this prejudice works. There is an Act of
Parliament, about thirty years old, which
obliges manufacturers to send their gold
productions to the Assay Office at Birmingham,
if they reside within thirty miles of it. Messrs.
Rotherham send the greater part of their
watch-cases to the Birmingham office; but
they feel it hard, while labouring under the
disadvantage of the old prejudice, to be
prevented from getting their gold assayed at any
office they prefer. Their alternative is between
having their watches despised on account
of the local mark, and buying their cases in
London. They are obliged to buy so many
cases in London, that it makes the difference
of thirty pounds a week in the wages of labour
that they pay in Coventry.

While we are speaking of legislative
impediments which annoy the manufacturer, we
may as well mention two or three more,
which would be scarcely credible in our day,
if they did not happen to be true. There
seems to be a natural relation between the
English and the Swiss, in regard to
watchmaking. Though the law does all it can to
part them, they are perpetually at work in
combination; a combination which it would
be convenient to make honest and easy. The
tools— various and most delicate—used by
watch-makers, are purchased chiefly from
Warrington in Lancashire; but the best of
them are fashioned in Switzerland. Iron is
sent over from England, and returned by the
Swiss in the shape of tools so exquisite, that
we cannot rival them. Swiss watch-makers
live in Clerkenwell, to make the faces of our
watches; an article in which fashion is as
capricious as in any department whatever.
Now, it would be much easier and pleasanter
for these Swiss to live at home, and work in
their own beloved dwellings, as numbers of
their countrymen, and many more of their
countrywomen, are always doing. But, while
Swiss watches are admitted entire into
England, at a duty of ten per cent., the
importation of parts of watches is totally prohibited.
Swiss watches, as a whole, are not to be
compared with English; but in the making of
some parts, the Swiss excel us. By this
absurd prohibition, we must either buy entire
watches, to help us to the parts we want, or
we must try to smuggle; or skilled Swiss
must come and live here. We need not say
that the one thing which we never think of,
is going without anything which is proved to
be the best of its kind. We, on the other
hand, are excluded altogether from the
European trade in watches. The prohibition, as
regards all Europe, is complete; while we
trade with Asia, Africa, and America. In
the United States, again, there is a duty
which so affects the importation of watches,
as to give rise to a whimsical state of things.
Our watches go "in the frame," packed naked,
as it were, and they are clothed with cases
there. The Americans cannot compete with
us in making the works; but the making of
the cases is now an important business with
them. What confusion, and trouble, and
waste, are caused by all these legislative
meddlings!

It is painful to see that further difficulties
are made by the selfishness of certain persons
at home, concerned in the making of watches.
One cause of the cheapness of Swiss watches,
which preserves their popularity, in spite of
their inferiority to ours, is the comparative
cheapness of their production. Throughout
the valleys of Switzerland, there are multitudes
of women busy in their own homes,
about the delicate processes of watch-making.
No work can be more suitable for women.
The fineness of sight and touch required
seems to mark it out as a feminine employment;
and it can be pursued at home, if that
is desired, just like needle-work, or any other
feminine business. But the men of Coventry
will not allow women to be employed. The
employers desire it; the women desire it; all
rational observers desire it; but the men will
not allow it. The same man who sends his
wife and daughter to weave at the factory,
will not hear of their engraving " brass-work"
at home. It is a curious thing to pass in
forty minutes from Birmingham to Coventry,
and to mark the difference between the two
places in this matter. In the one, we
see hundreds of neatly-dressed and
well-behaved women, doing work suitable to their
faculties and their strength, and earning the
means of support for themselves, and education
for their children, by making screws,
gold chains, and many other things; while,
in Coventry, the workmen will not allow a
woman to paste bits of floss silk upon a card,
or to mark the figures upon the face of a
watch. With regard to the ribbon manufacture,
they have had to give way. At the
reels and looms we see women employed by
hundreds. The rest will follow. The women
will obtain whatever liberty of occupation is
reasonable, because whatever is reasonable
becomes practicable, sooner or later. We
know of a beginning made, no matter where,
or by whom. The respectable and educated
wife of a superior mechanic chooses to aid her
husband's earnings, by employing her leisure
in a process of watch-making—that of
"engraving " the " brass work " in the interior
of a watch. As soon as it was discovered
that she was thus employed, an outcry was
raised. Every opposition was made, but she
has persevered. A sort of case of
apprenticeship has been made out, by witnesses
having affirmed that, in their presence, she
had seen her father do the work she had
undertaken. She would have preferred another
branch of the work; but she found there was
no chance of her being permitted to do the
same thing that her husband wrought at.
She is instructing her two daughters, however,
in her own branch; and there can be no
doubt that her example will be followed. At
present, hers is considered a singular case.