as will merely leave room to pass. The steam-engine
must be accommodated; and there
must be an apartment or two for the repair
or making of the machinery. The annealing,
and cooling, and weighing, and packing can
be done in a shed and yard. Adam Smith's
young acquaintances would have wanted the
whole site of Birmingham—for their forges,
to make as many nails as go forth from the
premises we saw. So compact is the space
required, that one man attends to four
machines. He is called a "minder." He
engages a boy for each machine, and sees that
it is properly fed. The "minder" is paid by
the hundred-weight, for all sizes of nails, except
tacks, which are paid by the thousand.
It is calculated that one hundred-weight contains
about fifty thousand nails of all sizes.
If so, the quantity of nails formed in a year,
in this one apartment, is no less than a thousand
and forty millions! When we see the
stroke given, which makes the head, we cannot
but wonder where the nail will next be struck
on the head;—whether in some shed on the
banks of the Danube, or in the cabin of some
peasant on the bleak plains of Russia, or in
some Indian bungalow, or in a cattle-fold on
the grassy levels of Australia, or in some chalêt
on the Alps, or on the brink of some mine high
up in the Andes, or under the palm-roof of
some missionary chapel in the South Sea
islands. As the nails are snipped off and
fashioned, much faster than the nimblest
fingers can snip paper, it is wonderful to think
how they will be spread over the globe,
nowhere meeting, probably, with a single person
who will think of where their heads were
last struck; unless one of them should be
floated, in some piece of wreck, to the feet of
some Robinson Crusoe, who will start at this
trace of a man's hand, and seem to hear once
more the pant of the steam-engine, and all
the sounds of busy toil, and the voices of
men, for which his ear and his heart are
thirsting. What would he not give to be
a "minder" where that nail was made?
—or the humblest helper on the premises,
so that he might work among his fellow
men?

The "minder" has it in his power to enjoy
all the best things of life, if he so pleases.
He easily earns from one hundred and twenty-five
to one hundred and fifty pounds a year.
But, unfortunately, he reckons his wages by
the week. If clergymen and others—who
would be glad of his income—did so, they
might make less of their small means than
they do; the weekly surplus being a constant
temptation to spend. And too truly, too
sadly, it is so with the " minder," with an
exception here and there. If he receives five
pounds a week for months together, and pays
away nearly, or quite half, to the four boys
below him, keeping fifty shillings or more for
himself; and if the machinery has to stop for
a few days, he is sure to borrow money of his
employer. After years of constant employment
and good health, if he falls sick, he has
not a shilling beforehand. This story has
been told before—often before—and it must
be told again now—and often again till the
workman learns to accept that welfare from
himself which he is too apt to expect from
law or society, which can effectually help only
those who help themselves.

In a neighbouring manufactory, which
would seem to require the strength of hard-handed
men, we find women employed in the
proportion of ten to one: and of that one
portion, many are boys. The manufacture is
that of screws; steel, brass, copper, and a few
of silver. From the smallest screws required
for putting together the nicest philosophical
instruments, to the heavy bolt-screws which
sustain the wear and tear of mighty steam-engines,
we find here specimens of all sorts
and sizes. The forging must be done by
men, of course: and here we find the anvil,
and the glowing furnace (fed by the steam-engine),
and see the great square heads of
bolt-screws beaten while at a white or red
heat.

The coils of wire, of different thicknesses,
of which the screws are made, come from the
wire-drawers. They have been made by
drawing the heated iron through holes in
hardened steel plates. The smaller kinds of
wire are drawn, by a hard mechanical gripe,
through smaller and smaller holes, till they
become of the thickness required. Then the
wire is brought to the screw manufactory;
and there we see it lying about in shining
coils. One end of a coil is presented to a
machine worked by boys or women; when
we see the end seized, and drawn forward,
and snipped off the proper length,
the snip falling, hot, into a pan of sawdust
below. Women are preferred to boys
for this work. Their attention is more
steady, and they are more careful of their
own flesh and blood. Boys are apt to make
mischief; and, if they look off their work,
it is too likely that they may lose their
finger-ends. It is in this department of the
business that most of the accidents happen.
It is more satisfactory to see the lads filing
the circular saws used in making the
machinery, or in other processes where they
have not to deal with such inexorable
powers as those which cut or stamp the
metal.

The heads of the bits of steel are next
stamped by machinery, and delivered over to
women to have the heads polished. There is
nice fingering required here; and, to do it,
we see rows of women, who earn from five
to twelve shillings per week, each attending
a machine of her own. She presents the head
of the screw to a vice, which seizes it and
carries it to a flying wheel, which smooths
and polishes it; and it conies out in an
instant, brightened with that radiating polish
which we observe in the head of a finished
screw. All the while, a yellowish ugly