صفحة 13 من 2651

I have seen several boys, under twenty years of age, who had

never exercised any other trade but that of making nails, and

who, when they exerted themselves, could make, each of them,

upwards of two thousand three hundred nails in a day. The making

of a nail, however, is by no means one of the simplest

operations. The same person blows the bellows, stirs or mends the

fire as there is occasion, heats the iron, and forges every part

of the nail: in forging the head, too, he is obliged to change

his tools. The different operations into which the making of a

pin, or of a metal button, is subdivided, are all of them much

more simple, and the dexterity of the person, of whose life it

has been the sole business to perform them, is usually much

greater. The rapidity with which some of the operations of those

manufactures are performed, exceeds what the human hand could, by

those who had never seen them, be supposed capable of acquiring.