MANUFACTURE OF HORSE-SHOES. 491 
same individuals” — the farrier, for instance, in shoeing horses. 
“ This state of things though, on the whole, highly favorable 
to the influence of taste on works of industry, is incompatible 
with low prices, or (which is the same thing) with extensive 
production. In particular, the difficulty and tediousness of 
the manipulation of materials so unyielding as metallic sub- 
stances, while they place a limit on production as it respects 
quantity, have a tendency to confine the character of the 
things produced to the two extremes of rudeness and elabora- 
tion. So long as the cheapness of an article was attained, 
not by increasing the mechanical facilities for its production, 
but by diminishing the amount of hand-labour bestowed 
upon it, metal working, so far as the mass of the people was 
concerned, could never extend itself beyond the few indis- 
pensable requisites of every day life ; which, to be cheap 
enough, must be of the rudest description — such is the fact;” 
but why a shoe of the rudest description should have been 
selected for trial in the army, I am at a loss to imagine, 
knowing that farriers of troops, at home, have ample time 
even for elaboration, without additional cost, as in private 
forges. “ Thus, every single production, on which labour 
beyond a certain indispensable amount was bestowed, partook 
more or less of the character of a specific work of art, identi- 
fied with the producer as an artist, and reproducible only by 
a reiteration of the original process by the same or equally 
competent hands.” 
In this very predicament is the manufacture of horse-shoes 
by manual labour. “It is, at least, a fact, that while the 
application of ornament to many hardware manufactures has 
gradually become more extensive, and of a higher order, the 
character of the individuals employed in the workshops with 
respect to artistic intelligence, has not been proportionally 
ele /ated. They for the most part retain the ideas belonging 
to the primary, mechanical, and general unartistic condition 
of manufactures. 5 ’ Unfortunately, we but too often see the 
truth of these observations, not only in the manufacture of 
horse-shoes in ordinary use, but also in the common practice 
of the application to horse’s feet. In the c Veterinarian 5 
for September, 1849, p. 500, the subject of artistic and 
unartistic practice is ably remarked on by Mr. A. Cherry, 
and in the same Journal for March, 1853, we read that the 
shoe in common use, the unartistic shoe, by Mr. A. Cherry 
“ condemned , and very properly so” for its rudeness, is ordered 
to have three months 5 trial. 
The military authorities have begun at what the Report of 
the Juries denominate as the primary, mechanical, and gene- 
