obedient to the thimble and the pole.



NAILS.

In most occupations, the profit of the master and the journeyman bear a
proportion: if the former is able to figure in genteel life, the latter
is able to figure in silk stockings. If the matter can afford to allow
upon his goods ten per cent. discount for money, the servant can afford
to squander half his wages. In a worn-down trade, where the tides of
profit are reduced to a low ebb, and where imprudence sets her foot upon
the premises, the matter and the man starve together. Only _half_ this
is our present case.

The art of nail-making is one of the most ancient among us; we may
safely charge its antiquity with four figures.

We cannot consider it a trade _in_, so much as _of_ Birmingham; for we
have but few nail-makers left in the town: our nailers are chiefly
masters, and rather opulent. The manufacturers are so scattered round
the country, that we cannot travel far, in any direction, out of the
sound of the nail-hammer. But Birmingham, like a powerful magnet, draws
the produce of the anvil to herself.

When I first approached her, from Walsall, in 1741, I was surprized at
the prodigious number of blacksmiths shops upon the road; and could not
conceive how a country, though populous, could support so many people of
the same occupation. In some of these shops I observed one, or more
females, stript of their upper garment, and not overcharged with their