Kitabı oku: «Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 685», sayfa 5

WATCHMAKING BY MACHINERY

Geneva, as is pretty well known, has long been a busy centre of the Swiss watchmaking trade, the work executed being minute, elegant, and trustworthy. The trade in watchmaking, however, is also a staple in the cantons of Neuchatel and Berne. Tourists in Switzerland have often occasion to pass through secluded valleys, the inhabitants of which, a peaceful and industrious race, are almost all devoted to watchmaking. It is a craft pursued in cottages, as a kind of domestic manufacture; and proficiency in fabricating the delicate mechanism has come down from father to son for several generations. We are reminded of the old-fashioned hand-loom system of weaving, which used to prevail in English and Scotch villages in times passed away. Just as that old system of weaving vanished in the introduction of the power-loom moved by machinery, so is watchmaking by hand about to pass away in Switzerland, and some other quarters. Watchmaking by machinery on a large and comprehensive scale has been brought to a wonderful degree of perfection in various parts of the United States. Immense quantities of American watches of a useful kind will soon, as is anticipated, greatly damage the system of making by hand.

It would be idle to waste time in complaining of change of fashion in any kind of manufacture. Skill, capital, and machinery are sure to carry the day. In the progress of affairs the old must give place to the new. In such cases the best plan is not to maintain a useless struggle, but at once to go over to the enemy – try to rival him on his own ground. Still one does not like to see an old and respectable trade ruined. It is stated that at least forty thousand men and women have hitherto been engaged within a limited district in Switzerland upon the watch-trade, all of whom must now alter their course of operations, quitting their rural resorts, and emigrating, or possibly becoming workers in factories. We are sorry for the crisis, but in economics such is the rule of the game.

A Swiss correspondent in the Times (January 5) presents some interesting particulars concerning the watch-trade, as it has till now been carried on. The division of labour has been immense in completing a single watch. He says: 'A repeating watch goes through the hands of no less than a hundred and thirty different workmen before being delivered to commerce. With such a division of labour, long apprenticeship was rendered almost superfluous; so that any man, without being acquainted at all with the watch industry before, might be able to learn a branch of it in the course of a few weeks. This last circumstance, together with the relatively high wages offered, induced during the time of prosperity of the trade a good many agricultural labourers to leave their former occupation and dedicate themselves to the watch industry. A superabundance of hands soon ensued, accompanied by a falling of wages, and besides, the quality of the products manufactured became yearly worse and worse. Only some few tradesmen continued to manufacture watches of higher qualities, while the majority of them supplied the markets with the lowest kind of products.' Here we have an explanation of at least one cause of the decline of the Swiss watch-trade. An over-confidence in monopoly led to deterioration of the article. The result was that Swiss watches fell into discredit in the United States. The imports fell from a hundred and sixty-nine thousand watches in 1864 to seventy-five thousand watches in 1876. There was ultimately a diminution in value to the extent of four hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds in four years. The diminution did not alone arise from fair competition. All European watches introduced to the United States are charged with a duty of 25 per cent. Few manufacturers can stand so heavy a tax. At the same time the poor Swiss had another rival to contend with. The manufacture of watches in the Swiss style had been introduced into Besançon in France, whereby there was a still further limitation of exports from Switzerland.

The question naturally arises, 'What is the difference in the number of watches made by a workman by hand-labour and by a man superintending machinery in the same space of time?' One authority specifies forty watches a year for a workman by hand-labour, and one hundred and fifty watches a year by employing machinery. Mr John Fernie, a civil-engineer, writing to the Times (January 11), gives from personal knowledge a considerably higher estimate of the comparative power of machinery. His observations are well worth quoting. 'Having,' he says, 'visited the American Watch Manufactory at Waltham, Massachusetts, last June, on my way to the Exhibition at Philadelphia, I may be permitted to say a few words supplementary to the article in your paper of Friday, on the watch-trade of Switzerland. During my visit the works at Waltham were turning out three hundred and sixty-six watches per day, and were employing somewhere about one thousand hands; and instead of their turning out one hundred and fifty watches per hand per annum, they were turning out at the ratio of one hundred and ninety watches per person employed per annum. Even at the ratio quoted by your correspondent, four hundred and twenty-five watches per day by one thousand three hundred and sixty hands would give one hundred and sixty-two watches per man per annum against the Swiss forty watches per man per annum. Of the thousand hands employed at Waltham, I found at least three-fourths of them were women, and it appeared to be a kind of work peculiarly fitted for them. The whole of the working parts of the watches, the wheels, pinions, axles, screws, and jewels were made by women, by means of the most perfect automatic machinery I have ever seen.' Some of the watchmaking machines were exhibited at Philadelphia. 'But fine as those few machines were, they gave one no idea of the spacious works, the airy, comfortable workrooms, and the perfect sets of machinery, executing in the most exquisite way the numberless details involved in the manufacture of a watch, every one of their pieces duplicates of one another, save and except the holes in the jewels. These as yet it had been found impossible to drill out to such a nicety; but by a series of delicate gauges they are paired and numbered, and each watch is registered, so that in case of an accident, that particular size may be rent out. When it is considered that many of the pieces can only be examined by a microscope, and that each piece is a duplicate of the thousands made except the jewels, the superiority over the hand-made watches is as apparent as that of the modern Enfield rifles over the old brown-bess. The basis of the duplicate system at Waltham lies in a complete series of gauges, ranging from a considerable size to the very smallest dimensions. Having been an early worker myself in the manufacture of duplicate machines and engines on the basis of Sir Joseph Whitworth's scale of the inch divided into thousandths, I was desirous to see how they obtained their scale; and Mr Webster, the able engineer of the Company, informed me he found the thousandth of an inch too coarse a dimension, and the ten-thousandth of an inch too fine; and he was led to divide the millimetre into a hundred parts, and found it a proper proportion for his work; and it is from a series of gauges founded on this system that the whole of the watches are built up and the constant accuracy of all their dimensions maintained. The men employed in the manufactory are principally engaged in keeping the machines in such order as to maintain their proper sizes, and in fitting the watches together and testing them for time-keeping, and in the heavy work of making the cases. As yet the Waltham Watch Company have not gone largely into the manufacture of the very highest class of watches, the great demand being for good time-keepers at a reasonable price; but there is no doubt that while they have developed a system which is driving the Swiss manufacturers out of the market, they have established a system which is equally good for the better class of watches; and unless some English Company undertake the work in a similar way, they will ultimately drive us out of the market too. I need hardly say I have no interest in the Waltham Company except the interest of a mechanical man in the most interesting manufactory I ever visited.'

It is, we think, perfectly clear, from the above and other descriptions, that hand-made watches, unless perhaps of a superior class, requiring exquisite polish and finish by hand, must speedily be driven out of the market by watches made on an unerring automatic principle, and on a wholesale plan by machinery. The only thing the Swiss can do is to adopt the same species of machinery into their manufacture. Great capital and enterprise, however, will be needed to compete with the gigantic concerns springing up in America. In California, by the assistance of Chinese, watchmaking is making great strides. Already, hundreds of thousands of watches are produced annually in the United States; and by establishing trade factories in Russia and other countries, the Americans to all appearance will soon have the command of the traffic in watches all over the world. We have not heard of any movement in England likely to counteract this stupendous system of making and dealing in watches. The English apparently rely on the deservedly high character of their finer class of watches, ranging in price from twenty to thirty guineas and upwards. And it may be a long time before the Americans are able to rival them in this department of the trade.

AN OLD SHOWMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Some fifty years ago I was entered, by permission of my father, a merchant tailor, as a pupil in the Duke of Cumberland's School. Among other branches taught, much attention was given to gymnastics, in which I soon surpassed all my schoolmates, and soon became such a proficient, that our training-master in that branch was dispensed with, and I, though but a boy, took his place. After completing our education, I, along with a select few of my old schoolmates, used to meet at the back of Primrose Hill on the Saturday evenings of summer for the purpose of practising posturing and trying to imitate the gymnastic feats we had seen performed at the fairs in London and the neighbourhood. On these occasions we used frequently to be patronised by 'The Champion Sword-swallower and Fire-king,' who was the proprietor of a penny show in Broad Street, Bloomsbury. The house was swept away when Bloomsbury Street was formed. One day he produced a dagger with a blade of six or seven inches in length, and passed the blade down his throat; and after removing it, challenged us to perform the feat. From my earliest boyhood I have always been somewhat of a dare-devil. I took the dagger, and soon found no difficulty in repeating what he had done.

That evening, on returning home, while my father was at supper, I went into the workroom and began experimenting with the yard-stick. I found that, in jugglers' phrase, I could swallow twenty-one inches of it. I thereupon determined to become the monarch of sword-swallowers; but domestic circumstances put an end for a time to my ambition. Instead of displaying my talents on the boards of a booth, I was compelled by necessity to tread the boards of a merchant-ship in the character of a sailor-boy. My early training at school was of great service to me, for my nimbleness and activity soon raised me high in the captain's favour.

My first appearance in public as a showman was at an entertainment in presence of the officers of the garrison at Tobago. I made a decided hit, and received many presents from them. On returning to England, our ship was wrecked off Margate, and with difficulty I managed to reach the shore, on which I stood the possessor only of a pair of canvas trousers with empty pockets, a belt, and a Guernsey shirt. Some kindly hearted persons presented me with an old straw-hat, a pretty decent pair of boots, and a good dinner. On the strength of the dinner I set out for Brighton, where I expected to find employment with a relative. Luckily the weather was dry and warm. My meals consisted of pilfered turnips, and I found comfortable lodging in the fields. I reached Brighton only to find that my relative was dead. His successor in business, who was a stranger to me, presented me with sixpence, and I then set my face towards London.

One evening I reached The Thorns, a small road-side inn at Hawley, in a very exhausted state, for I had passed no turnip-fields since morning. I made up my mind to spend my remaining two-pence on a pint of beer, and then to push on for a mile or two and look out for a comfortable hedge-side. I entered the public room of The Thorns. It was well filled with jovial farmers, as I afterwards ascertained them to be. I ordered my beer; and when it was brought in, one of the farmers insisted on paying, and ordered the servant to set a plate of bread and cheese before me. After my supper was devoured rather than eaten, another pint of beer was ordered for me, and I was asked by my kind entertainers to oblige them if I could with a song. I readily consented. I sang several songs, performed a few simple sleight-of-hand tricks, and finished up by swallowing half the length of the landlord's walking-cane. I then took my leave; but before I reached the door I was called back and asked where I intended putting up for the night, which was by this time far spent. I stammered out what answer I could; which not satisfying my worthy entertainers, they decided that at their expense I should remain where I was; should be supplied with breakfast, dinner, and tea, and that my beer should not be stinted. On the following evening they again returned, bringing with them a numerous company of their friends, and I went a second time through my performances. They wished me a hearty adieu and gave me a handful of silver.

On arriving in London I looked about for a professional engagement, and was not long in procuring one at a notorious penny theatre, known as Hayden's Gaff, in Newton Street, off Holborn, a short street now filled with handsome warehouses, but in those days a haunt of the vile and worthless of both sexes. My salary was paid nightly, and varied with the number of the audience and the sober or inebriated state of the lessee, manager, and money-taker, all which parts were played by Tom Hayden. From this gaff I emigrated to the Rotunda, now no more, in Blackfriars Road. After appearing at several of the music-halls (O how different from the flash and the flare of those of the present day), I got an appearance for a season at Vauxhall Gardens, which still retained some memories of their aristocratic youthhood.

During all this time I was eking out my means of living by doing odd jobs, for I was Jack-of-all trades. At last I recklessly plunged into a showman's life by signing a year's engagement with a Mr Spicer, proprietor and manager of a caravan and a travelling theatre, or in other words a booth; and in his booth I played for the first time before the merry-making lads and lasses at Bartholomew Fair. At this fair I met the sword-swallower of those days, who was then astonishing the audiences at 'Richardson's.' His sword was twenty-eight inches long. The longest sword I have ever performed with is twenty-seven and five-eighth inches. Keene used also to 'swallow' dinner knives and forks, but this was a mere sleight-of-hand trick.

About this time I met with the renowned Ramo Same, the Indian juggler and magician. He was performing at the Coburg (now the Victoria Theatre) in the Borough. He too was a sword-swallower, and very cleverly did he combine deception with reality. He used to come on the stage carrying three naked swords, with which he went through a clever performance. At the termination of this he stuck the swords upright in the stage, to shew the sharpness of their points, then pulling one of them with apparent effort out of the flooring of the stage, he slid it to a considerable depth down his throat. The swallowing part was genuine; but the sword he used for that purpose was provided with a false point, which was left in the wood on withdrawing the blade. I have never seen or heard of any sword-swallowing performed with a keen-edged or sharp-pointed weapon. I may add that Keene had advantage over me, he being the taller by nine inches of the two; and that my capacity of swallow is a marvel to the many leading medical gentlemen before whom, for scientific purposes, I have exhibited.

My engagement with Mr Spicer was rather peculiar. I was a single performer divided into three, and sometimes more. I occasionally appeared in the tragedy or melodrama which was 'supported by the entire strength of the company.' The entire strength numbered half-a-dozen including the driver of the caravan. The legitimate drama was every evening followed by a 'pleasing melange,' in which I made three appearances: first as 'Paul Blanchard the champion sword-swallower of the universe;' then after a brief interval, as 'Monsieur Le Bland the celebrated French acrobat, from the Royal Theatres of Paris;' and third and last, dressed in costume which may be described as a cross between the apparel of a Turkish Pacha and a stage Richard III., I made my bow as 'Victor Delareux the Fire-king, who has performed with great applause before the crowned heads of Europe.' In this character I 'swallowed' handfuls of tow and vomited smoke and flames from my mouth. This trick is easy of performance, and though not dangerous is very disagreeable to the performer. Then followed my feat of drinking boiling oil; which in its turn was followed by a draught of molten lead; and my performance was concluded by a dance, which I performed with my bare feet on a red-hot bar of iron, which I also, in an incandescent state, passed along my bare arms and legs, and licked with my tongue. The 'drinking' of the boiling oil, in which I used to dissolve before the audience a rod of metal, and the drinking of the molten lead, were simple and harmless tricks; and have, as far as my memory serves me, both been described and explained in the early editions of the Boy's Own Book, a copy of which was my constant companion thirty years ago and more. The iron bar performance necessitates the employment of a mixture of chemicals, with which the parts exposed to the red-hot metal are anointed. If the bar is not up to red-heat, the feat is dangerous, as the chemicals will not act. The dancing on the bar must be gone through rapidly, the heel of the foot never resting for a moment on the iron.

My acrobatic and fire-king feats I have long since discontinued, and for many years my sword-swallowing has been subordinate to the less romantic business by which I gain my living. Still I am an old showman at heart, and look back with a melancholy pleasure to the days when I wandered about in gipsy fashion boothing and tenting.

The entrance to Lough Swilly is now protected by lighthouses, one on Fannet Point, and another on Dunree Head; and the various reefs and shoals are marked by buoys in such a manner as to render the entrance to the harbour safe. Formerly it was not so.

In the year 1811 the Saldanha frigate, Captain Packenham, was stationed in Lough Swilly as guardship; her usual anchorage was off the little town or rather village of Buncrana; but from time to time she weighed anchor, and cruised for a few days round the coast of the County Donegal. She had been stationed in Lough Swilly so long that some of the officers' wives had come to reside at Buncrana; one or two of the officers and several of the men had even married in the neighbourhood, and all had made friends with the gentry and other inhabitants of the surrounding country.

Early on the morning of the 11th of November the Saldanha left the moorings off Buncrana for a three days' cruise round the coast; but though the morning was fine and bright, about noon the weather became dark and lowering; and before the short November day closed, a fearful tempest raged over sea and land. That storm is still remembered as the 'Saldanha Storm;' and some old folks can recount the sad story of the anxious hearts that beat, and eyes that watched through blinding spray and rain for the lights of the returning ship. They were seen at last, not from Buncrana, but from the opposite shore, nearer the mouth of the lough, rapidly drifting into Ballymastocker Bay, along the strand of which the Fannet people eagerly thronged. In this bay there is a dangerous reef of rocks, and on it the ship was seen to strike. If a mighty cry went up, or if any effort was made to save the doomed vessel, no one can now tell. Of that gallant crew, one man only reached the shore alive. Him, the wild people (half-wreckers) placed across a horse, after giving him a draught of whisky; but whether it was done in ignorance or in order to hasten his end, could not be proved; suffice it to say, that before he could be taken from the strand to one of the country cabins, he died. Many bodies came ashore from time to time, and were reverently buried in the old churchyard of Rathmullan, where the grave and monument can still be seen. It is told that there were three widows that night in one house in Buncrana, two ladies and their servant.

Years passed by; and when the winter storms swept Lough Swilly, part of the sunken wreck of the Saldanha would burst up, and the yellow sands of Ballymastocker Bay be strewn with fragments of her planks and various relics of the unhappy crew. The night of the 6-7th January 1839 was marked by another mighty hurricane, as bad, the old men said, as the 'Saldanha Storm;' and in the morning, when the coast-guards made their rounds, the shores of the bay were strewn from end to end with timbers and broken chests, the last of the Saldanha.

Among other articles, one of the coast-guardsmen found and brought to his officer's wife a little worked case, such as ladies used to call a thread-paper. It was beautifully made and stitched, and still contained some skeins of sewing-silk and a few rusty needles. On the back were embroidered three initials. I remember the lady, Mrs H – , shewing it to me; and child as I was at the time, I grieved for the sad heart of the embroideress whose loving fingers had set the stitches.

More than twenty years passed away; Mrs H – , who had returned to live in Scotland, and had been left a widow, was spending a few days in the country-house of friends in one of the southern shires. Among the guests was a young gentleman to whom she took a particular fancy. One evening the conversation turned on Ireland and Irish scenery, and Lough Swilly was mentioned. Her young friend seemed much interested, asked some questions about it, and presently said that his mother had lost a brother many years before in Lough Swilly by the wreck of the Saldanha. Mrs H – related all she knew of the circumstances, and finally said she had in her workbox at the moment a relic of the ship; and taking out the thread-paper, asked the uncle's name; which, strangely enough, was found to agree with the three initials embroidered on the little case. It further transpired that her young friend's uncle had been a midshipman on board the ill-fated ship, and was his mother's favourite brother.

Mrs H – then put the little thread-case into his hand, and told him how she had become possessed of it. 'And now,' she added, 'take that home to your mother; shew it to her, and ask her if she ever saw it before. Should she recognise it, she is very welcome to keep it. If it did not belong to her brother, let me have it again.' The gentleman left next morning for his home; and a few days afterwards Mrs H – had a letter from him, saying that his mother had at once recognised it as her own work, given to her darling brother when he last had left his home. Surely this relic of one so loved and lost, thus restored after more than fifty years, must have been as precious as though it had been some costly jewel.

[From Poems and Ballads, by James R. Fergusson, son of Sir William Fergusson, Bart.]

To Frank Buckland, energetic protector of fish in particular, and of all dumb-animal creation, editor of Land and Water, son of an eminent geologist a former Dean of Westminster, belongs the merit of having suggested that the remains of John Hunter should be deposited in Westminster Abbey. An order having been issued that all coffins should be removed from the vaults beneath the Church of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, Mr Buckland thought of his great professional brother, long dead, and lying there with no 'storied urn or animated bust' to mark the spot; and in a short time his generous zeal carried to a successful issue all proceedings connected with the 'Reinterment of John Hunter.' The place selected is close below a stone that has the words 'O rare Ben Jonson!' and I may mention that, standing by the open grave, I held in my hand the skull that once contained the witty, learned brain of him who wrote the undying line about Shakspeare:

 
He was not for an age, but for all time.
Within the walls beneath whose shade
The noblest of our land are laid,
I stood and watched due homage paid
To genius bright —
To one whose fame shall never fade
Nor lose its light.
John Hunter, 'mongst the chief of those
Who study all the earthly woes
That 'gainst our bodies frail are foes,
And wound our breast,
Here in this Abbey finds repose
And honoured rest.
The resting-place that first he found
No fame sufficient did redound,
Though many worthy were around,
Most noble dust.
'Let's place him here;' that sentence sound,
All thought it just.
And here he lies, the man whose fame
Detraction ne'er can put to shame,
Whose glory well his works can claim —
His works that bear
The impress of his mighty name
And genius rare.
In mysteries of creation's plan,
In study of his brother man,
His mind all former minds outran,
And far excelled,
And by its strength and mighty span
His views upheld.
A Scot was Hunter, bright the hour,
When Heaven first gave his spirit power
To reach fair Science' highest bower,
And there remain.
May present Scots, in ample shower,
His fame sustain!
 

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.