How it is made, describing in simple language how various machines and many articles in common use are manufactured from the raw materials;

Front matter

THE UNIVERSITY

OF ILLINOIS

LIBRARY

Preface

In a primitive society every person of sufficient age is primarily a worker with his or her hands. As a nation develops, not only do head work and hand work become more and more distinct, but occupations of all kinds tend to run in narrower grooves. Competition now forces us to pay great respect to the proverb, “ Let the shoemaker stick to his last ; and it has come about that the majority of even well-educated people in industrial countries are largely ignorant of the processes by which articles in common use are manufactured. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that this ignorance results from circumstances rather than from choice; for in any exhibition where something is being made visitors cluster round to watch the creation even of an article which may not be at all interesting in itself. The visitors’ book of any large factory that opens its doors to the public, and is within easy reach of large centres of population, reveals the same desire for information.

I have therefore been encouraged to make a tour of inspection among our industrial centres, and to record in these pages what I learnt from personal observation. As it was obviously impossible to give even short descriptions of all manufacturing industries in the space at my disposal, I have been obliged to select a convenient number of manuviii

PREFACE, factures for treatment. Some, such as iron, steel, and cotton, could hardly, on account of their prime importance, have been omitted. Others, again, have been chosen because the thing manufactured is of interest to the general public. I cannot hope that my choice will pass unchallenged, for in a matter of this sort any one person’s choice is influenced by his or her individual preferences. But I venture to think that a sufficiently wide field has been covered to give the reader a good idea of the nation’s workshops.

Want of space has compelled me to limit my descriptions to a plain statement of what I saw, and to omit anything beyond the briefest reference to the history of an industry. Wherever it seemed advisable, the accounts written were submitted to experts, who in all cases kindly revised them with great care. I owe a debt of gratitude to them, and to the many firms who allowed me to visit their premises, and showed personal interest in the success of my industrial explorations.

It is my sincere wish that the perusal of this book may do for the reader what the writing of it has done for me — make him realize what ingenuity and toil are devoted to the manufactures which render living comfortable and the country prosperous. Wordsworth has confessed to being deeply moved by the sight of “the meanest flower that blows.” Might not a match, a pin, or a needle — worth but a fraction of a penny — also stimulate a poet who has seen it in the making ? A. W.

Chapter I.— MONEY=MAKINQ

The Royal Mint — Gold and silver bars — The melting-houses — The rolling-room — Cutting the blanks — Marking — Annealing — The coining-presses — Weighing the coins — A very delicate automatic machine — Counting by machinery — Medals — Making a die — A popular fallacy. . . 13

Chapter II.— HOW PAPER IS MADE

The constituents of paper — Wood pulp — A Kentish paper-mill — Preparing rags — Boiling esparto grass — Breaking the grass — The presse-pdte machine — Beating and mixing — Colouring — The paper-making machine — Water- marking — Drying — Calendering — A long roll of paper — Rate of production — Finishing art papers — Drying — C ut ting — Sorting — Automatic stoKers 29

Chapter III.— HOW MATCHES ARE MADE

The cheap and ubiquitous match — Messrs. Bryant and May’s factory — Square wood matches — Making the heading composition — Reeling the splints — Dipping — Unreeling — Boxing — Round wood vestas — A wonderful machine — How it wcrus — Making cardboard boxes — Wax vestas — Making the taper” — Cutting it up — Heading wax vestas — A huge output 46

Chapter IV.— iHE BUILDING OF A PIANO.

Handel and hi^j spinet — The materials used in making a piano — Wood piles — Cutting and drying the wood — The joiners’ shop —

Contents

Veneering — A mechanical rubber — The sounding-board — The frame — Boring holes for the wrest -pins — Piano strings — The keyboard — Covering the hammers with felt — Polishing — Adjusting— Tuning — Factory organization 60

Chapter V.— CANDLES AND SOAP

The importance of the candle — Early candles — Sperm and tallow — Chevreul’s discovery — Stearine, oleine, and glycerine — Paraffin wax — Testing a candle — The preparation of stearine — Refining paraffin scale — The wick — Candle- moulding — The machine used — Self-fitting ends — Night lights — Soap — Its manufacture 7‘2

Chapter VI.— A MINERAL=WATER FACTORY

What mineral waters are composed of — Making the gas — Bottling — The pressure of gas in a bottle — Filling syphons 93

Chapter VII.— CHINAWARE AND POTTERY

Body and glaze — China — Its introduction into Europe and England — The Worcester Royal Porcelain Works — Materials used in china-making— The mill — The slip-house — Magnets — Shaping the clay — A potter’s wheel — Moulding — Turning — Affixing a handle — Plates and dishes — Ornamental pottery — Casting — Baking — Seggars — The “biscuit” oven — Dipping — The “glost” oven — Decorating — Printed designs — Artists at work — An ingenious oven — The Staffordshire Potteries 96

Chapter VIII.— THE MANUFACTURE OF GLASS

A story : how glass was discovered — Constituents of glass — Glassiraking — A tank furnace — Shaping glass— Blowing bottles — Windov. glass — Large sheets — Rolling plate -glass — Pressing glass— A stopi^^r- making machine 117

Chapter IX.— THE MAKING OF A PHOTOGRAPHIC PL\TE

Not an easy matter — Cleaning the glass b^ i;; .chinery — Applying the “ substratum ” — Drying — The coating machh. ^ — Cooling the emulsion — Cutting the plates — Films 132

CONTENTS.

Chapter X.— THE MECHANISM OF WEAVING

Warp and weft — Simple weaving — An improvement in method — The hand - loom — Healds — The reed — Shooting the shuttle — Twill weaving — The dobby loom — The Jacquard loom — Its principle — A wonderfuT device — The drop box — The power -loom — The Northrop loom 139

Chapter XL— THE MANUFACTURE OF COTTON GOODS.

The value of cotton — The magnitude of the cotton industry — Where raw cotton comes from — Lancashire the seat of British cotton manufacture — The cotton crop — Separating the cotton from the seed — Gins — In a cotton-mill — Breaking the bales — The cleaning - room — Carding — Drawing — Slubbing — Spinning — The ring frame — A spinning -mule — Preparing the warp — Drawing the warp into the healds and reeds — Twisting-in — In the weaving-shed — Singeing — Finishing — Bleaching — Calico printing : 153

Chapter XII.~THE MANUFACTURE OF RUBBER GOODS

Rubber— Its properties— Its value— Discovery by Europeans— The rubber tree — Collecting rubber — Scientific planting— Gutta-percha—The Silvertown Works — Cleaning raw rubber— Drying washed rubber — A clever device — Vulcanized rubber — Ebonite — Cable -making — The manufacture of tennis balls — Bottle-stoppers 18fi

Chapter XIII.— ROUND A BISCUIT FACTORY

Biscuits — The greatest makers — Biscuits and Bibles — The Reading factory — A fine model — The flour store — Mixing ingredients — Rolling — Cutting — Baking — Sorting — Broken biscuits — Packing — Soldering the tins for export — Commerce and geography — Cracknels — Cakes — An artist in sugar — Cleaning tins — Precautions against fire 193

CONTENTS.

Chapter XIV.— THE SMELTING OF IRON

King Iron — The value of a nail — Iron and warfare — The world’s annual output — A marvellous growth — Early history of iron smelting in England — Dud Dudley — Abraham Darby and his cooking -pots — The composition and distribution of iron ores — Bilbao— The Lake Superior deposits — Steam-shovels at work — A blast furnace — The hot blast — Neilson’s great invention — Heating the blast — Power from furnace gases — A blast furnace in action — Big blast furnaces — What takes place in the furnace — A little chemistry — Iron and steel — Properties of iron and steel 207

Chapter XV.— THE MANUFACTURE OF WROUGHT IRON

Puddling — A puddling furnace— Fettling the hearth — Melting the pig iron — Balling the iron — Extracting the iron balls — A teetotal story — Hammering the balls — Cutting and rolling — Mechanical puddlers — Rolling-mills — Rolling iron rods — Rolling tapered bars ...231

Chapter XVI.— THE MANUFACTURE OF STEEL

Various methods of producing steel — The Bessemer process — Bessemer’s account of his invention — His difficulties — David Mushet’s improvement of Bessemer’s principle — The Bessemer converter and its accessories — Blowing a charge of molten iron — A fine spectacle — The open-hearth process — An open hearth and its working described — Acid and basic processes of steel-making— Their respective advantages — Summary of processes in the manufacture of iron and steel — Alloy steels 242

Chapter XVII.— ARMOUR PLATES AND BIG GUNS

Messrs. Vickers Sons and Maxim’s Works, Sheffield — Ingot casting — The rolling-mill — Reducing the thickness of a plate — Resistless power — A monster hydraulic press— Carbonizing armour plates — Bending plates — Shaping plates in huge machines — Hardening — Assembling the plates — Built-up cannon — Wire-wound guns — The ingot for the inner tube of a 12-inch gun — How it is forged

CONTENTS.

and tempered — Shrinking a second tube over the first — Wire-winding— Interesting figures — Shrinking on the jacket — Rifling — The breech and its mechanism — A terrible weapon 263

Chapter XVIIL— SAWS AND FILES.

Various kinds of saws — Grinding a saw — Hardening and tempering — Polishing — Finishing — Fitting the handle — Files — Varieties of files — Rasps — Forging — Grinding — Cutting the teeth — An ingenious machine — Hand-cutting — Tempering — Testing a file.... 284

Chapter XIX.— HOW A WATCH IS MADE

Coventry and its watch industry — A watch the embodiment of mechanical delicacy — Parts of a watch — A funny story — The metric system — The watch case — Engine-turning — The dial — Writing extraordinary — “ Sunk seconds” — The “movement ” — The train wheels — The pinions — Extreme accuracy of workmanship— The escapement — Making the balance - wheel — Levers, pallets, and escape-wheel — Assembling the parts — Jewels — A wonderful performance by a watch — The hairspring — Timing a watch — Kew Observatory tests — Saving gold dust — Men who have stuck to their work 294

Chapter XX.— IN A MOTOR=CAR FACTORY

The rise of the motor car— A factory laboratory— Testing metal— The drawing-office— The tool-shop— High-speed steel— Shaping a crankshaft — Working to exact measurements — Grinding metal to size — Need for accuracy — Boring a cylinder — The components fitting-room — Testing an engine — Assembling the parts of a car —Electroplating— A time-registering clock 311

Chapter XXI — CYCLE=BUILDINQ

Coventry a city of cycle factories — The parts of a cycle — How the parts are made — Shaping the cranks — An automatic lathe — Case-hardening — A machine for sorting out steel balls — Building the frame — Brazing — Sand-blasting — The effect of sand on metal and glass — Trueing the frame — Polishing the frame — Enamelling — ‘ ‘ Lining ” — Wheel - building — Making chain wheels — Electroplating — Polishing the nickel — Assembling the parts.. 325

CONTENTS,

Chapter XXII.~THE CRADLE OF A LOCOMOTIVE

The big railway works of England — The Swindon works — Some of the sights to be seen there — Monster locomotives — The parts of a locomotive — Casting the cylinders — Boring and finishing the cylinders — Shaping the frames — Crank axles — Turning up the driving-wheels and shrinking on the tyres — The boiler — Its parts — Pressing plates into shape — Drilling bolt and tube holes — Riveting boiler plates — Inserting the tubes — Testing a boiler ■ — Erecting a locomotive — Feats of erection — Testing the locomotive on the rails and on a special registering machine 345

Chapter XXIIl.-PENS.

How a Roman wrote his letters — Origin of the word pen — Quill pens — Birmingham and the steel pen — Interesting pens — The making of a pen — Sheet steel — Cutting out the blanks — Marking the maker’s name — Piercing — Raising — Hardening and tempering — Scouring — Grinding — Slitting — Potting — Testing 369

Chapter XXIV.— IN NEEDLE TOWN

The qualities of a needle— Early history of the English needle industry — Redditch the present centre of the industry — Manufacture of a needle — Straightening of the wires — Pointing on a grindstone — Skimming — Eyeing — Filing— Hardening and tempering— Scouring — Heading — Grinding — The calyx-eyed needle — Fish-hooks — Barbing — Bending — Finishing 383

Chapter XXV.— SCREW=MAKINQ

Old-fashioned screws — The gimlet - pointed screw — An interesting Roman screw— Processes of manufacture — Forging — Trimming and nicking — Cutting the screw thread — Hail-making 400

Chapter XXVI.— PINS

Adam Smith on the division of labour as illustrated by the manufacture of pins — The modern development of the industry — Pin-making machines — How a pin is pointed — Machine versus hand labour — Cleaning the pins— Applj^ing a coat of tin — An inge-

CONTENTS, nious apparatus for sticking pins in paper — Black pins — Safety pins 408

Chapter XXVIL— HOW TWINE AND ROPES ARE MADE.

Useful string — Materials employed in the manufacture of twine and rope — A “rope -walk” — Preparing the materials — Carding, drawing, and spinning — A few words about twisting — Polishing twine— A balling machine — Rope-making — Twisting the strands — Laying three strands together to form a rope — A very big rope — Summary 417

Chapter XXVIII.— HOW WIRE IS MADE INTO ROPES

The uses of the steel-wire rope — Messrs. Bullivants’ works — Testing a wire and a rope — “Closing” wires into a rope — The twisting machinery explained — A monster machine — Splicing — A hydraulic rope-cutter — A rope that would bear a 1,500-ton strain 429

Chapter XXIX.— KNIVES AND RAZORS

Early mentions of Sheffield knives — The making of a table-knife — Forging — Welding on the bolster — Drawing out the tang— Hardening and tempering — Grinding — Hafting — Inferior knives — Pocket-knives — Razors — Hollow-grinding — Etching 442

Chapter XXX.— FORKS, SPOONS, AND HOLLOW WARE

Smelting nickel ore — Pouring ingots of German silver — Rolling the ingots into sheets — Cutting strips off the sheets — Cross rolling — ‘ ‘ Flying ” blanks for forks and spoons — Stamping— An easy way of lifting a heavy weight — Pronging a fork — Filing — Bending — “Bowling” a spoon — Polishing — The electroplating room —

Hollow ware — The parts of a teapot — Shaping the parts in a press — In the silversmiths’ shop — “Raising” metal ware by hand out of flat plates — Engraving and embossing — Clever artists — Spinning met^l sheets pn a lathe— Wire-drawing 453

HOW IT IS MADE.

Chapter I. MONEY=MAKINQ

The Royal Mint — Gold and silver bars — The melting-houses — The rolling-room — Cutting the blanks — Marking — Annealing — The coining-presses — Weighing the coins — A very delicate automatic machine — Counting by machinery — Medals — Making a die — A popular fallacy.

KINGS are manufactured to be bought and

JL sold. Buying and selling imply, in most cases, the transference of coin from one person’s pocket to that of another. So, after thinking over for some time the question of priority of subject, I have decided to open this book with a chapter on the

making of the ‘'coin of the realm,” as conducted at

the Royal Mint, a large building situated a few

hundred yards to the north-east of the famous Tower

of London, which itself was the seat of coinage until

the erection of the present Mint in the year 1811. a,28ii 2

The Royal Mint is not at all imposing as seen from the street — ^^just a long block of offices on the farther side of an open courtyard. One would never suspect that from some workshops at the rear of this block proceed most of the gold and silver coins issued in the British Empire, and all the medals issued to the navy, army, and royal societies. It is a unique factory, as far as the empire is concerned, since it has the sole right of manufacturing a certain class of article. Clever gentlemen who set up rival factories in secret places, and happen to be caught at work, are lodged for a long period at the country’s expense, under conditions in which money is of very little use to them.

Behind the office block is a quadrangle surrounded by low buildings. Entering a door on the left, the visitor finds himself in a room where ingots of gold, silver, and copper are weighed very carefully before being handed over to the workmen. Great exactness is characteristic of all business at the Mint. A certain weight of metal is given out, and it must return to the office in the shape of a certain number of coins. If a single coin be missing, it is hunted for till found. Even the dust in the workrooms is collected and put in the melting-pot to recover all the minute particles of uiefal it contains, And, as

MONE Y-MAKING.

we shall see, exactitude within very narrow limits in the dimensions and weight of the coins themselves is enforced.

Gold comes to the Mint as ingots of 400 oz. ;

Fig. 1. — Weighing and checking Copper and Silver Ingots.

{Photo by Sturdee.)

silver in 100-lb. blocks. All gold coins are made of an alloy containing 22 parts of gold to 2 of copper; silver coins of an alloy of 37 parts of silver to 3 of copper ; and for bronze coins a mixture of copper, tin, and zinc is used^ bronze discs for the same being occasionally manufactured in Birmingham. On rare occasions bronze has been coined by outside firms. Specimens can be recognized by the letter '' H which appears on the reverse below the date. But as it is

Fig. 2. — Casting Silver Bars,

{Photo by Sturdee.)

the stamping that converts metal into coin, the Mint may be considered responsible for all three coinages.

On either side of the office is a melting-room — one for silver, the other for gold. In the first a couple of men are extracting, by means of an electric crane, a large plumbago (blacklead) melting-pot from a hole in the top of a furnace. It contains about 810 lbs. of molten silver. The crane brings the pot over a rack of moulds, which consists of a number of iron bars of H section clipped together by a screw-press, so that their edges make a tight joint. The pot is

Fig. 3.— The Gold Melting-house.

tipped up, and the moulds are filled in succession ; and after a few minutes the fiery liquid has cooled into solid shining bars, which are easily separated from the moulds when the screw has been released.

In the gold kitchen there are eight furnaces to

1 8 MONK Y-MAKING,

heat as many crucibles, each containing about £5,000 worth of the precious metal. To-day is a busy one here, and the material for some 250,000 sovereigns is under treatment. The men stir the alloy very carefully to distribute the copper quite evenly among the gold. As the bars are taken from the moulds a bit is cut from the first and the last bar of each potful for testing purposes. (If the two samples have not the correct proportions of gold and copper, the bars are melted down again.) The rough edges are removed by a rapidly revolving cutter, and the bars are weighed and wheeled into

THE EOLLING-nOOM,

whither we will follow them. Here the bars (|-inch thick) are passed through several pairs of great steel rollers. In the first machine a bar is thinned by stages of yJo of an inch. Then it goes through the other machines, which squeeze it into a ribbon or “ fillet'’ about 1| inches wide and 2V of an inch thick. The thickness is tested by a delicate gauge. It must be correct to within -2 of an inch ; otherwise the coins stamped from the fillet would be too heavy or too light. It is sometimes necessary to pull the fillets between two immovable steel cylinders to give them

MONE Y-MAKING.

an even and due thickness. The machine used for this purpose is called a '' draw-bench.”

The next process — the first in the coin-making proper — is seen in

THE CUTTING-ROOM,

Fig. 4. -Rolling the Fillets.

(Photo by St7irdee.)

where we find powerful machines punching gold blanks,” two abreast, out of the fillets at the rate of about 150 blanks a minute. The scissel,” or metal left over (Fig. 5), is returned to the melting-house. The blanks have now to be ‘‘ marked ” — that is, have their edges thickened to protect the device that will presently be impressed on the two sides. They are

therefore passed rapidly between the face of a revolving grooved wheel and a fixed grooved block (Fig. 6), the distance between which is rather less than the diameter of the blank. Fig. 7 shows the blank before and after “ marking.”

Before a design can be impressed on a blank it must be annealed or softened by heating. The gold blanks are placed in boxes of powdered charcoal, which travel very slowly through a furnace on an endless chain. The transit takes about three hours. After immersion in a bath of dilute sulphuric acid, they are cleaned by being rolled in beechwood sawdust, and passed on to

7 THE COINING-PRESSES.

The coining-press room is by far the noisiest place in the Mint. One cannot wonder at this, considering

Fig. 5.

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that twenty presses are each stamping the Kings portrait on ninety blanks a minute, and that each blank receives a 30-ton blow.

There are two dies in each machine, one fixed in

Fig. 8. — The Coining-presses.

{Photo by Sturdee.)

the bed, the other in a socket at the end of a lever immediately above. Between the two dies is another lever carrying a collar, the inside of which is serrated, or “ milled,” in the case of gold coins and all silver coins except the crown and threepenny bit. An automatic arm pushes a blank on to the lower die. The collar descends, encircling it. Then down comes the upper die with tremendous force, squeezing the surfaces of the blank into its own design and that of the lower die, and forcing the edge sideways into the fluting of the collar. The next moment it rises, followed by the collar, leaving the (now) coin to be pushed down a shoot by the succeeding blank. In one day a machine can coin about 40,000 blanks.

THE WEIGHING-ROOM.

The coins are now finished, but before being issued to the public they must undergo two tests — (1) for weight, (2) for soundness.

Weighing is done in one of a number of very delicate automatic balances, enclosed in glass cases, which are the most interesting machines in the Mint. We must digress here a little to say that the standard weight of a sovereign is 123*27447 grains, and that no sovereign is put into circulation which is *17 grain heavier or lighter than this standard.

The weighing-machines are rather complicated, and in order to give the reader an idea of the principle on which they work, a very simple diagram (Fig. 9) is appended. From one end of the balance-

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beam hangs a stirrup containing a counterpoise w of the standard weight. At the other end is a scale-pan, on to which the coins are pushed in succession. This pan is connected by a rod to arm A, sharply pointed at the free extremity.

Close to the pan is a funnel f, which swings on pivot P, and has on the inner side a projection N, trie cam c, revolved by an electric motor, pushes the

funnel outwards at every revolution.

Below the funnel are three slots — H, for heavy coins ; R, for coins of the right weight ; and L, for light coins. A sovereign is shoved on to the scale-pan by the one behind. The cam pushes the funnel to the right, and holds it away for about three Beconds. Meanwhile the coin has been finding its level. If heavier than the standard, it sinks ; but if

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less than *17 of a grain too heavy, the scale-pan will not raise the ‘‘ remedy,” a tiny piece of gold wire weighing *17 grain. So that when the cam allows F to return to the left, the arm A will engage with notch 2 in N, and the funnel be arrested over slot K, down which the coin falls when pushed off by its successor. Should the coin exceed the limit of error,” the arm A would sink lower and engage notch 3 ; or if it were too light, A would rise and catch in notch 1. Put briefly, the travel of the funnel towards the left and the destination of the coin depend on the weight of the coin.*

The second test is made by a boy, who picks up by the handful the coins which have passed the weighing test, and drops them smartly one after another on a steel slab. A cracked coin '' rings ” badly, and is placed on one side to be melted down.

Finally, the coins are ‘‘overlooked” on a contrivance by means of which both sides are exposed to view successively.

The sovereigns that pass the test are put up in

* The Encydopcedia Britannica says: “In order to show the importance of extreme accuracy in weighing, it may be pointed out

that in a million sterling of sovereigns the difference between the

least and the greatest weight the law allows (’4 grain) would be no less than £3,244.”

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bags of one thousand, and returned to the office from which they came as ingots.

The counting of silver and bronze coins is done by a very ingenious automatic machine. The coins slide

Fro. 10.— The Automatic Counting-machine.

down a shoot which is partly blocked by the teeth of a wheel geared to the counting index. In order to get past, a coin must move a tooth on ; the action being very similar to a cycle chain running over a chain-wheel, coins representing the chain rollers.

It has been calculated that a sovereign while in circulation loses o ^ grain per annum, and a halfsovereign, which has much more handling, o' ^ grain. When three whole grains of gold have been worn off, a sovereign is garbled ’’ — that is, retained and sent back to the Mint — by the Bank of England.

MEDAL-MAKING.

Two rooms of the Mint are devoted to medals. The designs on these stand out much more boldly than those on coins, and the method of stamping just described would not be practicable for them. Every medal receives three blows from a large screw-press, and between two blows has to be annealed, cleaned, and polished. Its manufacture is therefore a comparatively slow business, though fast as compared with the making of a Great Seal of England, which requires two hundred blows.

The manner in which a die is prepared, for coin or medal work, is interesting. The artist first executes a large model, a foot or more in diameter, in wax. From this a mould is made, and from the mould a plaster cast. On this the medallist perfects his design. A steel cast is made from this, and from that a smaller cast of the size of the coin or medal is copied by means of a machine. This final mould is called the '' matrix.’' From it a positive ” die (one with the design standing out in relief as in the coin) is obtained by enormous pressure in a hydraulic press, and this in turn is similarly used to obtain the sunk dies for the coining-presses. A sunk die is not replaced until it is considered unfit for further use. A very good return for one die is 100,000 pieces.

A POPULAR FALLACY.

A number of people — the writer was once one of them — believe that pence struck in 1864 are especially valuable. A legend exists to the effect that some gold got mixed with the bronze used that year ; but like a good many legends, it has no truth to support it. Let us see what the “ Report of the Deputy-Master of the Mint” for 1904 says: — ‘'It may be well here to correct an erroneous idea which is entertained by some of the public, that pence of various years — those of 1864 are generally mentioned— possess a greatly enhanced value, and are received by the Mint and paid for at various extraordinary rates, the amount which was last quoted by a correspondent being no less than £7, 11s. 4d. each ! The present scarcity of pence of the year 1864 lies

MONE y- MA KING.

in the fact that a very much smaller number of pence than usual were coined in that year, and they are in consequence seldom seen in circulation. It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that no pence are purchased by the Mint at either their nominal or at any fictitious value.”

Chapter II. HOW PAPER IS MADE

The constituents of paper — Wood pulp — A Kentish paper-mill — Preparing rags — Boiling esparto grass — Breaking the grass — The presse-pdte machine — Beating and mixing — Colouring — The paper-making machine — Water-marking — Drying — Calendering — A long roll of paper — Rate of production — Finishing art papers — Drying — Cutting — Sorting — Automatic stokers.