A large majority of visitors to the fortifications in and
around Charleston Harbor, are, doubtless, of the opinion that we are still
indebted to Yankee or English mechanics for the heavy ordinance with which those
works are supplied. Certainly, until the Messrs. EASON demonstrated the
contrary, very few persons could have been persuaded that rifled cannon of as
good finish, and nearly as great range, as the best imported guns, could be
turned out of our own workshops. The fact is, and it should put our patriotism
to the blush, that the general tendency with us has been to disparage domestic
manufactures of every class, and to take it for granted that any article was the
better in direct ratio to the distance from which it was brought. Whatever was
home made must be inferior, and, acting upon this generally accepted axiom, our
authorities and our people have as a rule, given all their larger contracts to
Northern companies, without so much as taking the trouble to inquire into the
ability of Southern houses to furnish the same articles at the same prices. Some
excuse might be made for this singular inconsistency, if the question of economy
were at all involved. We cannot expect trades people to be over-liberal , nor is
it reasonable to suppose that, in making a bargain, any one is likely to
disregard his own interest. But it is humiliatingly true, that even where our
own mechanics have underbid their Northern rivals the latter have been
preferred, under a mistake idea that the workmanship and material of the South
are vastly inferior to those of the more wealthy and ingenious North.
A striking illustration of this blunder in political
economy, and of the vassalage in which we have been so long and voluntarily
held, is furnished by a recent experience in Virginia - happily, to unfavorable,
owing to the maladroitness of the enemy. Some time last year a Board of
Commissioners was appointed by the State to contract for tools and general
machinery for the manufacture of five hundred rifle muskets per annum, to be
equal to the best fire-arms and in the world, and requiring, therefore in their
construction, the most perfect and complete machinery; the object being to
establish on a permanent basis a State Armory.
With characteristic negligence, none of the Richmond
contractors urged their proposals before the board, until it appeared that there
was a strong probability of the work being given to the Massachusetts firm of
AMES & CO. Fortunately for us, at this juncture, the impudence of the Yankee got
the upper hand of his habitual caution. Confident of success, the New York Times
brought out a ___ in which it sneered most contemptuously at the helplessness of
Virginia, and exulted over the alleged inferiority other mechanics. This
article, which was re-published in the Richmond Enquirer, stung the leading iron
men here into energetic remonstrance and action. Mr. JOSEPH R. ANDERSON, the
accomplished head of the Tredegar Works, at once perfected his plans, and soon
offered the Commissioners proposals even more advantageous to the State than
those tendered by AMES. Governor LETCHER, after full consideration of the
matter, signified his approval of the contract, and the over-confident Yankee
had the satisfaction of knowing that his Abolition friends had choused [sic] him
out of a job which would have secured him large profits and additional
celebrity. He is welcome now to make as much out of the United States as he can
during the rest of the war. We are grateful for the opportunity he gave us to
develope our resources, and, I think, we will prove to the full satisfaction of
himself and the world, that we are equal, if not superior, to the North in the
manufacture as well as the use of every variety of arms.
I had the pleasure of visiting, yesterday, the great
Southern foundry, known as the Tredegar Iron Works; an establishment of which
the whole South may be justly proud, and to which we are mainly indebted for the
ordnance necessary to prosecute this war with energy and success.
It happened to be a busy day, and I was about giving up my
proposed inspection for want of a cicerone, when Dr. ARCHER, a polite and
cultivated gentleman, interested in experiments connected with the laboratory
and ordinance department, kindly volunteered to act as my guide and interpreter
through the mazes of the many detached shops which make up this monster
establishment.
The traveller, entering Richmond by night, catches a
glimpse, as he rolls slowly over the bridge which spans the James River, of the
most picturesque sight which has relieved the monotony of his journey through
pine forest and corn field for many a hundred miles. Far below him the shadow
haunted stream, broken by jutting rocks and deep foliaged islands, brawls along,
and as he looks over towards the left bank, where the clanger of a hundred
anvils assails his ear, he sees the broad red glare of innumerable fires
flashing out upon the ware, and dimly descries the dark forms of men moving
seemingly through the flames which shoot up myriads of sparks into the
smoke-obscured atmosphere. The next morning, if his curiosity so inclines him, a
short walk along the canal banks to the armory grounds will bring him vis-a-vis
with the smutty forges and blackened shops into which daylight transforms the
unearthly looking works of the previous night.
Entering the first of these he will find himself in a
Rolling Mill, surrounded by furnaces for melting and converting pig iron, and
ponderous machinery for rolling it, into bars and axles and bolts and chains for
railroads. “Step this side,” says the polite conductor, “you can see the process
by which this piece of carbonized and crystallized iron is converted into the
fibrous material which the skillful workman can shape into any form he pleases.”
First a long slab or bar of ordinary cast iron is placed in the furnace and
brought to a white heat. Armed with a powerful pair of forceps, a gigantic negro
seizes it by one extremity and carrying it rapidly to the roller - which
consists of a series of revolving wheels, whose broad edges are at equally
decreasing distances from an iron bed below - thrust it over the top of the
machine to his fellow-workman opposite, who passes one end with equal dexterity
between the first wheel and the bed, through which it is squeezed out with
diminished thickness. Seized again as it emerges it is again handed over, to
pass between wheel No. 2, and so da capo until the requisite degree of
compression has been attained. Next, the bar is cut up into a number of small
pieces and roasted in a second furnace, where, as it begins to melt, it is
continuously stirred and conglomerated into a large amorphous mass about a foot
and a half in diameter. This process is graphically called puddling. Here there
are a half dozen workmen, stripped to the waist and reeking with perspiration,
one of whom catches up this lump of glowing metal, transfers it to a kind of
truck, ladle-shaped opposite the handles, and by a very skillful manoeuvre
thrusts it into the open jaws of a revolving, stove-like machine. What the
intestinal arrangements of this iron-feeding devil may be, I cannot say, but in
a single second he spits out the white hot morsel, reduced in size by at least
one half. This lump is again rolled, brought once more to a welding heat, and
the work is done.
A few yards further on you come to the second Rolling Mill,
where all the kinds of large and small iron are made; and attached to this mill
is the extensive Spike Factory, four stories high, where rods are fashioned into
spikes by three powerful machines, each of which turns them out at the rate of
one a second, or about twenty five tons a day; these, falling into the lowest
story, are carefully inspected, packed, marked and stored, ready for
transportation.
One of the most interesting objects in this part of the
building is an enormous punch, whose power is equal to about twenty tons to the
square inch. A long iron plate is carefully adjusted; two men stand by the
machine - one to govern its movements, which is done with all ease by a simple
lever, and the other to bring the plate accurately to the spot where the whole
is to be cut. A motion of the handle, and the immense mass rises noiselessly a
few inches; another motion, and the hard steel punch quietly, and without the
slightest apparent resistance presses out a circular plug, an inch thick and an
inch and a quarter in diameter. The plates they were punching when I visited the
works are intended for -----, a purpose which will rather astonish some good
people when they find it out.
I have not time to take you through the cooper shop, or the
brass foundry, or the machine shop, with its powerful hydraulic press for
forcing car wheels on their axles, and as indicator to show the exact power
required to effect it; or the locomotive, or boiler or blacksmith shops, in the
latter of which twenty-five fires are blasting, and a large steam hammer, with
innumerable younger brothers, are running a tilt, and making the day hideous
with sound. My lyre is tuned to war, and I only sung of that puddling process as
an episode nearly connected with the main plot of cannon making. But if you will
come into one of the foundry buildings with me, I will show you a sight that
will make you open your eyes as wide as LINCOLN will when he sees JOHNSTON and
BEAUREGARD riding up to the White House with twice ten thousand rebels at their
back, craving pardon for that naughty affair of Bull Run. All through that
building were a hundred men and boys are making shot and shell, canister,
shrapnel, percussion and others, and leaving the laboratory on your left, where
they are cutting and filling fuzes, and strapping spherical cases, and fixing
leaden and wooden sabots on all sorts of destructive missiles, pass straight
through that door before you, and look around. Those four irregular cylinders
sticking up out of the central pit, are the moulds of our eight inch columbiads.
Lying by their side, is one in sections, not yet fitted together, which gives
you a good idea of their construction; and that big iron stove, with a trough
running from it into the pit, is the furnace out of which the molten mass that
these moulds will shape into huge cannon runs. If you go into the yard by the
side of this foundry, you will get a notion of how cannon look in the rough,
and, in the building opposite, you may see the workmen boring out the guns with
enormous lathes, and cutting off their honey-combed months, and shaping their
ragged cascables, and turning off their trunions, and boring their vents.
Here, too, cannon of all sizes, from 8 inch columbiads to
the lightest field pieces, are in process of rifling. The most beautiful of
these are the 3 inch field guns, constructed on a new principle, with twelve
grooves, and carrying a ten pound shot, invented by Dr. ARCHER. The Washington
Artillery, of New Orleans were supplied with these, and the Major commanding
told me that he never has seen any thing like their accuracy of fire. At one
time, in the battle of the 21st, a section of his battery was very much annoyed
by one of the enemy’s guns, and he ordered it be silenced. At the first fire it
was struck directly in the axle, and the piece tumbled over into the mud,
harmless henceforth, as far as that day’s work was concerned.
My space will not allow me to speak of the brass boat
howitzers, and other naval guns which are fashioned in these works. A far as my
limits allow, I have tried to give your readers a concise description of the
most magnificent establishment, in point of the variety as well as magnitude of
its operations, in the broad land. I hazard nothing in affirming that the work
turned out from the Tredegar shops will compare favorably with any in the world.
It has all the advantages of the best iron, the most consummate skill, and its
machinery is driven by water power - the cheapest of all forces at our command.
To its enterprising proprietors the South owes a debt of gratitude, which they
are now able to appreciate, and which we trust, they will repay by active and
liberal patronage in the future.
