The other two sides of the quadrangle are occupied by saw-pits, painters’ shops, stores, offices, and all the conveniences required for carrying on a business which frequently gives employment to eleven or twelve hundred men.

The reputation of Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., has been long established among engineers for the construction of railway bridges, iron roofs, and works of a similar kind; but it has been made European, if not universal, by the rapidity and skill with which they have constructed the Industrial Exhibition.

Strangers, if introduced, are permitted to see the works.

Besides the manufactures we have enumerated and described, there are many others of more or less importance; and new inventions and the spur of enterprise are creating new manufactures in Birmingham every day.

There are manufacturers of steam-engines and other machinery, of stoves, grates, and other iron foundry.  One firm (Messrs. Hardman Iliffe) employs a great number of workmen in making every kind of church furniture, from the most approved mediaeval models and the designs of Mr. Pugin.  Another executes stained-glass windows.  Saddlery and harness, or parts of saddles and whips, employ a certain number of hands; and not only imitation but a good deal of real jewellery is made.  There is one large and curious manufactory of gold chains.

In a word, there is no town in the world in which the execution of work, however new or complex, in metal, wood, horn, or ivory, can be so certainly effected as in Birmingham.

There are not many merchants in Birmingham, in the large sense of the term.  The chief mercantile business is done by parties termed factors, who in effect are, if not actually, the agents of great merchants.  These “factors” purchase what they need for their wholesale customers from the manufacturers.  About 2,000 of the Birmingham manufacturers are what are termed garret-masters; they work themselves, and employ a few hands.  The “factor” buys as few as half-a-dozen tea-pots, or a hundred gross of pearl buttons, from these little men, until he makes up his number.  His business partakes more of the character of retail than wholesale, and the grinding—­technically slaughtering—­system of the factors of Birmingham has an unfavourable Yankeefying effect on their character.

The principal mercantile houses are in direct communication with American houses, if not actual partners or agents.  A panic in New York finds an immediate echo in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, just as a fall or rise of cotton in New Orleans is immediately felt in Lancashire.

It is worth observing, that in some instances great transactions are carried on with wonderfully little show in Birmingham, and no state.  We could not give a better instance of the difficulty of “judging by appearances” than in the following sketch from nature.

There is a broad street of tall mean houses, which, except at the workmen’s dinner hour, seems always empty.