Industrial Biography

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It will readily be imagined that anything like civilization, as at
present understood, must have been next to impossible under such
circumstances. "Miserable indeed," says Carlyle, "was the condition
of the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of
hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round
them like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick
natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living
on wild fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonians, squatted himself in
morasses, lurking for his bestial or human prey; without implements,
without arms, save the ball of heavy flint, to which, that his sole
possession and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long cord
of plaited thongs; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with
deadly, unerring skill."

The injunction given to man to "replenish the earth and subdue it"
could not possibly be fulfilled with implements of stone. To fell a
tree with a flint hatchet would occupy the labour of a month, and to
clear a small patch of ground for purposes of culture would require
the combined efforts of a tribe. For the same reason, dwellings could
not be erected; and without dwellings domestic tranquillity,
security, culture, and refinement, especially in a rude climate, were
all but impossible. Mr. Emerson well observes, that "the effect of a
house is immense on human tranquillity, power, and refinement. A man
in a cave or a camp--a nomad--dies with no more estate than the wolf
or the horse leaves. But so simple a labour as a house being
achieved, his chief enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the
teeth of wild animals, from frost, sunstroke, and weather; and fine
faculties begin to yield their fine harvest. Inventions and arts are
born, manners, and social beauty and delight." But to build a house
which should serve for shelter, for safety, and for comfort--in a
word, as a home for the family, which is the nucleus of
society--better tools than those of stone were absolutely
indispensable.

Hence most of the early European tribes were nomadic: first hunters,
wandering about from place to place like the American Indians, after
the game; then shepherds, following the herds of animals which they
had learnt to tame, from one grazing-ground to another, living upon
their milk and flesh, and clothing themselves in their skins held
together by leathern thongs. It was only when implements of metal had
been invented that it was possible to practise the art of agriculture
with any considerable success. Then tribes would cease from their
wanderings, and begin to form settlements, homesteads, villages, and
towns. An old Scandinavian legend thus curiously illustrates this
last period: -- There was a giantess whose daughter one day saw a
husbandman ploughing in the field. She ran and picked him up with her
finger and thumb, put him and his plough and oxen into her apron, and
carried them to her mother, saying, "Mother, what sort of beetle is
this that I have found wriggling in the sand? " But the mother said,
"Put it away, my child; we must begone out of this land, for these
people will dwell in it."

M. Worsaae of Copenhagen, who has been followed by other antiquaries,
has even gone so far as to divide the natural history of civilization
into three epochs, according to the character of the tools used in
each. The first was the Stone period, in which the implements chiefly
used were sticks, bones, stones, and flints. The next was the Bronze
period, distinguished by the introduction and general use of a metal
composed of copper and tin, requiring a comparatively low degree of
temperature to smelt it, and render it capable of being fashioned
into weapons, tools, and implements; to make which, however,
indicated a great advance in experience, sagacity, and skill in the
manipulation of metals. With tools of bronze, to which considerable
hardness could be given, trees were felled, stones hewn, houses and
ships built, and agriculture practised with comparative facility.
Last of all came the Iron period, when the art of smelting and
working that most difficult but widely diffused of the minerals was
discovered; from which point the progress made in all the arts of
life has been of the most remarkable character.

Although Mr. Wright rejects this classification as empirical, because
the periods are not capable of being clearly defined, and all the
three kinds of implements are found to have been in use at or about
the same time,*
[footnote...
THOMAS WRIGHT, F.S.A., The Celt, The Roman, and The Saxon,
ed. 1861.
...]
there is, nevertheless, reason to believe that it is, on the whole,
well founded. It is doubtless true that implements of stone continued
in use long after those of bronze and iron had been invented, arising
most probably from the dearness and scarcity of articles of metal;
but when the art of smelting and working in iron and steel had
sufficiently advanced, the use of stone, and afterwards of bronze
tools and weapons, altogether ceased.

The views of M. Worsaae, and the other Continental antiquarians who
follow his classification, have indeed received remarkable
confirmation of late years, by the discoveries which have been made
in the beds of most of the Swiss lakes.*
[footnote...
Referred to at length in the Antiquity of Man, by Sir C. Lyell, who
adopts M. Worsaae's classification.
...]
It appears that a subsidence took place in the waters of the Lake of
Zurich in the year 1854, laying bare considerable portions of its
bed. The adjoining proprietors proceeded to enclose the new land, and
began by erecting permanent dykes to prevent the return of the
waters. While carrying on the works, several rows of stakes were
exposed; and on digging down, the labourers turned up a number of
pieces of charred wood, stones blackened by fire, utensils, bones,
and other articles, showing that at some remote period, a number of
human beings had lived over the spot, in dwellings supported by
stakes driven into the bed of the lake.

The discovery having attracted attention, explorations were made at
other places, and it was shortly found that there was scarcely a lake
in Switzerland which did not yield similar evidence of the existence
of an ancient Lacustrine or Lake-dwelling population. Numbers of
their tools and implements were brought to light--stone axes and
saws, flint arrowheads, bone needles, and such like--mixed with the
bones of wild animals slain in the chase; pieces of old boats,
portions of twisted branches, bark, and rough planking, of which
their dwellings had been formed, the latter still bearing the marks
of the rude tools by which they had been laboriously cut. In the most
ancient, or lowest series of deposits, no traces of metal, either of
bronze or iron, were discovered; and it is most probable that these
lake-dwellers lived in as primitive a state as the South Sea
islanders discovered by Captain Cook, and that the huts over the
water in which they lived resembled those found in Papua and Borneo,
and the islands of the Salomon group, to this day.

These aboriginal Swiss lake-dwellers seem to have been succeeded by a
race of men using tools, implements, and ornaments of bronze. In some
places the remains of this bronze period directly overlay those of the
stone period, showing the latter to have been the most ancient; but in
others, the village sites are altogether distinct. The articles with
which the metal implements are intermixed, show that considerable
progress had been made in the useful arts. The potter's wheel had been
introduced. Agriculture had begun, and wild animals had given place to
tame ones. The abundance of bronze also shows that commerce must have
existed to a certain extent; for tin, which enters into its
composition, is a comparatively rare metal, and must necessarily have
been imported from other European countries.

The Swiss antiquarians are of opinion that the men of bronze suddenly
invaded and extirpated the men of flint; and that at some still later
period, another stronger and more skilful race, supposed to have been
Celts from Gaul, came armed with iron weapons, to whom the men of
bronze succumbed, or with whom, more probably, they gradually
intermingled. When iron, or rather steel, came into use, its
superiority in affording a cutting edge was so decisive that it seems
to have supplanted bronze almost at once;*
[footnote...
Mr. Mushet, however, observes that "the general use of hardened
copper by the ancients for edge-tools and warlike instruments, does
not preclude the supposition that iron was then comparatively
plentiful, though it is probable that it was confined to the ruder
arts of life. A knowledge of the mixture of copper, tin, and zinc,
seems to have been among the first discoveries of the metallurgist.
Instruments fabricated from these alloys, recommended by the use of
ages, the perfection of the art, the splendour and polish of their
surfaces, not easily injured by time and weather, would not soon be
superseded by the invention of simple iron, inferior in edge and
polish, at all times easily injured by rust, and in the early stages
of its manufacture converted with difficulty into forms that required
proportion or elegance."--(Papers on Iron and Steel, 365-6.) By some
secret method that has been lost, perhaps because no longer needed
since the invention of steel, the ancients manufactured bronze tools
capable of taking a fine edge. in our own time, Chantrey the
sculptor, in his reverence for classic metallurgy, had a bronze razor
made with which he martyred himself in shaving; but none were found
so hardy and devoted as to follow his example.
...]
the latter metal continuing to be employed only for the purpose of
making scabbards or sword-handles. Shortly after the commencement of
the iron age, the lake-habitations were abandoned, the only
settlement of this later epoch yet discovered being that at Tene, on
Lake Neufchatel: and it is a remarkable circumstance, showing the
great antiquity of the lake-dwellings, that they are not mentioned by
any of the Roman historians.

That iron should have been one of the last of the metals to come into
general use, is partly accounted for by the circumstance that iron,
though one of the most generally diffused of minerals, never presents
itself in a natural state, except in meteorites; and that to
recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its matrix,
demands the exercise of no small amount of observation and invention.
Persons unacquainted with minerals would be unable to discover the
slightest affinity between the rough ironstone as brought up from the
mine, and the iron or steel of commerce. To unpractised eyes they
would seem to possess no properties in common, and it is only after
subjecting the stone to severe processes of manufacture that usable
metal can be obtained from it. The effectual reduction of the ore
requires an intense heat, maintained by artificial methods, such as
furnaces and blowing apparatus.*
[footnote...
It may be mentioned in passing, that while Zinc is fusible at
3 degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, Silver at 22 degrees, Copper at
27 degrees, and Gold at 32 degrees, Cast Iron is only fusible at
130 degrees. Tin (one of the constituents of the ancient bronze) and
Lead are fusible at much lower degrees than zinc.
...]
But it is principally in combination with other elements that iron is
so valuable when compared with other metals. Thus, when combined with
carbon, in varying proportions, substances are produced, so
different, but each so valuable, that they might almost be regarded
in the light of distinct metals,--such, for example, as cast-iron,
and cast and bar steel; the various qualities of iron enabling it to
be used for purposes so opposite as a steel pen and a railroad, the
needle of a mariner's compass and an Armstrong gun, a surgeon's
lancet and a steam engine, the mainspring of a watch and an iron
ship, a pair of scissors and a Nasmyth hammer, a lady's earrings and
a tubular bridge.

The variety of purposes to which iron is thus capable of being
applied, renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals
combined. Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable
state; and at an erly period in history, it seems to have been much
more plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the
purposes of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an
axe, nor a sword; whilst tempered steel could answer all these
purposes. Hence we find the early warlike nations making the backs of
their swords of gold or copper, and economizing their steel to form
the cutting edge. This is illustrated by many ancient Scandinavian
weapons in the museum at Copenhagen, which indicate the greatest
parsimony in the use of steel at a period when both gold and copper
appear to have been comparatively abundant.

The knowledge of smelting and working in iron, like most other arts,
came from the East. Iron was especially valued for purposes of war,
of which indeed it was regarded as the symbol, being called "Mars" by
the Romans.*
[footnote...
The Romans named the other metals after the gods. Thus Quicksilver
was called Mercury, Lead Saturn, Tin Jupiter, Copper Venus, Silver
Luna, and so on; and our own language has received a colouring from
the Roman nomenclature, which it continues to retain.
...]
We find frequent mention of it in the Bible. One of the earliest
notices of the metal is in connexion with the conquest of Judea by
the Philistines. To complete the subjection of the Israelites, their
conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land, and carried them
away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the country was
insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of forging
weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the land of
Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords
or spears. But the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his
mattock."*
[footnote...
I. Samuel xiii. 19, 20.
...]

At a later period, when Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians, one
of their first acts was to carry the smiths and other craftsmen
captives to Babylon.*
[footnote...
II. Kings xxiv. 16.
...]
Deprived of their armourers, the Jews were rendered comparatively
powerless.

It was the knowledge of the art of iron-forging which laid the
foundation of the once great empire of the Turks. Gibbon relates that
these people were originally the despised slaves of the powerful Khan
of the Geougen. They occupied certain districts of the mountain-ridge
in the centre of Asia, called Imaus, Caf, and Altai, which yielded
iron in large quantities. This metal the Turks were employed by the
Khan to forge for his use in war. A bold leader arose among them, who
persuaded the ironworkers that the arms which they forged for their
masters might in their own hands become the instruments of freedom.
Sallying forth from their mountains, they set up their standard, and
their weapons soon freed them. For centuries after, the Turkish
nation continued to celebrate the event of their liberation by an
annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and
a smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his
nobles.

We can only conjecture how the art of smelting iron was discovered.
Who first applied fire to the ore, and made it plastic; who
discovered fire itself, and its uses in metallurgy? No one can tell.
Tradition says that the metal was discovered through the accidental
burning of a wood in Greece. Mr. Mushet thinks it more probable that
the discovery was made on the conversion of wood into charcoal for
culinary or chamber purposes. "If a mass of ore," he says,
"accidentally dropped into the middle of the burning pile during a
period of neglect, or during the existence of a thorough draught, a
mixed mass, partly earthy and partly metallic, would be obtained,
possessing ductility and extension under pressure. But if the
conjecture is pushed still further, and we suppose that the ore was
not an oxide, but rich in iron, magnetic or spicular, the result
would in all probability be a mass of perfectly malleable iron. I
have seen this fact illustrated in the roasting of a species of
iron-stone, which was united with a considerable mass of bituminous
matter. After a high temperature had been excited in the interior of
the pile, plates of malleable iron of a tough and flexible nature
were formed, and under circumstances where there was no fuel but that
furnished by the ore itself."*
[footnote...
Papers on Iron and Steel, 363-4.
...]

The metal once discovered, many attempts would be made to give to
that which had been the effect of accident a more unerring result.
The smelting of ore in an open heap of wood or charcoal being found
tedious and wasteful, as well as uncertain, would naturally lead to
the invention of a furnace; with the object of keeping the ore
surrounded as much as possible with fuel while the process of
conversion into iron was going forward. The low conical furnaces
employed at this day by some of the tribes of Central and Southern
Africa, are perhaps very much the same in character as those adopted
by the early tribes of all countries where iron was first made. Small
openings at the lower end of the cone to admit the air, and a larger
orifice at the top, would, with charcoal, be sufficient to produce
the requisite degree of heat for the reduction of the ore. To this
the foot-blast was added, as still used in Ceylon and in India; and
afterwards the water-blast, as employed in Spain (where it is known
as the Catalan forge), along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and in
some parts of America.

It is worthy of remark, that the ruder the method employed for the
reduction of the ore, the better the quality of the iron usually is.
Where the art is little advanced, only the most tractable ores are
selected; and as charcoal is the only fuel used, the quality of the
metal is almost invariably excellent. The ore being long exposed to
the charcoal fire, and the quantity made small, the result is a metal
having many of the qualities of steel, capable of being used for
weapons or tools after a comparatively small amount of forging.
Dr. Livingstone speaks of the excellent quality of the iron made by
the African tribes on the Zambesi, who refuse to use ordinary English
iron, which they consider "rotten."*
[footnote...
Dr. Livingstone brought with him to England a piece of the Zambesi
iron, which he sent to a skilled Birmingham blacksmith to test.
The result was, that he pronounced the metal as strongly resembling
Swedish or Russian; both of which kinds are smelted with charcoal.
The African iron was found "highly carbonized," and "when chilled it
possessed the properties of steel."
...]
Du Chaillu also says of the Fans, that, in making their best knives
and arrow-heads, they will not use European or American iron, greatly
preferring their own. The celebrated wootz or steel of India, made in
little cakes of only about two pounds weight, possesses qualities
which no European steel can surpass. Out of this material the famous
Damascus sword-blades were made; and its use for so long a period is
perhaps one of the most striking proofs of the ancient civilization
of India.

The early history of iron in Britain is necessarily very obscure.
When the Romans invaded the country, the metal seems to have been
already known to the tribes along the coast. The natives had probably
smelted it themselves in their rude bloomeries, or obtained it from
the Phoenicians in small quantities in exchange for skins and food,
or tin. We must, however, regard the stories told of the ancient
British chariots armed with swords or scythes as altogether
apocryphal. The existence of iron in sufficient quantity to be used
for such a purpose is incompatible with contemporary facts, and
unsupported by a single vestige remaining to our time. The country
was then mostly forest, and the roads did not as yet exist upon which
chariots could be used; whilst iron was too scarce to be mounted as
scythes upon chariots, when the warriors themselves wanted it for
swords. The orator Cicero, in a letter to Trebatius, then serving
with the army in Britain, sarcastically advised him to capture and
convey one of these vehicles to Italy for exhibition; but we do not
hear that any specimen of the British war-chariot was ever seen in
Rome.

It is only in the tumuli along the coast, or in those of the
Romano-British period, that iron implements are ever found; whilst in
the ancient burying places of the interior of the country they are
altogether wanting. Herodian says of the British pursued by Severus
through the fens and marshes of the east coast, that they wore iron
hoops round their middles and their necks, esteeming them as
ornaments and tokens of riches, in like manner as other barbarous
people then esteemed ornaments of silver and gold. Their only money,
according to Caesar, consisted of pieces of brass or iron, reduced to
a certain standard weight.*
[footnote...
HOLINSHED, i. 517. Iron was also the currency of the Spartans, but it
has been used as such in much more recent times. Adam Smith, in his
Wealth of Nations (Book I. ch. 4, published in 1776), says, "there is
at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am
told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of money, to the baker's
shop or the alehouse."
...]
It is particularly important to observe, says M. Worsaae, that all
the antiquities which have hitherto been found in the large burying
places of the Iron period, in Switzerland, Bavaria, Baden, France,
England, and the North, exhibit traces more or less of Roman
influence.
[footnote...
Primeval Antiquities of Denmark. London, 1849, p. 140.
...]
The Romans themselves used weapons of bronze when they could not
obtain iron in sufficient quantity, and many of the Roman weapons dug
out of the ancient tumuli are of that metal. They possessed the art
of tempering and hardening bronze to such a degree as to enable them
to manufacture swords with it of a pretty good edge; and in those
countries which they penetrated, their bronze implements gradually
supplanted those which had been previously fashioned of stone. Great
quantities of bronze tools have been found in different parts of
England,--sometimes in heaps, as if they had been thrown away in
basketfuls as things of little value. It has been conjectured that
when the Romans came into Britain they found the inhabitants,
especially those to the northward, in very nearly the same state as
Captain Cook and other voyagers found the inhabitants of the South
Sea Islands; that the Britons parted with their food and valuables
for tools of inferior metal made in imitation of their stone ones;
but finding themselves cheated by the Romans, as the natives of
Otaheite have been cheated by Europeans, the Britons relinquished the
bad tools when they became acquainted with articles made of better
metal.*
[footnote...
See Dr. Pearson's paper in the Philosophical Transactions, 1796,
relative to certain ancient arms and utensils found in the river
Witham between Kirkstead and Lincoln.
...]
The Roman colonists were the first makers of iron in Britain on any
large scale. They availed themselves of the mineral riches of the
country wherever they went. Every year brings their extraordinary
industrial activity more clearly to light. They not only occupied the
best sites for trade, intersected the land with a complete system of
well-constructed roads, studded our hills and valleys with towns,
villages, and pleasure-houses, and availed themselves of our
medicinal springs for purposes of baths to an extent not even
exceeded at this day, but they explored our mines and quarries, and
carried on the smelting and manufacture of metals in nearly all parts
of the island. The heaps of mining refuse left by them in the valleys
and along the hill-sides of North Derbyshire are still spoken of by
the country people as "old man," or the "old man's work." Year by
year, from Dartmoor to the Moray Firth, the plough turns up fresh
traces of their indefatigable industry and enterprise, in pigs of
lead, implements of iron and bronze, vessels of pottery, coins, and
sculpture; and it is a remarkable circumstance that in several
districts where the existence of extensive iron beds had not been
dreamt of until within the last twenty years, as in Northamptonshire
and North Yorkshire, the remains of ancient workings recently
discovered show that the Roman colonists were fully acquainted with
them.

But the principal iron mines worked by that people were those which
were most conveniently situated for purposes of exportation, more
especially in the southern counties and on the borders of Wales. The
extensive cinder heaps found in the--Forest of De an--which formed
the readiest resource of the modern iron-smelter when improved
processes enabled him to reduce them--show that their principal iron
manufactures were carried on in that quarter*
[footnote...
"In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts the iron is made at this day
of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown by in the Roman time;
they then having only foot-blasts to melt the ironstone; but now, by
the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of Bellows twenty feet
long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders which could not
be forced from it by the Roman foot-blast. And in the Forest of Dean
and thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there ave great and
infinite quantities of these cinders; some in vast mounts above
ground, some under ground, which will supply the iron works some
hundreds of years; and these cinders ave they which make the prime
and best iron, and with much less charcoal than doth the
ironstone."--A. YARRANTON, England's Improvement by Sea and Land.
London, 1677.
...]
It is indeed matter of history, that about seventeen hundred years
since (A.D. 120) the Romans had forges in the West of England, both
in the Forest of Dean and in South Wales; and that they sent the
metal from thence to Bristol, where it was forged and made into
weapons for the use of the troops. Along the banks of the Wye, the
ground is in many places a continuous bed of iron cinders, in which
numerous remains have been found, furnishing unmistakeable proofs of
the Roman furnaces. At the same time, the iron ores of Sussex were
extensively worked, as appears from the cinder heaps found at
Maresfield and several places in that county, intermixed with Roman
pottery, coins, and other remains. In a bed of scoriae several acres
in extent, at Old Land Farm in Maresfield, the Rev. Mr. Turner found
the remains of Roman pottery so numerous that scarcely a barrow-load
of cinders was removed that did not contain several fragments,
together with coins of the reigns of Nero, Vespasian, and
Dioclesian.*
[footnote...
M. A. LOWER, Contributions to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian,
and Metrical. London, 1854, pp. 88-9.
...]
In the turbulent infancy of nations it is to be expected that we
should hear more of the Smith, or worker in iron, in connexion with
war, than with more peaceful pursuits. Although he was a nail-maker
and a horse-shoer--made axes, chisels, saws, and hammers for the
artificer -- spades and hoes for the farmer--bolts and fastenings for
the lord's castle-gates, and chains for his draw-bridge--it was
principally because of his skill in armour-work that he was esteemed.
He made and mended the weapons used in the chase and in war--the
gavelocs, bills, and battle-axes; he tipped the bowmen's arrows, and
furnished spear-heads for the men-at-arms; but, above all, he forged
the mail-coats and cuirasses of the chiefs, and welded their swords,
on the temper and quality of which, life, honour, and victory in
battle depended. Hence the great estimation in which the smith was
held in the Anglo-Saxon times. His person was protected by a double
penalty. He was treated as an officer of the highest rank, and
awarded the first place in precedency. After him ranked the maker of
mead, and then the physician. In the royal court of Wales he sat in
the great hall with the king and queen, next to the domestic
chaplain; and even at that early day there seems to have been a hot
spark in the smith's throat which needed much quenching; for he was
"entitled to a draught of every kind of liquor that was brought into
the hall."

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