The following description of his manufactory, which is not open to strangers
without special cause shown, will be found interesting in a social as well as
a commercial and mechanical point of view.
* * * * *
GILLOTT'S STEEL-PEN FACTORY.--In the first department, sheets of steel
received from Sheffield are passed through rolling mills driven by steam,
under charge of men and boys, until they are reduced to the thinness of a
steel pen, to the length of about thirty inches, and the breadth of about
three inches. These steel slips are conveyed to a large roomy workshop, with
windows at both sides, scrupulously clean, where are seated in double rows an
army of women and girls, from fourteen to forty years of age, who, unlike
most of the women employed in Birmingham manufactories, are extremely neat in
person and in dress. A hand press is opposite each; the only sound to be
heard is the bump of the press, and the clinking of the small pieces of metal
as they fall from the block into the receptacle prepared for them. One girl
of average dexterity is able to punch out one hundred gross per day. Each
division is superintended by a toolmaker, whose business it is to keep the
punches and presses in good working condition, to superintend the work
generally, and to keep order among the workpeople.
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