Category: Historical Images

Asked whether or not they handled American wares, one of the members of an Edinburgh wholesale firm dealing extensively in implements and sundry articles of steel, iron, and wood answered: “O, yes; largely; come into our warerooms and see for yourself.”

Leading the way, he pointed to rows of boxes in the first room we entered, remarking: “These are American axes—the best and the cheapest in the world.” Around the wall, standing ten deep, were ranged forks of all descriptions for the farmers’ use, and heaped on the floor were thousands of handles for hayforks, hoes, picks, axes, spades, and shovels. Observing a notebook in my hand, he said: “If you put down everything in our place that is American, you will fill the book.” This was soon apparent.

Going into another room and directing my attention to shelves bending with the weight of packages, and to dozens of boxes at either end, he informed me that this was a recent importation, something new for his firm—10 tons of bolts and nuts from the United States. In every part of the great establishment most of the articles were American made, including hay knives, lawn mowers, saws, files, wheels, hubs, spokes, rims, spades, shovels, rakes, washing machines, washboards, and wringers.
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It would be part of my scheme of physical education that every youth in the State—from the King’s son downwards—should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let him know what touch meant; and what stout craftmanship meant; and to inform him of many things besides, which no man can learn but by some severely accurate discipline in doing. Let him once learn to take a straight shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without faltering, or lay a brick level in its mortar; and he has learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could ever teach him.

John Ruskin

Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne : Twenty-five letters to a working man of Sunderland on the Law of Work – (London) 1867

-Jeff Burks

This industry as used in this report includes establishments engaged in the manufacture of sash, doors, blinds, window frames, door frames, moldings, stair material, newels, mantels, store fixtures, and all kinds of builders’ trim or finish.

A large number of the establishments are comparatively small and confine their operations wholly to custom work. Many of them are operated in connection with a retail lumber business. Some are run by contractors who carry on large building operations, and manufacture trim, mostly for their own use. Some custom mills in the larger cities are quite extensive and employ a large number of workmen.

A few establishments manufacture for the general market. Such establishments, as a rule, employ a larger number of workmen than the custom mills or factories, have their work more systematized, and pay somewhat lower wages. The latter fact may be accounted for by the greater division of labor whereby an employee, while being expert in the operation of a particular machine or in performing certain work, is not a skilled workman generally, and so can not command as high wages as an all-round skilled mechanic.
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Today it is the specialist who is sought after. This is particularly true of the professions, and in those trades that ought to be called professions, where a high degree of skill and technical knowledge are required. It is well known that no man “knows it all,” though it is quite possible that a man may know all that is known about one branch of trade or profession, if he follows it closely.

Every day, as it closes, leaves the world richer in knowledge, and the aggregation of many days produces a store of learning which vastly increases the quantity which the beginner must master ere he approaches proficiency. A couple of centuries ago all the world knew of the healing art was within easy grasp of any average intelligent person. Now there is no living physician, however eminent, who pretends to have mastered, or even to be moderately versed in all the details of medicine and surgery. So it is with science, with law, with mechanics, and, of course, and particularly so in the building trades.
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