AMERICAN INDUSTRIES.
We havemf Jate read a,great deal in the ■English, arid European ptess of the wonderful,.,progress tl'iQ Americans have made in Tine arts, and innovations on the/lrade in Great 'Britain. It lias now taken‘'such a hold o’i\ the workman and statesman, that Parlianteut aid called upon to explain ..why they themselves, as, a Government, should orders for watches, locks, tools, and various lines of building materials to American manufactures in preference, to their'own. The answer has come "back from the House of Commons, after careful enquiries and examinations, that their reasons for buying from American manufactures such lines as stated were as follows The cheapness of production, the really good quality of their wares, and the rapidity with which Americans filled their orders, and the suitableness of such goods for their special requirements, which was owing chiefly to the perfectness of which the use of improved machinery had brought about. This is essentially true, for even wo ourselves in this small community, can see the Americans in our midst, supplementing, with their machinerygmd: -other automatic'appliances the printipafcT. productions where science, skill, and mechanical ingenuity arc requisites for perfection. A few days ago we were afforded an opportunity "of practica’ly bearing testimony to this fact, by examining and,4nspecting the productions of the largest and most interesting industry in the United States, and we may say their line in the world, these were the specimens of watches manufactured by the American Watch Company of Waltham, Mass., whose reputation as first-class watchmakers has gained world-wide recently at 'Philadelphia and Paris, and also in England, where the company, have opened a house for supplying the increasing demand which their watches have throughout Great Britain and the Continent. ° The superiority of these watches lias been sufficiently tested by both English and Swiss makers to warrant the British Government ordering Waltham watches for the use of guards on the Indian State railways in preference to those made in Europe. Mr. D.; .Manson, the representative agent of this great company, who has spent some little time amongst ns, and who was sent ont by the company for the purpose of bringing more particularly to the notice of the watchmakers the various improvements they have made during the past twenty-three years' in the manufacture of a machine so delicate as that of a watch. It is truly wonderful when one ihinks that the entire... assortment of samples he has with him, numpering over three hundred, - were all made in less than a whole dajn We can imagine the perfectness and nicety with which these machines must do their work to turn .out such truly arfstic works of art and mechanical ingenuity as these watches ate. Twenty-throe years ago watchmaking was entirely unknown in America, and since that time this company alone has produced over two million watches, which have been distributed to almost every part of the known world. When this industry first started in America it was in the . midst of the strongest oppositon of prejudice and cheap foreign production ; but being in the hands of managers who had a mastery of the commercial machinery, and operated hy mechanics whose skill, ingenuity, and intelligent application of the principles of horological science and art, made the watches of a quality to merit success, and they have tuns grown into the largest and most important watch factory in the world. In fact it can be safely stated from what we know of watchmaking, and from what the latest writers on horology tell us, that this is the onto Company in the world'where the entire watch is turned out complete I 1 ®* 11 its first inception to a perfect and reliable timekeeper, all under one roof, owned and controlled by one company- Where the plates, dials, hands, wheels, pinions, screws, springs, jewels, and eases are made, '-chiefly by'automatic machines, and A these very machines which make taS, watches aro made in their own machine shop, being a portion of of the factory ; so that in not one single item have they to" depend on the certainty of hand labour. It is therefore only reasonable to suppose that the cost of production must bo very much less than that of an English _or Swiss, when every single machine working in the factorv— and they number several thousand-will tarn out'per day as many parts or pieces of a watch as n; ty pairs of hands, an - : mwi -- \vry part to millions of pieces v alike, for ic is impo^^iblc for the mac hi no* to vary as they are regu-
i, instantly uiaV.3:. , nat tlieir watches lii —. be infinitely less ex pen s'. fele than the English or Switb. ; . necessary to turn out a wa\. 4 must be very much greater, anu '> have all the perfections that those taw out by machines have, as the machines cannot vary, and they cannot give a less degree of finish or perfection to the cheapest grades that even those of the finer-adjusted ones have ; and as for their finer grades we need no better proofs of their superior time-keeping qualities than that attested to by Sir William Thompson and Sir Edward Beckett, the most eminent writers on horology of the present day. It may not be amiss to our readers and those interested in watchmaking to here state that out of 2,500 watches which were exhibited at Philadelphia in 1870, ten were selected at random by the judges from among the lot, and were subjected at the Observator> to the most severe tests for a period of eleven weeks, and tested in all the different positions' a watch can he placed in, and to a temperature of 100 degrees in heot and many degrees below zero in cold, and at the end of the eleven weeks it was found that the total mean daily variation rate of the ten watches was only three seconds, and among these ten one" had varied only during the eleven weeks a daily mean rate of the onehundredth part of a second, being equal to the finest marine chronometer ever made, and to sceptics this must bs an overwhelming proof of the excellent qualities of watches made with the going barrel. Facts like thef-e are surely sufficient reasons why the British Government should purchase Waltham watches for the use of the guards on the Indian State Eailways in preference to those made by their own workmen. It is not our pleasure to deex-y British workmen and British manufactui’ers, but the facts are painfully apparent that the great antipathy which British workmen have to the use of machinery in the production of wai’es where perfection and ingenuity are pre-i’equisites, that they are driving the trade and commerce which they hade built up for England, and which has constituted the most important part of her greatness, into channels that it will be impossible to regain ; and they themselves are in a great measure to blame for the widespread, distress'which prevails in the manufacturing centres of the Mother Country. We trust that the British workmen will not hold so persistently to the old-timed ideas of their forefathers, but adopt, in these enlightened days of x’auroads, steamboats and telegraphs, - the improved means which the appliances of inventive genius and improved machinery, afford of competing successfully with their American cousins over the way, and still keep the name of Great Britain foremost among the manufacturing nations of the world.
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Temuka Leader, Issue 167, 6 August 1879, Page 2
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1,235AMERICAN INDUSTRIES. Temuka Leader, Issue 167, 6 August 1879, Page 2
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