INDUSTRIES 



passing it through successive currents of air. 1 

 This last function had originally been performed 

 by a series of different fans, but in 1859 an 

 arrangement was patented by Mr. R. Garrett, 

 in conjunction with his foreman, Mr. Kerridge, 

 by which a single fan placed on the same spindle 

 as the threshing drum does all the work. 



The making of steam-threshing machines 

 necessarily involved the construction of steam- 

 engines, and the latter department of the Leiston 

 Works has developed so extensively as to over- 

 shadow the other. Mr. Richard Garrett devoted 

 special attention to the improvement of the 

 portable engine, 'and no man then living,' says 

 a competent authority, ' had a more thorough 

 knowledge of it.' Semi-portable and stationary 

 engines, traction engines, and steam road-rollers, 

 all with either single or compound cylinders, are 

 made in great numbers, and these, along with 

 steam boilers of all types, constitute a large pro- 

 portion of the output of the Leiston Works, 

 which now cover over 20 acres, and are 

 equipped with hydraulic, pneumatic, and electri- 

 cal power transmission. Messrs. Garrett export 

 their machinery, engines, and boilers very largely 

 to all parts of the world, and have been awarded 

 gold medals at more than a dozen international 

 exhibitions. The firm has become a limited 

 company, but the management is still in the hands 

 of direct descendants of the Richard Garrett whose 

 epitaph in Leiston churchyard of the date of 

 1839 declares him to have been ' the elder of the 

 fourth generation of his name and sixty-two years 

 a respectable inhabitant of this parish.' 



Messrs. Garrett have maintained the best rela- 

 tions with their workpeople and have done a great 

 •deal to improve their conditions of life. At- 

 tached to the Leiston Works there is a large hall, a 

 free library, reading and recreation rooms, and a 

 recreation ground. The firm has built several 

 hundred excellent artisans' houses with gardens 

 in front and back, and as perhaps an even larger 

 number have been built by the workmen them- 



selves, the town may be said to be the creation 

 of the works. 2 



The long-continued prosperity of the leading 

 Suffolk engineering firms is due to the fact 

 that the inventive ability and the faculty for 

 industrial organization shown by the founders 

 have been inherited by one or more in each of 

 three or four generations of descendants. 



The Smyths of Peasenhall, whose early achieve- 

 ments in connexion with the Suffolk drill have 

 already been referred to, are another family 

 whose industrial record covers three or four 

 generations, and here again a limited company 

 (Messrs. Jas. Smyth & Sons, Ltd.) has been 

 founded on the basis of the old firm. Messrs. 

 Whitmore & Binyon, Ltd., of Wickham Market, 

 represents the culmination of an equally long 

 development of the same kind. The Wickham 

 Market Iron Works were founded by the grand- 

 father of the present Mr. Whitmore in 1780, 

 and attained great prosperity under his father, 

 who was born in 1801, and died in 1872. 

 The firm, which became Whitmore & Binyon 

 in 1868, specialized very early in milling and 

 mining machinery, and have fitted up some of 

 the largest mills in the kingdom. They like- 

 wise export a large amount of machinery for 

 milling rice as well as corn. 3 Messrs. E. R. & F. 

 Turner, Ltd., of St. Peter's Works, Ipswich, 

 who also manufacture milling machinery, as well 

 as engines, boilers and gold-mining plant, and 

 Messrs. Page & Girling of Melton, who are the 

 patentees of self-righting feeding and drinking 

 pans for cattle, are both the representatives of 

 firms that were flourishing in the middle of the 

 last century. 



The works of Messrs. Robert Boby, Ltd., which 

 have been established at Bury for more than half a 

 century, have specialized in contrivances for the 

 sampling and handling of grain, and now supply 

 the large maltsters of the county with the ma- 

 chinery which has revolutionized that important 

 industry. 



FERTILIZERS 



In this distinctly modern industry Suffolk 

 •may claim a peculiar interest. Suffolk men 

 were amongst the pioneers, not only of the 

 •scientific discovery on which it was based, but 

 also of the practical application of scientific re- 

 sults to the improvement of agriculture ; whilst 

 the soil of the county itself contributed in no 

 small degree to the inauguration of the industry. 

 In the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, 

 under the combined influence of chemical and 

 geological research, there began to be opened 

 up new and extensive sources of those nitrogenous 



1 Engineer, 8 Aug. 

 126 March, 1888. 



1884., p. 109; Agric. Gaz. 



and phosphatic elements which increase or 

 restore the fertility of a weak or exhausted soil. 

 The guano of Peru, which was introduced into 

 England in 1839, held for many years the first 

 place as an artificial manure. This could, if 

 reduced to a powder, be applied directly to the 

 soil. About this time the attention of English 

 experimentalists was caught by the suggestion of 

 Liebig, in his work on the Organic Chemistry of 

 Agriculture, that super-phosphate of lime might 

 be prepared from bones or other phosphatic 

 deposits. The treatment for this purpose of 



285 



' Ex inf. Messrs. R. Garrett & Sons, Ltd. 



' V. B. Redstone, Byegone If 'ickbam Market, pp. 54-6. 



