tin, zinc, lead, and nickel, either in their simple states or mixed and combined so as to form brass, bell-metal, bronze, pewter, and white metal, give rise to an extraordinary diversity of manufactures, in which Birmingham takes the lead of all other towns, beyond the reach of comparison. Look at any correct list of the divisions of Birmingham manufactures, (if such a list can possibly be prepared,) and see how this matter presents itself. Beer-engines, belle, Britannia-metal goods, British plate or nickel-silver, bronze goods, buttons, candlesticks, chandeliers, clock - dials, clock - hands, clock-movements, coach-beading, coach brass-work, coach-plating, coach-ornaments, coffin-furniture, brass cocks and valves, corkscrews, cornice-poles and curtainrings, brass fire-furniture, gas-fittings, guns and muskets, inkstands, letter-weights, lamps, medals and dies, military ornaments, pewter vessels, pins, plated ware, brass rings and rods and tubes, harness-ornaments, copper vessels, scales and weights, stamped brass-work, tin-plate ware,-here is a list which would put any one out of breath to read; and all of these articles are made wholly, or mainly, of one or other of the metals lately named. Each one, too, is the object of a separate and distinct branch of Birmingham manufacture; and not only so, but many of them are further subdi vided. The factor or dealer may receive the finished article from a manufacturer, who has received it in half-a-dozen different parts from half-a-dozen smaller manufacturers; and each of these, again, employs many men, each of whom can do only one part of the work. The making of muskets and fowling-pieces strikingly illustrates this subdivision of Birmingham industry. Gun-making is one of the best and most extensive of her trades; but we should form a most erroneous estimate of the matter if we interpreted a gun-manufacturer to mean one who makes guns complete within the walls of one establishment. There are gun-barrel makers, gun-case makers, gun-engravers, gun-filers, gun-finishers, gun-furniture makers, gun-percussioners, gun-polishers, gun-screwers, gun-lock makers, gunstockers. Even these are subdivided among themselves; for among the gun-barrel makers are borers, browners, filers, grinders, ribbers, smoothers, and welders; and the gun-locks are distributed among makers, forgers, and filers. In some of the numerous branches here indicated, the work is done by manufacturers who have tolerably large workshops, and employ a good many hands, and who send in their finished portion of the work to the gun-manufacturer or firsthand employer; while, in other cases, the occupation is more that of a journeyman than of a master. The consequence of this system is, that the parts of a gun are travelling about Birmingham most actively the fragments are running after each other, and do not ! come finally together till they are about to reach the warehouse of the manufacturer. Smith, Brown, Jones, Robinson, Higgins, Tomkins, Jenkins, -all are at work, in their respective workshops, and, perhaps, all in different streets, on different parts of the same gun, at the same time; and a good deal of testing is required from time to time, to see that the adjustment of the different parts is correct. The whole internal economy of the gun-making trade of Birmingham, indeed, is very interesting. During the French war, infantry-muskets were made at Birmingham at the rate of a musket a minute; and the organised system is still maintained, whereby a large order of muskets can be executed in a very short space of time. Many of the processes themselves are highly curious. The common barrels are formed by hammering a heated strip of plate-iron round a mandril, or core, until it assumes a tubular shape; while the best barrels are made by twisting a narrow strip of iron round and round, in corkscrew fashion, and then heating and hammering so as to close the fissures between the successive thread of the spiral. The boring and smoothing of these barrels are subsequent and very carefully conducted operations; for the right discharge of the bullet requires that the axis of the tube shall be in a mathematically straight line, and the sides of the tube perfectly smooth. While the barrel is being made, the 'stock' or woodwork, is progressing in other quarters. This is usually of walnut-wood, and is shaped by saws, planes, chisels, spoke-shaves, and other tools. The Wolverhampton and Willenhall and Walsall men, too, are making the locks in the meantime; for, though Birmingham could make gun-locks as well as other things, yet it seems that all parties agree to locate this trade out of the town-another proof of combination in subdivision: subdivision in the processes themselves, and combination in respect to the workmen in each branch grouping themselves pretty much in one spot. These country-made gun-locks are always cheaper than the Birmingham men could make them for themselves. The barrels sent in from the several manufactories are loaded with four or five times as much powder as they will be required to carry in actual practice. They are then ranged side by side on a low stage in a long building, in such a way that all the touch-holes shall rest upon a long train of gunpowder. All the men then leave the place, doors are closed, a light is applied to the extreme end of the train, a hundred barrels are fired at once, and the bullets bury themselves in a large heap of sand provided for that purpose. The smoke is allowed a few moments to dissipate itself, the doors are opened, and the barrels are taken up one by one. A small per-centage of them-we believe from one to two per cent.-yield to this severe test: they burst. The workman who has forged the barrel undertakes that it shall bear the test applied to it; if it does not do so, he repairs or remakes the barrel without extra charge to his employer. The Government proof-house is a more comprehensive and interesting establishment. It is situated near the Walsall-road, at the northern part of the town. This is a proof-house in the fullest sense of the term, for everything is put to a severe test. Workmen and errand-boys, messengers and carriers, are continually coming to and fro, bringing the several parts of muskets which have been made by different manufacturers, in order that they may be proved by persons belonging to the establishment. Each musket barrel is here proved separately. It is loaded, and put into an oak chest of immense strength, the lid of which is then held down by ponderous iron fastenings: by an ingenious piece of mechanism the barrel is fired :-bullet, smoke, flame,-all are confined within the chest, which is shortly afterwards removed. When the strength of the barrel is thus tested, it is gauged and measured in its diameter, and in the straightness of its bore; and all the little nicks and juts and prominences which are to aid in fastening it to the stock are separately examined. The woodwork is struck and beat and examined, to see that there is no flaw. The locks are taken piecemeal, and screws and springs minutely Who has ever visited Birmingham by railway with- examined. The bayonets are struck and bent in out having his ears saluted with a bang and a boom various ways, to prove their temper; and the sockets from some spot near the station? This 'bang, bang,' which are to receive them in the gun are examined and comes from the gun-barrel proof-house, which is within gauged. In short, every bit of metal and wood in the a few dozen yards of the passenger station. In order musket undergoes a separate and severe scrutiny; and that the Government might be able to depend on the if anything fails in the proof, the makers are the losers; quality of the infantry muskets supplied from Birming- for the terms of contract are, that all the articles made ham, and that the reputation of Birmingham manufac- shall bear the test applied to them. Most of these turers might be maintained at an honourable point, an provers in the Government establishment receive high arrangement was made during the war, which em- wages; great experience, steadiness, and tact are called powered the Birmingham gun-makers to establish a for in the exercise of their vocation, and are paid for barrel-proving-house, under the management of a accordingly. It is however, a sad exemplification of warden and other officers, selected from among them- the stupid folly of 'strikes,' in mechanical employselves. Every manufacturer is bound, under ments, that one class of operatives, engaged in fitting heavy penalty, to send all the barrels he may make to together all the minute portions of a gun, thought this establishment, for trial and proof; and the few proper to strike' for higher wages a few years ago, pence which he pays for the proving of each barrel although they were then in receipt of £4 or £5 per ! defray the expenses of the establishment. week wages. The Government would not submit to proof-house is a large, dirty, rambling sort of building. this demand; and an ingenious arrangement of a This gun machinery was invented, not for the purpose of dispensing with manual labour, but to enable a workman of moderate skill to make the requisite adjustments: this renders the employers independent of any small clique of high-skilled workmen; and the ' percussioners' as they are called, have since had cause to regret their short-sightedness. If guns are one of the notable features of Birmingham, Buttons are another. Ever since buttons were buttons, Birmingham has been their head-quarters. Birmingham, doubtless, would undertake to button up all the world, if the world wished to be buttoned. You must not say you "don't care a button" to a Birmingham man; for to him a button is a thing of rank and importance it is not to be laughed at or treated with disrespect. Buttons give employment, and homes, and sustenance to many thousands of persons in this town; and every change of fashion in these tiny products involves large commercial consequences to Birmingham. The demands for protection' in buttons have been more numerous than most persons are aware of. In the early part of the last century, coat-buttons usually consisted of a central mould or disc, made of wood or bone, round which threads of gold, silver, or silk, were wound by women and girls, who sat about a table at this employment. But at last, the fashion arose of covering the mould with the same kind of cloth as was employed in the dress. Hence arose a huge outcry; and a petition was presented to Parliament, which, like all similar petitions in all ages, shows how utterly useless is the attempt to legislate on such matters. The Petition held forth thus:"It appears by long experience that needle-wrought buttons have been a manufacture of considerable importance to the welfare of this kingdom, insomuch that, whenever such buttons have been disused, the wisdom of the nation hath always interposed, as may be seen by the several Acts passed in the reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and of His Majesty in this present Parliament. Yet, notwithstanding the said Acts, the tailors continue to make buttons and button-holes of the same materials the clothes are made of; and the said Acts cannot be put in execution, because of the great difficulties that attend the detecting and prosecuting the offenders."—Of course, the said Acts could not be put in execution. If those incorrigible tailors had been the very models of meekness and kindness, they could not have done it: they were relatively powerless: they had to bend to a greater power-fashion-which runs its circle in spite of all such laws. Buttons were more showy affairs in Hutton's time, half a century ago, than they are now. He says:"Though the original date is rather uncertain, yet we well remember the long coats of our grandfathers covered with half a gross of high-tops, and the cloaks of our grandmothers ornamented with a horn button, nearly the size of a crown piece, a watch, or Johnapple, curiously wrought, as having passed through the Birmingham press. Though the common round button | keeps in with the pace of the day, yet we sometimes see the oval, the square, the pea, and the pyramid, flash into existence. In some branches of traffic the wearer calls loudly for new fashions; but in this the fashions tread upon each other and crowd upon the wearer." Our buttons are less capricious in shape than were those of Hutton's time; but we have new kinds of which he knew nothing. For The button manufactories of Birmingham are among the largest and most interesting in the town. They are really comprehensive and well-conducted establishments in which supervision and subdivision play their parts effectively. Gilt buttons, silvered buttons, plated buttons, silk buttons, Florentine buttons, shell buttons, horn buttons, bone buttons, wood buttons— all are made in these large establishments; and the processes relating to them are very numerous. instance, there are, for the common gilt button, the stamping out of the sheet-copper 'blank,' the trimming of the edge, the cutting of a bit of wire for the 'shank,' the bending of this shank to its proper shape, the adjustment and soldering of the shank to the blank, the steeping of the button in a mercurial solution, the gilding by means of gold-amalgam, the fixing of the gold by a heated iron, the cleansing of the button, the burnishing with a piece of blood-stone, and the papering and wrapping up. If, instead of being flat and plain on both sides, the button is curved on the outside, or if it be globular like some of the buttons for boys' dresses, or if it has a raised device like livery or uniform buttons, there are many additional processes besides those here enumerated; and if the button is to exhibit a silvery whiteness instead of a golden yellow, both the original metal and the final chemical processes are different. For a Florentine or silk coat-button, two bits of thin sheet-iron, a bit of pasteboard, a bit of thick canvas, and a bit of the Florentine or silk, are cut out, by stamping each circular disc; and by a most beautiful machine, all these are adjusted and fixed together by two movements of a press-without the aid of glue, cement, riveting, sewing, twisting, screwing, or any other fastening. For buttons of shell, wood, or bone, the chief operations are, the mechanical ones of turning, stamping, and drilling; while, for those of horn, the main process is pressure in a die or mould, while the horn is in a softened state of heat. As a proof of the commercial largeness of this apparently trivial trade, it has been stated that a new kind of button has been known to cost the manufacturer several thousand pounds, and many months of thought and labour, before it was introduced into the market! If any one would witness the nimbleness of female fingers, let him ask permission to enter one of the Birmingham button-factories. Many females are there employed, and the celerity with which they cut out the small circular pieces of metal and other material by means of a cutting-press, is almost inconceivable. Some of the circular convex discs of copper are stamped out at the rate of thirty in a minute; each stamping | tweezers, brooches, finger-rings, (25,000 gold weddinginvolving three distinct operations-the placing of the strip of metal, the movement of the stamping-press, and the removal of the little disc from the cell or die where it lies! A very wide range is taken of articles made by somewhat similar means to buttons. Stamping-works are numerous at Birmingham; and at these works an exhaustless variety of articles is produced from sheet metal, applicable to various purposes of use and ornament. The supply of dies and stamps is a remarkable feature at such establishments. It is said that some of the Birmingham stamping-works possess as many as a quarter of a million separate dies, all of which are liable to be thrown into disuse by the changes of fashion! Buttons, and guns, and stamped goods, are among those examples of the use of mixed metals at Birmingham, which we alluded to in a former page. But they are not the only examples: brass tubing, curtain rods, bedsteads, telescope tubing, candlesticks and chandeliers, bronze gates, railings, vases, tripods, statuettes, ornaments, Britannia-metal-or would-be silver-articles of use and ornament; these, and a hundred others, help to swell the list of industrial products of this remarkable town. Pins, too, though small in size, are large in manufacturing importance. They are made in large establishments; and the cutting, the pointing, the head-cutting, the whitening, and the papering, give employment to a large number of hands, of which the chief are boys and girls. THE GOLD AND SILVER TRADES. But even yet we have not done with Birmingham metals: we must go to gold and silver, of which a large quantity is used in the town. If we enter the shop of a London silversmith and jeweller, and look around at the tempting bits of glitter that meet the eye, we should be pretty safe in saying that much of the store came from Birmingham. Cheap articles in gold and silver can in no other town in England be made so cheaply as in Birmingham. She has all the machinery wanted, all the manual skill wanted, all the trading organization wanted, for such work. Her principal manufacturers are in a position to show that if costly and highly-artistic productions be required, she can produce them; but the prominent and staple produce is that which meets the requirements of a low-priced market. No one knows better than a Birmingham man, how to make a grain of gold cover a large surface; and it is by carrying this principle to an outrageous extent, that some of the smaller and more obscure manufacturers have given a 'Brummagem' character to Birmingham goods, not without injury to others engaged in the trade. The gold and silver manufactures of Birmingham exhibit the workshop system of that town more, perhaps, than the manufactures in other metals. There are very few or no large factories for these goods. The pencilcases, pen-holders, thimbles, bodkins, toothpicks, rings have been marked in the Assay-office of Birmingham in one year!) ear-rings, chains, bracelets, armlets, buckles, clasps, and countless other articles in gold and silver, are mostly made in small workshops, or in the attic or back shop of a workman. There are in Birming ham many manufacturers, factors, or warehouse keepers, who supply these goods to the shopkeepers and dealers, but who do not keep premises in which the goods are actually made. Such an employer supplies himself with gold and silver of the requisite thicknesses and standard, and gives out this material either to a workman, or to an intermediate manufacturer, who keeps a small number of men and apprentices under him; and the material so given out is manufactured to a definite size and form, which is returned to the factor, who pays for the labour so bestowed. So subdivided is the employment, that one article of gold and silver is made, perhaps, by a dozen different persons, in as many places; each workman or small master undertaking to make only one fragmentary portion of the complete article. In some cases these fragments are put together on the factor's own premises; while in other instances, a distinct class of middlemen or operatives undertake this sort of putting together. The articles themselves are made by varied applications of the processes of tubedrawing, wire-drawing, rolling, stamping, pressing, turning, filing, punching, chasing, engraving, riveting, soldering, &c., according to the size and nature of the thing to be made; and the little bits of gold and silver are mostly fashioned at small workbenches in small workshops. Hence arises one peculiarity of Birmingham trade. Few towns equal it in the number of small workshops scattered throughout its streets and lanes; or in the number of its small masters. As Birmingham has found out the art of spreading out a bit of gold to a large superficies, so has she brought to a high state of efficiency that most extraordinary art, by which electricity instantaneously developes a film of gold or silver over a prepared surface. This is not the place to talk about the wonders of the galvanic battery. We must ask the reader to believe the following points: That when a solid substance, properly prepared for the purpose, is immersed in a liquid solution, containing a chemical combination of gold or silver, if the mysterious influence from a galvanic-battery be brought to bear on the solution, the metal separates from it, and becomes spread in a thin film on the prepared body; that the thin film may be rendered permanent and durable; that it may be burnished and otherwise wrought up to a high state of beauty; and that it may then be used as a substitute for real gold and silver plate. All this has been developed at Birmingham within the last few years, partly founded on galvanic discoveries made elsewhere. One of the largest and finest establishments in Birmingham, is devoted to this kind of electroplating, or electro-metallurgy; and there are several of smaller rank. The kind of work for which the electroplate is mostly used as a substitute, is silver-plated, or gold-plated, or silver-gilt goods. The real and costly | gilding, varnishing, and polishing, are carried to an gold and silver goods, of the highest class, which are as pure within as they are without, are either cast in moulds, or stamped and pressed from sheet metal, or both, and are afterwards wrought up to the highest pitch of finish and beauty by hand. The plated goods are made by rolling a sheet of copper and a sheet of silver together with such force as permanently to unite them, and by working up this two-fold sheet into any required form the silver, which is very much thinner than the copper, being used as the outer or visible surface. Silver-gilt goods are made either of solid silver, or of silver plated on copper, and then coated externally by what is termed the "water-gilding" process, with a thin film of gold. But in the electro process, no solid gold, silver, or plated copper are used. A model, or foundation, varied in its character and material according to the purpose in view, is prepared by the designer, the modeller, the moulder, and the chaser; and this being immersed in a vessel containing a chemical solution of gold or silver, a few minutes' application of a galvanic-battery suffices to separate the gold or silver from the solution, and to deposit it in an exquisitely fine and complete layer on the model. This is one of the most surprising and beautiful of all manufacturing processes. It is one which vividly illustrates the debt that art owes to science. Whether rank and fortune will consent to use this substitute for plate instead of plate itself -whether some manufacturers will be tempted to make the thin film of precious metal too thin, and thereby damage the good name of this magically-coated material-are points beside our present object. Enough to state what can be done, what has been doing, and what is now doing, in the development of this beautiful department of industry. As one consequence of the spread of this art will be to add to the number and variety of richly adorned articles in the houses of the middle and upper classes, it will lend an impetus to the arts of design; since no brilliancy in the appearance of the material will ensure for it permanent favour unless it be wedded to that grace and elegance which it is the office of the designer to infuse into it. Birmingham has contrived to make paper do duty as a material for some most attractive and delicate productions. Papier maché—the name and the material both derived from the French-is a pulpy mass prepared by shredding and softening pieces of paper; and this pulp can be pressed into moulds, and afterwards dried into an uncommonly light, tough, and durable material for ornaments. Another mode of using paper is to paste numerous sheets together so as to form a pasteboard or cartoon, and to use this pasteboard as a material. Tea-trays and other flat articles are made of this pasteboard material; while more diversified and ornamental forms are better produced on the other method. There is an establishment in Birmingham in which this art is brought to a high pitch of excellence; for after the actual form is given to the material, the processes of japaning, painting, elaborate extent: insomuch that it becomes difficult to believe that so humble a material as paper lies beneath so much beauty. It is possible that this sheet may reach the hands of some who saw the gorgeous sofa at a recent exhibition of specimens of manufacture at the Society of Arts in London: this sofa will suffice to show what Birmingham can do to impart solidity and splendour to-mere paper. SOCIAL FEATURES. Let not the reader suppose that we are about to drag him into all the workshops of Birmingham. He will perhaps think that there has been enough of it already ; but to attempt to give anything like a general idea of this busy town, without dwelling a little on the organization and subdivision of its manufactures, would be nearly as bad as enacting 'Hamlet' with the chief character omitted. Further down, deeper and deeper still, goes the subdivision of employments, not only in metallurgic manufactures, but in others in which other materials are employed. When the British Association held its meeting at Birmingham, in 1839, a valuable paper relating to that town was read before the Statistical Section, by Mr. Francis Clark, who from his two-fold position as a manufacturer and a magistrate, has peculiar facilities for obtaining trustworthy information. In this paper he gives an analysis of 791 persons who formed the members of a Provident Institution; and he found that these members belonged to no less than 110 different branches of trade-an amount of subdivision of labour truly remarkable. was also able, by examining the condition of a large number of these persons, to form an average which he thinks approaches very near to a correct average of the earnings of the whole of the Birmingham operatives, at different ages. These rates he gives thus: from seven to thirteen years of age, boys, 3s. 1d. per week-girls, 2s. 4d.; from fourteen to twenty years, males, 5s. 9d. He females, 5s. 2d.; and above the age of twenty years, males, 24s. 3d.-females, 8s. per week. If such an estimate be applicable to an average of years, and if the men of Birmingham do really earn and receive 24s. per week as an average of all the manufacturing trades, we will venture to express a doubt whether there is another large manufacturing town in the kingdom to equal it; at any rate, it has but few equals. How must the poor framework-knitters of Nottingham and Leicester envy these Birmingham men! According to this estimate, a Birmingham metal-worker could buy out three or four cotton-stocking men of Nottingham, or worsted-stocking men of Leicester. It is one consequence of the mode of conducting Birmingham manufactures, that the wretched cellardwellings of many of our large towns are not there met with. There are but few extreme poor, driven down to the verge of starvation. Times may be hard, and trade may be slack, but still the weekly wages distributed are always large and more equable than in |