Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

WOMEN TOILERS IN THE BLACK COUNTRY. 195 appearances are against them. In ragged or makeshift apparel, toil-stained, ill-fed, and haggard, they are the antithesis of the society beauties who ride in Hyde Park, or grace reception or ball at West-End mansion. The female chainmaker of the Black Country stands long at the forge. She has to work now and again with her child at her breast, or with a sharp eye upon the little one as it crawls about the spark - sprinkled floor. Whether her hands are blistered, or her body scorched with flying iron, she toils on, and, working twelve hours a day, earns from five to eight shillings per week ! She needs no larder, for she lives from hand to mouth, and if her children can sit to a feast of bread, soaked in hot water and flavoured with weak tea, they become quite epicurean. The bellows blowers, both children and old men and women, are worse paid than the female chainmakers. They turn the wheels or pull the bellows beams at the rough rate of threepence per day, making, nevertheless, a substantial profit for the forge owners, who do not scruple to charge heavily for the “ breeze ” or fuel indispensable to the chain- makers. Industry at Cradley and at Dudley is a Juggernaut. The woman has to toil till the birth of her babe sharply reminds her of the imperative claims of motherhood ; the man has to labour under conditions that sap his strength, that utterly exhaust nature. In the Cradley district one thousand tons of chains is the average weekly output, and it includes nearly every variety of chains, from the heaviest cables to pit hauling gear, and to the familiar dog chains, swivels, and rings, for which the girl maker receives three-farthings or at the outside one penny each, and for which the dog fancier willingly pays eighteen- pence. The woman, as a rule, forges the smaller and lighter chains, inasmuch as for this work less furnace heat is necessary. She heats the thin iron rod, bends the red-hot piece, cuts it on the chisel, twists the link, inserts it into the previous link, and welds it with the hand, hammer or the “ oliver,” or both. The male chainmaker is engaged in the production of heavy cables, and is well paid for his work while he is at it, getting from seven shillings to ten shillings per day ; yet he is so handicapped that his earnings have a better look in print than feel in his hand. He has to work in such intense heat that a portion of his wages is sweated out of him. He has the athirst of Tantalus, and assuages it with huge draughts of beer, the cost of which, however poor the quality of the beverage, ruthlessly diminishes the weekly sum available for household and other uses. The heat of the furnace saps the man’s vitality, and two days’ full work per week is as much as nature can withstand, especially as his constitution is soon undermined by the fierce alternations of heat and cold. Granted that he actually receives one pound per week for his toil, from this sum must be deducted the inevitable beer money, and two or three shillings for blast, the latter sum going to the employer as his share of the cost of fuel and blow—practically for the use of the furnace, worked by either steam or me- chanical power. Bricks are made in nearly every county in England, but it is in Staffordshire and Worcestershire that the works are the most