Before these were planned, the service of the roads was centred in some of those fine, dashing, well-appointed stage-coaches, such as our own country alone can present. Nearly a dozen excellent turnpike-roads radiate from Birmingham, placing that town in connection with all the great towns of the kingdom. In addition to the turnpike-roads, Birmingham is intersected with numerous canals, which have for many years formed media of conveyance to and from the manufacturing towns. But we live in such 'go-a-head' days, that both coaches and canals are well nigh held in contempt. Nothing will now suffice but the puffing, dashing, fly-away locomotive, which is accused of intolerable slowness if it does not master thirty or forty miles an hour. When the two railway Companies before-mentioned arranged to join their lines at Birmingham, they thought they were doing brave things to afford such handsome stations at the eastern margin of the town. And so indeed they were: the works were large, comprehensive, and commodious (Cut No. 6); although the competition of more recent years bids fair to render them nearly useless. That which is now the Queen's Hotel was once the offices of the Company; but offices of a much larger character became speedily required. The booking-offices and passenger-sheds, at the rear or east of the hotel, cover an immense area. So long as the London and Birmingham, and the Grand Junction Companies remained separate, each one required a large station, both for passengers and goods, at Birmingham; but when the two 'amalgamated' (how little do railway companies seem to remember that an amalgam is in reality a union of quicksilver with some other metal!) both stations were thrown into one. The Birmingham and Gloucester, and the Birmingham and Derby lines also brought their termini pretty nearly to the same spot. Why then should there be any vast additional railway works in the heart of Birmingham ? Let the 'Battle of the Gauges' answer this question: a battle which, though not bloody, has cost the commercial world millions of good money, much of which will never bring an adequate return. In 1845, the broad gauge was first permitted to trace its giant steps towards the north. The Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton, and the Oxford and Rugby Railways received Parliamentary sanction in that year. Thus was the narrow gauge of Birmingham threatened both in the east and the west: the army of General Stephenson was attacked on both flanks by that of General Brunel. In the next following year the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Company obtained increased powers to render the accommodation of their district more efficient; while another Company obtained Legislative sanction for the Oxford and Birmingham Lineall these lines being closely associated with the Great Western Company. Here was a bold step. The invading army actually entered Birmingham; nay, more, an additional sum of nearly half a million sterling was sanctioned for carrying the broad gauge right through the town itself. Even this was not all; for a new Company, under the name of the Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Dudley Railway Company, were VOL. I. empowered to spend nearly a million sterling in making | have succeeded in landing all parties in a 'fix,' from about fifteen miles of broad gauge between those three towns. Was the narrow gauge to beat a retreat, or surrender at discretion, at such a time? Was General Stephenson to be vanquished in this way ? The ulterior measures will show. The narrow gauge party obtained an Act by which they were authorized to spend more than one-third of a million sterling in carrying their old line into the heart of Birmingham; while they supported the Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Stour Valley Company in obtaining an Act for a narrow gauge line from Birmingham to Wolverhampton, with a power of raising about a million and a half sterling. In 1847, further Acts were obtained by both the rival parties, to make additional bits of lines to complete their respective systems. Every scrap of these new lines which is to be on the narrow gauge, together with a very large portion of the canal navigation of the whole district, have become absorbed in the gigantic London and North Western Company; while the whole of the broad gauge portion will probably ultimately belong to the Great Western. The two have made desperate struggles to obtain possession, by purchase, of the Birmingham and Oxford line; which struggles have been marked by the most extraordinary features, perhaps, ever presented by a joint-stock undertaking. The battle is not yet ended; the two gauges regard each other as fiercely as ever, and the battle-field is even divided against itself,-shareholders against directors; and eighteen months of Parliamentary and legal proceedings which they do not seem to know how to extricate themselves. Meanwhile money has been absorbed at a frightful rate; the whole of the capital for this much-coveted line has been called up, before the line itself even approaches to completion; and when the decision is finally made, and the oyster fairly divided, it appears very much as if there would be just a shell a piece for the combatants. In sober truth, this railway campaigning at Birmingham is a very wild affair: it outruns all reasonable limits. The new works on both gauges, within fifteen miles of Birmingham, will probably not be brought into working order for less than four millions sterlingof which one million will be spent within Birmingham itself! Both lines run completely through Birmingham from one side to the other, and both lines run from Birmingham to Wolverhampton and Dudley, independently of the old Grand Junction Railway, which also runs from Birmingham very near to Wolverhampton. Parliament did not know which to sanction, so it sanctioned both; and neither Company will abandon or suspend its works, for fear of the rivalry of the other. It will not perhaps arrive at a Kilkenny cat' conclusion, but it will make a nearer approach thereto than is consistent with the interests of the respective Companies. The North Western Company, especially, will smart for it in future years. But if the combatants will share between them the shells of the oyster, who will have the oyster itself? The town of Birmingham. Birmingham will have almost unprecedented advantages in respect to com- | Birmingham can make them; but if articles of utility munications with other towns. Two stations in the very heart of the town, replete with all the conveniences for traffic that ingenuity can suggest, and connecting-links between these stations and all the great towns of England-these are the results which Birmingham will get out of the mélée. The old or narrow gauge line will send off its branch or extension, a little eastward of the present station; and this branch will cross several streets and lanes, until it reaches Pinfold Street, southward of New Street. Here an immense group of houses, mostly of a humble character, are being levelled with the ground, to make room for a passenger-station of magnificent dimensions, from which station a new road of communication will be formed into New Street, the principal avenue in the town. From this station the line will take its start onward to Dudley and Wolverhampton. The other line, the broad gauge, will enter Birmingham at the south-east corner, pass a little to the west of the present narrow gauge station, and arrive near the heart of the town, at the junction of High Street, Bull Street, and Dale-End. A little north-west of this point an immense quadrangle of houses is to be cleared away, bounded by Monmouth, Livery, and Great Charles Streets, and Snow Hill; and here the broad gauge station is to be, not a whit less vast and costly, apparently, than its rival. From this station the line will pass out into the open country, on its way to Dudley and Wolverhampton. In carrying these two new lines through Birmingham, the works assume a very diversified character; for, owing to the many inequalities in the level of the streets, there are on each line combinations of viaduct, open cutting, and tunnelling, of a most costly nature. If the shareholders in all these lines gain as much advantage as Birmingham itself, it will be well: but we doubt. BIRMINGHAM INDUSTRY What is this Birmingham, for which such a railway rout is made? What do the inhabitants do-how do they live-what has made them famous? The answers to these questions would carry us into such a maze of manufactures, that we must purposely glance only at the most broad and salient features. Birmingham is, beyond all question, the most remarkable centre of manufactures in metal, in the world. There may perhaps be other towns where more iron is used; there are, as at Sheffield, places where more steel is wrought into manufactured forms; there is in London, a larger production of costly articles in gold and silver; there are other towns, where large and complicated engines and machines are made in greater number; but there is no place to equal Birmingham in respect to the diversity and subdivision of metal manufactures, or to the number of persons so employed. It was at one time called the "toy-shop of Europe;" but this, though a smart sort of cognomen, is not worth much. If the world wants metal toys, are wanted, Birmingham is equally alive to the best mode of producing them. Whatever metal can do, Birmingham will make it do; from a pin's-lcad to a steam-engine; from a pewter pot to a copper boiler; from a gilt button to a brass bedstead. Every ounce of metal is made to do so much work in Birmingham, as to illustrate the economy of material more strikingly than in most other places. No place knows better than Birmingham how to make metallic articles thin, when the price will not pay for a greater thickness. No place can contrive better to give an ornamental exterior to that which, for economising material, is hollow within. And if many Birmingham goods are Brummagem' goods, whose fault is this? If people will have goods so cheap that a fair remunerating price can hardly be left to the manufacturer, is it matter for wonder that the latter taxes his ingenuity how to produce a showy affair for "next to nothing?" So long as Birmingham can show her ability to produce the highest class of manufactured articles in metal when properly paid for, no one has reason to blame her for trying to please the pence-gentry as well as the guineagentry. Nay, we may go further;-the cottages and humble dwellings of England are indebted to Birmingham and its neighbourhood, for a greater amount of neat interior fittings, useful utensils, and ingenious knick-knacks of all kinds, than fall to the lot, perhaps, of any other country in the world. Let the reader take his eyes off this sheet for a few minutes, and glance round the room in which he may be sitting-we care not whether it be in a house of £10 or £100 a year rental let him look at the doors, the windows, the fire-place, the cupboards or closets, the furniture, the implements and vessels, the ornaments or decorations-wherever he may look, Birmingham is before There is scarcely a room in this country, except in the most poverty-stricken hovel, that does not contain some article of Birmingham manufacture. Let him then go from houses to persons: let him look at English dress, in all its endless variety, and then say whether there is one such dress that is not indebted to Birmingham for something or other in a metallic form. It may be trivial, it is true; but this very triviality only the better illustrates the minute applications which are now made of metal. Will not a beaver or silk hat escape this enumeration? Look at the little buckle that fastens the band. Are not our boots excepted? Look at the nails and tips' or at the tags of laces. Female attire? Let the buttons and buckles and clasps, the pins and hooks-and-eyes and lace-holes, the combs and bracelets and armlets, the rings and brooches and necklaces-let them all give evidence to the part which Birmingham and its vicinity have taken in decking out any and every Englishwoman. If you write a letter, look at your desk, your inkstand, your steel-pen, your pen-holder, your wafer-stamp, your seal, your candlestick or taper-stand, and think how far Birmingham has been concerned in them. If a lady, seated at her work, would gossip a little about him. her work-trinkets, the needles, pins, thimble, bodkin, piercer, crochet and knitting-needles-all would tell of Birmingham, or in some few instances of Sheffield or Redditch. If you walk abroad, and rain befall you, ask who made the metal work of your umbrella. If you ride on horseback, think where the bridle-bit, the stirrups, and the buckles came from. In short, do anything, go anywhere, buy, beg, borrow, make, alter, eat, drink, walk, ride, look, hear, touch-you cannot shake off Birmingham for many minutes together. If, then, there be such a multiplicity of articles made of metal in Birmingham, the reader may reasonably expect that there must be vast factories in that town, replete with all the wonderful organization of labour that marks the Manchester cotton factories. This, however, is not exactly the case. Chimneys there are in plenty, smoke there is in more than plenty; but the chimneys and the smoke belong to workshops rather than to factories. So much of Birmingham work is effected by manipulative skill, that the steam-engine is less autocratic in that town than in Manchester or Leeds. It is true there are numerous steam-engines always employed, but the power afforded by these engines is applied principally to the rougher kinds of work. One ball of cotton is so like another, one yard of calico is so like another, that as soon as steam machinery has been enabled to spin the one or weave the other, millions of each kind are struck off in a very short time. But in Birmingham the different varieties and sizes and patterns of articles are so numerous, that the adjustment of the steam-engine to do the work of all would be almost impracticable, and unprofitable if practicable. The adjustments required by the evervarying tastes and wants of the age can be effected only by men's fingers: the steam-engine being appealed to for that kind of service which may be common to all the works required. It is the multiplicity and diversity of the manufactures of Birmingham that lead to the peculiar mode of managing the arrangements between master and workmen. There are some establishments which contain several hundred workmen under one roof; but, in general, the numbers must be reckoned by dozens rather than by hundreds. The buildings are really workshops, and not huge factories with five or six long ranges of windows speckling the fronts. But we must come down even to less numbers than dozens, to catch the spirit of Birmingham manufactures in a proper manner. The division and subdivision of labour are carried in that town to a most extraordinary degree of minuteness; insomuch that an article which might appear to us to emanate from one factory or workshop, has been really produced at a dozen—each manufacturer or workman fabricating only a portion of it. There is master under master, workman under workman; and when the finished article is ready for sale, its price is made up of a number of fragments of wages, and fragments of profits, besides the cost of the original material. THE IRON AND STEEL TRADES. Let us glance a little at some of the more prominent departments of productive industry, and see how they bear on the social features of Birmingham life. And first for Iron. There are no iron mines, and no coal mines under Birmingham itself. All the iron and all the coal are brought from the busy district northwest of the town. The iron-masters of Staffordshire usually come to Birmingham on Thursday in each week, to arrange all the matters incident to the sale of iron to the Birmingham manufacturers. They also meet once a quarter, to settle among themselves the price at which iron shall be sold; for there is, in this respect, an arrangement something like that adopted by the coal-owners of Durham and Northumberland. The iron is sent to Birmingham, mostly by canal, in the form of bars, rods, and sheets; and Birmingham industry has then to impart to this iron the countless forms which distinguish it. There are steam-engine makers, mill-wrights, axle-tree makers, boiler-makers, and others, who use iron in large and weighty pieces; and here the forge, the casting-pit, and the file, are the main appliances for bringing the iron to the required forms. If we go to the next lower stage in the use of iron, by tracing it to the manufacturer of smaller articles, and if we include the South Staffordshire district generally, instead of confining our attention strictly to Birmingham, the number and variety become perfectly bewildering. Agricultural implements, anvils, hammers, and all kinds of tools, locks and keys, hinges and bolts, springs, stoves, fenders, fire-irons, chains, fences, tubes, presses and vices, saucepans and kettles, gridirons and flat-irons-it would be in vain to try to get to the end of the list. And what is very remarkable is, that each one of these articles is a separate branch of manufacture. Take the lock-manufacture, for example: we find not only that locks form a distinct branch of industry, but that book-case locks, cabinet locks, case locks, dead locks, drawback locks, gate locks, mortice locks, padlocks, pocket-book locks, rim locks, sash locks, spring locks, stock locks, thumb locks, trunk locks, and probably many others, -all form distinct branches, undertaken by different men, and wrought by workmen, each of whom confines himself pretty nearly to one kind. Then again, take keys: some of the men-not merely the workmen, but masters who take orders on their own account,- -are key-makers, some key-stampers, some key-filers. Nearly the whole of the iron implements and articles mentioned in this paragraph are made in workshops containing only a small number of men but they are more closely connected with the environs of Birmingham than with Birmingham itself; so we will defer to a future page a sketch of the manufacturing system which distinguishes them. If we descend to a next lower scale in the use of iron, we find that though the articles themselves are smaller, the establishments in which they are made are generally larger. This arises from the circumstance | iron in manufacture,-lower in respect to the size of that the steam-engine can be used in this group of manufactures; whereas the group noticed in the last paragraph are almost wholly made without the aid of this mighty worker. This precisely illustrates the comparison which we before made between factories and workshops. Wire, nails, and screws, are three classes of products that especially come under the operation of this remark: they are all made in enormous quantities in Birmingham, and for the most part in large establishments. In the making of wire on the improved modern system, rods of iron are drawn repeatedly through holes in hardened steel plates, until the thickness of the iron is so reduced as to bring it to the form of wire; smaller and smaller holes being used according as the thickness of the iron diminishes; and as this drawing requires an immense mechanical force, such an operation is a very proper one to be brought within the scope of steam-machinery. Then, when a steam-engine is once provided, every motive of economy leads the manufacturer to make it do as much work as possible; and hence he has many draw-plates, many coils of wire, many drums round which the wire can wind as it is made, and many repetitions of the drawing machinery. All this gives to his workshop the appearance of a large factory. The nail and screw factories are yet larger exemplifications of the same system. Some of them employ several hundred men, and are fitted up with complicated machinery in every room. The number of nails and screws made in Birmingham is almost beyond belief. The iron for the nails is sent into the factories in the form of sheets; and these sheets are cut into strips, which strips are further cut up into various sizes and shapes of nails. There is one establishment in Birmingham which cuts up from thirty to forty tons of iron per week, to make into nails; the nails, taking one size with another, give an average of about a million to a ton; so that the total yield would amount to two thousand million nails in a year!-All this in machine-made nails alone, and in one factory alone! Whether any one has ever attempted to estimate the almost uncountable number made in the whole Staffordshire district, we do not know. Screws are not made in such enormous number as nails; but still the produce must be very large, and the establishments in which they are made exhibit highly ingenious specimens of mechanism. The cutting off of a piece from a coil of thick wire, the forging of a protuberance to form the head, the turning or shaping of the head and shank into a symmetrical form, the cutting of the notch or cleft in the head, and the cutting of the thread or worm of the screw, all are effected by the aid of machinery, some of which is of a very curious kind. It is a remarkable feature in this manufacture, that the machines are attended almost wholly by females: the employment is of a kind that requires steady attention rather than physical strength or great skill; and it is one of many in Birmingham that females can attend to. If, lastly, we descend to a still lower application of the pieces of iron employed,-we shall find that Birmingham industry becomes more and more interesting. We must here suppose the iron to have undergone that process which converts it into steel; for steel is capable of being employed in smaller fragments than iron. Who does not now use steel pens? Who does not remember the time when a steel pen cost as much as a dozen quills? Who is ignorant of the marvellous reduction that has taken place in the market value of these tiny bits of steel? Sixpence a piece, sixpence a dozen, sixpence a gross,- thus have they come down in value. All this could not have been done but for the application of machinery. Men's hands employed in cutting and pressing and shaping the pens, would never have permitted this cheapening to have gone to such an extent. And yet there are actually more men employed in the manufacture than were employed when machinery was less used. The machinery, in fact, has created a demand, which requires large numbers both of machines and of men to supply. Some of the steel-pen manufactories of Birmingham are very large establishments, containing ranges of highlyfinished machines, and giving employment to large numbers of workmen. One of these manufacturers, in his advertisements, states his yearly produce at millions of dozens; and there is no reason to doubt that it does reach that extraordinary pitch. Needles are another application of minute pieces of steel, requiring very delicate and beautiful machinery. No fewer than thirty separate and successive processes are involved in the manufacture of a good needle, affording an example of subdivided employment scarcely paralleled in any other industrial process. Birmingham produces its millions of needles; but the manufacture is not one which marks the town particularly. The village of Redditch, in Worcestershire, one of the most extraordinary villages in England, is the home of the needle trade: almost every manufacturer makes needles, almost every workman makes needles; almost every lawyer and doctor, every landlord and householder, every shopkeeper and pedlar, makes his money indirectly by needles or needle-makers: needles are the beginning and the end, the be-all and the do-all, the sinews and the life-blood, of Redditch. Three or four thousand millions of needles travel out of this needle-making Redditch every year. No wonder, then, if Birmingham has to be content with the second place in this department of industry. She has her revenge, however, in steel toys and ornaments. These are produced in exhaustless variety at Birmingham. Studs and rosettes, clasps and buckles, handles and knobs, feet and claws, are made of steel, to a vast extent, and give rise to a constant exercise of ingenuity on the part of the designer to produce patterns which shall please by their gracefulness and beauty. THE MIXED METAL TRADES. But large as is the consumption of iron, either in its |