An American view of Sheffield in 1884

[Guest Gramps]

This is an article by William Rideing, an American author, published in Harper's Magazine in 1884. The illustrations don't have much relevance to the text but some of them are quite interesting.

SHEFFIELD

.

ONE beauty of Sheffield is that you can see very little of it at a time. The greatest altitude and the clearest day combined do not considerably affect this circumstance. No matter which point of view is selected, the foreground is dim, yellow, and confined ; the distance is spectral, muffled, and deplorably gloomy. Down below us, from every height, is a nest of dark, unornamental houses; a complication of narrow, winding streets; the lofty spire or dome of a church; the urgent traffic of pedestrians and vehicles. Beyond, in every direction, is a screen of torpid smoke which obscures the sky, and tones the warm radiance behind it to a mellow and sometimes golden twilight. Out of the clinging folds countless slender chimneys immensely high streak the monotonous color that surrounds them, and from each issues a woolly black stream that, lacking the natural buoyancy and diffusiveness of smoke, seems to clot in the sultry air. The uninformed traveller who glances through the town by railway without alighting is kept in ignorance of its topography by the persistence of these fumes: he can not tell, from all that is visible, whether it is built upon a plain, a slope, or a ridge; whether it is compact or scattered, wide or narrow in area. Only the elongated chimneys with their smoky pennons are lifted into prominence; all below them is vague.

t is a blessing even yet that not much of Sheffield can be seen at a time, for all that makes a city attractive is only now being provided. The streets were tortuous and incongruous, having been built without any prevision. The builders seem never to have thought that the plans which suited them might obstruct in the future, or, thinking, they did not care; and when any new edifices were put up, it was with American indifference to the harmony of environment, and un-American disregard of the conveniences of approach. As the population has multiplied, and as the sons of the old cutler of a hundred years ago have grown into a firm employing hundreds of workmen, larger dwellings and more commodious factories have been necessary; but the modern structures have not been erected with a cohesive design or appropriate sequence; the new music hall is here, and the new hotel there, with shabby blocks of antiquated houses between. The manifest inconvenience of such a state of things at length forced itself upon the attention of the authorities, who, armed with power and provided with the necessary funds, have entirely revised large portions of the early plan of the centre of the town. Blind alleys and curvilinear lanes, with all their misleading sinuosities, have been razed to open the continuous and spacious streets which the ever-increasing traffic requires. The authorities have aimed to secure a main avenue, broad and well lighted, in its business centre, with well-planned streets running at right angles with it. In them stately piles of buildings, of some architectural pretensions, are being erected, and the centre of the town in the future will present a very different appearance from what it has done in the past. Sheffield possesses no town-hall, court-house, museum, or other public building really worth looking at, and until recently it had only one public park ; now it has three. A brief digression will enable us to see what there is commendable in the town besides its commerce.

The atmosphere of Sheffield is not favorable to the development of genius, but a few notable men have grown under the smoky skies whose fame has reached all English readers. Chantrey, the sculptor, was born within two or three miles of the town; Montgomery, the poet, spent most of his life in it; and Elliott, whose facile versification contributed as much to the repeal of the corn laws as the most logical eloquence of prose, carried on a business within its precincts.

When he was a mere boy, and an unsuccessful one, having failed in London, the rock that breaks so many hearts, Montgomery saw an advertisement in a Sheffield newspaper which led to his engagement upon its staff. The paper was the Register, which was in disfavor with the government on account of its sympathy with the disaffection created in England by the French Revolution; and the embryo poet had not been long enough in an editorial chair to perceive what Dead Sea fruit its rewards are, when (the proprietor having fled) he was arrested on the charge of having written a seditious ballad, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Soon after his release his sense of humanity was touched and his indignation aroused by the violence of a military officer in quelling a disturbance, for a description of which he was again arrested, and imprisoned six mouths. But he survived these penalties, and prospered. Under the name of the Iris, the Register became a great pecuniary success, and Montgomery died in April, 1854, at the age of eighty-three years, wealthy and honored, after a residence in Sheffield of sixty-two years. A bronze statue upon a granite pedestal has been erected to his memory in the General Cemetery. His paper was published and most of his poems were written in an old house in the Harts-head, which was recently occupied as a tavern, but now is used as offices. It is related that Howitt once called his attention to the number of authors whose homes had become public drinking places, among others Burns's, Scott's, Shelley's, and Coleridge's at Nether Stowey. Montgomery laughed, but he lived to see his own sanctum become the resort of disreputable old topers.

Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-law Rhymer," entered the steel business in Sheffield with a capital of one hundred pounds, and after many struggles acquired a respectable fortune. His corn-law rhymes had an extraordinary success, and if his other works were not satisfactory in form they showed in some degree real inspiration.

Chantrey was a milk-boy in Sheffield, and when released from this occupation he was transferred to the scarcely more congenial shop of a grocer, and then apprenticed to a carver and gilder, with whom he remained only a short time. Afterward he started out on his own account as a portrait painter, and modestly set forth his claims to patronage through an advertisement in Montgomery's paper, which stated that '' he hoped to meet with the liberal sentiments of an impartial public." His advancement was rapid, and from a humble portrait paiuter he soon developed into a great sculptor. He was knighted by William the Fourth, and was buried in a suburb of Sheffield. Thomas Creswick, the landscape painter, was also a native of the town, as were Archbishop Seeker, Sir Sterndale Bennett, and several other celebrities.

Another thing which uplifts the town above the sordid commonplaces of its commerce is its history, which has a varied interest. Its site was known to the Romans, of whom many traces have been found; and when they had departed the land was occupied by a succession of Saxon lords, from whom it passed to the famous Shrewsburys. The fourth earl was custodian of Cardinal Wolsey during his disgrace, and entertained him with great consideration at the Manor Castle, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned twelve years out of the nineteen which she spent in England. She was in custody of the sixth earl, and was guarded by forty men. There is extant the following document, issued by the earl for the government of her household, which comprised thirty personal attendants.

To the Master of the Scotts Queenes Household, Mr. Beton.

"

First

.—That all your people which appertayneth to the Queene shall depart from the Queene's chamber or chambers to their own lodging at IX of the clock at night, winter and summer, whatsoever he or she; either to their lodging within the house or without in the towne, and there to remain till the next day at VI of the clock.

Item.

That none of the Queenes people shall at no tyme wear his sword neither within the house nor when her grace rydeth or goeth abroad; unless the master of the household himself do weare a sword and no more without special licence. Hem. That there shall none of the Queeues people carry any bow or shaftes at no tyme, neither to the fields nor to the butts, unless it be four or fyve and no more in the Queenes companye.

Item

. That none of the Queenes people shall ryde or go at no tyme out of the house or towne without my special licence; and if he or they so doeth, they or he shall come no more in at the gates, neither in the towne, whatsoever he or she or they be.

Item

. That you or some of the Queenes chamber, when her grace will walke abroad, shall advertyse the officiar of my warde, who shall declare the messuage to me one houer before she goeth forth.

Item

. That none of the Queenes people, whatsoever he or they be, not once offer at no tyme to come forth of their chamber or lodging when anie alarum is given by night or daie, whether they be in the Queenes chamber or in their chambers within the house or without in the towne, and yf he or they keep not their chambers or lodging whatsoever that be he or they shall staude at their peril! for deathe.

At Shefeild the 26th daie of April, 1571, per me,

" SHREWSBURIE."

[Guest Gramps]

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The earl's orthography was not always so "symmetrical," as Matthew Arnold would say, however, as may be seen in a letter which he wrote describing the unhappy lady's condition: "She is within a few dayes become more malinclioly than of long before, and complenes of her wronges and imprisonments. I am sure her malyncholy and grefe is grattar than she in words uttars; and yett, rather than contynew this imprisonment she stycks not to say she will gyve hur boddy, hur sonne, and hur cuntry for lyberty." The Queen remained at the castle until Septernber, 1584. and three years later her career was ended by the executioner's axe. Wolsey died within three days of his departure from the town.

With the extinction of the male Shrewsburys in the civil war, the estate became the property of the Howards, and the Duke of Norfolk now owns much of the ground upon which Sheffield is built. The castle is levelled, but the manor attached to it, which received the Queen while alterations were being made in the main, building, remains, in a state of extreme dilapidation, having been occupied as a roadside ale-house until its walls became too insecure for the shelter even of the most reckless. The parish church was founded in the reign of Henry I. It is rectangular in shape, with a crocketed tower and a spire near the centre. The nave and chancel have north and south aisles, and the nave is divided into five hays with stone pillars and arches. In the southeast corner is the Shrewsbury Chapel, an elaborately fitted alcove with a stained-glass window, and under its sculptured vault is the tomb of Wolsey's noble custodian, whose figure is reproduced in recumbent marble, with similar statues of his two wives by his side.

The Hall, the property of the Cutlers' Company of Hallamshire, is most interesting for its associations. The reputation of Sheffield steel-ware had even reached old Chaucer's ears, who, describing a character in the Canterbury Tales, says, "A Sheffield thwytel bare he in his hose," the "thwytel" or " whittle" having been a fourteenth-century bowie-knife; and in the Middle Ages the staple business of the town was the manufacture of arrowheads, some of which were used on Bosworth Field. Nearly two hundred years ago the population included seven thousand cutlers,.and in 1624 the operatives formed themselves into a protective company " for the good order and government of the makers of knives, sickles, shears, scissors, and other cutlery wares"—an organization which still exists in a prosperous condition. The body - corporate includes a master-cutler, two wardens, six searchers, and twenty-four assistant searchers, the latter being empowered to seize all defective wares produced by inferior workmen. For a long time the government of the Cutlers' Company pursued a very exclusive policy, excluding all except freemen from their handicraft; but in 1814 an act of Parliament limited its functions to the granting of trade-marks.

By a still more recent act the functions of the company have been extended to every department of steel and iron in the district, and it now occupies a position of equality with the Registrar - General of Trade-marks in London. The revenue of the company is derived from the granting of marks, the lettings of their rooms, and dividends on invested stocks. The first Thursday in September is a memorable day in connection with the company. The master-cutler-elect is then ceremoniously installed in office, and in the evening he gives his time-honored " feast"—one of the most celebrated events in northern England. His guests number 350; and happy is the master-cutler who can secure the presence at his festive board of one or more of the cabinet ministers of the day, with a sprinkling of dukes, earls, and noble lords. The hall is in the Italian style, and includes a dining-room one hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, and an assembly-room eighty feet long by thirty feet wide.

At one time Sheffield was deplorably behind in educational matters; but since the Education Act was passed in 1872 Herculean efforts have been made to supply felt deficiencies. The School Board have erected twenty-three schools in different parts of the town, which are alike an ornament and a credit to it. The attendance at the elementary schools within the borough has increased since 1872 from 12,000 to 36,317.

There is no more handsome pile of buildings in the town than the central schools, the offices of the board, and the college erected through the munificence of the late Mr. Mark Firth. Much attention is also being given to technical education. Then there is the new Albert Hall, which, in proportions at least, is somewhat noteworthy. In Arundel Street a school of art is established under the auspices of the South Kensington Museum, the directors of which place it at the head of all similar schools in the United Kingdom ; and in Darkhouse Road is the classic front of the Wesleyan College.

Another count in Sheffield's favor is that it has many firmly established and well-equipped charities. The Shrewsbury Hospital began its beneficence over two hundred years ago, and has since accommodated twenty poor gentlewomen and twenty poor gentlemen, providing them with lodgings, coal, clothing, and a small amount of cash each week. Besides the inmates, it has sixty out-door pensioners, twenty of whom (males) receive seven shillings a week each, and forty of whom (females) receive five shillings a week each. The Deakin Institute is both novel in its aims and admirable in its administration. It was founded by a merchant, who bequeathed three thousand pounds toward its establishment, on condition that a like sum should be subscribed within two years of his death. Its object is to assist unmarried women of good character, who are members of the Episcopal Church, Evangelical, or Dissenters, over forty years of age, and thirty-nine such women are now annuitants, twenty-five of the number receiving twenty-five pounds each annually, and fourteen twenty pounds each annually. The most unusual and commendable feature of the charity is its privacy and unostentation. On election the annuitants immediately receive one-half of the yearly sum, and the details of the payment are so arranged that no one is the wiser for it except the recipient

At Ranmoor, one of the loveliest suburbs of Sheffield, is a group of alms-houses which were built and adequately endowed by the late Mr. Mark Firth at a cost of £30,000. There are thirty-six houses for the accommodation of forty-eight persons, with chapel and house for the chaplain and governor. Besides the free occupancy of the house, each married couple receives ten shillings and each single inmate seven shillings per week. The Sheffield General Infirmary, which has been established for nearly a century, relieves from 12,000 to 14,000 in and out patients every year. It contains 180 beds for patients, of which forty are set apart exclusively for children's cases in separate wards. The Public Hospital and Dispensary accommodates about forty thousand patients, in-door and out, annually; and the town also has a special hospital for women, built at a cost of more than £30,000 by Mr. Thomas Jessop; a free hospital for children, an Institute and manufactory for the blind, a home for nurses, an asylum for decayed licensed victuallers (the euphemistic calling in Great Britain of dealers in alcoholic liquors), a school of medicine, and various "funds" bequeathed under more or less narrow, eccentric, or oddly generous conditions. Among the hills outside the town, in an old dwelling, is the nucleus of Mr. Ruskin's art museum of the St. George's Society; and among the things we have to admit is that the desire for wealth has not been so eager nor the hold of it so tenacious that the unfortunate or necessitous have been overlooked in Sheffield.

But now that we have enumerated such of its possessions, historical, biographical, and architectural, as weigh in a tourist's estimate of a town's desirability, let us emphasize what is fairly evident — that Sheffield is not to be discovered in museums, churches, or municipal palaces; that its vitality, its influence on the world, all that makes it great, and the causes of its reputation, are by no means aesthetical, religious, or philanthropic. Its significance is in its immense trade and the absolute excellence of its metallic manufactures, the knowledge of which is circulated everywhere by a medium less mutable than literature. We question if there is a savage so benighted who, however ignorant he may be of its import, can not see Sheffield deeply branded on his knife, and it is quite possible at this very moment, while the ink is drying on this manuscript, that with a Sheffield blade of one kind or another some fugitive Bannocks are hiding in the fastnesses of Montana, with a view to anatomic experiments upon the "whites"; that many a Jack Tar, perched in the fore-top, surveying the gray uncertainty of antipodal seas, is shaving his "plug" for a fresh "quid"; that princes are sitting down to dinner; that some convicts are scraping the cement out of the walls of their cells; and that the readers of Harper's Magazine are cutting the leaves of the last number. Scarcely any limitation can be set to the variety of purposes served by Sheffield manufactures. Travellers in Russia and Austria are whirled over Sheffield rails; the twenty-four inch armor plates of England's newest ironclads were rolled in Sheffield; the scissors that myriads of pale seamstresses are plying bear the Sheffield brand; the velocipedes upon which numerous young athletes are flying between the bloom of English lanes have come from under the big Sheffield chimneys; the scythes that are levelling fields of ripe grain in Iowa and Minnesota were ground on Sheffield stones; the rotary saws that are hissing in lumbering settlements among the California sierras were cut by Sheffield hands; the mortars and cannons that bristle along many a fortress, with the pyramids of shot and shell for their consumption beside them, represent an extensive part of Sheffield's industry; the superb repoussé work of silver épergnes that adorn banquet tables was hammered out by Sheffield artisans; and every variety of electro - plate and silver-ware, beautiful in design and enormous in price, is wrought under Sheffield roofs. We have not nearly exhausted a catalogue which includes many other products, such as railway tires, axles, springs, buffers, and engines, all sorts of tools, sewing-machines, fire-irons, and stoves; but we have mentioned enough to indicate where Sheffield is to be found, if its interest is invisible in the places to which a tourist usually looks for a city's attractions.

The labor has few rests, and whenever we are carried into the dark limits of the town from the green hills of Yorkshire by the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire line, the grewsome(sic) spectres of chimneys are still wearing their funereal banners. At night the smoke pulsates with the fervid glow of the furnaces at the base, around which hoarse, complexionless, sweating men are toiling, not for the price of a ransom, but for a brief respite. We see Sheffield in hundreds of blackened little cottages, built in alleys, courts, and thoroughfares; again, in the groups of citizens who with their wives fill the streets and markets in the evenings ; again, in the modern factories built to accommodate from one to five thousand hands; now in the scorching glow of a red-hot armor plate, then in the dust of a "hull" of grinding '' troughs." It has little time for refinement or amusement, and immortality is less of a problem with it than the adjustment of work and wages. The steam-hammer shapes the destinies of the populace as well as the metal upon which its blows fall and ring.

In whichever direction we walk we can not escape the throbbing of labor. Now it is audible in the hissing whirl of a steam-saw that tears its way through a plate of steel as though it were the softest wood; now in the strident friction of a grinding-wheel; now in the measured beat of a hundred hammers; then in the ravenous breathing of a blast-furnace; and once more in the terrible splashings of molten metals. Nor can we wander far away from the presence of labor, which is visible from the pleasure-parks, the cemeteries, and the homes of the citizens. A prodigious exhibit of industries is that which Sheffield presents; one that, if it were taken in the details of all its branches, would fill a volume of description—an absorbingly interesting volume, too, for while every appliance that human ingenuity has devised may be seen in operation, the purely mechanical or economic aspect which engages the engineer is superseded in the estimation of a layman by the picturesque side of the works, the high colors, the un-intermittent activity, and the metamorphoses of some of the workmen, who seem like imps in a region which only needs perpetuity to realize the inferno. Only of a Sunday does the hum of toil cease, the'smoke begin to clear away, and Sheffield for a few hours of respite becomes quiet and visible.

[Guest Gramps]

continued.....

Containing a population of 286,289, mostly artisans, Sheffield lias particular interest to the student of social science. Notwithstanding its great and varied industries, and the abundant opportunities for employment that are afforded, there are in the more crowded parts of the town much destitution and immorality. Employers complain that their people will not work full time, but waste their days at cricket and foot-ball matches, at handicaps and coursing matches; and betting on almost every conceivable event has spread amongst them like an epidemic. Others are ardent fishermen. There are hundreds of fishing clubs in the town, which rent miles of water away in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and elsewhere. Cooperation, improved dwellings, cafes, clubs, and so forth, are doing much to improve the social life of the people.

The more respectable Sheffield artisan is not tentative by nature, and the course of a river is not more submissive to the thralldom of habit than he is. Living in a two-storied cottage well seasoned with the homogeneous blackness, he is usually enabled by ordinary sobriety and industry to maintain himself and his family in a respectable and comfortable position. The cottage has two stories, a kitchen and sitting-room on the first floor, and two or three bedrooms above, such a dwelling being obtainable for about five shillings, or one dollar and twenty-five cents, a week. His wife is apt to be a stout Lancashire or Yorkshire woman, thrifty, industrious,and cleanly, whose good qualities are conspicuous in the whitened door-step, the speckless windows, and the orderly arrangement of the furniture. The neatness of these cottages is very noticeable, and an exception to the rule in most manufacturing towns.

Once a year even the poorest try to take a holiday by the sea-side at Bridlington, Morecanibe Bay, or Scarborough, and evening amusements are provided by several theatres and music halls, though it is to be confessed that the entertainment most patronized during our visit to the town was not of an edifying character. The programme consisted of a farce called An Old Woman in a Fix (the very title of which seemed to strike the audience as being humorous to a side-splitting degree), and a novel exhibition in which the spectators took part. A new silk hat ('' one of Tyler's best") was offered to the "gastronomic prodigy" who could eat one of '' Fiddlestick's celebrated all-hot pies" the quickest ; and the contest provoked an uproar of mirth that must have warmed the managerial heart. But the more sedate citizens resort to the neighboring tap-room for the discussion of affairs of state. Sometimes there are flashes of rough wit, and the stolid Yorkshire mechanic becomes as eager a politician as the most eloquent members of the Bull-dog Coterie, Sixth Ward, New York. '' Wheer's tha off to ?" inquires his opponent, as a disgusted Liberal angrily makes for the door. "I'm goin' to see if th' 'sylum's open," retorts Mr. Gladstone's disciple, delicately insinuating the appropriateness of that institution for the gentleman opposite. '' Well, they'll ta-ake thee in, anyway, I'll bet," loudly asserts the Conservative; and the audience, whether they believe it or not, are vastly tickled by the sally. "What argement canst th' make on it ?" demands another Conservative of a Liberal, referring to a question that he has put. '' A good enough one," is the reply, "but thou'd want to answer it, and it 'ud ta-ake thee a' neet."

A survey of all the trades that are plied in Sheffield is impossible here, and we must confine our observations to the three largest, which are in steel manufactures, electro - plating, and cutlery. The last is first in history, extent, and importance, the value of its exports to the United States being about one million dollars annually. The oldest firm began its business one hundred and fifty years ago, with workshops in the rear of the dwellings of its two partners. It made only the plainest goods, but the steel in them was of the best quality, and it has now become an establishment employing over seventeen hundred mechanics, who produce weekly five thousand dozen table knives and forks, eighteen hundred pairs of carvers, sixteen hundred dozen pocket-knives, fourteen hundred dozen razors, and fifteen hundred dozen scissors. The quantity of finished cutlery exported by this one firm to the United States annually weighs more than twelve tons, and the intimacy engendered between Sheffield and the West by the traffic causes an American to be treated in that city with a little less wonderment than his advent excites in some other English provinces.

The "pioneer establishment," as they would call it on the Pacific coast, was willingly opened for our inspection, and an intelligent artisan was appointed to act as our guide, who first took us into the ivory room, in which twenty-five tons of elephant tusks are made fit for handles every year. It is not a pleasant place by any means; the air is filled with white dust, which is thrown out like a spray from the saws, and the pale brown tusks piled upon the shelves have no reminiscence of the spicy Indies in their odor. The hest quality is African, the second East Indian, and each tusk contains eight different qualities in itself, the yellowish part near the centre being most valuable. Every bit is utilized, and as the sawyer is paid according to the thrift he displays with his materials, he is sometimes so ingenious that not a scrap of waste remains. Besides the ivory, four hundred - weight of stag-horn is used every week for pocket-knives, and of this only the rough brown outside is available. The inside is put in solution for the gelatinous substances which it contains; the extraction is sold for the stiffening of cloth, and the residue is an excellent fertilizer. In the next department, which is in a court-yard, six men, each in a separate alcove, like mediaeval alchemists, are bending over little forges, and here the blades are shaped out of purposeless-looking bars, under the tinkling rain of the hammers; the form is given, without the polish or edge of the finished article, and at this stage of the manufacture the steel is a variable blue or purple, with rings and blots of rusty brown upon it. Every blade is branded with the individual mark of its maker, who is thus held accountable for its quality to his employers, and the same sign shows at the end of the day exactly how much work he has done, the labor in all the branches of cutlery being paid for by the piece. The blade made, it is welded, in the case of a dinner knife, to a piece of iron, which forms the "tang,"or the part that is inserted in the handle, and the shoulder, or the projecting part between the handle and the blade. It is then heated to incandescence, and plunged perpendicularly into cold water, by which a sudden hardening is effected, and the gradual application of further heat afterward " tempers'" it. The next process is grinding. We are led across the court-yard into a dismal workshop, which is so poorly lighted that for a few moments we can only discern the whirring bands on many wheels, an occasional white flash, or a, shower of sparks, and when our sight becomes accustomed to the gloom, a fantastic scene is visible. From the back of the room to the front there are several separate rows of grinding-stones, and these MASSIVE disks are revolving1 with a busy murmur, the power being communicated from the shaf ting near the ceiling by leather bands. The lower part of the stones touches a long vessel containing water, and by a technical peculiarity each stone is called a "trough." Immediately behind every stone there is a solid blo«k of wood with a saddle in it, which forms the seat of the grinder, who, scarcely ever straightening himself, bends to his task, and accompanies the humming of the stone with a song or a whistle. The stone spins steadily and tirelessly; myriads of minute sparks fly out from it mixed with particles of sand that make the apartment misty, and the grinder gently draws the blade to and fro across it until the steel loses the dark color the forge gave it, and becomes lustrously white under the friction. Now and then he lifts the blade from the stone, and quickly runs his eye along its lambent surface, or touches the edge with his finger—an experiment repeated several times before he transfers it into other hands. After it has been applied to the rough sandstone, it is ground upon a wheel of hard blue-stone, next upon an emery wheel, and finally upon a wheel of what our amiable guide very deliberately called "rhinoc'us" hide, the different kinds of friction leaving it sharp and brilliant.

The grinders work under an unusual system: the troughs and the tools belong to them, having been a heritage through an unknown number of generations, and they pay the employers seven shillings a week for the power supplied to each trough. Not every grinder is a proprietor, however. Some have no direct relations with the master-cutlers, being hired by their fellows, who adjust and settle their wages, and these agents are paid so much a dozen for the blades ground. The custom is old and incongruous; it has no apparent advantages to either party; but a Sheffield grinder inflexibly adheres to established usage, and resists every innovation. He suffers severely from a painful disease caused by the entrance of steel and stone dust into the lungs, and when fans were applied to create draughts that would suck the dust away, he objected to them because they would lengthen the average life of the trade, and lead to a surplus of labor! The grounds upon which a grinder stands have not often a more rational foundation. A very notable characteristic of his class, and one that has sprung in recent years from the dissemination of cheap literature arid the facilities for travel and observation, is an independence of attitude and utterance which, however repugnant it may be to those followers of Mr. Ruskin whose watch-word is "Obey," contrasts refreshingly with the obsequiousness of former days.

Passing from the dark interior of the grinding-room, where each wheel has a sound of its own, one spluttering, another whirring, and another singing, we are led up and down stairways, along close corridors, and through interminable workrooms, where men, women, and children are silently putting the various parts of the knives together; and the division of labor is so complete that one knife is handled, or "taken up," to use the local expression, about seventy times, by different artisans, from the moment the blade is forged until the instrument is finished and smoothly wrapped up for market. At one long bench we find a party of men cutting files on the blades of pocket-knives with such dexterity that the threads, each less than the hundredth part of an inch in thickness, and exactly equidistant, are as true as if they were graven with the aid of a rule and a magnifying-glass, while the only implements used in the work are a chisel and a mallet, the mechanic being guided by his eye and an almost marvellous sensitiveness and accuracy of touch. The chisel is put upon the blade near the tip, and struck with the mallet, leaving the initial thread, which is followed by others until the flat steel becomes a perfect file. The men employed in this are fairly considered skilled workmen, but their earnings are small, and do not reach two pounds, or ten dollars, a week, under the most favorable circumstances. At another bench a row of men are putting together the parts of ivory, pearl, and buck-horn clasps, riveting them and jointing them with a like quickness and sureness of touch that would not be suspected from the clumsiness of their fingers; and in a separate room more wheels are revolving, each operated by a man or a boy, who is putting the finishing polish on the blades. The custom previously mentioned of making some mark on a knife by which each of the various processes may be traced to the artisan who has done the work, and a check put upon carelessness or incapacity, is continued through all the branches, and when a knife passes into the packing-room or storehouse it bears a succinct history of itself from its shaping at the forge to its chastening on the polishing-wheel.

The hours are long—from seven in the morning until noon, when there is an intermission for a frugal dinner, and from one o'clock until six. We grow pitiful in contemplating their tedium. All the windows show an unvarying prospect of roofs and smoking chimneys, without a bit of blue sky or any silver lining to the clouds —a contraction of the horizon, a despondence of color, unspeakably monotonous. Conversation is not allowed, and whatever resource the work-people find outside the abstraction of their toil must be in the imagination. Here and there the benches have been decorated by scraps from illustrated newspapers, or the very chromatic portrait of some houri that has adorned a baking-powder box. An ascetic-looking old gentleman has a familiar hymn pasted on the wall before him, and the youth next to him, whose face indicates much pent-up levity, has a ballad under his eye, the easy rhyme having an inexhaustible fascination for him. The intelligence of some, their comfortableness of dress and well-taken-care-of appearance, are very noticeable, and yet more so is the interest evinced in politics by the men, who, between their bites at dinner, pore over the "leaders" of the morning papers with great eagerness.

From the cutlers—and, by-the-way, let us say that, technically, the cutler is the man who puts the knife together, to the exclusion from the name of grinders and others—from the cutlers, whose buildings loom up on an entire block, we traverse several little alleys and broad thoroughfares, with smoke-discolored houses and shops bordering them, until we stand before a MASSIVE gateway, with a tremendous knocker not less than five pounds in weight affixed to it, and in response to a laborious rat-tat and a word of explanation, we are admitted into a laboratory where Vulcan and Titan are partners, and the Cyclops, disembodied, re-appear in machines of modern devising; where feats of strength are performed every minute that make play of those recorded in the classic fables; where Sheffield is again seen in five thousand mechanics, clothed in fustian, begrimed, and translated, to all appearances, from decent humanity to a hybrid condition between that of gnomes and that of demons. Within these noisy precincts the materials of the toil are steel and iron, and the productions are armor plates, tools, and railway metals.

The space covered by the workshops is more than fourteen acres, subdivided by long avenues, and all over this vast area, which is piteously black and execrably dusty, the labor assumes heroic proportions, which elevate it and fill an observer with the almost obsolete sense of amazement—even an observer of nineteenth-century ubiquitousness, who has been everywhere, seen everything, and cares nothing about ordinary mechanical processes. No wild vision of the supernatural, no Crystal Palace exhibition of pyrotechnics, no brilliant achievement of scenic art, could approach in weirdness, picturesqueness, and startling quality of effect the simple business of making Bessemer steel, which, is a staple and everyday industry.

Our final exploration is through the work-rooms of an electro-plate factory— another scene, another act, and a new set of characters in Sheffield life. We watch the inferior metals in pale green and yellow baths assuming the whiteness of silver; we see shapeless pieces of metal transformed into beautiful dishes embossed with fruits, flowers, and other artistic designs, under the instantaneous pressure of an insensate machine; we are charmed by the exquisite skill of the repoussé workman, under whose hammer Nature is imitated in her loveliest forms.

Though Sheffield is itself so sombre, it is environed by some of the fairest scenery in England. Chatsworth and Beauchief Abbey are in its vicinity. Proceeding in any direction, the traveller is sure to find within a few miles of the town a picturesque charm in an embowered rivulet, a quaint old church, an ancient manor-house covered with ivy, a cool expanse of woodland, or a sweep of velvety pasturage.

HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE Vol. LXIX.—No. 409.—5

[RichardB]

The picture "A bit of Sheffield on the Hill" has me completely lost; other than that a very interesting read. Thanks for finding and posting Gramps.

[Guest Gramps]

The picture "A bit of Sheffield on the Hill" has me completely lost; other than that a very interesting read. Thanks for finding and posting Gramps.

I suppose it could be a view of St. John's on Park Hill - perhaps from the old Manor Yard, - the flying buttresses on the steeple just a bit of artistic licence. It's quite surreal...almost spooky.