792 TEANSACTIONS OP SECTION V, 



4. Industrial Evolution in the Cnilery Industry, 

 By G. I. H. Lloyd, ALA. 



The transition from handicraft to factory organisation of industry may be con- 

 veniently traced in the development of the cutlery trades, especially in England and 

 Germany, where the trades have been mainly localised in a single town in each case, 

 and where a definite international parallelism can be established. The introduction 

 of steam-power, which is usually regarded as the turning point between the old and 

 tbe new types of industrial organisation, had no special significance where manual 

 skill retained its predominance. Just as there were factories before the steam- 

 engine, so there are to-day numbers of occupations in which the domestic producer 

 is found in possession of his special trade or process. A generation ago the cutlery 

 trades were for the most part semi-domestic, being principally carried on by 

 forgers, cutlers, and grinders, who rented their own work-places and worked on 

 their own tools, thus retaining to some extent the iodependenceand the capitalistic 

 responsibilities of the old guild craftsman, and turning out goods in the produc- 

 tion of which machinery played an insignificant part. The gradual introduction 

 of mechanical methods as supplementary to, or as substitutes for, the almost bare- 

 handed skill of the old system is gradually producing the true factory type of 

 organisation. In fact, the factory system, though long retarded, is now making 

 rather rapid progress, involving a steady transition from independent master 

 workman to wage-worker, and the increasing prominence of the capitalist em- 

 ployer. The artisan has in the past clung tenaciously to his independence, but 

 the semi-capitalistic functions which fall on him prove a severe burden in times 

 of indifferent or declining t'rade, and he is now generally not unwilling to resign 

 them. The change in the status of the worker affects the power and influence 

 of the labour unions. These made their appearance in Sheffield early in the 

 eighteenth century, marking the practical exclusion of the journeymen from their 

 corporate rights as members of the Cutlers' Oomp.any. During the first half of 

 last century they were powerfully organised, and became in some cases despotic 

 and even ruthless in enforcing their regulations on recalcitrant masters and men, 

 and earned an unenviable reputation. Though still organised on sectional lines, 

 they are beginning to look to federation and consolidation as necessary to main- 

 tain and increase their influence. The corresponding unions in Germany are 

 more effectively organised, the established price-lists are enforced, and elaborate 

 machinery for conciliation has resulted from their activity. Both in Sheffield and 

 in Solingen machinery has taken a firm hold of the forging process and of the 

 work of preparing the separate portions of a knife-handle. Even the cutler who 

 puts the pieces together and builds up a complete article is becoming more and 

 more dependent on mechauical aids, and finds his work increasingly subdivided. 

 Grinding remains for the most part the stronghold of simple hand industry, for, 

 though automatic grinding has been partially applied to grinding files and to pre- 

 paratory work on razors and knives, no device for the successful production of an 

 edge has yet appeared. 



The basis of the prevailing wage rates is still the time-honoured piecework 

 price-lists ; but though these are not yet discarded, neither are they strictly 

 observed, but in most cases are subject to varying discounts. In the newer forms 

 of the industry there is a steady increase of time wages, but of course this cannot 

 apply to the considerable body of outworkers, whether grinders, file-cutters, or 

 cutlers. Meanwhile the ' little master,' employing a small team of men in a single 

 occupation, or giving out work in turn to those undertaking the various pro- 

 cesses, and then himself trading his wares away, has not disappeared, but is 

 numerically of less importance than formerly. In Germany the 'little master ' is 

 also found, but the tendency to substitute a time wage ibr piecework rates is 

 being in the main successfully counteracted by the solid opposition of the labour 

 unions and also by the diffusion of electrical energy among the home workers, by 

 which means the necessity of concentrating in factories in order to obtain the 

 benefit of modem mechapical devices is obviated. In general the tendepcy is for 



