long before the second half of the eighteenth century. We have seen, too, that "the trades," as distinct from the heavy manufacturing side of the industries, continued largely in the hands of small men and domestic workers, who employed little capital. If we think of the whole group of occupations from the mining of the raw material to the production of the finished goods as constituting one interconnected industry, we may say that it combined the factory system with the domestic, the large employer with the "small man." It shows, in epitome, the general trend of English manufacture.

The relations between industrial development and the expansion of commerce have been of consummate interest. We have noticed that the general widening of the geographical horizon in Elizabethan times had a very real bearing on industry, although the full implication of it was not to be realised for several centuries. The possibilities of opening up trade with the Continent were considered by Höchstetter as early as 1570; but it was not until the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century that serious efforts were made not merely to find markets in Europe, but to carry the brass and copper goods of England into far distant lands. And so having captured the home market for themselves, the brass and copper producers sent their goods to America, to India, to Africa and to all parts of the Continent. So rapid and so effective was their success that by the end of the eighteenth century the manufactured produce of Birmingham was famous far afield, and her merchants had practically complete control of some of the most important European markets. It is true that this export trade received a serious set-back in the last decade of the century, partly because of the high price of copper, partly because of foreign tariff barriers and continental wars; but this was only temporary, and soon Birmingham was able to regain lost ground and carry her merchandise into still new places.

In the preceding chapters special attention has been paid to the establishment of the brass and copper manufactures in Birmingham. We have seen that the people of this town were skilled in metal work as early as the sixteenth century, but it was in the second half of the following century that their skill was turned to the manufacture of small

articles of brass and copper. It was at this time that the population was greatly strengthened by the coming to their town of numerous Dissenters, who brought new ideas and perhaps new trades. The growth of the town was rapid, and certainly by the third decade of the eighteenth century it had become the most important centre in England of the brass and copper trades. This naturally led the townspeople to view with alarm the movement towards combination among the producers of their raw materials, and by a vigorous stroke they dealt a severe blow at the association of brass manufacturers by establishing in 1780 a co-operative concern to make brass for themselves. But this in itself was not sufficient; and when the Cornish Metal Company put up the price of copper the manufacturers of Birmingham once more took strong measures and established the Mining and Copper Company in 1790. And so by the end of the eighteenth century, when we lay down our pen, Birmingham had become the chief centre of the English brass and copper industries. Well might Höchstetter and Humfrey, who had struggled valiantly against enormous odds some two hundred years before, have been satisfied to see such an enduring monument raised on the foundation of their humble efforts at Keswick.

APPENDIX I

METHODS OF PRODUCTION

THE chief constituents of brass are copper and zinc, although certain other metals may be introduced to give the brass a certain quality. Tin, lead and iron, for instance, are frequently used for this purpose; and so in modern times there are many different qualities of brass, though, strictly speaking, the word brass is employed to denote an alloy of zinc and copper only, containing more copper than zinc. The following table will perhaps make this point clear, the compositions given, however, do not exhaust all the various possibilities.

Until last century practically all brass was made not with the metallic zinc or spelter, but with an ore of that metal; and the process employed was known as "cementation," that is, the actual blending of copper with the ore of zinc called calamine or lapis calaminaris. This method goes back to very early times, and it is possible that the Greeks and Romans made brass in this way, but the term calamine, 1 W. C. Roberts-Austen, “Introduction to the Study of Metallurgy," 1910, pp. 122-125.

Georgius Agricola, "De Re Metallica," 1556, translated and edited by H. C. and L. H. Hoover, 1912, p. 112 n.

however, was not used till a very much later period. Before the sixteenth century, it is said, considerable quantities of this ore were imported from China, while metallic zinc or spelter was imported in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under such names as tuteneque, tuttenego, calaem, and spiauter; the ore was used extensively, the metallic zinc was but imperfectly understood. The first reference to metallic zinc is usually attributed to Paracelsus (1493-1541), who writes: "Moreover, there is another metal generally unknown called zinken. It is of peculiar nature and origin; many other metals adulterate it. It can be melted, for it is generated from three fluid principles; it is not malleable. Its colour is different from other metals and does not resemble others in its growth. Its ultimate matter is not to me yet fully known."1 Again, in 1617 another writer says: When the people in the smelting works are smelting, there is made under the furnace and in the cracks in the walls, among the badly plastered stones, a metal which is called zinc or counterfeht, and when the wall is scraped it falls into a vessel placed to receive it. This metal greatly resembles tin, but it is harder and less malleable." Finally, in 1656 Glauber writes': "Zink is a volatile mineral or halfripe metal when it is extracted from its ore. It is more brilliant than tin and not so fusible or malleable-it turns (copper) into brass, as does lapis calaminaris, for indeed this stone is nothing but infusible zinc, and this zinc might be called a fusible lapis calaminaris, inasmuch as both of them partake of the same nature. It sublimates itself up into the cracks of the furnace, whereupon the smelters frequently break it out." Thus, we see, it was only very gradually that knowledge of zinc in its metallic state was gained; but no method of extracting it from the ore was, as we shall see, discovered until 1738.

2

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries calamine was mined in Somerset and Nottinghamshire by the Mineral and Battery Works, and an interesting account of the methods employed in the former county was given in 1684. “The

1 Ibid., p. 409.

Ibid., p. 410., John Webster, a metallurgist, writing in 1671, speaks of "Zinctum or Zinck or Spelter," but his knowledge on the subject was very limited (" Metallographia, or, An History of Metals," pp. 338340).

method they take for finding out a vein is by digging a trench as deep as till they come to the rocks where they expect it lies, across the place where they hope for a course; which trench they generally dig from north to south, or near upon that point, the courses usually lying from east to west, or at 6 o'clock, as they term it. Though this is not constant neither, for sometimes the courses, seams or rakes, as they call them, lie at 9 o'clock and sometimes are perpendicular, which they call the high time of the day or 12 o'clock and these courses they esteem the best. These seams or courses run between the rocks generally wider than those of lead ore unless they are enclosed in very hard cliffs, and then they are as narrow as veins of lead. The colour of the earth where calamine lies is generally a yellow grit, but sometimes black." When the ore had been taken to the surface, it was cleaned or "buddled." For this process "they enclose a small piece of ground with boards or turfs through which a clear stream of water runs; within this enclosure they shovel their calamine with the rest of the impure and earthy parts; and these impure and earthy parts the running water . . . carries away, and leaves the lead and the calamine and the other heavier, stony and sparry parts behind; and for the better cleansing or buddling the calamine... they often turn it, so that the water passing through may wash it the better. When they have thus washed it with this running stream as clean as they can, having raked up the bigger parts both of the lead and the calamine, they afterwards put the smaller parts that they may lose none of their ore into sieves made of strong wire at the bottom, and these sieves with the calamine, lead and the remainder of the earthy, sparry and stony parts, which the water could not wash away, they often dip and shake up and down in a great tub of water by which the parts of the lead... sink to the bottom of the sieve as being the heaviest, the parts of the calamine in the middle, and the other sparry, stony and trashy parts rise up to the top, which as they rise they skim off, and then take off the calamine, and after that the lead." The calamine was next spread upon a board, and any stone or other foreign material was picked out by hand, and so the ore was made ready to be calcined. For this next process it was necessary to use a calcining oven which was much bigger than that used by