a small additional fee each member can also secure free medical aid for his wife and children. The advantages to members are free medical or surgical treatment in case of need, payment from the fund of funeral expenses at death, pensions to men who have been permanently disabled by injuries while engaged in the works, pensions to widows of members, and temporary support to men who are certified by two of the physicians as unable to work. The highest pension to men is five pounds monthly, the average being about two pounds[Pg 49] sixteen shillings monthly. The average pension to widows is about one pound fourteen shillings monthly.
The firm have made special arrangements with a number of life insurance companies whereby the workmen can, if they choose, insure their lives at low rates. They have formed a Life Insurance Union, and endowed it with a reserve fund of three thousand pounds, from which aid is given to members needing assistance to pay their premiums. An important institution in Essen is the great Central Supply Store, established and owned by the firm, where articles of every description--bread, meat, and other provisions, clothing, furniture, &c.--are sold on a rigidly cash system at cost price. Connected with the Central Store are twenty-seven branch shops, in positions convenient for the workpeople, placing the advantages of the system within the easy reach of all.
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The original name, 'Frederick Krupp,' has been retained through all vicissitudes of fortune as the business title of the firm. The small dwelling in which Alfred Krupp was born is still standing, in the midst of the huge workshops that have grown up around it, and is preserved with the greatest care. At his expense, photographs of it were distributed among his workmen, each copy bearing the following inscription, dated Essen, February 1873: 'Fifty years ago, this primitive dwelling was the abode of my parents. I hope that no one of our labourers may ever know such struggles as have been required for the establishment of these works. Twenty-five years ago that success was still doubtful which has at length--gradually, yet wonderfully--rewarded the exertions, fidelity, and perseverance of the past. May this example encourage others who are in difficulties! May it increase respect for small houses, and sympathy for the larger sorrows they too often contain. The object of labour should be the common weal. If work bring blessing,
then is labour[Pg 50] prayer. May every one in our community, from the highest to the lowest, thoughtfully and wisely strive to secure and build his prosperity on this principle! When this is done, then will my greatest desire be realised.'
Germany has become a formidable competitor to Great Britain in the iron and steel trade, and German steel rails, girders, and wire come in freely to this country. From reports we learn that Great Britain produced in 1882 81/2 million tons of iron and 5 million tons of finished iron and steel, while the production of Germany was then less than 31/2 and 21/2 million tons respectively. English
production had fallen to 71/2 million tons of iron and 4 million tons of finished iron and steel in 1895, while Germany had risen to 5 million tons and 6 million tons respectively.
Contrary to what has been commonly believed, it appears that the difference all round in wages amongst ironworkers, as between
England and Germany, is not great.
Chicago, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and New York are the chief centres of the American iron and steel trade, the production of pig-iron in
1895 being about 91/4 million tons, whereas in 1880 it was well under 4 million. At present over 4 millions of tons are produced of
Bessemer pig-iron.
[Pg 51]
CHAPTER II.
POTTERY AND PORCELAIN.
Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Ware--Worcester Porcelain.
hen Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, a member of the famous firm of potters at Etruria, near Burslem, Staffordshire, went to work about forty years ago, his famous ancestor and founder of the world-famed Wedgwood ware was still named amongst the workmen as
'Owd Wooden Leg.' A son of Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, now in the firm, is the fifth generation in descent, and the manufactory is still carried on in the same buildings erected by Josiah Wedgwood one hundred and twenty years ago.
One hundred years ago Josiah Wedgwood, the creator of British artistic pottery, passed away at Etruria, near Burslem, surrounded by the creations of his own well-directed genius and industry, having 'converted a rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art and an important part of national commerce.' His death took place on 3d January 1795, the same year in which Thomas Carlyle saw the light at Ecclefechan, and one year and a half before the death of Burns at Dumfries. During fifty years of his working life, largely owing to his own successful efforts, he had witnessed the output of the Staffordshire potteries increased fivefold, and his wares[Pg 52] were known and sold over Europe and the civilised world. In the words of Mr Gladstone, his characteristic merit lay
'in the firmness and fullness with which he perceived the true law of what we may call Industrial Art, or, in other words, of the application of the higher art to Industry.' Novalis once compared the works of Goethe and Wedgwood in these words: 'Goethe is truly a practical poet. He is in his works what the Englishman is in his wares, perfectly simple, neat, fit, and durable. He has played in the German world of literature the same part that Wedgwood has played in the English world of art.'
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.
[Pg 53]Long ago, in his sketch of Brindley and the early engineers, Dr Smiles had occasion to record the important service rendered by Wedgwood in the making of the Grand Trunk Canal--towards the preliminary expense of which he subscribed one thousand pounds--and in the development of the industrial life of the Midlands. Since that time Smiles has himself published a biography of
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Wedgwood, to which we are here indebted.
More than once it has happened that the youngest of thirteen children has turned out a genius. It was so in the case of Sir Richard Arkwright, and it turned out to be so in the case of Josiah Wedgwood, the youngest of the thirteen children of Thomas Wedgwood, a Burslem potter, and of Mary Stringer, a kind-hearted but delicate, sensitive woman, the daughter of a nonconformist clergyman. The town of Burslem, in Staffordshire, where Wedgwood saw the light in 1730, was then anything but an attractive place. Drink-
ing and cock-fighting were the common recreations; roads had scarcely any existence; the thatched hovels had dunghills before the doors, while the hollows from which the potter's clay was excavated were filled with stagnant water, and the atmosphere of the whole place was coarse and unwholesome, and a most unlikely nursery of genius.[Pg 54]
It is probable that the first Wedgwoods take their name from the hamlet of Weggewood in Staffordshire. There had been Wedgwoods in Burslem from a very early period, and this name occupies a large space in the parish registers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; of the fifty small potters settled there, many bore this honoured name. The ware consisted of articles in com-mon use, such as butter-pots, basins, jugs, and porringers. The black glazed and ruddy pottery then in use was much improved after an immigration of Dutchmen and Germans. The Elers, who followed the Prince of Orange, introduced the Delft ware and the salt glaze. They produced a kind of red ware, and Egyptian black; but disgusted at the discovery of their secret methods by Astbury and Twyford, they removed to Chelsea in 1710. An important improvement was made by Astbury, that of making ware white by means
of burnt flint. Samuel Astbury, a son of this famous potter, married an aunt of Josiah Wedgwood. But the art was then in its infancy, not more than one hundred people being employed in this way in the district of Burslem, as compared with about ten thousand now, with an annual export of goods amounting to about two hundred thousand pounds, besides what are utilised in home-trade. John Wesley, after visiting Burslem in 1760, and twenty years later in 1781, remarked how the whole face of the country had been improved in that period. Inhabitants had flowed in, the wilderness had become a fruitful field, and the country was not more improved than the people.