n a
minute was made in Birmingham on the average of a year, but the Peace threw
numbers out of work and reduced wages very considerably.

Time has brought the trade to a level; indeed, it is one of the great
advantages of Birmingham, that the prosperity of the town does not rest on
any one trade; so that if some are blighted others are flourishing, and when
one fails the workmen are absorbed into other parallel employments.

The gun trade now depends for support on the demand for--first, cheap muskets
for African and other aboriginal tribes; secondly, on cheap fowling-pieces,
rifles, pistols, blunderbusses, etc., for exportation to America, Australia,
and other countries where something effective is required at a moderate
price; thirdly, on the home demand for fowling-pieces of all qualities, from
the commonest to those sold at the West End of London, at fancy prices;
fourthly, on that for fire-arms required by our army and navy; and, lastly,
on occasional uncertain orders created by wars and revolutions on the
Continent.

There are a vast number of guns, or parts of guns, made in Birmingham, which
bear the names of retailers in different parts of the kingdom. Even very
fashionable gun-makers find it worth their while to purchase goods in the
rough state from Birmingham manufacturers on whom they can depend, and finish
them themselves.

This is rendered easy by the system. No one in Birmingham makes the whole of
a gun. The division of labour is very great; the makers of the lock, the
barrel, and the stock, are completely distinct, and the mechanics confine
themselves to one branch of a department. The man who makes the springs for
a lock has nothing to do with the man who makes the nipple or the hammer;
while the barrel-forger has no connexion with the stock-maker or lock-maker.

The visitor who has the necessary introductions, should by no means omit to
visit a gun-barrel factory, as there are a good many picturesque effects in
the various processes, beside the mechanical instruction it affords.

The following is the order of the fabrication of a common gun:--

The sheets for barrels are made from scraps of steel and iron, such as old
coach-springs, knives, steel chains, horse shoes and horseshoe nails, and
sheets of waste steel from steel pen manufactories.

These, having been sorted, are bound together, and submitted first to such a
furnace, and then to such a steam hammer as we described in our visit to
W