363 



CUTLERY. 



CUTTING. 



306 



years of age. Three causes have been assigned for this recklessness 

 the troublesome confinement of the mouth-guard ; the cost of the ven- 

 tilating fan; and the fear lest wages stiould lessen if the grinder's 

 employment became more healthy ! 



Handles, though not cutlery, form an important branch of Sheffield 

 industry. Indeed not merely one, but many branches ; for there are 

 separate workers in ivory, bone, horn, mother of pearl, and other 

 substances, so largely used for handles. Those handles which have a 

 hole for receiving the tang of a knife or fork are known in Sheffield 

 Language as hafts ; while those which consist of two pieces adjusted to 

 their places by rivets, as in the case of clasp-knives, are called icales. 

 The various kinds of hafts and scales are made by sawing, planing, 

 filing, piercing, pressing, &c., according to the material employed. 



Various other processes connected directly or indirectly with the 

 cutlery trade will be found noticed under FILE ; SAW ; STEEL. 



Certain peculiarities in the Sheffield cutlery operations deserve 

 notice. Two special kinds of buildings in that town are technically 

 known by the short names of tilts and wheels. A tilt is a building 

 containing all the mechanism necessary for working enormous tilt- 

 hammers. All the steel for the best cutlery is tilted before being 

 used ; it is heated to a certain temperature, and then beaten for 

 a considerable time all over its surface, to close up the pores, and 

 render the metal as dense and close as possible. At many of the tilts, 

 or tilt-works, the operations are entirely confined to this tilting or 

 hammering of steel, such tilters working for a large number of cutlers 

 and steel manufacturers. The wheels are places in which nothing is 

 done but grinding cutlery and edge-tools upon grindstones or wheels. 

 Formerly these grindstones were worked by water-wheels, turned by 

 some of the rivers which flow through the valleys around Sheffield ; 

 and hence the origin of the name wheel, as given to these places ; 

 but now large buildings have been constructed, supplied with steam- 

 power ; and here the owner either grinds cutlery and edge tools for 

 other persons, or lets out workshops and steam-power to workmen 

 at a definite rental. Such a system could not be profitably conducted, 

 except in a town where the manufacture is carried on very exten- 

 sively. The fork-grinders, already adverted to as victims of an obsti- 

 nate adherence to unhealthy processes, form a sort of community by 

 themselves ; they work mostly in villages a short distance from 

 Sheffield, rather than in the town itself. The division of labour is 

 remarkable at Sheffield. There is nothing analogous to the factory 

 KyxU'in of the cotton manufacture ; no establishment where a rough 

 piece of iron enters at one door, and comes out finished cutlery at 

 another. A Sheffield manufacturer, generally speaking, has no large 

 manufacturing establishments ; he buys his steel of one firm, has it 

 forged by another, ground by another, and finished by another ; or he 

 will purchase ready-made goods from manufacturers of less capital ; or 

 he will advance money to workmen to purchase material, and agree to 

 give a certain price for the finished articles. It is a mode of con- 

 ducting business in some degree intermediate between those of the 

 manufacturer and the merchant, as those designations are usually under- 

 stood. There are a few large firms, however, which have establish- 

 ments which might be called cutlery factories. 



During the last few years, the cutlers of Sheffield have been warmly 

 interested in the question, whether or not the excellence of their 

 manufactures is maintaining its rank, relatively to those of the con- 

 tinent. It is known that the French cutlers were greatly struck by 

 the Sheffield goods displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The 

 quality of the best kinds was better than they could produce. They 

 did not very readily acknowledge the fact at the time ; but they 

 determined to profit from the lesson they received, by introducing 

 sundry improvements. When the Paris Exposition was held in 1855, 

 Mr. Moulton, of Sheffield, acted as a member of the jury on that 

 class of exhibited goods which included cutlery. Not as a juror, but 

 in his private capacity, he wrote to Mr. Wilson Overend, chairman 

 of the committee of Sheffield exhibitors, a letter which excited vexa- 

 tion if not surprise among his townsmen, especially when that letter 

 got into the French as well as the English newspapers. He said : " It 

 has been my opinion for some time, that the French were superior to 

 us in point of design for their ornamental work. This I find to be 

 the case in the better kinds of cutlery. In this respect they are supe- 

 rior even to what I expected. And not only so ; but the workman- 

 ship, or what may be called putting-together, is I consider superior to 

 our best class of manufactured goods. If they are deficient at all, I 

 think it is in their grinding, and I think their table-knives too thick. 

 The Prussians are improving very fast, both in tools and cutlery, and 

 I am informed export to a considerable extent. Many of their goods 

 exhibited were near approaches to Sheffield. I came to the conclusion, 

 then (which is not a new one with me), that Sheffield cutlery, instead of 

 ving as the trade advances in other ways, has been on the decline. 

 While foreigners have been progressing, we have been either stationary 

 or guing backwards. There are exceptions of course." The Sheffield 

 cutlers, smarting under this judgment passed by their townsman, met, 

 and passed a formal resolution as a trade-guild, that the opinion of Mr. 

 Moulton was incorrect : in other words, that Sheffield had not fallen 

 l> -liinil prance in the excellence of its cutlery. Some of them insisted 

 that, as their townsman WM an edge-tool maker, he ought not to have 

 pronounced authoritatively concerning cutlery, which is a distinct 

 branch of trait-. Those who, at that time and afterwards, denied that 



French cutlery had risen to an equality with English, admitted that 

 there is more grace and delicacy in the handles and the general con- 

 formation. Whatever may be the case in reference to high-class goods, 

 it is certain that Sheffield has learned how to produce common goods 

 at wonderfully low prices. This is effected chiefly by substituting 

 casting and cutting-out for forging. In the processes of making the 

 best cutlery, described in the former part of this article, cast-steel 

 is used for the articles which are to bring the highest price. But this 

 does not imply that the articles themselves are cast ; the steel is cast 

 into ingots, which are hammered and refined up to a high degree 

 of excellence; and pieces of this steel are cut off, to make the 

 articles of cutlery by forging. The cheap goods, however, are really 

 cast ; a mould is made, containing perhaps a dozen or twenty knife, 

 or razor, or scissor patterns; and into this mould molten metal is 

 run. The metal may be entirely iron, or principally iron with a 

 little steel added, and is known in the trade as run steel. A little 

 filing, grinding, and polishing, finishes the article, with scarcely any 

 forging. Penknife-blades are often made by stamping a number of 

 small oblong pieces out of a sheet of steel, and forging each separate 

 piece into a blade. A discussion took place at the Society of Arts, on 

 one of the evenings of meeting in 1856, concerning the light in which 

 these goods ought to be regarded. Some of the Sheffield cutlers, then 

 present, regretted that the cheap system had ever come amongst them. 

 It appears that the vine-dressers of France required common and 

 inexpensive scissors for clipping their grapes, seeing that the juice of 

 the fruit attacked the metal, and spoiled good scissors as quickly as 

 bad. Sheffield met the demand, and supplied such scissors at a 

 wonderfully low price. Thereupon, some of the manufacturers deter- 

 mined to make such goods for the general market, to beat out all com- 

 petitors by the force of cheapness; and then the markets of most 

 countries became stocked with cutlery, which like the razors cele- 

 brated by Goldsmith were made to sell, not to cut. Mr. Alderman 

 Mechi, accustomed as he is to cutlery of a high class, nevertheless 

 would not admit that the production of cheap goods is industrially a 

 commercial wrong it becomes a moral wrong when such things are 

 sold under false names, appearing to be what they are not. He adduced 

 instances of table-knives and forks sold at Is. Idil. per dozen pairs, 

 razors at la. 6d. per dozen, and scissors at 2Jrf. per dozen all of which 

 would render a little service ; the manufacturing of such, he contended, 

 was not to be disapproved, unless under one or other of these two 

 circumstances either that the buye sold the articles again at a much 

 higher price, by some pretext which would for a time veil the in- 

 feriority of their quality ; or that the manufacturer recklessly deprived 

 himself of profit, or his workmen of due wages. Sheffield cutlers are, 

 it is admitted, compelled to look sharply after each other, and after 

 their continental rivals. The best firms have trade-marks, each 

 firm stamping a particular mark on all the articles of cutlery made ; 

 but there are some dishonest enough to appropriate those marks, and 

 apply them to cutlery which is thereafter sent into the market under 

 false pretences. Some of the Sheffield mark-makers have even allowed 

 themselves to be employed by German houses to imitate the trade- 

 marks of eminent Sheffield cutlers no-wise in ignorance of the pur- 

 pose to which the imitative stamps were to be applied. 



Of the total amount of the cutlery trade in this country, nothing 

 definite can be stated. In the export trade, cutlery is included with 

 hardware in the Board of Trade returns, which do not afford means 

 for separating the items. In the years 1856-7-8, the quantities and 

 values thus exported averaged about 715,000 cwts. annually, worth 

 3,813,100*. 



Our best customer for these products is America. 



CUTTING AND STABBING. [MAIM.] 



CUTTING, in gardening, is a portion of a plant from which a new 

 individual is propagated when placed in the earth. Everybody knows 

 that a stick of willow stuck into the ground will put forth roots, and 

 become a new plant ; such an instance is a rude exemplification of the 

 manner of multiplying plants by cuttings. In the empirical rules to 

 be observed in this operation, the reader had better consult some book 

 on gardening ; we shall confine our observations to the theory of the 

 operation. 



Every bud which a plant contains is a distinct seat of life, capable, 

 under fitting circumstances, of growing, flowering, fruiting, seeding, 

 independently of all other buds, and able, if separated from the mother 

 plant, to form a new individual. The buds of a vine, and of a potato, 

 are actually so employed under the name of e//ea ; a cutting is merely 

 a small collection of eyes adhering to a mass of woody matter. 



A cutting, when prepared for planting, is cut off close to a bud at 

 the bottom, and down to another at the upper end ; it is then placed 

 in earth quite up to its topmost bud, the remainder being buried. 

 The object of this is threefold : firstly, to expose only one bud to the 

 stimulus of light, so that when the cutting begins to grow the leaves 

 may not, from their number, require more food than the woody system 

 can supply ; secondly, to keep back the other eyes by the pressure of 

 the earth upon them ; .and thirdly, to expose as great a surface of the 

 cutting as possible to the influence of the moist earth and darkness, 

 by means of which the production of roote will be facilitated. 



In delicate operations, where cuttings are difficult to strike, several 

 additional practices are had recourse to. The cuttings are covered 

 with a bell glass, in order to keep the air that surrounds them 



