The Strand Magazine : an illustrated monthly. Vol. 1, no. 2, February 1891 / edited by George Newnes.

Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Strand Magazine : an illustrated monthly. Vol. 1, no. 2, February 1891 / edited by George Newnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were so easy and so mechanical a busi¬ ness to “ make money ’’ in one’s daily doings. x\nd then it strikes us : What do these men, ^\dth their usually grimy aprons and often work in turning blackened out so faces. get for their much coin of the realm ? They seem to have a very good time of it on the whole, and the conditions of light, warmth, and safety under which they labour are certainly in striking contrast to the trials, the dangers, and the dreariness of the lives of those who unearth the metal. On an average, each workman in the operative de¬ partment of the Mint makes his £2 I os. a week. He enters the ser¬ vice of the department as a boy, and remains there through his working life, if he cares to do so and proves trustworthy. No one is accepted for employ¬ ment after sixteen years of age, and every precau¬ tion is taken by the. authorities against the weakness of human nature. Each room is under a separate official, without whose assistance in the unlocking of doors no employe can leave. There is no hardship in this daily im¬ prisonment, every department being fitted up with all con\'eniences for cooking, eat¬ ing, ckc. ; and, judging from wdiat we have seen, we should say the lives of the opera¬ tives at the Mint are not unenviable. Of one thing A\'e can speak very positively, and that is as to their natures : their geniality is a characteristic they share in common with their chief superintendent. If one had seriously contemplated becoming an opera¬ tive, they could not have taken more pains to initiate one into the mysteries of the coinage. We now make our wav to the Aunealing- room. Here the scene changes entirelv. illustration gives an excellent impression. It shows the man standing with the iron rod and hook in hand ready to push the tray to the farther end of the oven. We venture modestly to suggest that the structure would do admirably for the pur¬ poses of cremation. ‘‘ Quite right, sir, it would 1 I suppose you wouldn't like to try it ? ” We frankly and honestly confess we should not. A X X E .V LI .\ (; I- f K X A C E. d'he buzz, the whirr, and o bang of the all ])Owerful machinery give place to severalfur- naces. The blanks are brought in in bags, are emptied into an iron tray, and shoved along sort of oven, of which our an elongated After a few minutes the blanks are sufficiently baked. If one’s own valu¬ able carcase had been in that red-hot oven for ever so short a time, it would have come out charred and hardened. Not so the metal, which is considerably softened. The blanks are now tipped into a perforated sort of basin, which is picked up by a man from another room and carried away. We have during all this time been stand¬ ing in a heat which would do credit to a Turkish bath. But now, again, the conditions change entirely, and Ave are in a room filled with steam, and cold enough to refrigerate one. Here the blanks are plunged into a tank of cold water, Avhich hisses and spits like a dozen angry snakes as the hot metal touches it. From the cooling bath the blanks go to the acid bath. Into this latter they dis¬ appear black with the oxide of copper cling¬ ing to them. Pears’ Soap or Sapolio, or whatever means to cleanliness Ave may em¬ ploy, AA^ould hardly accomplish the Aronders in an hour’s application to the human skin.