Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 1).djvu/303

by being confined to a repetition of the same thing become more expeditious and more to be depended on than when obliged or suffered to pass from one to another. Thus a button passes through fifty hands, and each hand perhaps passes a thousand in a day; likewise, by this means, the work becomes so simple that, five times in six, children of six or eight years old do it as well as men, and earn from ten pence to eight shillings a week. There are besides an infinity of smaller improvements which each workman has and sedulously keeps secret from the rest. Upon the whole they have reduced the price so low that the small matter of gold on a button makes the chief expense of it, being as three to one including all other materials and manufacture. However, they have lately discovered a method of washing them with aquafortis, which gives them the colour of gold, and are come to stamp them so well that 'tis scarce possible at any distance to distinguish them from a thread button. There are many other manufactures here; most of the spirit of hartshorn consumed in England, and oil of a great quantity, but the greatest manufacture of that is now removed to Preston Pans in Scotland. The reason Mr. Garbett gave for it was, first, secrecy as to the method of making it (which is almost impossible to preserve in Birmingham, there is so much enterprise and sharpness); next, the cheapness of provisions; and, lastly, the obedient turn of the Scotch. Refining of gold and silver, and gun-making to a prodigious amount for exportation, are likewise another branch of their trade, of which they send annually above a hundred and fifty thousand to the coast of Africa, some of which are sold for five and sixpence a-piece, but what is shocking to humanity, above half of them, from the manner they are finished in, are sure to burst in the first hand that fires them. If an Act of Parliament was passed ordering a proof-master to be settled at the expence of the manufacturers themselves, for one shilling more the barrels might be properly bored and finished, so as to secure the buyer at least from certain danger, the trade by this means assured and confirmed in its present channel,