soon be in
utter confusion. Rain or snow, cold or heat, sunshine or cloud, July
glow or December fog and gloom are all one to them. The busy swarm of
workmen comes and goes, the furnaces spout their dense black clouds of
smoke into the heavens; the dazzling steam, shot out from the engines
and steam-hammers, leaps up in an ascending pillar, the rapid wheels
spin round in the roof or under the wall, and the endless toil goes on,
all which must be catered for by the shunters.
Great care must be taken to prevent the sidings from becoming blocked by
crossing a wrong point. Where two or more engines are operating over a
complex siding this may easily be done, and a delay of several hours
will be the result. If an inexperienced shunter, mistaking the number of
his points, shifts his waggons on to the wrong track and, not perceiving
his error, at once proceeds to carry out several other manœuvres, he
may shut in the engines so completely and confusedly that he will want
all his wits about him to extricate them again; it will be like a
mathematical problem. Happily for the shunter’s credit, this is not a
common occurrence.
Strong, healthy men are selected for the shunter’s trade, to carry the
pole and whistle. By working in the open air, exposed to all kinds of
weather, they become hardy and seasoned and present a far different
appearance from that of those who are shut up within the walls of the
workshop, amid the smoke and fumes. Instead of becoming lean with the
constant running to and fro, they seem to thrive on the exercise, and
many of them assume substantial proportions. Their faces are bronzed
with the sun and wind, and they are a picture of health--strong,
stalwart, and of good physique. The shunters are not under as many
restrictions as are the factory workers proper, _i.e._, those within the
sheds. It is their privilege to smoke while on duty, or, at any rate, in
the intervals on the premises, an indulgence which is strictly forbidden
to all other employees. They remain always about the yard and never go
beyond the bounds prescribed for them, so that they really belong to the
factory.
The other cabin is used by the watchmen as an out-shelter--a kind of
half-way refuge. Their headquarter is at the main entrance, where there
are always one or two on duty to check the coming in and going out of
the workmen, to keep out intruders and to prevent any from passing out
before the regulation hour. They also act in the quality of police to
protect the property of the railway company, patrol the shops and yards,
and keep a sharp look-out for loiterers and any who should attempt to
smoke or read a newspaper on the sly.
Every workshop and building is provided with certain clock-like
instruments called “tell-tales,” which are fixed in many corners and
angles, and at frequent intervals along the high board fence that
encloses the factory grounds. The watchman appointed for the round is
furnished with a key that fits the instrument. It is his duty to visit
each of these every hour, or every two hours, according to the
time-table given him by his chief. When he comes to the tell-tale he
inserts the key and, after turning it round, withdraws it. This leaves a
record of his visit and certifies that he has gone his round regularly.
At intervals, unknown to the watchman, the tell-tales are removed and
privately examined, in order to see that everything is correct, and if
there has been any neglect of duty the offender is sought out and
punished. Occasionally it transpires that there has been wholesale
tampering with the instruments in order to escape going the rounds. The
watchmen, like all others at the works, agreed for the time, finally
come to loggerheads and play the tell-tale themselves. Someone or other
informs of his mate, this one retaliates and the scheme is laid bare.
Forthwith the whole staff of watchmen are summoned to appear before the
works’ manager, and are punished in various ways. Something new and
strange is adopted; the men’s time and rounds are altered, and they
patrol their beats the laughing-stock of the workmen whom it is their
duty to observe and supervise.
The watchmen, as a class, are surly and over-officious. Perhaps they
were chosen for some qualities they were thought to possess, fitting
them for the duties expected of them; they are not popular with the
workmen. The fact of their being placed in a supervisory position and of
being exempt from manual work induces them to have a higher opinion of
themselves than the actual circumstances warrant. They consider
themselves above the average at the works and cultivate the
pseudo-genteel.
When a new watchman is made it is noised abroad throughout the
department; his size, description, and all else that is known of him are
passed around the sheds for the benefit of the masses. Developments are
anticipated and the results eagerly awaited. Elated at his promotion and
great in his own conceit the newly initiated one, before he is
well-known and identified by the workmen, slips to and fro in the sheds,
eager for surprise captures. Immediately before the hooter sounds for
the men’s release at meal times he is to be found suddenly opening doors
and popping on the scene. If any of the workmen should happen to have on
their coats, or to have gathered near the door ready to rush out, they
scatter like wood-pigeons when a hawk has darted in the midst of them.
This forms the subject of a report to the shop foreman or to the
manager. Dire threats as to the consequences of loitering are launched
at the workmen; a few youths are suspended and forced to take a rest,
and so the matter is settled.
The watchman, however, is not forgotten or forgiven by the men. Some
nickname or other is coined for him on the spot. Perhaps he is hooted
for a sneak and teased in various ways, the boys especially enjoying a
joke at his expense. They set traps for him, and after racing about the
yard and dodging between the waggons and coaches, suddenly decamp and
make for the tunnels or entrances. Once a nickname becomes attached to a
watchman it seldom leaves him. One has borne the title of “Long Bill”
for a number of years; another is honoured with the appellation of
“Powerful”; this one is “Flat-foot,” that is “Rubber-heel,” and another
has earned for himself the ridiculous title of “Chesty.”
Theft is sometimes practised by the workmen, though it is much more
rarely committed now than it was formerly. Some of the schemes adopted
for getting the stolen materials outside the works have been quite
artistic, and others were ridiculously open and daring. Years ago loads
of timber and other valuables were regularly smuggled out in the middle
of the night, and especially on Saturday nights. They were piled upon
big trucks and bogies and got past the entrances with the watchman’s
consent and connivance. Probably he received a bribe for his silence--a
quart of ale at the club, or a share of the stolen goods. On at least
one occasion a brazen-faced fellow wheeled out a new wheel-barrow,
unchallenged, amid the crowd at a dinner-time and was never suspected.
At other times wheel-barrows and other tools have mysteriously
disappeared in the night, as though they had been swallowed up by an
earthquake. They were quietly lifted over the fence and received into
the neighbouring field and so got safely away.
Sometimes a workman will split on his mate whom he knows to be in the
habit of purloining things from the shed. Perhaps it is a little
firewood or a few screws or nails that were picked up in the yard.
Going privately to the watchman he acquaints him of the fact, and at
dinner-time, or night, a stand is made at the entrance, and the culprit
seized and searched. This invariably means dismissal, however small the
amount of the theft may be. Somehow or other, though, the informer is
discovered and for ever afterwards he is branded as a sneak and shunned
by his fellows. There is no forgiveness for this kind of thing among the
workmen. Honesty or not honesty, he is never tolerated but is looked
upon with the utmost disgust and contempt.
Occasionally, if you should stand at the entrance as the workmen are
leaving, you might see an abject-looking individual, with drawn
features, making his way painfully through the tunnel, limping, or
dragging a leg behind him. The casual observer would jump to the
conclusion that the man had met with an accident, or that he was
naturally lame or a cripple. But very likely, if the truth were known,
he has a staff of wood, or a rod of iron, four feet long, concealed in
the leg of his trousers and reaching up to the breast, and that is what
makes him walk with such great difficulty. Another plan is to bend a rod
of iron in the shape of a hoop and so fix it around the waist, or to
pack the contraband next to the skin, under the armpits and around the
stomach. This very often leads to detection. The watchman on duty at the
entrance has his suspicions aroused by the shape of the man. Accordingly
he steps out, calls him aside and feels the part, and the culprit is
discovered.
It sometimes happens that a watchman gets on the track of an innocent
workman and makes himself appear ridiculous, for he is sure to be
noticed by the crowd and heartily jeered at for his interference. Not
long ago a young workman, on his way out from the shed one morning
after night duty, was challenged and stopped and required to disclose
the contents of his dinner-basket, which, to the watchman’s eye, seemed
unusually heavy. The young man, who was an enthusiastic Christian,
smilingly complied and, opening his basket, took out a big Bible, and
presented it to his challenger. That was more than the watchman had
bargained for, and he immediately shuffled off in considerable
confusion. A few nights ago a surly watchman stopped me and curtly
demanded to know what I was carrying “in the parcel under my arm.” It
was merely my daily newspaper.
It is not the rank and file alone that are guilty of taking things that
do not belong to them. Some of the principals of the staff have been
notoriously to blame in this respect, as is well-known at the works,
though their misdeeds are invariably screened and condoned. If one of
the managers has stolen materials worth hundreds of pounds he is
reprimanded and allowed to continue at his post, or at most, he is asked
to resign and is afterwards awarded a pension; but if the workman has
purloined an article of a few pence in value he is dismissed and
prosecuted. This is no general statement but a plain matter of fact.
Further over the yard, towards one of the sheds that form the boundary
on this side, stands a large water-closet, one of many about the
factory, built to meet the requirements of about five hundred workmen.
These buildings are of a uniform type and are disagreeable places,
lacking in sanitary arrangements. There is not the slightest approach to
privacy of any kind, no consideration whatever for those who happen to
be imbued with a sense of modesty or refinement of feeling. The
convenience consists of a long double row of seats, situate back to
back, partly divided by brick walls, the whole constructed above a
large pit that contains a foot of water which is changed once or twice a
day. The seats themselves are merely an iron rail built upon brickwork,
and there is no protection. Several times, I have known men to
overbalance and fall into the pit. Everything is bold, daring, and
unnatural. On entering, the naked persons of the men sitting may plainly
be seen, and the stench is overpowering. The whole concern is gross and
objectionable, filthy, disgusting, and degrading. No one that is chaste
and modest could bear to expose himself, sitting there with no more
decency than obtains among herds of cattle shut up in the winter pen.
Consequently, there are many who, though hard pressed by the exigences
of nature, never use the place. As a result they contract irregularities
and complaints of the stomach that remain with them all their lives, and
that might easily prove fatal to them. Perhaps this barbarous relic of
insanitation may in time be superseded by some system a little more
moral and more compatible with human sensibility and refinement.
Near this spot, in the open air, are stored hundreds of gallons of oil,
spirits and other liquids of a highly inflammable nature, used for
mixing paints for the carriages and waggons, together with chemicals
employed in the rapid cleansing of the exteriors of vehicles that come
in for repairs and washing-down. The rules of the factory strictly
forbid the storing of any of these liquids within the workshops and
outhouses. This precaution is taken in order to prevent damage by fire
in case of an outbreak and to render the flames more easy of control by
the firemen.
At every short distance there is a connection with the water-main and a
length of hose always fit and ready for any emergency. The works has its
own fire-engine--a powerful motor and pumps--and if by chance a call is
made the men are speedily on the spot. Here and there around the sheds
are deep pits, walled up and covered with cast-iron tops, to contain
water for the fire-engines, for they cannot well draw clear off the
main. To these pits, in the afternoon or evening, the engines and
firemen occasionally come for practice. Immediately the wells are filled
from the main, the hose is coupled up, and a perfect deluge is rained
over everything in the vicinity, as though a fire were really in
progress. After half an hour’s lusty exertion with the hose and the
scaling of walls and roofs, the firemen stow their apparatus and the
motor rushes off down the yard quickly out of sight.
Though fires at the works are not of common occurrence, there is now and
then an outbreak, and sometimes one of serious dimensions. They are
generally the result of great carelessness, or the want of ordinary
attention on the part of a workman or official. Perhaps a naked light is
left burning somewhere or other, or a portion of cotton-waste is
smouldering away unobserved. The roof may become ignited through contact
with the hot chimney; and very often the cause of the outbreak is not
ascertained at all. In several cases incendiarism has been suggested as
the cause of a fire, but, notwithstanding all the efforts of the works’
detectives to fix the guilt, proof of the crime has never been brought
home to any individual. When fires do happen they nearly always
originate in the night. One reason of this is that, with so many workmen
on the scene, during the day, the first sign of an outbreak would be
immediately detected and dealt with before it could become dangerous.
But at night it would develop rapidly and obtain a good hold on the
premises before being discovered by the watchmen.
When it is known in the works that a fire is raging round about--if it
should happen to be at night--the few workmen employed, without waiting
for instructions from the overseers, throw down their tools and rush off
to the scene of the accident. They are impelled to do this, in the first
place, by the strong natural desire every man has to be of service in
times of danger; secondly, by reason of the intense excitement which the
cry of “Fire!” always produces in the most phlegmatic individual, and,
last of all--if either of the two causes before-named are wanting--by a
natural and uncontrollable curiosity and fascination for the smoke and
flames. It is usually the first of these three causes that impels the
workmen to throw down their tools and run to help the men with the
fire-engines. At such times as these nothing is held sacred. Doors and
windows are forced open or smashed in, bolts and bars are wrenched from
their sockets, offices and storehouses are entered; the most private
recesses are made public. All thoughts of the midnight meal are set
aside and there is no returning to the worksheds until morning brings a
fresh supply of hands accompanied by the day officials.
Not many years ago the station buildings took fire, shortly after
midnight, and most of the men on night duty in the department nearest
the scene flocked out to help the station staff and the firemen. By and
by the refreshment rooms were involved and there was a wholesale removal
of the viands and liquors. Under such circumstances, drinking was
naturally indulged in, and more than one--officials, as well as the rank
and file--who came out to help returned the worse for liquor. Such
adventures as these live long in the memory of the workmen: it is not
often they have the opportunity of taking a drink at the company’s
expense.
Some time after the station fire a much more serious outbreak occurred
in an extensive shed used for the construction and storing of carriages.
There were in the place sufficient vehicles to compose twenty trains,
and the most of them were brand new, representing altogether a huge sum
of money. When the watchman passed through on his rounds at midnight
everything appeared safe; the place was dark, silent, and deserted. Half
an hour afterwards a workman employed in a shed some distance away saw a
dull glow above the roof and thought at first it was the moon rising. A
few minutes afterwards flames leapt into sight and discovered a fire of
some magnitude.
Quickly the signal was given, and every available man rushed on the
scene. The centre of the shed was like a raging furnace. The roof was on
fire and the flames leapt from coach to coach with great rapidity.
These, from their slightness of construction and from their being
thickly coated with paint and varnish, caught fire like matchwood and
burned furiously, while large sections of the roof fell in. Every now
and then, as a coach became consumed down to the framework, the gas
cylinders underneath burst with a terrific report, like that of a piece
of heavy artillery. The shattered iron and steel flew in all directions
and increased the danger to the firemen. Hundreds of people of the
neighbourhood, roused with the repeated shocks, left their beds and ran
out of doors to ascertain the cause of the explosions. Some thought it
was an earthquake and others feared it was the boilers exploding. Many
volunteered to help, but their offers were refused, and a strong cordon
of police was drawn around the shed to keep out all intruders. So fierce
was the heat within that the steel tyres of the wheels were buckled and
bent, the rails were warped and twisted into fantastic shapes and the
heavy iron girders of the roof were wrecked. The frames of the burnt
coaches were reduced to a pile of debris and were totally
unrecognisable. The damage to rolling stock and to the premises amounted
to many thousands of pounds, yet the fire was all over in two or three
hours. As to its origin, that remained a mystery, and completely baffled
the detectives. Examination of the tell-tales proved that the watchman
had gone his round all right, and though many experiments were made the
cause of the outbreak remained inexplicable.
A great part of the repairs to carriages--such as washing-down,
smudging, and especially the cleaning and re-fitting of interiors--is
done out of doors in the yard when the weather permits, for it would be
impossible to contain all the vehicles in the sheds. The whole of this
work, even to the most trivial detail, is now done at the piece rate.
Experienced examiners decide the amount of repairs to be executed, and
the prices are fixed according to their recommendation. It is generally
a matter of luck to the workman whether the repair job pays or not. Very
often the carrying out of repairs takes a much longer time than had been
anticipated. The renewing of one part often necessitates the remodelling
of another, or the fitting up of the new piece may prove to be a very
tedious process. In this case the workman may lose money on the job,
though, on the other hand, he may have finished altogether earlier than
he expected. It would be very nearly impossible to have a perfect
equation in the matter of repair prices, and this is recognised by all,
masters and men, too, at the factory. The workman is commonly told by
his chief that “what he loses on the swings he must pick up on the
roundabouts,” i.e., what he loses on one job he must gain on another,
and this axiom is universally accepted, at least by all those who do
repairs. On new work the labour is uniform and there is no need and no
excuse for inequality of prices.
Great consternation fell upon the carriage finishers, painters, and
pattern-makers, several years ago, when it became known that piece rates
were to be substituted for the old day-work system, especially as the
change was to be introduced at a very slack time. It was looked upon as
a catastrophe by the workmen, and such it very nearly proved to be. Many
journeymen were discharged, some were transferred to other grades of
work--that is, those who were willing to suffer reduction rather than to
be thrown quite out of employment--and the whole department was put on
short time, working only two or three days a week, while some of the men
were shut out for weeks at a stretch. Several who protested against the
change were dismissed, and others--workmen of the highest skill and of
long connection with the company--had their wages mercilessly cut down
for daring to interpose their opinion. The pace was forced and quickened
by degrees to the uttermost and then the new prices were fixed, the
managers themselves attending and timing operations and supervising the
prices. Feeling among the workmen ran high, but there was no help for
the situation and it had to be accepted. Few of the men belonged to a
trade union, or they might have opposed the terms and made a better
bargain; as it was they were completely at the mercy of the managers and
foremen.
The carriage finishers and upholsterers are a class in themselves,
differing, by the very nature of their craft, from all others at the
factory. As great care and cleanliness are required for their work, they
are expected to be spruce and clean in their dress and appearance. This,
together with the fact that the finisher may have served an
apprenticeship in a high-class establishment and one far more genteel
than a railway department can hope to be, tends to create in him a sense
of refinement higher than is usually found in those who follow rougher
and more laborious occupations. His cloth suit, linen collar, spotless
white apron, clean shaven face, hair carefully combed, and bowler hat
are subjects of comment by the grimy toilers of other sheds. His
dwelling is situated in the cleanest part of the town and corresponds
with his personal appearance. In the evening he prosecutes his craft at
home and manufactures furniture and decorations for himself and family,
or earns money by doing it for others. Very often the whole contents of
his parlour and kitchen--with the exception of iron and other ware--were
made by his hands, so, since his wages are above the ordinary, provided
he is steady and temperate, he may be reasonably comfortable and
well-to-do.
The painters are not quite as fortunate as are their comrades the
finishers. Their work, though in some respects of a high order and
important, is at the same time less artistic than is that of the
cabinetmakers and upholsterers. It is also much more wearisome and
unhealthy, and the wages are not as high. Very often, too, work for them
is extremely scarce, especially during the summer and autumn months,
when every available coach is required in traffic for the busy season,
and they are consequently often on short time. Their busiest periods are
the interval between autumn and Christmas and the time between the New
Year and Easter. The style of colouring and ornamentation for the
carriages has changed considerably of recent years and there is now not
nearly as much labour and pains expended upon the vehicles as in times
past. The brighter colours have been quite eliminated and have given
place to chocolates and browns, while the frames and ends of the
carriages are painted black. The arms of the company, together with
figures, letters, initials, and other designs, so conspicuous to the eye
of the traveller, are affixed by means of transfers and therefore are
not dependent upon the skill of the painters.
The washing-down of the coaches is done by labourers, some of whom live
in the town and others in the villages round about. Little skill is
required for this, and the operation is very dull and monotonous. The
men are supplied with long-handled brushes, soaps, and sponges, hot and
cold water and chemical preparations. Large gangs of them are
continually employed in removing the accretions of dust and filth
acquired by the coaches in their mad career over the railway line,
through tunnels and cuttings, smoky towns and cities. Sometimes the
vehicles are completely smothered with grease and mud thrown up by the
sleepers in bad weather, and every particle of this must be removed
before the painter can apply his brush to renovate the exterior.
The washers-down are generally raw youths and many of them are of the
shifty type--the kind that will not settle anywhere for long together.
The drabness of their employment forces them to seek some means of
breaking the monotony of it, and they often indulge in noise and
horseplay, singing and shouting at the top of their voices and slopping
the water over each other. This brings them into trouble with the
officials, and occasions them to take many a forced holiday, but they do
not care about that, and when they arrive back upon the scene they
practise their old games as boldly as before. Having no trade, and
receiving but a scant amount in wages, they do not feel to be bound down
hand and foot to the employment, and even if they should be discharged
altogether they will not have lost very much. Their youthfulness, too,
renders them buoyant and independent; all the world is open to them if
they decide to hand in their notices.
The cushion-beaters, formerly well known about the yard, have quite
disappeared now. At whatever time you were outside the shed, in fine
weather, you might have heard their rods beating on the cushions in
perfect rhythm and order. They were taken from the coaches and laid upon
stools in the open air, and the beater held a rod, usually of hazel, in
each hand. With them he alternately smote the cushion, keeping up the
effort for a long time, until every particle of dust was removed and
blown away. His dexterity in the use of the rods and the ability to
prolong the operation were a source of great interest to the youths; all
the small boys of the shed stole out at intervals to see him at work.
Now the dust is removed from the cushions and paddings by means of a
vacuum arrangement. This is in the form of a tube, with an aperture
several inches in diameter and having strong suctional powers created by
the exhaust steam from the engine in the shed. It is passed to and fro
over the surface of the cushion, and the dust is thereby extracted and
received into the apparatus. So strong is the suction within that it
will sometimes draw the buttons from the upholstering if they are loose
or frayed. The quantity of dust extracted from one carriage often
amounts to a pound in weight.
Old customs and systems die hard at the works and, whatever their own
opinion of the matter may be, the officials are not considered by the
workmen to be of a very progressive type. Many of the methods employed,
both in manufacture and administration, are extremely old-fashioned and
antiquated; an idea has to be old and hoary before it stands a chance of
being admitted and adopted here. Small private firms are usually a long
way ahead of railway companies in the matter of methods and processes,
and they pay better wages into the bargain. They have to face
competition and to cater for the markets, while railway companies, being
both the producers and consumers of their wares, can afford to choose
their own way of manufacturing them. In addition to this, the heads of
small firms usually have an interest in the concern whereas the managers
of railway works are otherwise placed; it makes no difference to them
what they spend or waste, and they are always able to cover up their
shortcomings. Their prodigality and mismanagement would ruin a hundred
small firms in as many months, though the outside world knows little or
nothing about it. But if the officials creep they urge the rank and file
along at a good rate and make a pretence of being smart and
business-like. The fact of a workman being engaged prosecuting a
worn-out method for the production of an article does not make the task
lighter or more congenial for him, rather the opposite. Real improvement
in manufacture not only expedites production, but also simplifies the
toil to the workman, and the newer methods are the better, generally
speaking.
In everything, then, except in smart management and supervision, railway
sheds now resemble contract premises. Piecework prices are cut to the
lowest possible point; it is all push, drive, and hustle. No attempt is
made to regulate the amount of work to be done, and short time is
frequent and often of long duration. This is not arranged as it was
formerly, when the whole department, or none at all, was closed down.
Now even a solitary shed, a portion of it, or a mere gang is closed or
suspended if there is a slackness at any point. Consequently, one part
of the works is often running at break-neck speed, while another is
working but three or four days a week and the men are in a half-starved
condition. In one shed fresh hands are being put on, while from others
they are being discharged wholesale. Transfers from one shop to another
are seldom made, and never from department to department. One would
think that the various divisions of the works were owned by separate
firms, or people of different nationalities, such formidable barriers
appear to exist between them.
The chiefs of the departments are usually more or less rivals and are
often at loggerheads, each one trying to outdo the other in some
particular direction and to bring himself into the notice of the
directors. The same, with a little modification, may be said of the
foremen of the several divisions, while the workmen are about
indifferent in this respect. For them, all beyond their own sheds,
except a few personal friends or relations, are total strangers. Though
they may have been employed at the works for half a century, they have
never gone beyond the boundary of their own department, and perhaps not
as far as that, for trespassing from shed to shed is strictly forbidden
and sharply punished where detected. Thus, the workman’s sphere is very
narrow and limited. There is no freedom; nothing but the same coming and
going, the still monotonous journey to and fro and the old hours, month
after month, and year after year. It is no wonder that the factory
workmen come to lead a dull existence and to lose interest in all life
beyond their own smoky walls and dwellings. It would be a matter for
surprise if the reverse condition prevailed.
CHAPTER IV
THE OLD CANAL--THE ASH-WHEELERS--THE BRICK-LAYERS--RIVAL
FOREMEN--THE ROAD-WAGGON BUILDERS--THE WHEEL SHED--BOY
TURNERS--THE RUBBISH HEAP.
West of the workshop the yard is bounded by a canal that formerly
connected the railway town with the ancient borough town of Cricklade,
eight miles distant. But things are different now from what they were at
the time the cutting was made, for great changes have taken place during
the last half century in all matters pertaining to transport. Then the
long barges, drawn by horses, mules, and donkeys, and laden with corn,
stone, coal, timber, gravel, and other materials, proceeded regularly by
day and night, up and down the canal to their destinations--north to
Gloucester, west to Bristol, east to Abingdon, and thence to far-off
London. At that time, instead of being filled with mud, weeds, and
refuse, and overgrown with masses of rank vegetation--grasses, flags,
water-parsnip, and a score of other aquatic plants--the channel was
broad and free, and full of clear, limpid water. The cattle came to
drink in the meadows; there the clouds were mirrored, floating in fields
of azure. The fish leapt and played in the sunshine, making innumerable
rings on the surface, and the swallows skimmed swiftly along, dipping
now and then to snatch up a sweet mouthful to carry home to their young
in the nest under the eaves of the neighbouring cottage or shed.
Occasionally, too, a steamboat passed through the locks out beyond the
town and proceeded on its way to the Thames or Avon. The dredger plied
up and down to prevent the accumulation of mud and refuse, and the
towpaths and bridges were kept in good repair. The railway had not
everything its own way then. The fever of haste had not taken hold of
every part of the community, and a few, at least, could await the
arrival of the barges and so save a considerable sum in the conveyance
of their goods. But now all that is changed. Goods must be loaded,
whirled rapidly away and delivered in a few hours, for no one can wait.
The pace of the freight trains has been increased almost to express
speed. Every possible means that could be thought of have been devised
to facilitate transport, and the barges have disappeared from this
neighbourhood. Here and there at the wharves may still be seen a few
rotten old hulks, falling to pieces and embedded in the mud; the bridges
are shattered and dilapidated and the lock gates are broken. The
towpaths are overgrown with bushes and become almost impassable, and the
channel is blocked up.
The only person who benefits by the change is the botanist. He, from
time to time, may be seen busily engaged in grappling for rare specimens
of weeds and grasses, or the less learned student of wild flowers comes
to gather what treasures he may from the wilderness: the beautiful
flowering rush, golden iris, graceful water plantain, arrowhead, water
violet, figwort, skull-cap, gipsy wort, and celery-leaved crowfoot.
Formerly, too, the works derived a considerable quantity of water
through the canal, but that has long ceased to be. There is no water at
hand now, and supplies have had to be sought for among the Cotswold
Hills, at a great distance from the town. The engines at the old
pumping station, near the canal path, once so familiar a feature to
travellers that way, are silent now and will be heard there no more.
They, too, have become a thing of the past.
The factory premises extend along both banks of the canal and are
protected on the far side by a high wall, while that part nearest the
workshop is open to the water’s edge. On this side, first of all, is a
high platform, called the stage, which is used to load the ashes and
refuse, slag and clinkers from the furnaces and forges. This refuse is
wheeled out twice daily--at six in the morning and again in the evening
after the furnaces have been clinkered--by labourers, upon whom the duty
devolves. To remove the clinker properly and economically from the grate
of the furnace the fire must have been damped for a short while. This
allows the whitehot coals to cling together underneath, and they form a
kind of arch above the bars. When this has been accomplished the
furnaceman inserts a strong steel bar at the bottom, resting it upon the
“bridge,” and, with a heavy sledge, breaks the clinker, working along
from side to side. That is in a compact layer or mass, often six or
eight inches deep, considerably thicker in the corners, and it is very
tough while it is hot. After it has been thoroughly broken up, several
of the fire bars are removed together, beginning at one side, and the
heavy clinker drops through, spluttering and hissing, into the deep
boshes of water disposed underneath. If the fire has not been
sufficiently damped it is loose and hollow, and as soon as the bars are
removed the white-hot coals rush through into the water, raising clouds
of hot, blinding dust and dense volumes of steam.
Immediately the furnaceman, warned of the fall, springs backwards and
escapes from the pit, or, if he is tardy in his movements, he is caught
in the hot vapour and scalded severely. Sometimes the fall is very
sudden and he has no time to escape. Then his face and arms take the
full force of the rushing steam and he is certain to receive painful
injuries. When the operation of clinkering is over the men bring their
wheel-barrows and, with the aid of long-handled shovels, remove the
refuse from the pits and run it outside and upon the stage. This is hot
work, whenever it is performed; the men are always sure of a wet shirt
at the task. Whatever the weather may be, wet or fine, frost or snow,
they come to it stripped to the waist and quickly run their
wheel-barrows to and fro. If the rain should pelt in torrents it makes
little or no difference to them, they still go on with their work,
half-naked and bare-headed. Hardy and strong as they may be, this is
bound to affect their health, sooner or later. It is not an uncommon
thing to find one or other of them breaking down at an early age, a
physical wreck, unfit for further service.
The ash-wheelers belong to the same class as the coalies and are
sometimes identical with them. They are usually some of the strongest
men in the shed, new hands, perhaps, who have not yet earned for
themselves an installation into the ranks of the regular machine staff.
Sometimes, however, they have proved themselves smart with the shovel
and wheel-barrow and have been considered too serviceable to shift to
other employment, for, as it is well known that “the willing horse must
draw double,” so the workman who is willing to perform a hard duty
without murmuring and complaint is always imposed upon and forced to do
extra. The natural fool or the systematic skulker is pitied and
respected. Once his general conduct is understood he is taken for what
he is worth, and no more is expected of him. In time he is rewarded. He
may come to be a checker, a clerk, or an inspector; while the sterling
fellow, the hard worker, the “sticker,” as he is called, may stop and
work himself to death like a slave. Thus, deserving men, because they
have proved themselves adepts at the work, have been kept on the
ash-barrows for ten or twelve years, sweating their lives away for the
sum of eighteen shillings a week. Several, however, disgusted with the
business, have left the shed and gone back to work on the farms, in the
pure surroundings of the fields and villages. This branch of work has
recently been overhauled and estimated at the piece rate, and the wages
somewhat improved, though the amount of work to each man has been almost
doubled. The refuse and clinker from the furnaces are transported to
various parts and used for filling up hollows, and for the making of
banks and beds of yards and sidings.
Beyond the stage, lodged on the ground, are two old iron vans that were
formerly used in the goods traffic. They have no windows or lights of
any kind, merely a double door opening outwardly. These are the cabins
and stores of the bricklayers, and they contain cement, fireclay, and
firebricks for the furnaces and forges. A permanent staff of bricklayers
is kept in each department at the works to carry out whatever repairs
are necessary from time to time and to see to the construction and
renovation of the furnaces. If there is any building on a large scale
required, such as a new shed, stores, or offices, extra hands are put on
from the town and afterwards discharged when the work is done. This
procedure gives the officials an opportunity of selecting the best men,
so that it often happens that new hands, temporarily engaged, become
fixtures if they have shown exceptional skill at their trade and are
otherwise suitable. In that case some of the old hands must go, and it
needs not to be said that such an opportunity is welcomed by the
foreman, as it provides him with an excuse for removing undesirables
without being too much blamed himself.
The bricklayers are a distinct class and do not mingle well with the
other men at the works. Their having to do with bricks and mortar,
instead of with iron and steel, seems to exclude them from the general
hive, and the fact of their being dressed in canvas suits and overalls,
and smeared with cement and fireclay, instead of being blackened with
soot and oil, tends to emphasise the distinction. As with the rest of
the staff, they are recruited from all parts of the country, and some of
them have served a rural apprenticeship. In shrewdness and intelligence
they do not rank with the machinists; that is to say, they may be smart
at their trade, but they do not discover extraordinary faculties beyond
that. Perhaps the nature of their toil has something to do with it, for
that is at best a dull and uninspiring vocation. There is no magic
required in the setting together of bricks and mortar, and little
exertion of the intellect is needed in patching up old walls and
buildings. They are nevertheless very jealous of their craft, such as it
is, and deeply resent any intrusion into their ranks other than by the
gates of the usual apprenticeship. Occasionally it happens that a
bricklayer’s labourer, who has been for many years in attendance on his
mate, shows an aptitude for the work, so that the foreman, in a busy
period, is induced to equip him with the trowel. In that case he at once
becomes the subject of sneering criticism; whatever work he does is
condemned, and he is hated and shunned by his old mates and companions.
The foreman, too, takes advantage of his position and pays him less than
the trade rate of wages, so that, after all, he is really made to feel
that he is not a journeyman.
Very often, when there is no building to be done, the bricklayers must
turn their hands to other work, such as navvying, whitewashing,
painting, and so on, all which falls under their particular department.
Armed with pick and shovel, or pot and brush, they must dig foundations
and drains, or scale the walls and roof and cleanse or decorate the
shed. This is always productive of much grumbling and sarcastic comment,
but it is better than being suspended. On the whole the bricklayers have
a fairly comfortable billet at the works and they are not subject to
frequent loss of time through wet weather and other accidents, as are
their fellows of the town, though they do not receive as much in wages.
It is astonishing what a prodigious amount of work the labourers will
get through in a short time, and apparently with little exertion, when
they are digging out drains and foundations for new furnaces,
steam-hammers, or other machinery. These foundations are generally huge
pits, twelve or fifteen feet deep and double the size square. Stripped
to the waist in the heat of the workshop, and armed with the heavy graft
tool, with a stout iron plate fixed underneath their right foot, they
will dig for hours without resting and yet seem to be always fresh and
vigorous. Occasionally, as they throw up the solid clay, some workman of
the shed will steal along to examine the fossil remains, pebbles, and
flints, that were embedded in the earth, and slip back to his place at
the steam-hammer, preserving some relic or other for future examination.
The sturdy labourer, however, keeps digging out the clay and hurling it
up to the light. He knows nothing of geological data, theories and
opinions, and cares not to inquire. He is there to dig the pit and not
to trouble himself about the nature of soils and deposits, and though
you should talk to him ever so learnedly of old time submersions,
accretions, and formations, he only answers you with a blank stare or an
unsympathetic grin. His private opinion is that you are something of a
lunatic.
There is one among the bricklayers’ labourers that is remarkable. This
is the silent man, generally known as Herbert. The story goes that
Herbert was once in love and thought to take a wife. But the course of
true love did not run smooth in his case, and, in the end, the young
lady jilted Herbert. That is according to the story. It may or may not
have been true; perhaps Herbert could tell, but he is not at all
communicative. Whatever the circumstances were, they made a profound
impression upon Herbert’s mind and he has never been the same man since.
Now he does not speak to any except his near workmate, and only then to
answer the most necessary questions. It is useless for an outsider to
attempt to make him speak; he ignores all your attentions. To cause him
to smile would be akin to working a miracle. The set features never
relax. The eyes are vacant and expressionless, the mouth is firm and
stern, and the whole countenance rigid.
Yet Herbert is a fine-looking man. His features are regular--almost
classic--his face is bronzed with working out of doors, and he is a
picture of health. In height he is medium. His shoulders are broad and
square, his arms strong and muscular, and he has the endurance of an ox.
Would you tire Herbert? That is impossible. Whatever labour you set him
to do he performs it without a murmur. He does the work of three
ordinary men. Must he dig? He will dig, dig, dig, and throw up the huge
spits of heavy clay as high as his head, one might say for ever. Must he
wheel away the debris? He will pile up the wheel-barrow till it is
ready to break down under the weight, and trundle it off and up to the
stage without the slightest exertion and be back again in a breath. He
will lift enormous weights and strike tremendous blows with the sledge.
He is tireless in his use of the pick and shovel; in fact, whatever you
set Herbert to do he accomplishes it all in about a fifth of the time
ordinarily required for the purpose. He is the butt of his masters and
of his work-mates. Whatever uncommonly laborious task there is to be
done Herbert is the man to do it, and the more he does the more he must
do, though he does not know it, or if he does, he shows no indication of
the knowledge. Now and again the foreman stands by and watches him
approvingly, and this stimulates him to fresh efforts. He revels in the
work and, whatever he thinks about it all, he is still silent and
inexplicable.
This sort of thing is all right from the point of view of the foreman,
but it is very inconvenient and unfair to the other labourers who are
sane in their minds and mortal in their bodies, for everything they do
is adjudged according to the standard of this indefatigable Hercules.
The overseer, used to seeing him slaving endlessly, thinks light of the
others’ efforts, and imagines that they are not doing their share of the
toil, so uneven is the comparison of their labours. In reality, such a
man as Herbert is a danger and an enemy of his kind, though as he is
quite unconscious of his conduct and does it all with the best
intentions he must be forgiven. Such a one is more to be pitied than
blamed.
The foremen of the bricklayers are not bricklayers themselves, and never
have been, but were selected apparently without any consideration of
their specific abilities. This one was a shunter, another was a
carpenter, a third was a waggon-builder, and so on. Perhaps So-and-so
and So-and-so went to school together, or worked formerly in the same
shed; or consanguinity is the cause, for blood is thicker than water in
the factory, as elsewhere. Accordingly, it often comes about that the
most fitting person to take the responsible position is thrust aside at
the last moment for an utter stranger, one who has no knowledge whatever
of the work he is to supervise. With a certain amount of “pushfulness,”
however, and an extraordinary confidence in himself and his abilities,
the new man is able to make a pretence of knowledge and, somehow or
other, the work proceeds. Very often it would go on for months just as
well without the foreman to interfere, and in many cases even better,
for it is the chargemen and gangers who have the actual control of
operations and who possess the real and intimate knowledge of the work.
Should an aspirant to the post of foreman through his own merits be set
aside for a stranger--as is sometimes the case--there is bound to be
jealousy existing between the two for ever afterwards, which now and
again breaks out into heated scenes and may result in brawls and
dismissals. Of the workmen, some will take the one side, and some the
other; they are mutually distrustful, and have recourse to whispering
and tale-telling. If it has been proved that one workman is guilty of
getting another his discharge by any unfair means he is not forgiven by
his mates. The dismissed man, in such a case, will frequently wait for
his informer outside the gates, and will not be satisfied until he has
given him a good thrashing. Perhaps he will walk boldly in through the
entrance with the other men and take him unaware at his work and punish
him on the spot. It is superfluous to say that this is not tolerated by
the officials, and anyone who is so bold as to do it must be prepared to
stand the consequences and appear at the Borough Police Court.
Now and again a foreman, who has been guilty of some underhanded action,
is taken to task by the exasperated victim and treated to a little
surprise combat of fisticuffs. Perhaps the foreman is a sneak or a
bully, or both, and has carried his tyrannical behaviour too far for
human endurance; or private jealousy may have impelled him to some
cowardly turn or other, and the workman, driven to desperation, takes
the law into his own hands and gives him a thrashing. This--provided the
reprisal was merited--will be a source of huge delight to the other men
in the shed, and everyone will rejoice to see the offender “taken down a
notch,” as they say; but if it was merely an exhibition of unwarrantable
temper on the workman’s part, the overseer will be commiserated with and
defended. Whether right or wrong the pugnacious one is dismissed. His
services are no longer required at the shed; he must seek occupation
elsewhere.
Running along for some distance near the canal is a shed in which the
road-waggons are made--trollies, vans, and cars for use in the goods
yards and stations about the line--and inside this, and parallel with
it, is the wheel shop, where the wheels, tyres, and axles are turned and
fitted up for the waggons and carriages. Besides the making of new work
in the first-named of these sheds, there is always a considerable amount
of repairs to be carried out. A great part of this is done outside, in
fine weather, in order to give increased room within doors.
The road-waggon builders are of a sturdy type. Many of them are inclined
to be old-fashioned and primitive in their methods, and they are solid
in character. This is accounted for by the fact that the greater part of
the older hands received their initial training in small yards, in
little country towns and villages, where they worked among farmers and
rustics. The work they did there was necessarily very solid and
strong--such as heavy carts and waggons for the farms--and everything
had to be done by hand, slowly and laboriously perhaps, but efficiently
and well. This taught them the practical side of their trade, as how to
be self-sufficing and independent of machinery, which are the most
valuable features of a good apprenticeship and are of great service to
the workman in after years. By and by, when the time came for them to
leave the scene of their apprentice days--for few masters will pay the
journeyman’s rate of wages to any who, at the end of their term, have
not gone further afield for new experience--they shifted out for
themselves. Some went one way and some another. This one went to London,
that one to Bristol, and others came to the railway town. Whatever
peculiarities of workmanship they acquired in their youth they brought
with them and practised in their new sphere, and so the individual style
is maintained in spite of totally different methods and processes.
At the present time--in large factories, at any rate--there is machinery
for everything, and this is highly destructive of the purely personal
faculty in manufacture. But in the case of the road-waggon builder,
though a great many, or perhaps all, of the parts have been shaped for
him by steam power, there yet remains the fitting up and building of the
vehicle, which is reasonably a task requiring considerable care and
skill. The iron frame of the locomotive or railway waggon may be clapped
together quite easily, for there is no very elaborate fitting or joining
to be done. Good strong rivets are the chief things required there. The
wooden bodies of the vans and cars, however, must be fitted and built
with the nicest precision and finish, or the materials would shrink away
and the parts would gape open, or fall to pieces. Thus, the road-waggon
builder, as well as the carriage body-maker, must be a craftsman of the
first order, and while some journeymen may be at liberty to sacrifice
their dearly gained experience and individual characteristics in the
face of newer methods and improved mechanical processes, it is well for
him to hold fast to what he has found useful and good in the past.
The workmen of every shed have their own particular tone and style
collectively as well as individually; different trades and atmospheres
apparently producing different characteristics and temperaments.
Accordingly, the men of one shed are well-known for one quality, while
those of another are noted for something quite different. These are
famed for steadiness, civility, and correct behaviour; those for noise,
rudeness, horseplay, and even ruffianism. The men of some sheds are
remarkable for their extreme docility and their almost childish
obedience to the slightest and most insignificant rules of the factory,
counting every official as a thing superhuman and nearly to be
worshipped. Others are notorious for ideas quite the reverse of this,
for riotous conduct within and without the shed, an utter contempt of
the laws of the factory, for thieving, fighting, and other propensities.
These characteristics are determined as much by the kind of work done in
the sheds and the quality of the overseer, as by the men’s own nature
and temperament. Most foremen are excessively autocratic and severe with
their men, denying them the slightest privilege or relaxation of the
iron laws of the factory. Others are of a wheedling, pseudo-fatherly
type, who, by a combination of professed paternal regard and a cunning
manipulation of the reins, contrive to make everything they do appear
just and reasonable and so hold their men in complete subjection. Some
foremen, again, are of the ceremonious order, who, from pure vanity,
will insist upon the complete observance of the most trivial detail and
drive their workmen half-way to distraction. A few, on the other hand,
are generous and humane. They hold the reins slack, and, without the
knowledge of their chiefs, grant a few small privileges and are rewarded
with the confidence of the workmen and a willingness to labour on their
part amounting to enthusiasm. For, as the horse that is tightly breeched
draws none too well, neither do those men work best who are rigidly kept
down under the iron rod of the overseer. Discipline there is bound to
be, as everyone knows, but there is no excuse for treating a man as
though he were a wild beast, or an infant just out of the cradle.
Whatever dissatisfaction exists about the works is chiefly owing to the
behaviour of the officials, for they force the workmen into rebellion.
If the directors of the company are anxious for the welfare of their
staff--as they profess to be--let them instruct their managers and
foremen to show themselves a little more tolerant and kindly disposed to
the men in the sheds. Actions speak louder than words, and kindness
shown to workmen is never forgotten.
The wheel shop is a large building, containing many rows of lathes for
the wheels, tyres, and axles, which are nearly all tended by boys. The
lines of shafting stretch in the roof, up and down from end to end of
the place, and the pulleys whirl round almost noiselessly overhead.
Everything is spotlessly clean, for there are no furnaces belching out
their smoke, dust, and flames. The temperature is low and the shed, even
in the hottest part of the summer, is cool in comparison with the other
premises round about. In the winter it is heated with steam from the
boilers and the exhaust from the shop engines. This prevents the boys
from catching cold. The heavy steel axles and tyres are exceedingly
chill in the winter, especially in frosty weather.
The boys come from all parts, from town and country alike, immediately
after leaving school, and go straight to the lathes. There are labourers
to fix the wheels and tyres in the machines, and the boys attend to the
tools, working carefully to the gauges provided. Coming to the work at a
time when their minds are in a receptive state, they soon master the
principal parts of the business and before long become highly skilled
and proficient. Their wages are no more than five or six shillings a
week for a start, with yearly rises of one or two shillings until they
reach a pound or twenty-two shillings. Upon arriving at this
stage--unless work is plentiful--they are usually removed from the lathe
and set labouring, or otherwise transferred or discharged as too
expensive for the work. Sometimes, after this, they migrate to other
towns and earn double or treble the wages they received before, for good
wheel- and axle-turners are in constant demand and a clever workman may
be sure of securing a high rate of remuneration.
The boys are an interesting group, and one that is well worthy of
consideration. They are of all sorts and sizes, of many grades and walks
in life. There is the country labourer’s lad, who formerly worked on the
land amid the horses and cattle; the town labourer’s lad, who has been
errand-boy or who sold newspapers on the street corner; the small
shopkeeper’s lad, the fitter’s lad, tall and pale, in clean blue
overalls, and the enginedriver’s lad, fresh from school, whose one
ambition is to emulate his father and, like him, drive an engine, only
one that is two or three times as big and powerful. There are tall and
short boys, boys fat and lean, pale and robust-looking, ragged and
well-kept, with sad and merry faces. And what pranks they play with one
another, and would play, if they were not curbed and checked with the
ever watchful eye of the shop foreman! They are always ready for some
game or other--football, hide-and-seek, or “ierky”--at any time of the
day, and whatever they do, it does not seem to tire them down; they are
still fresh and active, cheerful and vivacious.
Many of them begin the day well with running regularly to work, perhaps
for two or three miles. At five minutes past six in the morning they
commence at the lathe, and when breakfast-time comes they scamper off,
food in hand, and play about the yard, or in the recreation field
beyond. From nine till one their labour is continuous; there they stand,
bound as with chains to the machines they serve, for ever watchful, so
as not to spoil the cut and waste the axle, which would mean an enforced
holiday for them. When one o’clock comes, smothered with oil and with
faces like those of sweeps--often blackened purposely to give themselves
the appearance of having perspired much--they race off as before, and
play recklessly until it is time to return to the shed. And after the
day’s work is finished and they go home in the evening, they wash away
the grime and oil and play about the streets and lanes till bed-time,
utterly indifferent to the wearisome occupation awaiting them on the
morrow. Their sleep is sound and sweet, for their hearts are happy and
light. Of the cares of life they know nothing; the future is full of
hope for them; all the world is before them. Their chief concern is for
the holidays. All these are anticipated and awaited with great joy and
eagerness; it is by this alone that they discover the extreme tedium of
the daily drudgery of the workshop.
The boys’ foreman is an experienced official, shrewd, keen, and very
severe; a good judge of character, cautious, and careful, civil enough,
but unbending in a decision, a very good formative agent, one who will
exercise a healthy restraint upon the intractables and encourage the
timid, but who exploits them all for the good of the firm. His keen eyes
and sound judgment enable him to at once sum up a lad’s capabilities. He
takes the youth and sets him where he will show to the best advantage,
instructs him on many of the crucial points, advises him as to the best
means of getting on, and very often furnishes him with hints of a
personal nature which--whatever the lad may think of them at the
time--bear fruit in after life. If the youngster is inclined to be wild
and incorrigible he tries his best to reform him, and gives him sound
advice. He has also been known to administer a corrective cuff in the
ear and a vigorous boot in the posterior, but he usually succeeds in
bringing out the good points and suppressing, if not entirely
eradicating, the bad.
Whenever he walks up or down the shed the boys fix their attention more
firmly upon their machines, for they feel his keen, penetrating eyes
upon them, and they know that nothing ever escapes his notice. If there
is a slackness at any point the word is passed rapidly on--“Look out,
here’s J----y coming,” and the overseer is sometimes amused with the
various expedients resorted to in order to deceive him and cover up the
juvenile shortcomings. As to wages, prices, and systems, they are not
altogether his fault. If he could suit himself he might possibly be
willing to pay more, but he is always being pressed by the staff to
reduce prices and expenses, and, like the other foremen, he is not
prepared to offer effective resistance. Being an official of long
standing, however, he is secure in his place, and has no occasion to
betray his hands to the firm, as is too often the case with young
foremen, who wish to secure personal notice and advantage. That is one
of the most damning features of all, and is becoming more and more a
practice at the works. One young “under-strapper” I knew is in the habit
of standing over the boys at the lathe, watch in hand, for four hours
without once moving, and, by his manner and language, compelling them to
run at an excessive rate so as to cut their prices. Without doubt he is
deserving of the birch rod, though the managers, who allow it, are the
more to blame.
A short way from the canal, north of the road-waggon shed, is the
rubbish heap, at which most of the old wood refuse and lumber, with
hundreds of tons of sawdust, are brought to be burned. At one time all
this was consumed in the boiler furnaces, but since the amount of refuse
has enormously increased it has been found expedient to transport some
part of it there and so do away with it. One small furnace is used for
the purpose, and by far the greater part of it, especially the sawdust,
is burned in big heaps upon the ground. This is a slovenly, as well as a
dangerous method, and the inconvenience resulting to the men in the
sheds is considerable. If the wind is in the west the dense clouds of
smoke sweep along the ground and are blown straight in through the open
doors upon the stampers, and are a source of extreme discomfort and
disgust. There is always plenty of smother in the shed, arising from the
oil furnaces, without receiving any addition from outside. Once the
workshop is filled with the bluish vapour it takes hours to disperse,
for, though there are doors all round and hundreds of ventilators on the
roof, they do not carry off the nuisance. Very often the smoke will
travel from end to end of the shed, like a current of water, but just
as it reaches the doorway and you think it is going to pass outside, it
suddenly whirls round like a wheel and traverses the whole length of the
place, and so on, over and over again.
If the wind is in the north, then the road-waggon builders must suffer
the persecuting clouds of smoke and be tormented with smarting and
burning eyes at work; and if it should blow from over the town, across
the rolling downs from the south, the smother is carried high over the
fence and sweeps along the recreation field to the discomfort of small
boys and lovers, or of whoever happens to be passing that way. If the
nuisance arose from any other quarter complaints might be made and steps
taken towards the mitigation of it. As it is, no one, not even a member
of the local bodies and the Corporation, summons up the courage to make
a protest, for everyone bows down before the company’s officials and
representatives in the railway town and fears to raise objections to
anything that may be done by the people at the works.
CHAPTER V
“THE FIELD”--“CUTTING-DOWN”--THE FLYING DUTCHMAN--THE FRAME
SHED--PROMOTION--RIVET BOYS--THE OVERSEER
On the north the factory yard is bounded by a high board fence that runs
along close behind the shed and divides the premises from the recreation
grounds, which are chiefly the haunt of juveniles during the summer
months and the resort of football players and athletes in the winter.
Here also the small children come after school and wander about the
field among the buttercups, or sit down amid the long grass in the
sunshine, or swing round the Maypole, under the very shadow of the black
walls, with only a thin fence to separate them from the busy factory.
The ground beneath their feet shakes with the ponderous blows of the
steam-hammers; the white clouds of steam from the exhaust pipes shoot
high into the air. Dense volumes of blackest smoke tower out of the
chimneys, whirling round and round and over and over, or roll lazily
away in a long line out beyond the town and fade into the distance.
The fence stretches away to the east for a quarter of a mile from the
shed and then turns again at right angles and continues the boundary on
that side as far as to the entrance by the railway. About half-way
across are several large shops and premises used for lifting, fitting,
and storing the carriages; beyond them is a wide, open space commonly
known as “the field.” As a matter of fact, the whole area of the yard
was really a series of fields until quite recently. Fifteen years ago,
although the space was enclosed, you might have walked among the
hedgerows and have been in the midst of rustic surroundings. Numerous
rabbits infested the place and retained their burrows till long after
the steel rails were laid along the ground. Hares, too, continued to
frequent the yard until the rapid extension of the premises and the
clearing away of the grass and bushes deprived them of cover. It was a
common thing to see them and the rabbits shooting in and out among the
old wheels and tyres that had been removed from the condemned vehicles.
If you should follow the fence along for a short distance you might even
now soon forget the factory and imagine yourself to be far away in some
remote village corner, surrounded with fresh green foliage and drinking
in the sweet breath of the open fields. One would not conceive that in
the very factory grounds, within sight of the hot, smoky workshops, and
but a stone’s throw from some of them, it would be possible to enjoy the
charm of rusticity, and to revel unseen in a profusion of flowers that
would be sought for in vain in many parts about the countryside. Yet
such is the pleasure to be derived from a visit to this little
frequented spot. The fence, to the end, runs parallel with the
recreation ground alongside a hedgerow that once parted the two fields
when the whole was in the occupation of the people at the old farmhouse
that has now disappeared. In the hedgerow, with their trunks close
against the board partition, still in their prime and in strong contrast
to the black smoky walls and roofs of the sheds opposite, stand
half-a-dozen stately elms that stretch their huge limbs far over the
yard and throw a deep shadow on the ground beneath. At this spot the
field gradually declines and, as the inner yard has been made up to a
level with the railway beyond, when you approach the angle you find
yourself out of sight, with the raised platform of cinders on the one
hand and, on the other, the high wooden fence and thick elms.
At the corner the steel tracks have had to make a long curve, and this
has left the ground there free to bring forth whatever it will. Here,
also, the trees are thickest, and, within the fence, a small portion of
the original site still remains. A streamlet--perhaps the last drain of
a once considerable brook--enters from the recreation ground underneath
the boards and is conducted along, now within its natural banks and now
through broken iron pipes, into the corner, where it is finally
swallowed up in a gully and lost to view. Stooping over it, as though to
protect it from further injury and insult, are several clumps of
hawthorn and the remains of an old hedge of wych elm. Standing on the
railway track of the bank are some frames of carriages that were burnt
out at the recent big fire. Near them are several crazy old waggons and
vans, that look as if they had stood in the same place for half a
century and add still further to the quiet of the scene.
It is alongside the fence, and especially about the corner, that the
wild flowers bloom. Prominent over all is the rosebay. This extends in a
belt nearly right along the fence, and climbs up the ash bank and runs
for a considerable distance among the metals, growing and thriving high
among the iron wheels and frames of the carriages and revelling in the
soft ashes and cinders of the track. Side by side with this, and
blooming contemporary with it, are the delicate toadflax, bright golden
ragwort, wild mignonette, yellow melilot, ox-eye daisies, mayweed, small
willow-herb, meadow-sweet, ladies’ bedstraw, tansy, yarrow, and
cinquefoil. The wild rose blooms to perfection and the bank is richly
draped with a vigorous growth of dewberry, laden with blossoms and
fruit.
Beside the streamlet in the corner is a patch of cats’-tails, as high as
to the knees, and a magnificent mass of butter-bur. The deliciously
scented flowers of this are long since gone by, but the leaves have
grown to an extraordinary size. They testify to the presence of the
stream, for the butter-bur is seldom found but in close proximity to
water. Here also are to be found the greater willow-herb with its large
sweet pink blossoms and highly-scented leaves, the pale yellow
colt’s-foot, medick, purple woody night-shade, hedge stachys, spear
plume thistles, hogweed and garlick mustard, with many other plants,
flowering and otherwise, that have been imported with the ballast and
have now taken possession of the space between the lines and the fence.
The shade of the trees and beauty of the flowers and plants are
delightful in the summer when the sun looks down from a clear, cloudless
sky upon the steel rails and dry ashes of the yard, which attract and
contain the heat in a remarkable degree, making it painful even to walk
there in the hottest part of the day. Then the cool shade of the trees
is thrice welcome, especially after the stifling heat of the workshop,
the overpowering fumes of the oil furnaces and the blazing metal just
left behind; for it is impossible for any but workmen to enjoy the
pleasant retreat. No outsider ever gains admittance here, and though you
should often pace underneath the trees in the recreation ground you
would never dream of what the interior is like. Nor do even workmen--at
least, not more than one or two, and this at rare intervals in the
meal-hours--often come here, for if they did they would be noticed by
the watchmen and ordered away. Their presence here, even during
meal-hours, would be construed as prejudicial to the interests of the
company. They would be suspected of theft, or of some other evil
intention, or would at least be looked upon as trespassers and reported
to the managers. In times gone by men and youths have been known to
escape from the factory during working hours and while they were booked
at their machines, by climbing over the fence, and this has made the
officials cautious and severe in dealing with trespassers. It would not
be a difficult matter, even now--and especially in the winter afternoons
and evenings--to climb over the top of the fence and decamp.
This part of the factory yard is by far the most wholesome of the works’
premises. There is plenty of room and light, and happy were they who, in
the years ago, were told off for service in the field, breaking up the
old waggons, sorting out the timber, and running the wheels from one
place to another. At the time the old broad-gauge system of vehicles
was converted to the four-foot scale, large gangs in the yard were
regularly employed in cutting-down; that is, reducing the waggons to the
new shape. First of all the wood-work was removed; then both sides of
the iron frame--a foot each side--were cut completely away. Two new
“sole-bars” were affixed, and the whole frame was riveted up again. The
wheels, also, were taken out and the axles shortened and re-fitted. The
carpenters now replaced the floors and sides and all was fit for traffic
again. The locomotives, on the other hand, were condemned. The boilers
and machinery were built on too great a scale to be fitted to the
narrow-gauge frames. They were accordingly lifted out and the boilers
distributed all over the system, while the frames were cut up for scrap
and new ones built in place of them.
The old type of broad-gauge engine has never been beaten for speed on
the line. By reason of its occupying a greater space over the wheels and
axles the running was more even, and there was not so much rocking of
the coaches. The broad-gauge Flying Dutchman express was noted for its
magnificent speed and stately carriage, and for many years after the
abolition of the system stories of almost incredible runs were current
at the works. One old driver, very proud of his machine, was said to
have sworn to the officials that he would bring his engine and train
from London to the railway town, a distance of seventy-seven miles, in
an hour, dead time, with perfect safety, and he was only prevented from
accomplishing the feat by the strong stand made by the officials, who
threatened him with instant dismissal if he should exceed the limit of
speed prescribed in the time-tables.
At the same time, it is well known that the official time-table was
often ignored, and stirring tales might be told of flying journeys
performed in defiance of all written injunctions and authority. The
signalmen knew of these feats and were often astounded at them, but they
are only human, and they often did that they ought not to have done in
order to shield the driver. The passengers, too, are always delighted to
find themselves being whirled along at a high rate. There is an
intoxication in it not to be resisted, and when they leave the train at
the journey’s end, after an extraordinary run, they invariably go and
inspect the engine and admire the brave fellow who has rushed them over
the country at such an exciting speed.
When the broad-gauge was converted great numbers of men from all
quarters were put on at the works. Every village and hamlet for miles
around sent in its unemployed, and many of the farms were quite
deserted. These were engaged in “cutting-down” or in breaking up the
waggons and engines--little skill being necessary for that
operation--and when, after several years, the system was quite reduced
and slackness followed the busy period, the greater part of them were
discharged and were again distributed over the countryside round about.
It is impossible to go into any village within a radius of eight or ten
miles of the railway town without finding at least one or two men who
were employed on “the old broad-gauge,” as they still call it. After
their discharge the majority, by degrees, settled down to farm life.
Many, however, continued out of work for a long time, and some are
numbered among the “casuals” to this day.
The only tools, besides hammers, required by the cutters-down, were cold
sets to cut off the heads of the rivets and bolts, and punches to force
the stems and stays out of the holes. They were held by hazel rods, that
were supplied in bundles from the stores for the purpose. To bind them
round the steel tools they were first of all heated in the middle over
the fire. Then the cutter-out took hold of one end, and his mate held
the other, and the two together gave the wand several twists round.
After that the rod was wound twice about the set or punch and the two
ends were tied together with strong twine. This gave a good grip on the
tool, which would not be obtained with the use of an iron rod. The
repeated blows on the set from the sledge would soon jar the iron rod
loose and cause it to snap off, while the hazel rod grips it firmly and
springs with it under the blow.
Formerly all the repair riveting was done by hand. When the hot rivet
was inserted in the hole the “holder-up” kept it in position, either
with the “dolly” or with a heavy square-headed sledge. Then the riveters
knocked down the head of the rivet with long-nosed hammers, striking
alternately in rapid succession and making the neighbourhood resound
with the blows. Afterwards the chief mate held the “snap” upon it and
his mate plied the sledge until the new head was perfectly round and
smooth. The “snap” is a portion of steel bar, about ten inches long and
toughly tempered, with a die, the shape of the rivet head required,
infixed at one end. Now, however, pneumatic riveting machines are used
out of doors. These, being small and compact, can be employed anywhere
and with much fewer hands than were required by the old method. The air
is supplied from accumulators into which it is forced by the engine in
the shed, and it is conducted in pipes all round the factory yards.
The repair gangs are an off-shoot of the frame shed that is situated at
a distance of nearly half a mile from the field. There the steel frames
for the waggons and carriages and all iron-topped vehicles, such as
ballast trucks, brake and bullion vans, refrigerators and others are
constructed. That is essentially the shop of hard work, heavy lifting
and noise terrific. The din is quite inconceivable. First of all is the
machinery. On this side are rows of drills, saws, slotting and planing
machines; on that are the punches and shears, screeching and grinding,
snapping and groaning with the terrible labour imposed upon them. The
long lines of shafting and wheels whirl incessantly overhead, the cogs
clatter, the belts flap on the rapidly spinning pulleys, and the blast
from the fan roars loudly underground. All this, however, is nearly
drowned with the noise of the hammering. Hundreds of blows are being
struck, on “tops” and “bottoms,” steel rails and iron rails, sole-bars
and headstocks, middles, diagonals, stanchions, knees, straps and
girders. Every part of the frame is being subjected to the same
treatment--riveted, straightened, levelled, or squared, most
unmercifully used. Every tone and degree of sound is emitted, according
to the various qualities and thicknesses of the metal--sharps and flats,
alto, treble and bass. There is the sharp clear tone of the
highly-tempered steel in the tools used; the solid and defiant ring of
the sole-bar or headstock, strong and firm under the hammer of the
“puller-up,” the dull, flat sound of the floor plates, the loud hollow
noise of the “covered goods” sides and ends, and the deep heavy boom of
the roofs of the vans. Everyone seems to be striking as hard and as
quickly as he is able. All the blows fall at once, and yet everything is
in a jumble and tangle, loud, vicious, violent, confused and chaotic--a
veritable pandemonium. And then, to crown the whole, there are the
pneumatic tools, the chipping and riveting machines. It is dreadful; it
is overpowering; it is unearthly; but it has to be borne, day after day
and year after year.
Yet even the frame shed must yield to the boiler shop in the matter of
concentrated noise. The din produced by the pneumatic machines in
cutting out the many hundreds of rivets and stays inside a boiler is
quite appalling. There is nothing to be compared with it. The heaviest
artillery is feeble considered with it; thunder is a mere echo. What is
more, the noise of neither of these is continuous, while the operation
within the boiler lasts for a week or more. The boiler, in a great
degree, contains the sound, so that even if you were a short distance
away, though the noise there would be very great, you could have no idea
of the intensity of the sound within. Words could not express it;
language fails to give an adequate idea of the terrible detonation and
the staggering effect produced upon whosoever will venture to thrust his
head within the aperture of the boiler fire-box. Do you hear anything?
You hear nothing. Sound is swallowed up in sound. You are a hundred
times deaf. You are transfixed; your every sense is paralysed. In a
moment you seem to be encompassed with an unspeakable silence--a
deathlike vacuity of sound altogether. Though you shout at the top of
your voice you hear nothing--nothing at all. You are deaf and dumb, and
stupefied. You look at the operator; there he sits, stands or stoops.
You see his movements and the apparatus in his hands, but everything is
absolutely noiseless to you. It is like a dumb show, a dream, a
phantasm. So, for a little while after you withdraw your head from the
boiler, you can hear nothing. You do not know whether you are upon your
head or your heels, which is the floor and which is the roof. The ground
rises rapidly underneath you and you seem to be going up, up, up, you
know not where. Then, after a little while, when you have removed from
the immediate vicinity of the boiler, you feel to come to earth again.
Your senses rush upon you and you are suddenly made aware of the
terrific noise you have encountered. Even now, it will be some time
before the faculty of hearing is properly restored; the fearful noise
rings in your ears for hours and days afterwards.
And what of the men who have to perform the work? It is said that they
are used to it. That is plainly begging the question. They have to do
it, whether they are used to it or not. It is useless for them to
complain; into the boiler they must go, and face the music, for good or
ill. All the men very soon become more or less deaf, and it is
inconceivable but that other ailments must necessarily follow. The
complete nervous system must in time be shattered, or seriously
impaired, and the individual become something of a wreck. This is one of
the many ills resulting from progress in machinery and modern
manufacturing appliances.
The personnel of the frame shed is individual and distinct in a very
marked degree. Most of the men seem to have been chosen for their great
strength and fine physique, or to have developed these qualities after
their admission to the work. The very nature of the toil tends to
produce strong limbs and brawny muscles. It is certain that continual
exercise of the upper parts of the body by such means as the lifting of
heavy substances tends to improve the chest and shoulders, and many of
those who are engaged in lifting and carrying the plates and sole-bars
are very stout and square in this respect. There is a number of “heavy
weights,” and a few positive giants among them, though the majority of
the men are conspicuous, not so much by their bulk, as by their
squareness of limb and muscularity. A proof of the strength of the frame
shed men may be seen in the success of their tug-of-war teams. Wherever
they have competed--and they have gone throughout the entire south of
England--they have invariably beaten their opponents and carried off the
trophies.
There was formerly a workman, an ex-Hussar, named Bryan, in the shed,
who could perform extraordinary feats of strength. He was nearly seven
feet in height and he was very erect. His arms and limbs were solid and
strong; he was a veritable Hercules, and his shoulders must have been as
broad as those of Atlas, who is fabled to have borne the world on his
back. It was striking to see him lift the heavy headstocks, that weighed
two hundredweights and a quarter, with perfect ease and carry them about
on his shoulder--a task that usually required the powers of two of the
strongest men. This he continued to do for many years, not out of
bravado, but because he knew it was within his natural powers to
perform. Notwithstanding his tremendous normal strength, however, he was
subject to attacks of ague, and you might have seen him sometimes
stretched out upon the ground quite helpless, groaning and foaming at
the mouth. If he had been working in the shed recently, since the
passing of the new Factory Acts, he would have been promptly discharged,
for no one is kept at the works now who is subject to any infirmity that
might incapacitate him in the shed among the machinery. Later on, when
work got slack, Bryan was turned adrift from the factory, a broken and a
ruined man. All his past services to the firm were forgotten, he was
cast off like an old shoe. However valuable and extraordinary a man may
have proved himself to be at his work, it counts for little or nothing
with the foremen and managers; the least thing puts him out of favour
and he must go.
The men of the frame shed are of a cosmopolitan order, though to a less
extent than is the case in some departments. The work being for the most
part rough and requiring no very great skill, there has consequently
been no need of apprenticeships, though there are a few who have served
their time as waggon-builders or boiler-smiths. They are not recognised
as journeymen here, however, and so must take their chance with the rank
and file. Promotion is supposed to be made according to merit, but there
are favourites everywhere who will somehow or other prevail. The normal
order of promotion is from labourer to “puller-up,” from puller-up to
riveter, and thence to the position of chargeman. Here he must be
content to stop, for foremen are only made about once or twice in a
generation, and when the odds on any man for the post are high, surprise
and disappointment always follow. The first is usually relegated to the
rear, and the least expected of all is brought forward to fill the
coveted position. It may be design, or it may be judgment, and perhaps
it is neither. It very often looks as though the matter had been
decided by the toss of a coin, or the drawing of lots, and that the lot
had fallen upon the least qualified, but there is no questioning the
decision. The old and tried chargeman, who knows the scale and
dimensions of everything that has been built or that is likely to be
built in the shed in his lifetime, must stand aside for the raw youth
who has not left school many months, but who, by some mysterious means
or other, has managed to secure the favour and indulgence of his
foreman, or other superior. Perhaps he is reckoned good at arithmetic,
or can scratch out a rough drawing, though more than likely his father
was gardener to someone, or cleaned the foreman’s boots and did odd jobs
in the scullery after factory hours.
Another reason for the selection of young and comparatively unknown men
for the post of foreman is that they will have a smaller circle of
personal mates in the shed, and, consequently, a less amount of human
kindness and sympathy in them. That is to say, they will be able to cut
and slash the piecework prices with less compunction, and so the better
serve the interests of the company. The young aspirant, moreover, will
be at the very foot of the ladder, hot and impetuous, while the elder
one will have passed the season of senseless and unscrupulous ambition.
A feature of the frame shed is the rivet boy. It is his duty to hot the
rivets in the forge for his mates and to perform sundry other small
offices, such as fetching water from the tap in the shed, or holding a
nail bag in front of the rivet head which is being cut away, in order to
keep it from flying and causing injury to any of the workmen. The forges
for hotting the rivets are fixtures and are supplied with air through
pipes laid beneath the ground from the fan under the wall. Several boys
usually work from one fire, and there is often a scramble for the most
advantageous position in the coals. An iron plate is used to facilitate
the heating. This has been perforated with holes at the punch to allow
its receiving as many rivets as are required. It is then placed over the
whitehot coke in the forge and the rivets inserted. Each boy has a
certain number of holes allotted to him and he must not trespass on his
mates’ territory.
It sometimes happens that one of the boys proves to be a bully and a
terror and plays ducks and drakes with the rights and privileges of the
others. This is always a matter of great concern to the juveniles, and
they will not be satisfied till the tyrant has been humbled and
punished. They have many minor differences and quarrels among
themselves, and challenges to fight are frequent. Honour looms big in
the eyes of the rivet boys, and they are quick to resent a taunt or
affront and to wipe off all aspersions. Perhaps a sneer has been
levelled at one by reason of his name, his father’s occupation, or the
name of the street or locality in which he lives. With true pluck the
matter is taken up. An hour and a place for the meeting are fixed: it is
generally--“Meet me in the Rec at dinner-time.” There they accordingly
assemble with their mates and supporters and fight the matter out. It is
usually a rough-and-tumble proceeding, but they do not desist till one
or the other has been worsted and honour satisfied. More than once it
has happened that they have been so intent on the match they have lost
count of the time and have all--a dozen or more--got locked out for the
afternoon. This requires some explanation, and the next day the whole
circumstance has to be related. Here the boys’ fathers might interfere
and administer a sound corrective lesson to each one of them.
Getting locked out is also very often the result of over-staying at
football, which is regularly practised by the youngsters in the
recreation field all the year round. The boys club together and buy a
ball and race out to play every dinner-time. There, for three-quarters
of an hour, they exert themselves to the utmost and are forced to run
back to the shed at the top of their speed, often returning in an
exhausted condition. A spell of five minutes puts them right, however,
and they go on with their work as though they had enjoyed an infinite
period of refreshment. In the evening they race home to tea and
afterwards go out again while it is daylight, never seeming too tired
for sport and play.
Many queer nicknames, such as “Bodger,” “Snowball,” “Granny,” “Chucky,”
and “Nanty Pecker,” are in vogue among the boys. These become fixtures
and remain with them for many years. It must not be thought that all the
rivet boys submit to become permanent hands in the shed. A good many of
them, as soon as they are sufficiently old and big, go to the recruiting
sergeant and try to enlist. Some enter the Army and others the Navy;
some go this way and some that. Very often boys who spent their early
days at rivet-hotting in the shed and enter the Service, return in after
years to obtain another start in the old quarters, and grow old amid the
scenes of their boyhood. Some never return at all, but die, either in
battle, of sickness, or other accident. More than one, too, has gone the
wrong way in life and ended in suicide.
The boys are much given to reading cheap literature of the “dreadful”
type, and they revel in the deeds of Buffalo Bill, Deadwood Dick, and
other well-known heroes of fiction. Sometimes a boy, unknown to his
parents, actually possesses a firearm--a pistol or revolver--and, with a
group of companions, scours the countryside round about in search of
“game.” Once, at least, mischief was done in the shape of bursting open
a letter-box with bullets, and at another time a poor calf received a
bullet-shot through the hedgerow. This last-named deed, however, was
purely accidental. Great fear fell upon the juveniles after this
untoward experience and the pistol was forthwith cast into the canal. At
another time a careless lad shot himself through the hand with a pistol
and inflicted a dangerous wound.
A great change has come over the frame shed during the last twelve
years. The old foreman has gone; a great many of the old hands have
disappeared also, and the methods of work have been revolutionised. The
prices have been cut again and again; a different spirit prevails
everywhere; it is no longer as it used to be. Considerable liberty and
many small privileges were allowed to the men by the governing staff in
those days, and the foreman, if he felt disposed, could do much to make
them comfortable and satisfied. Then the overseer was practically master
of his shed and could make his own terms with the workmen, though it is
only fair to remember that under those conditions he was sometimes
inclined to be summary and despotic.
The old foreman of the frame shed was an excellent example of this kind
of overseer. As an engineer he was clever, intelligent, sharp-sighted,
and energetic. In addition to this he was a good judge of character, a
natural leader of men, and one strongly sympathetic. If he was in want
of new hands he needed not to ask a dozen ridiculous questions, or to
stand upon any kind of ceremony; he came, saw, and decided at once. One
glance was sufficient for him; he had summed the man up in an instant.
In the shed he was free, easy and spontaneous, praising and blaming in
the same breath. At one moment he was livid with passion; the next he
was kind, conciliative, and condescending. His temper was hot and fiery.
When he frowned at you his expression was as black as a thunder-cloud,
but you knew that everything would soon be well again. His behaviour was
at least open and genuine, and whatever his attitude to his superiors
might have been, he was free from dissimulation with the workmen.
Nothing escaped his attention in the shed. As he walked his eagle eye
comprehended all. If a stanchion or girder was in the least out of
square he perceived it, and it had to be put right immediately.
He never made himself too cheap and common with the workmen, but held
himself in such a relation to them that he could always command respect.
He often came to the shed late and left early, but there was then no
rigid law compelling the foreman to be for ever at his post, and the
work usually proceeded the same. He was an inventor himself, and he was
always ready to encourage independent thought and action among his
workmen. He recognised merit and rewarded it. He was not jealous of his
workmen’s brains, and he was at all times willing to consider an opinion
and to act upon it if it seemed preferable to his own. He was a mixture
of the fatherly ruler and the despot, but he was very proud of his men
and he lauded them up to the skies to outsiders, whenever an opportunity
presented itself. There was nothing they could not make, and make well,
according to him. If he blamed them to themselves he stoutly defended
them against others, and he would not have dreamed of selling and
betraying them to the management, as is commonly done at this time.
Of the boys he was extremely fond, and especially of such as were
well-behaved and attentive, however ragged and rough their dress might
be, and he often stood and talked to them with his hand on their
shoulder, or gave them pennies or marbles. But if he saw one of the
“terribles” bullying a younger lad he ran up to him and gave him a sound
cuff, or a vigorous kick. Under his foremanship work was plentiful and
wages were high. The shed was nearly always on overtime, and money
flowed like water. The men bore the strain of the overtime complacently.
They worked without fear and turned out a hundred, or a hundred and
twenty waggon frames a week. Those were prosperous days for the frame
shed and many a one saved a little pile from his earnings.
Together with all this, however, the foreman discovered some remarkable
characteristics and he was possessed of the most amazing effrontery. If
strangers connected with other firms came in to inspect the plant and
process and to know the prices of things, he hoodwinked them in every
possible manner and told them astounding fables. He would take up an
article in his hand, describe it with pride, and tell them it was made
for a fifth of what it actually cost to produce. If the manager came
through and any awkward questions were asked, he skilfully turned the
point aside and motioned secretly to the men to support him if they
should be consulted. He hated all interference and would not stand
patronage even from his superiors, and where argument failed clever
manœuvring saved the situation.
Whatever he saw in the shape of machinery he coveted for his own shed.
More than once he was known actually to purloin a machine from the
neighbour foreman’s shop in the night and transfer it to his own
premises. Once a very large drilling machine, new from the maker and
labelled to another department at the works, came into the yard by
mistake, but it never reached its proper destination. Calling a gang of
men, he removed the drill from the truck, caused a foundation to be made
for it, fixed it up in a corner half out of sight, and had it working
the next morning. A hue and cry was raised up and down and around the
yard for the missing machine, but it was not discovered till a long time
afterwards. It still stands in the shed, a proof of one of the most
brazen and impudent thefts possible.
At another time three large drop-hammers were shunted near the shed, and
on seeing them he quickly had them unloaded, but he was not successful
in retaining them. On being discovered he made profuse apologies for his
“mistake” and there the matter ended. At last he fell into the disfavour
of someone and defiantly handed in his resignation. Now everything
proceeds upon formally approved lines, though many a one wishes the old
foreman were still in his place, grumbling and scolding, and pushing
things forward as in the days ago.
CHAPTER VI
THE SMITHY--THE SMITH--BUILDING THE FIRE--GALLERY
MEN--APPRENTICES--THE OLDEST HAND--DEATH OF A SMITH--THE
SMITH’S ATTITUDE TO HIS MATES--HIS GREAT GOOD-NATURE--THE
SMITHS’ FOREMAN
Adjoining the frame-building shed is the waggon smithy, where the
thousand and one details for brake systems for the carriages and
waggons, and other articles and uses are manufactured. Here, also, all
kinds of repairs are executed, and a great number of tools of every
description made for the permanent way men and for other workshops round
about. It is said that the forge is the longest in England, and this is
probably correct. It is slightly under two hundred yards in length, and
it contains one hundred fires. These are built at equal distances, on
each side of the shed, with crowns like large bee-hives, and the
chimneys are joined in with the walls. Every fire is supplied with a
boshful of water in which to cool the various tools, and there is also a
tap and a rubber pipe for damping the coals.
Behind the forge is a recess for the coke, which is crushed by machines
outside and wheeled in ready for use. Above this is a rack for the tongs
and tools, of which the smith possesses a considerable number. They are
of all sorts and sizes, capable of holding and shaping every conceivable
article. Of tongs there are flat-bits, hollow-bits, and claws large and
small, with sets and “set-tools,” “fullers,” flatters, punches,
“jogglers,” and many others with no specific title but conveniently
named by the brawny fellow who uses them. Standing in one corner, or
soaking in the water of the bosh, are large and small sledges and one or
two wooden mallets. Every fire has its sieve or “riddle,” as it is
called, for sifting the coke before it is put in the forge, for every
particle of dust must be removed from the fuel so as to obtain a clear,
bright heat. If there is welding to be done the coke will have to be
broken up small--about the size of a walnut--with the mallet, in order
to concentrate the heat, and to allow of the iron being easily moved in
the fire and well-covered with the fuel.
The task of making up the fire falls upon the smith’s mate or striker.
Perhaps, if the piece of work is of big dimensions, two fires are
needed; if it is small or moderate-sized, one will be sufficient. It is
the mate’s duty to get everything ready for the smith. First of all the
clinker is removed and the dust taken out from the centre of the fire
with an iron shovel. The live coals are now raked to the middle and the
blast applied. When this is performed the fresh coke is “riddled” up,
and carefully distributed in the forge. Every smith is very particular
as to the _shape_ of his fire. In general disposition it will be high at
the back with the corners--right and left--well filled, rather full in
front and even in the centre. If the weather is hot and the coke dry it
may receive a good watering--once before the smith begins his heat, and
several times during the operation. A good smith will be sparing of
water, however, for too much of it makes the fire burn too fiercely in
the centre, contracts the area of heat and causes the iron to be dirty
and slimy. The harder the coke, the better it is, and the more brilliant
the heat will be. Soft coke is soon consumed and completely reduced to
dust, while good, hard coke will last a considerable time in the fire.
It must not be assumed that the smith is idle while his mates are
employed in renovating the forge. He is busy preparing his tools and
taking dimensions of the job to be made, and pondering on the best means
of doing it. For this he usually has a large board whitened with chalk,
upon which he sketches out the article and by means of which he
determines the best method of forming his bends and angles. He may not
be much of an artist, but in his rude way he will make a very
commendable drawing of his job and will thus be enabled to determine
beforehand exactly what to do to effect it, just the time to begin his
tapers and angles, the direction of the bend, and the tools for doing
it. He never leaves the method undetermined till he has his iron on the
anvil, but takes pains to have everything settled and every phase of the
operation well in view before he begins it. It is the inferior or the
unintelligent workman alone that heats his iron and trusts to a chance
idea to complete the job.
Meanwhile the cloth cap has been removed from the head, and the
waistcoat and braces hung up behind the forge. The long leathern apron
is produced from the wooden tool-chest and tied around the waist, or
fastened with the belt, about three inches of the top of the trousers
being often turned down outside. The smith’s trousers are usually of
blue serge, and they are made very loose and baggy, so as to allow of
much stooping. The strikers more frequently use aprons made of canvas or
of old thin refuse leather that has been stripped from the worn-out
carriages and horse-boxes and consigned to the scrap-heap. While the
finishing touches are being put to the forge the burly smith takes his
can and goes to the tap for a drink of water. Arrived there he fills the
vessel, removes the quid of tobacco from his cheek--a great many smiths
chew tobacco--raises the can to his lips, rinses out his mouth once or
twice and spouts the water out again to a great distance. Then he takes
a long drink, fills the can again and carries it back to the forge,
where he hands it to his mates, or sets it down for future refreshment.
By this time the iron will have been placed in the forge and the blast
applied by the strikers. The sets also will have been ground, the shafts
of the hammers examined and the wedges tightened. The floor, too, will
be cleanly swept round about, for the smith is most particular in the
matter of neatness and will not have loose ashes and cinders, or other
rubbish, lying under his feet. A light, square table, sometimes of wood
and sometimes of iron plate, is set by the anvil, and of a height with
it, to contain the tools. A handful of birch, bound together after the
manner of a little besom, is placed conveniently upon the table. This is
used for brushing the heat when it comes from the coals, and for
removing the dust and scale from the anvil. As the blast rushes through
the pipe from underground and into the forge it roars loudly, sounding
in the coke like a strong wind among trees. Long, yellow flames rise and
leap high up the chimney, and the air around is filled with clouds of
dust and sulphur fumes from the burning coke. As the heat of the fire
increases this diminishes; in a short time the gaseous properties are
entirely consumed and there is no smell of any kind.
Our smith is a perfect giant in stature. In height he is well over six
feet, solid and erect, with tremendous shoulders and limbs. His head is
massive and square, with broad deep forehead and bushy brows. His grey
eyes, frank and fearless, are rather deeply inset. The nose is Roman and
slightly crooked; the mouth, with thick lips a little relaxed, is
pleasant and kind. He has a heavy, bronze moustache, a clean shaven chin
and plump, ruddy cheeks. The whole countenance is square, and exhibits
the marks of good-nature and honest character. His ponderous arms are
hard and brown, full of rigid bone and muscle, and his hands are large
and horny with continual holding of the tongs and hammer. His breast is
remarkably broad and hairy--his woollen shirt is always thrown open at
work; he has hips and belly like an ox, legs like those of an elephant,
and large flat feet, and he weighs more than eighteen stone. When he
walks his motion is rather slow and deliberate. He goes heavy on his
soles, and his shoulders rise and fall alternately at every step he
takes.
He is at all times steady and cool, and he seems never to be in a hurry.
At the anvil he gives one the same impression, so that a stranger might
even think him to be sluggish and dilatory, but he is in everything sure
and unerring, never too soon or too late. Every action is well-timed;
nothing is either over- or under-done. He performs all his beats with a
minimum amount of labour. Where a nervous or spasmodical person would
require forty or fifty blows to shape a piece of metal he will
accomplish it with about twenty-five. His masterly eye and calculating
brain are ever watchful and alert. He understands the effect of every
blow given, and while the less experienced smith is still engaged with
his piece nearly black-hot, his is finished, complete, with the metal
still yellow or bright red. He moves always at the same pace, and his
work is of a uniformly superlative character. When strangers are about,
watching him at his weld, he makes no difference whatever in his usual
methods of procedure, but behaves just as coolly and deliberately and
takes no notice of any man.
Some smiths and forgemen, on the other hand, hate to be watched at work
by strangers--“foreigners,” as they call them--and very quickly give
evidence of their dislike and irritation. They will every now and then
dart an angry look at the visitors, and, after using the tools, throw
them down roughly, muttering under their breath and telling the
strangers to “clear off,” though not sufficiently loud to be heard. By
and by the unoffending strikers will come in for a castigation; whatever
kind of blow they strike it will be wrong for their mate. At last he
shuts off the blast from the forge, and, laying down his hammer, turns
his back towards the “interlopers,” and waits till they have passed on
up the shed. After their departure he resumes his labour and quickly
makes up for the lost time.
Some smiths, again, though extremely nervous under the eye of a
stranger, do not object to being watched, while others positively like
the attention. Such as these are always anxious, under the
circumstances, to impress the stranger with their great skill and
dexterity in the use of tools and in twisting and turning the iron about
on the anvil. They are the “gallery men.” As soon as visitors appear
afar off they begin to prepare for an exhibition. The blast is steadied
down, or shut off, and the fire is cooled round. The tools are all most
conveniently disposed upon the anvil or table, and everything is made
ready for a “lightning” weld. The strikers are as well agreed as the
smith, and brace themselves up for an extra special effort. They wait
till the visitors are nearly opposite them and certain of viewing the
operation. Then on goes the blast, roaring loudly in the firebox, while
the smith, with the perspiration streaming down his brow and cheeks,
turns his heat over and over in the forge and glances quickly across to
take care that he is ready at the right moment. The visitors notice the
unusual activity of the men at the fire and stand still, waiting to see
the heat. This is the signal for the iron to leave the coals. With
exaggerated celerity the sections of metal are withdrawn from the forge
and brought to the anvil. The fused parts are clapped smartly together,
the striker throws down his tongs viciously, grips his hammer and,
following the directions of his mate, rains a shower of blows on the
spluttering iron. The sparks whizz out, and reach the visitors, singeing
the dresses of the ladies--if there happen to be any among them--and
causing them to cry out and step backwards a few paces, while the anvil
rings merrily under the blows. Now the smith lays down his own hammer
quickly and takes up the steel tool for finishing and squaring the heat.
His mate follows, striking rapidly, at all angles, heavy and light,
light and heavy, according to what is required, though the smith utters
not a word during the process, for the whole routine is known by heart.
Over and over the piece is jerked on the anvil--a fine flourish being
given to each movement--until it is finished. Upon its completion the
smith hands it to the striker, who receives it dexterously and places it
on the ground, or in the pile, the pair of them looking several times at
the visitors as much as to ask them if they do not think the job well
and quickly done, and begging a compliment. The visitors usually accord
them an admiring glance in recognition of their prowess and pass on up
the forge.
The gallery men are smart and quick by nature, and are fairly sure of
being successful in “exhibition” work. The slightest blunder would spoil
the whole act and make them appear ridiculous, consequently none but
those who are really skilful ever attempt the business. The average
smith, however, and especially the one we have in view, never breaks his
rule or goes out of his way to oblige visitors, but continues at a
steady, uniform rate. The workman who is showy and energetic before
visitors is often remiss when they have gone by; it is the continual
plodder that gets through the most work in the long run. The visitor,
moreover, if he is gifted with an ordinary amount of insight and
commonsense, may easily recognise the superior workman and discriminate
between the genuine and the superficial effort. Occasionally, when
strangers pass through, after such a performance as I have described,
the striker, more in jest than in earnest, throws his cap at the feet of
the visitors, suggesting that a tip would be welcomed. It is but fair to
say that the hint is seldom or never taken.
Though the striker, or inside mate, must perform the task of preparing
the fire for the smith, he is no longer responsible for it. Henceforth
the smith takes it under his care, and only hands it over to his mate
when the heat is finished and a stop has to be made to renew the forge.
If the job upon which he is engaged is of any dimensions and two fires
are needed, that will make it increasingly hard for the strikers. The
heaviest work is naturally more usually assigned to the strongest men,
though the rule of adaptability also holds here and the various jobs are
given to those who have proved themselves to be the most efficient at
them. Of the smiths, some are famed for their skill in one direction,
and some for their ability in another. This job requires strength, that
speed and cleverness, and another needs a combination of all those
qualities and is difficult to do at any time. Occasionally it transpires
that an inferior smith has been kept at one class of work for such a
long time that he gets out of touch with the other jobs in the shed, and
would shape awkwardly if he were suddenly called upon to undertake
something new and unusual to him. This is a mistake not often committed
by the foreman, however. He periodically changes and interchanges the
work and so gets the smiths accustomed to many and miscellaneous toils.
The skilled and clever smith will be at home anywhere and everywhere. He
will do anything, anyhow, and by any method you please, for he is a
complete master of the trade. He will make all kinds of tools with the
utmost ease and simplicity. He will also forge chains, wheels, joints,
and levers, work in iron or steel, in “=T=” stuff, or angle iron; every
conceivable shape and form of work is subject to his operation. If you
put him at the steam-hammer he is still at home; he will forge out an
ingot or bloom with the best man on the ground.
All the lightest work falls upon the young apprentices and the very old
men, who are too feeble to undertake heavy and trying tasks, but are yet
far too valuable to be dispensed with altogether. The apprentices
perform such work as simple setting and bending, the making of bolts and
eyes, rings and links for chains and so on. They usually come to the
work at the age of sixteen, and stay for five or six years, when they
voluntarily hand in their notices and migrate to other towns. There they
are received as improvers, or as journeymen, and are forthwith paid the
trade rate of wages. This varies considerably in many localities, and it
is to be noted that railway sheds almost always provide the very lowest
wages. Since the work is constant and sure, however, and is not subject
to the many fluctuations of the contract shop, the stability of
employment is counted a certain compensation for lower wages, and the
majority of smiths accept the conditions philosophically.
The young apprentices are strong and sturdy, and invariably of a sound
constitution; one never sees a sickly-looking youth taking up the
occupation of smithing. This accounts for the fine physique and often
big proportions of the senior smith; the reason being that the youths
chosen were hardy and suitable, and showed signs of physical
development. The sons of smiths usually choose the trade of their
fathers and follow in their footsteps. There is consequently often a
hereditary quality in the workman; they have been a family of smiths for
generations.
The smiths, provided they are strong and healthy, are usually retained
at the forge till they have reached the age of seventy when, under the
present rule, they are required to leave. Even this is a kind of
concession to them, for, generally speaking, the other workmen are
turned off long before they reach such an advanced age. The smith’s
usefulness, even in his age, is the cause of this; though feeble, he is
still able to do good work and to help with his knowledge and
experience. He is usually employed at tool-making, or at other light
occupations. His poor old hand, almost as hard as iron, shakes with the
weight of the hammer; his head trembles visibly, and his legs totter
beneath him. He comes in early in the morning, in order to avoid the
crush. He brings his meals with him and eats them in the forge, and he
is the last going out at night. In his decline he is forced to live near
the works--only a street or so from the entrance--and even then it takes
him a long time to hobble to and fro. In the evening and at week-ends he
usually stays at home to rest, or he may possibly look in to see a
friend, or to take a mug of ale at the neighbouring inn.
It is a sad day for him when he receives intelligence of his discharge.
Feeble as he is become, he has a real affection for the smithy, and is
never so happy as when he is at his forge and anvil. As long as he can
drag himself backwards and forwards, see the old faces, and snuff the
breath of the fires, he is content. His health, too, which has been
maintained by the constant exercise of his trade, is passable while he
can do a little work. When he is forced to lie idle, and to forego his
regular habit of early rising and the exertion of his muscles with the
hammer, that suffers as a matter of course. His joints forthwith become
stiff and set; his little store of strength, instead of increasing with
the change, wastes and declines. In a very short while he is dead, and
his old bones are haled away to the cemetery on top of the hill. A
number of his mates and fellow-smiths follow him to the grave and
witness the last rites, not for the sake of formality, but out of pure
friendship and respect. His name is certain to live long in the annals
of the smithy.
The oldest hand in the forge at the present time is aged sixty-eight,
though there were recently several above this age who have now been
placed on the retired list or superannuated by their societies. He has
led a hard life, and affords a very good example of the average type of
smith. He was apprenticed at Cheltenham and made a journeyman at
Gloucester. From that city he passed on to Worcester, and went thence to
Birmingham, working for about a year at each place. Afterwards he
migrated to Sheffield--the home of furnaces and forges--and shifted
thence in turn to Liverpool, Lancaster, Rotherham, Durham, and several
other manufacturing centres, settling finally in the railway town. He
has brought up a big family and seen them all established in life. Of
his sons several are smiths; one is in America, one in Africa, and one
at home in England. He has saved enough money to buy his house, and he
has a few pounds besides, so that he has no fear of being reduced to
want. He has worked hard and lived well, and he has always drunk his
glass of ale. He is associated with several bodies and committees, and
he has presented a bed to the local hospital out of his earnings, with
the natural condition that smiths have the first claim upon it. Though
his hand is a little unsteady with continual use of the tools, he can
still manage a fair day’s work. He is very proud of his trade and takes
great delight in telling you of his travels and adventures. Every summer
he passes the examination of old smiths made by the works’ manager to
see that they are fit for duty, and he still looks forward to years of
activity at the forge.
Nearly all the smiths live in the town and within easy reach of their
work. A few only of their number have had a rustic apprenticeship. The
great majority of those in the shed have learnt the rudiments of their
trade in factories, and have migrated from place to place. By living in
the midst of large towns and cities, they have become almost indifferent
to surroundings and are able to make themselves happy and comfortable in
the most crowded and uncongenial situations. For the beauties of
external nature they care but little; they appear to be wholly wrapt up
in and concerned with their own vocation. They nearly all belong to
unions and organisations, and are the most independent of men, though
they do not make a great parade of the fact. Their independence is born
of self-confidence--the knowledge of their own usefulness and worth, and
the strength of their position. If they should choose to leave one place
they are certain of getting employment elsewhere, for a good smith is
never out of work for long together. Other trades suffer considerably
through slackness of employment, but there is a constant demand for
smiths and hammermen. The fact is that fewer smiths and forgemen are
made, in proportion to their numbers, than is the case with some other
trades. The work is hard and laborious, and the life must be one of toil
and sacrifice.
Although some smiths drink an enormous quantity of cold water at the
forge there are others who seldom taste a drop of the liquid. If you ask
them the reason why, they will tell you that it is not a wise plan to
drink much cold water at work. They say that it causes cramp in the
stomach, colds, rash, and itching of the skin, and add that it makes
them sweat very much more than they would otherwise do. The more you
drink, they say, the more you want to drink, and it is but a habit
acquired. If you care to use yourself to it you may work in the greatest
heat and feel very few ill effects from it if you are abstemious in the
taking of liquids. At the same time, the majority of smiths do drink
water, and that copiously, and seem to thrive well upon it. Such as do
this, and are fat and well, when spoken to upon the matter, always smile
broadly and tell you it is the result of having a contented mind and of
drinking plenty of cold water.
It is certain that those who drink most perspire most, but that does not
appear to hurt them in the least, and you often hear it said by a
workman who is not addicted to perspiring freely that he feels very
“stuffy” and congested and that he should be better if he could sweat
more. A delightful feeling is experienced after a good sweating at work.
Every nerve and tissue seems to be aglow with intensest life; the blood
courses through the body and limbs freely and vigorously, and produces a
sense of unspeakable physical pleasure. Sweating as the result of
physical exercise has a powerful effect upon the mind, as well as upon
the body; it clears the vision and invigorates the brain, and is a
perfect medicine for many ailments, both mental and physical. If many of
the languid and indolent, who never do any work or indulge in sturdy
exercise, were suddenly to rouse themselves up and do sufficient
physical labour, either for themselves or for someone else, to procure a
good sweating at least twice a week, they would feel immeasurably better
for it. Life would have a new meaning for them. They would eat better,
rest better, and sleep better. They would feel fresher and stronger,
altogether more active and vigorous, more sympathetic and satisfied.
Though he is, as a rule, quite unaware of it, the workman derives
considerably more physical pleasure from life than do those persons,
mistakenly envied, who do nothing, for everything has a relish to him,
while to the others all is flat and insipid. Truly work is the salt of
life, and physical work at that, though there is a most passionate
desire in many quarters to be well rid of it.
The majority of the smiths, even though they do not drink much cold
water in the forge, are fond of a glass of ale; there are very few
teetotalers among them. No one would wish to imply by this that they are
“wettish customers.” The very nature of their work makes them thirsty,
and though they constrain their appetites while they are at the fires,
nevertheless when they come to the town they feel bound to go in
somewhere or other and “wet the whistle,” as they term it. After a hot
turn in the shed the foaming ale goes down with a delicious relish and
the smith feels that he is entitled to enjoy that pleasure, considering
how hard he has toiled all day in the heat and dust. There is also the
evening paper to be read, after which follows a chat with his mate, and
all the hard toil is for the moment forgotten. Rested and refreshed, the
man of the forge goes home to his wife and children and partakes of a
good tea, feeling very fit and on excellent terms with himself and
others.
It is rather remarkable that smiths do not smoke very much tobacco. In
the use of the weed they are very moderate, though the strikers and
mates easily make up for the deficiency. Every day, after having their
meals in the smithy, they walk out into the town or stand under the
bridge to “have a draw” and read the morning newspaper, returning
leisurely about ten minutes before it is time to start work again.
To his mates and strikers, while at the forge, the smith is rather quiet
and reserved, often speaking very little and seldom discussing with them
matters apart from the work. This is not out of any undue feeling of
pride in himself or unsociableness, but because he is full of his work,
and disinclined to talk much. Neither is he given to the discussing of
political and social problems and continually seeking an opportunity for
holding an argument with this or that one. It is characteristic of him
to view everything calmly and soberly; he is imbued with the genuine
philosophical temperament. It is a certain and invariable rule that the
one who has the most ready tongue and is always ripe for an argument is
not the most energetic and proficient at his employment. If such a one
as this should desire to entangle the sturdy smith in a cobweb of
discussion he is bluntly and unceremoniously told to “clear out,” for he
has no time to listen to such “stuff.” Off the premises, however, he is
friendly and indulgent to his mates and strikers. When he meets them in
the town he stops and speaks to them and invites them to have a glass of
ale at his expense.
The religious beliefs of the smiths are not as well-known as are those
of some classes of workmen, for they are not in the habit of discovering
themselves to outsiders. Though he who has his forge in the village,
under the old elm or spreading chestnut, may go regularly to church,
there is no evidence to prove that those who dwell in the town imitate
him in that respect. Their Sundays appear to be spent chiefly at home in
rest and quietness, in company with their wives and families. A few,
plainly and simply dressed--for the smith heartily hates all foppishness
and superficial ornament--may be seen in the evening walking out towards
the fields. The majority, however, stay indoors and recuperate for the
coming week’s work, or merely go to see their friends who live a few
streets away. But if they do not go to church or chapel they are far
from being deficient in charitableness and true piety. They merely aim
to live the best life they can and to do good wherever possible. Their
religion is one of kindness to all; they are at once large-hearted and
broad-minded, honest, just, and liberal. Their sympathy for their
fellows arises largely from the fact that they are well acquainted with
hard toil; they know what it is to work and sweat, to be hot and
thirsty, beaten and tired. Theirs is no gentlemanly occupation, such as
is that of some other journeymen; not merely the theoretical exercise of
a craft, but one that requires good, solid exertion, such as brings out
all that is best in a man.
A proof of their utter good-nature and kindness to their fellows may be
seen in the fact of their having, for the last twenty years, made a
voluntary weekly offering of a halfpenny per man to the local Cottage
Hospital. This is taken once a fortnight, the condition being that it
must be unsolicited and a straight gift. In twenty years the sum
collected has amounted to over two hundred pounds. This is quite
independent of the annual collections made for charities, in which the
smiths again always head the list by a large margin. There is no other
example at the works of such spontaneous good-nature, and this will
show, more than any words, the true characteristics of the brawny men at
the forges.
The smiths’ foreman is the very personification of his class, and is a
highly interesting study. He is of great stature--he is over six feet in
height--with broad, square shoulders and large limbs; fleshy, but not
corpulent. His forehead is wide and steep; he has bushy brows, iron grey
hair and beard, and red cheeks. His eyes are frank and honest; his
voice deep and gruff, but not unkind; and when he speaks to you he looks
you full in the face. His whole figure is striking; he towers above the
majority of his workmen. His weight, as he tells you himself, with a
mixture of pride and modesty and the suspicion of a smile, is nineteen
stone six. After this he hastens to inform you that he is not the
heaviest at his house, for his good wife turns the scale at twenty-two
stone. He has been once married and is the father of a large
family--nineteen in all--twelve of whom are yet living. His age is well
over sixty, and he will soon have to retire from the forge, though he is
still hale and hearty, fond of a glass of good beer, and, as he
frequently and forcibly tells you, he is “a great eater of beef.”
As for scholarship and culture, he makes no claim to either, for he
never had the opportunity of much education, though he is a famous
smith, and is gifted with the rare faculty of getting his men into a
good humour and keeping them there. He is on good terms with all his
staff; is jealous of their interests, open and honest in his dealings
with them, and he has the satisfaction of being respected in return. He
is one of the old school, of a type that is nearly extinct now; a bold
defender of the rights of smiths, a hard and fast believer in the
hand-made article. Naturally, for him, he is suspicious of all modern
machinery that tends to do away with the trade of the smithy, and he
swears by the most unbreakable oaths that whatever is done by the newer
systems of forging and stamping he is able to equal it on the anvil,
both as regards strength and cheapness. When the managers recently
attempted to bring about sweeping reductions in the prices throughout
the smithy he opposed them at every point, swore that he was master in
his own shed, and that no one but he should be allowed to fix prices.
“When I am gone you can do just whatever you like, but I’m going to
have a say in things as long as I’m about here,” said he. On the
managers insisting to cut the prices, he unceremoniously took off his
coat, and, turning up his shirt-sleeves, presented the representative
with a pair of tongs and a hammer and challenged him to have a trial at
the game himself. “Here’s my fire, guvnor, and there’s yourn. Come on
with you and let’s see what you can do, and if you can make it at your
price I’ll give in to you, but you’ll never do it in the world.” Only
one or two prices fell in the whole shed. The managers abstained from
further interference and since that time the smiths have been but very
little molested.
No one could walk through the forge and observe the splendid physique
and bearing of the smiths, their skill and dexterity with the tools at
the fires and anvil, without a feeling of pride and genuine admiration
for them. They are a fine body of men, and their frankness and
good-nature, their freedom from ostentation, and general
straightforwardness impress one even more than do their physical
qualities, and help to fix them more deeply and truly in his regard and
esteem. They are not little and petty; they are not spiteful and
malicious. They are not jealous of each other’s skill and position; they
are no tale-bearers. They seldom quarrel about politics or religion, or
hold any other controversy in the shed or out of it. Their attitude to
each other is fair and unquestionable; they are natural and spontaneous,
very free and generous. If proof is needed of this you have but to come
into the smithy and see for yourselves. You will find it written in
their faces in unmistakable characters. You will discover it in a
greater degree if you converse with them. You will be completely
satisfied as to their genuineness and quite convinced of the justice of
these observations.
CHAPTER VII
FITTERS--THE STEAM-HAMMER SHOP--FORGEMEN--THEIR
CHARACTERISTICS--BOILERMAKERS--THE FOUNDRY--THE BLAST
FURNACE--MOULDERS
There are two large fitting sheds at the works--for engine- and
carriage-fitting. They differ in several respects but are on the whole
consimilar, both in the nature of the work done and in the composition
and individuality of the staffs employed. The duties of the fitters are
very well indicated by their denominative: they prepare and fit together
all the machinery parts for the locomotives and carriages as well as the
steam-brake details and other apparatus of a complicated nature. The
sheds also serve as centres for supplying the other shops with their
small staffs of fitters who superintend repairs to the local machinery,
attend to the steam-hammers, fix new shafting, and so on.
The fitting sheds are large buildings and are packed with machinery of
every conceivable shape and kind. Within them are lathes large and
small, machines for slotting, shaping and drilling, drills for boring
round and square holes, punches and shears, hydraulic tackle, and
various other curious appliances almost incapable of description. There
are hundreds of yards of steel shafting, pulleys and wheels innumerable,
and miles of beltage. The space between the roof and the floor seems to
be entirely occupied with swiftly-revolving wheels and belts. To view
the interior is like peering into a dense forest where all is tangled
and confused and everything is in a state of perpetual motion. At the
same time there is a minimum of noise. Here are no steam-hammers beating
on the stubborn masses of iron and steel and making the foundations of
the earth tremble beneath you, no riveters’ hammers battering on the
hollow plates of the frames and boilers, and no pneumatic tools ringing
out sharply and driving one to distraction with the unspeakable din. The
wheels revolve almost without sound; the shafting turns and spins
silently. The lathes are nearly noiseless in operation, and the drills
only creak a little now and then as a small portion of the detached
metal becomes blocked underneath the tool and runs round with it. The
greatest noise is made by those who are busily chipping at the benches;
otherwise there is comparative quiet when we remember the tremendous din
of the neighbouring workshops.
As there are no furnaces or forges in the fitting shed, and abundant
ventilation, the air is cool and free from smoke and fume. The work is
less laborious than is that of the smithy or frame shed, and the men are
not required to perspire much. Both the fitters and the machinemen wear
cloth suits, with a thin blue jacket or “slop” and overalls, and you
rarely see them stripped or with their shirt-sleeves turned up. This is
so much the rule that if they should be seen to take off their coats at
a job in either of the outlying sheds the circumstance will be noted as
of unusual occurrence by the rank and file. They will immediately raise
a good-natured laugh and jokingly tell them to “put their jackets on if
they don’t want to catch a cold.” One local fitter, by reason of his
great fondness for carrying a drawing with him wherever he goes and the
readiness and ease with which he has resort to it in order to explain
away the most trivial detail, has earned for himself the title of “The
Drawing King.” A second, as the result of his artificial activity with
the callipers, is styled “Calliper King,” while a third, by his
volubility, has secured the expressive nickname of “Fish-mouth.”
An amusing and true story is told of a chargeman of the fitting shed. He
was lying seriously ill and believed himself to be at the point of
death. While in that condition he was conscience-stricken at the thought
that he had had one or two very good prices for work in the shed. He
accordingly sent for his foreman to come and visit him. When he arrived
the sick man unburdened his soul and begged him to cut the prices
forthwith; he said he “could not die with it on his mind.” In due time
the prices were cut. The old fellow’s period had not yet come, however.
He got better and had the satisfaction of returning to the shed and
working at the reduced rates, the laughing-stock of his companions.
The fitters are usually looked upon as the men _par excellence_ of the
shed. Like the smiths, they have usually travelled far. Some have
visited every part of the kingdom, while others may have served
abroad--in America, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, or Egypt. A few
have been artificers in the Navy or in the Mercantile Marine; here is
one, for instance, who, by reason of his nautical experiences, has
gained the nickname of “Deep Sea Joe.” It will commonly be found that
those who have gone furthest from home are not only the best workmen--as
having had a more varied and extensive experience--but they are also
more broad-minded and sympathetic towards their mates and labourers.
The majority of the fitters are members of Trades Unions, and of all
other classes at the works, perhaps, they take the greatest pains to
protect themselves and their interests. By contributing to the funds
of their organisations they are insured against accidents, strikes,
or dismissal, and are thus placed in a position of considerable
independence. They are required to serve an apprenticeship of five or
seven years’ duration before they are recognised as journeymen and they
are, by a common rule, compelled to go further afield in order to obtain
the standard rate of wages. Nearly all the foremen of the different
sheds are appointed from among the fitters; whatever qualities an
outsider may discover he stands but little chance of being preferred for
the post.
Before a fitter has been promoted to the position of foreman he is a
bold champion of the rights of Labour, one loud in the expression of his
sympathy with his fellowmen, a staunch believer in the liberty of the
individual and a hearty condemner of the factory system. If he has been
appointed overseer, however, there is a considerable change in his
manner and attitude towards all these and kindred subjects. A great
modification of his personal views and opinions soon follows; he begins
to look at things from the official standpoint. He is now fond of
telling you that “things are not as they used to be.” Possibly they are
not, as far as he himself is concerned, but there is another view of the
situation. At the same time, he will be fairly loyal to his old mates,
the journeyman fitters, and treat them with superior respect. To the
labourers, however, he will not be so well-disposed. He will ignore
their interests and rule them with a rod of iron.
I have said that steam-hammer forging is on the decline in the railway
town. The chief cause of this is the recent development of the process
of manufacturing malleable cast steel, which has largely taken the place
of wrought iron forging both in the locomotive and elsewhere. Formerly
all wheels were forged in sections and were afterwards welded up, and
the work provided constant employment for the steam-hammer men. Now they
are obtained elsewhere, more cheaply, it may be, though they are of an
inferior quality. Engine-cranks also, which at one time were made
exclusively on the premises, are nearly all bought away from the town,
and this was a second great loss to the shed. All that remains is the
manufacture of the less important details, such as connection rods and
levers, with a few special or repair cranks now and then.
The steam-hammer shed has thus been deprived of much of its importance.
The big machines, capable of striking a blow equivalent to a hundred or
two hundred tons’ pressure, have been removed and put on the scrap-heap,
and their places have been filled by other and less powerful plant. The
old forgemen, too, with their mates who worked the furnaces, are
missing. Of these, some are dead, some have been discharged, while
others have been reduced and are scattered about the yard. He who
formerly shouted out his orders at the steam-hammer and controlled the
mighty mass of iron or steel with the porter, turning it round and round
to receive the tremendous blow, is now hobbling about with a shovel and
wheel-barrow, cleaning up the refuse of the yard, in receipt of a
miserable pittance. Perhaps he is lame as the result of a blow, or he
has a withered arm through its having been “jumped up” with the driving
back of the porter, or he may have lost an eye. A portion of steel has
fled from the hammer rod, or from the “ram,” and struck him in the eye
and he is blind as a consequence.
Several years ago there was at the factory a splendid forger, a cool and
highly-skilful workman, and one possessed of fine physique. He was tall,
square and broad built, full of bone and muscle, solid and strong, and,
though of seventeen or eighteen stone in weight, he was very nimble and
of unerring judgment. One day he received the offer of a job in the
Midlands, at nearly double the wages he was getting in the railway town,
and he decided to accept the post. Accordingly he left the shed and took
over his new duties. He had not been away long, however, before he met
with a serious accident that quite incapacitated him from following his
occupation as a forgeman. A careless or unskilful hammer-driver had
struck a terrific blow out of time, and the porter-bar, driven out
suddenly, forced the forger’s hand and arm violently to the shoulder,
completely crippling him. A ruined man, he came back to the town and
gained a wretched livelihood by helping to serve the bricklayers and
masons with his one arm.
The steam-hammer forger is one of the most skilful and useful, as well
as the most interesting of men. He may possibly have learned his trade
in the town, or he may hail from Sheffield, Middlesborough, Scotland or
Wales. All these places are noted for extensive manufactures in iron and
steel and for the efficiency of their workmen, and especially of their
forgers and furnacemen. If any forger in the shed is reputed to have
come from the Midlands, the North, or the iron region of Wales, he is
sure to be considered something of a prodigy. He comes bearing with him
a part of the laurels of his township and all eyes will be upon him to
see how he acquits himself of the responsibility. Very often, however,
he quite fails to fulfil the expectations entertained of him and is
easily beaten by the local men. After all, it was but the name; he is no
better than many who have learned their trade in the shed. Perhaps he is
not even as efficient as they, though he did come from “Ironopolis” and
forged very many tons of steel ingots in an incredibly short space of
time, though this happened “years ago,” if you chance to press him at
all concerning the matter.
The forger is not always a man of big physical proportions. On the
contrary, he is more usually of a medium, or even of a diminutive type;
you seldom or never find one as stout and heavy as is the average smith.
The nature of the toil forbids this. The smith, at his work,
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