Beddow and Sturmey, Legge and
Chilton, and Enoch Tonks and Sons. In the casting trades are John Harper
and Co., Ltd. (by far the largest concern), Wm. Harper, Son, and Co., C.
and L. Hill, H. and J. Hill, T. Pedley, H. and T. Vaughan (under the
style of D. Knowles and Sons), and Arthur Tipper. In this branch of the
industry women are largely employed, and children to a slight extent, in
attending to light hand and power presses. Female labour is now utilised
in the making of parts of machine-made locks (a method of production
introduced during the last generation), and for varnishing, painting, and
bronzing both the machine and the hand-made goods.

The rate of wages for workmen in the lock trade now ranges from 20s. to
35s. per week, yielding an average of about 29s. Of the wares produced
there are probably 300 varieties, many of them in several sizes each, the
gross output running into thousands of dozens per week, and so great is
their diversity that they range from field padlocks to ponderous prison
locks, and the selling prices vary from 1d. to 30s. each. They are
exported all over the world, finding good markets in Australasia and
South Africa.

Tradition forbids that we should omit here the two stock illustrations of
the fact that lock-making ranks among the notoriously ill-paid
industries. One is the familiar exaggeration that if a Willenhall
locksmith happens to let fall the lock he is making, he never stoops to
pick up because he can make another in less time.

The other is the hackneyed anecdote of the late G. B. Thorneycroft, who
was once taunted with the sneer that some padlocks of local manufacture
would only lock once; and who promptly retorted that as they had been
bought at twopence each, it would be "a shame if they did lock twice" at
such starvation prices of production. But Willenhall's contributions to
the hardware production of the Black Country are by no means limited to
this endless variety of locks, some for doors and gates, some for carpet
bags and travelling trunks, some for writing portfolios and jewel
caskets; but extends to lock furniture and door furniture, latches, door
bolts, hasps and keys, hooks and steel vermin traps, grid-irons and
box-iron stands, files and wood-screws, ferrules and iron-tips for
Lancashire clogs; and other small oddments of the hardware trade.

The making of currycombs, though shrunk to somewhat insignificant
proportions within the last quarter of a centu