Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/332

298 appealing to facts known to many individuals of those classes for whose benefit these reflections are intended.

(362.) There is a process in the manufacture of gun-barrels for making what, in the language of the trade, are called skelps. The skelp is a piece or bar of iron, about three feet long, and four inches wide, but thicker and broader at one end than at the other: and the barrel of a musket is formed by forging out such pieces to the proper dimensions, and then folding or bending them into a cylindrical form, until the edges overlap, so that they can be welded together.

About twenty years ago, the workmen, employed at a very extensive factory in forging these skelps out of bar-iron, "struck" for an advance of wages; and as their demands were very exorbitant, they were not immediately complied with. In the meantime, the superintendent of the establishment directed his attention to the subject; and it occurred to him, that if the circumference of the rollers, between which the bar-iron was rolled, were to be made equal to the length of a skelp, or of a musket barrel, and if also the groove in which the iron was compressed, instead of being of the same width and depth throughout, were cut gradually deeper and wider from a point on the rollers, until it returned to the same point, then the bar-iron passing between such rollers, instead of being uniform in width and thickness, would have the form of a skelp. On making the trial, it was found to succeed perfectly; a great reduction of human labour was effected by the process, and the workmen who had acquired