Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN AT WORK. Photo: Cassell & Co.. Ltd. NAILMAKERS AT WORK. ten or twelve shillings. One has heard in some trades of the peculiar counting that gives thirteen to the dozen, but this is a feeble trick in mathematics in comparison to the “ fogger’s ” arithmetic in the Black Country, his notion of a thousand nails being eleven hundred and fifty! In buying he sometimes demands even twelve hundred for the price of a thousand; but invari- ably the nailmaker has to turn out eleven hundred and fifty nails for every thou- sand he or she is paid for, and though an advance of wages has been conceded the workers do not always benefit from it. The peculiarity of the nail trade, as followed in the Black Country, is that the master takes no risk. The worker has to find both the capital and the labour wherever he or she can, is obliged to submit to the loss con- sequent on the purchase of unsuitable material, and pays all sorts of charges to make industry possible. The nailer’s cottage is both home and workshop. Generally, at any rate, the work shed is attached to the habitation and included in the rent. The shed is fitted with forge and bellows ; but the nailer,'usually the head of the family, has to procure his own bench and set of tools. On the bench is fixed an anvil, and a chisel, for pointing, bending, and partially cutting the heated iron, and a bore in which the severed length of rod is inserted. The “ oliver,” the heavy hammer, worked by a treadle, is close by, and fashions the head of the nail. The nailer does what he can to reduce the expense of production. He lets the bench room in his shed to other workers—or stallers,” as they are called— and these men or women pay sixpence per week towards the rent, and another pinepence towards the cost of the “ breeze,” or firing; so that a “staller” making twenty thousand Flemish tacks—really twenty-four thousand —a laborious week’s work, would earn, paid at the rate of sixpence-halfpenny per “ fogger’s” thousand, ten shillings and ten pence: nine shillings and sevenpence, with his working expenses deducted. There are different prices for the making of hob, brush, clout, and many other sorts of nails; but the wage result differs little. The workers are poorly nourished because they cannot afford sufficient food, and they are ill clad because they have not the wherewithal to buy raiment. The world to them is a slavish den. Bromsgrove appears to be inseparable from poverty, yet it is more comely than Cradley Heath. The centre of the chainmaking industry by night is bright with the glare of furnace ; by day it is shrouded with smoke and gloom and flecked with mud. Here and there men or women are chainmaking in their own particular sheds, in comparative solitude; but most of the work is done in factories, and in some of these workshops there are five or six women at the anvils. Their tongues in rough rhythm to the beat of the hammers and the clink of the chains they are forging; but there is no genuine mirth in their din. However womanly they may be at heart,