TIN TOYS AND TEA SETS.
Reading edition
BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.
In Avenue D, some time ago, I saw a small boy wheeling a barrel along on its edge with so much difficulty that I wondered, what it contained, and looking inside, I saw that it was more than-half full of glistening scraps of metal. I asked him what they were for. "Oh, them's Dexters," he said, as if grieved at my ignorance; and he wheeled his barrel into a great brick factory, five or six stories high, piled about the door of which were large wooden cases addressed to Java, Brazil, Cape Town, and other distant points of the world.
It was in the latter part of April; and though the end of the year was so far off, these packages were being shipped for the Christmas trade in the far-away countries named upon them. They were all filled with toys, and on all the floors of the factory hundreds of busy hands were making playthings for children. That was what the small boy meant by Dexters. The scraps of tin in the barrel bore the convex impression of a horse upon them, and after being trimmed, put together, and painted, they would look not at all unlike the famous trotter by whose name they are known.
Dexters are the most popular of all tin toys, and at this factory in Avenue D they were being made by the thousand for the holiday trade of the coming winter. The spring and summer months are the busiest at the factory, which is quietest when the stores are doing their best trade, in November and December. The seasons with wholesalers and retailers are not at all alike; and when next Christmas the reader visits a toy-shop, he may remember that the goods he sees were principally made in May, June, and August.
The manufacture of tin toys is a new industry in America, and it is so successful that, besides supplying the domestic market, it sends large quantities of goods to all parts of the world, including England and France. When Santa Claus drops in on the children at the Cape of Good Hope, at Penang, at New Zealand, at Buenos Ayres, and at Callao, he will have articles from this factory in Avenue D, New York.
Perhaps some of our readers have advanced so far in the serious business of life that they have forgotten what tin toys are. They are made of tin, of course, but they comprise many different articles, and over a thousand different designs. They are mounted on platforms and wheels, or on wheels alone, and in some of them the revolution of the wheels sets the figures on the platform in motion. An elephant tirelessly somersaults on a trapeze, three dogs ascend and re-ascend a ladder, a little boy chops a tree, a tiger climbs a pole, a girl dances with a skipping-rope, and a circus rider leaps through a hoop. The trainer is larger than the elephant, the axe is larger than the boy, and the tiger balances upon its tail. But this is neither here nor there. As long as the toys are kept in motion, the figures repeat their feats; and if they are not quite life-like, they have the advantage of being unwearying in their exertions.
Tin toys also include locomotives with trains of cars, street cars with papier-maché conductors and drivers, express wagons, hose-carts, ox teams, menagerie wagons, ice carts, milk wagons, "four-in-hands," trucks, stages, steamboats, fire-engines, and magic lanterns.
They are all made much in the same way as the Dexters: the sheet tin is struck by heavy dies, and the impressions made in the metal are cut out, trimmed, and fastened together. Eight dies are used in making a Dexter four inches long, and the set costs from four to six hundred dollars.
In one of the upper stories of the factory we find a young man with a pile of tin plates before him, each about four inches long and three inches wide. He places them one by one on a steel bed-plate, with the counter die upon it, and putting his foot into the stirrup of a leather band by which the die is suspended in an iron frame-work, he strikes out with it, lifting the die, and then allowing it to fall upon the plate, in which it hollows out a very fair representation of a horse. The strain on the man's leg is severe, and if he has nerves, they are pretty well shattered by the cannon-like sound which the die makes in striking.
It must be still worse with the girls who are employed in the same branch of the business; and as the mass of steel comes down like a sledge-hammer every two or three seconds, I pity them as I see how it shakes not only their bodies, but also the beams in the ceiling and the pillars that hold the building together. The hours are long and dreary to them, and when the day is ended, the continuous shock has unfitted them to enjoy the evening. They have no share in the pleasure which the results of their labor will afford. They do not see the toys giving happiness to children; and what they think most about, I fancy, is the number of impressions they can make in a day, for every time the die strikes it is a bit of bread for them.
Their whole attention must be fixed on the machine in its up-and-down motion. A moment's carelessness would cost them their fingers; and we see one girl half of whose hand has been lost by being caught under the die.
The first die simply hollows out the form in the plate, a second die cuts away all the surrounding metal, and a third die smooths the edges. But there is only half a horse so far, and the other half is made in the same way as the first. Both pieces are then pressed together, and we have a very shapely racer.
There are several hundred different dies for acrobats, cows, goats, boys, girls, parrots, monkeys, and other objects of natural history.
In another part of the factory we see several men seated by small furnaces, over which pans of liquid metal are simmering, and the Dexters are dipped into these, which additionally secures the two halves. The next process is coloring. Up to this point the horse has plainly been tin; but when it is dipped in a bath of white or brown or black paint, and hung out to dry, it becomes very much more life-like, and has the glossy surface of an enamel. Dipping is found preferable to painting with a brush, as it leaves a much smoother surface, and of course can be done much quicker. The superfluous paint flows back into the bath, and sometimes strings of it hang from the hoofs and ears. When they are hard, these strings are cut off with a knife, and the toy is then secured to a small platform, and "finished." The finishing is done by a score or more of men and young women seated at long benches, upon which are pots of paints and brushes. The eyes, mane, tail, and hoofs are given different colors from the body, and the Dexter is now ready for packing.
The manufacture of tin toys requires no great ability or ingenuity, and most of the persons employed in it are paid very little. A Dexter several inches long can be bought for fifteen cents at any shop, and this sum includes the profits of the producer, the wholesale merchant, and the retail seller. The producer's price to the trade is not more than seven or eight cents. But simple as it is, the toy is handled by sixteen persons before it finally reaches the little girls who wrap it in tissue-paper and put it into a card-board box. It travels up and down stairs, and makes the whole circuit of the factory; it passes from the dies to the solderers, from the solderers to the paint shops, from the paint shops to young men who put wheels upon the platform, and thence to the finishers.
Tea sets and dinner sets of Britannia metal are made in the same factory. The liquid metal is poured into iron moulds, and cups, saucers, plates, sugar-bowls, milk-pitchers, and coffee-pots are produced, twenty or thirty to the minute. Coming out of the mould, they have no lustre, and they are polished on a lathe, which gives them the appearance of burnished silver. A complete tea set, with cups and saucers for a doll and five guests, costs twenty-five cents at retail, and not more than fifteen cents at wholesale, and the man with the mould has to work briskly in order to earn his bread and butter.