The Iron Age. — Iron the King of Metals. — Locke’s Apothegm. — The Moulder’s Art is Fundamental. — History of Founding. — Remains of Bronze Castings in Egypt, Greece, and Assyria. — Layard’s Discoveries. — The Greek Sculptors. — The Colossal Statue of Apollo at Rhodes. — The Great Bells of History. — Moulding and Casting a Pulley. — Description of the Process, Step by Step. — The Furnace Fire. — Pouring the Hot Metal into the Moulds. — A Pen Picture of the Laboratory. — Thus were the Hundred Gates of Babylon cast. — Neglect of the Useful Arts by Herodotus. — How Slavery has degraded Labor. — How Manual Training is to dignify it.

As we enter the Founding Laboratory we recall Locke’s apothegm: “He who first made known the use of that contemptible mineral [iron] may be truly styled the father of arts and the author of plenty.” We reflect, too, that the mineral that has given its name to an age of the world—our age—is worthy of careful study.

The Founding Laboratory, like all the laboratories of the school, is designed for twenty-four students. There are twenty-four moulding-benches, combined with troughs for sand, and a cupola furnace where from five hundred to one thousand pounds of iron may be melted.

The students we lately parted from in the Wood-turning Laboratory are here. Their training has been confined to manipulations in wood; they are now to be made acquainted with iron—iron in considerable masses. They should know something, in outline, of the history of the king of metals in the Founding Laboratory. The instructor speaks familiarly to them, somewhat as follows:

The art of the founder is fundamental in its nature. The arts of founding and forging are, indeed, the essential preliminary steps which lead to the finer manipulations entering into all metal constructions. Whether forging preceded founding or founding forging is immaterial; both arts are as old as recorded history—much older indeed. Moulding, which is the first step in the founder’s art, should be among the oldest of human discoveries, since man had only to take in his hand a lump of moist clay to receive ocular evidence of his power to give it any desired form.

Moulding for casting is closely allied to the potter’s art. The potter selects a clay suitable for the vessel he desires to mould, and the founder prepares a composition of sand and loam of the proper consistency to serve as a matrix for the vessel he desires to cast.

The art of founding was doubtless first applied to bronze. The ruins of Egypt and Greece abound in the remains of bronze castings, an analysis of which reveals about the same relative proportions of tin and copper in use now for the best qualities of statuary bronze. The bronze castings of the Assyrians show a high degree of art. Many specimens of this fine work of the Assyrian founder have been rescued from the ruins of long-buried Nineveh—buried so long that Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks marched over its site more than two thousand years ago without making any sign of a knowledge of its existence, and Alexander fought a great battle in its neighborhood in apparent ignorance of the fact that he trod on classic ground. But there, delving beneath the rubbish and decayed vegetation of four thousand years or more, Layard found great treasures of art in the palaces of Sennacherib and other Assyrian monarchs—vases, jars, bronzes, glass-bottles, carved ivory and mother-of-pearl ornaments, engraved gems, bells, dishes, and ear-rings of exquisite workmanship, besides arms and a variety of tools of the practical arts.

In Greece, in the time of Praxiteles, bronze was moulded into forms of rare beauty and grandeur. The colossal statue of Apollo at Rhodes affords an example of the magnitude of the Greek castings. It was cast in several parts, and was over one hundred feet high. About fifty years after its erection it was destroyed by an earthquake. Its fragments lay on the ground where it fell, nearly a thousand years; but when the Saracens gathered them together and sold them, there was a sufficient quantity to load a caravan consisting of nine hundred camels. One of the finest existing specimens of ancient bronze casting is that of a statue of Mercury discovered at Herculaneum, and now to be seen in the museum at Naples.

During the era of church bells the founder exercised his art in casting bells of huge dimensions. Early in the fifteenth century a bell weighing about fifty tons was cast at Pekin, China. This bell still exists, is fourteen and a half feet in height and thirteen feet in diameter. But the greatest bell-founding feat was, however, that of 1733, in casting the bell of Moscow. This bell is nineteen feet three inches in height and sixty feet nine inches in circumference, and weighs 443,772 pounds. The value of the metal entering into its construction is estimated at $300,000. It long lay in a pit in the midst of the Kremlin, but Czar Nicholas caused it to be raised, mounted upon a granite pedestal, and converted into a chapel. The methods of casting employed by the founder of this king of bells are not known. The bell has outlived the Works where it was cast. The melting and handling of two hundred and twenty tons of bronze metal certainly required appointments, mechanical and otherwise, of the most stupendous character; and the existence of such Works presupposes an intimate acquaintance with the most minute details of the founder’s art, since the natural order of development is from the less to the greater. That is to say, the founder who could manipulate scores of tons of metal in a single great casting could doubtless manipulate a few pounds of metal; or, the founder who could cast a bell weighing two hundred and twenty tons, could cast pots and kettles and hundreds of other little useful things. What we hope to do in this school Founding Laboratory is to gain a correct conception of great things by making ourselves thoroughly familiar with many forms of little things in moulding and casting.

The lesson of the day is the moulding and casting of a plain pulley. In the Pattern Laboratory each student has already executed a pattern of the pulley to be cast, and the pattern lies before him on his moulding-bench. Now the instructor, at the most conspicuous bench in the room, proceeds to execute the first part of the lesson, which consists of moulding. Taking from the trough a handful of sand, he explains that it is only by the use of sand possessing certain properties, as a degree of moisture, but not enough to vaporize when the metal is poured in, and a small admixture of clay, but not enough to make of the compound a loam, that the mould can be saved from ruin through vaporization, and, at the same time, given the essential quality of adhesiveness and plasticity. In the course of this explanation he remarks that the sand used in some parts of the mould is mixed with pulverized bituminous coal, coke, or plumbago, in order to give a smoother surface. Now he takes the “flask”—a wooden apparatus containing the sand in which the mould is made—and explains its construction and use. From this point—the sifting of facing sand on the turn-over board, to the final one of replacing the cope and securing it with keys or clamps—every step of the process is carefully gone through with and explained.

Meantime, before the moulding lesson has proceeded far, a fire is kindled in the furnace and it is “charged;” that is to say, filled with alternate layers of coal and pig-iron, with occasional fluxes of limestone. During the process of charging the furnace the instructor explains the principle of its construction, and shows how it operates. At every subsequent rest in moulding the students surround the furnace to witness the progress of the fire, the position of the layers of coal, and the state of combustion. They pass the furnace in procession, and each peeps in through the isinglass windows upon the glowing fire, asks a question, or a dozen questions, perhaps, and gives place to the next student in line. In the intervals of these visits to the furnace the work of making twenty-four moulds goes on under the eye of the instructor, the students explaining each step in advance. He is omnipresent, answering a question here, preventing a fatal mistake there, cheering, inspiring, and guiding the whole class, but never insisting upon a slavish adherence to strict identity in processes. And it is to be noted that there is in moulding more latitude for independence than in almost any other mechanical manipulation. Certain essentials there are, of course, but these being secured, the student may exercise his ingenuity in the execution of many minor details. That there is considerable individuality in the class may be seen by observation of the different methods employed by the several young moulders to compass various details of the same general process.

The moulds are nearly completed. The instructor assists a student who is found to be a little behind in his work, and interposes a warning against haste at the critical moment. Within a period of ten minutes the twenty-four patterns are “tapped,” loosened, and lifted from their beds, imperfections are carefully repaired with the trowel, or some other tool, channels to the pouring holes are cut in the surfaces, the pieces remaining in the copes are removed, the particles of loose sand are blown from the surfaces of the moulds, and the twenty-four copes are replaced, and secured in their correct positions with keys or clamps.

A final visit is now made to the furnace. The fusion is found to be complete; the “pigs” are converted into a molten pool. It only remains to pour the hot metal into the moulds. The instructor seizes an iron ladle lined with clay, holds it under the spout of the furnace reservoir until it is nearly filled with the glowing fluid, lifts and carries it carefully across the room, and pours the contents into a mould. Then the students, in squads, after having been cautioned as to the deadly nature of the molten mass they are to handle, follow the example of their instructor. At this moment the laboratory appeals powerfully to the imagination. The picture it presents is weird in the extreme. From the open furnace door a stream of crimson light floods the room. The students wear paper caps and are bare-armed; their faces glow in the reflected glare of the furnace-fire; they march up to the furnace one by one, each receiving a ladleful of steaming hot metal, and countermarch to their benches, where they pour the contents of their ladles into the moulds.

Still holding his empty ladle in his hand, the instructor watches the progress of the lesson with keen interest until the last stream of metal has found its way into the throat of the last mould. He recalls the story of Vulcan, the God of Fire, and of all the arts and industries dependent upon it, and wonders why he was not depicted pouring tons of molten metal, in the foundery, rather than sledge in hand at the forge. Then he regards the class with a benignant expression of pride, begs for silence, and says, “Thus were the hundred brazen gates of ancient Babylon cast long before the beginning of the Christian era.” Herodotus did not think to tell us much of the state of the useful arts in the early time of which he wrote, but the brazen gates attracted his attention, and he described them: “At the end of each street a little gate is found in the wall along the river-side, in number equal to the streets, and they are all made of brass, and lead down to the edge of the river.” Could Herodotus have foreseen what a deep interest his readers of this remote time would take in the history of the useful arts, he would have written less about the walls, palaces, and temples of Babylon, and more about the artificers. He would have begged admission to the forges and founderies of the city; he would have visited the Assyrian founder at his work, questioned him about his processes, and set down his answers with painstaking care. Then he would have sought an introduction to the smithy, and from the grimy forger learned what he could tell of his art and of kindred arts. So the father of history might have made an enduring record of the real things which throughout all time have contributed to the advancement of the human race, rather than of events growing out of the ambitions and passions of men—the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, the varying fortune of battle, the treacheries, crimes, and brutalities of rulers, and the cringing submission of millions of subjects. But, alas, the founders and smiths, and all the other cunning artificers of the vast empire of Syria, were slaves! and through their ancestry for unnumbered generations the stigma of slavery had attached to labor. Ay, on the bare backs of the founders of Babylon’s brazen gates the popular scorn of labor had doubtless left its livid brand.

With these pariahs of Assyrian society, these outcasts of the social circle, the great Greek historian could not even speak. Descended from a long line of noble Halicarnassian families, Herodotus felt all the prejudices of the hereditary aristocracy of his country. Hence he dilates upon the wonders of Babylon, but is silent as to its architects and artisans. He describes with great minuteness of detail the tower of Jupiter Belus, but gives no hint of the name of its designer and builder. He declares that Babylon was adorned in a manner surpassing any city of the time, but in regard to the artificers through whose ingenuity and skill such pleasing effects were produced he gives no sign.

The silence of Herodotus on the subject of the useful arts in Babylon does not indicate a want of appreciation of their value, but merely shows contempt of the Assyrian artisan, and this not because he was an artisan, but because he was a slave. The story of Solon and Crœsus, which antedates Herodotus, whether true or a myth, shows that iron and artisanship were appreciated by both Greeks and barbarians. When Crœsus had exhibited to the Greek sage his vast hoard of treasures, Solon said, “If another comes that hath better iron than you he will be master of all this gold.” Here is a recognition of the immense value of the arts of smelting and forging, coupled with a contemptuous silence regarding as well the smelter and the smith as the rank and file of the armies who should wield the swords and spears drawn by science from the recesses of the earth, and by art wrought and tempered at the forge. Through all the early ages the brand and scorn of slavery adhered to labor, while the arts, the products of labor, were often deified. Thus the Scythian, who from a grinning skull drank the warm blood of his captive, regarded with superstitious awe as a god the iron sword with which he cut off his captive’s head.

It was only with the revival of learning, after the intellectual and moral gloom of the Dark Ages, that labor began slowly to lift its bowed head and assert itself. But it does not yet stand erect. It still stoops as if in the presence of a master. Every now and then it winces and cringes as if the sound of the descending lash smote its ear. It remains for you, students in this school of the arts—all the arts that make mankind good and great—it remains for you to brush away from the tear-stained face of labor all the shadows accumulated there through all the dead ages of oppression and slavery. It remains for you to make labor bold by making it intelligent. It remains for you to dignify and ennoble labor by bestowing upon it the ripest scientific and artistic culture, and devoting to its service the best energies of body and mind.