Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

i68 BRITAIN AT WORK. is conducted in an isolated room specially provided with a large central ventilating shaft, which carries the fumes right into the open air, and prevents the disastrous results to the workpeople hitherto somewhat pre- valent in less properly conducted factories. They are then placed in drying rooms to dry. When thoroughly dry they go to the box hands, whose quick fingers deftly pick up scores at a time and place them in the boxes. The workshops generally, and especially those where the highly inflammable paraffined wood chips are handled, do not depend for immunity from accidental fire on the ordi- nary precautions of hose, buckets, and tanks of water, but are supplied with overhead water-pipes fitted with automatic sprinklers, so that on a fire occurring in any portion of the room, that portion would be instantly subjected to a shower of water automatically released by the heat. To “ tapers,” or wax matches, is conceded by far the most important division of this comprehensive factory, for through the immense colonial demand, and by nature of the comparatively extensive space which their evolving requires, this section claims considerable attention. The wax match comes into being in the following manner. Hanks of cotton consist- ing of one hundred separate strands, each strand being two thousand five hundred yards in length, are wound on giant reels. These large reels or drums are about eighty feet apart,, and the threads of cotton are wound from one drum to the other several times, each time passing through a bath of heated wax until the threads, termed “ taper,” have received a sufficient coating. These drums are driven by steam, and the taper in course of manufacture is attended to by women. When finished, the wax taper is rolled off on to smaller drums, which are placed in front of machines, and it is threaded through holes in a steel plate. In front of these machines what are known as “ frames ” are placed, which, though like their counterparts on the wood match side, contain, however, about eight thousand when filled. The process of filling is as follows :— The threads are protruded through the aforementioned steel plate on to the frame boards; a knife descends and cuts them off. At each descent it severs the one hundred strands. The attendant girl drops a fresh board, and another one hundred are presented for decapitation ; and so the pro- cess goes on until every board has been dropped and the frame-full is finished, which means that eight thousand wax matches are ready to receive their crown of usefulness. Gripped tightly by the “ Venetian blind ” sug- gestive frame, they are taken from the cutting , machine, put into a lift, and shot up to the roof of the factory, there to get the finishing application of phosphorus. These are the conditions prevailing at one of the best re- gulated London factories, where we have been permitted to take photographs. The rate of payment in match factories is arranged, except in the case of new hands, almost exclusively on the “ piece-work ” system—at all events, as regards the girls and women ; heads of departments, overseers and so on receive, on the contrary, a fixed wage. Girls are employed in this industry as soon as they have succeeded in passing the standard pronounced by the School Board authorities to be the high-water mark of obligatory education. These learners, being totally raw material, are only worth small recompense, so until they emerge, for better or worse, from their chrysalis of ignor- ance, they earn but a set five shillings or so a week. But the bright and energetic ones are soon able to get themselves transferred to the nine or the ten shillings rank, with the step of fifteen shillings within reasonable distance. The more ambitious “ hands ” are prompt to accept the first opportunity of being promoted to “ piece - work,” since by this satisfactory arrangement only can their indi- vidual industry make any effect on their earnings. Filling frames with waxed strands and superintending their sojourn under “ the guillotine,” for instance, is paid by piece at one shilling per hundred frames. Quick workers do three hundred frames a day. It would be an interesting calculation to find out for the cutting of how many yards of strands into inch-long match lengths each girl is responsible in the ten hours which make her working clay.