Speaker 1: Christmas Crackers by Leonard Larkin. If there is one thing
inseparable from Christmas in general, and the little one seasonable
gatherings in particular, it is a cracker with what a
delightful look of expectation they have waited for it to
go bang, And how they have screamed as they scrambled
after the surprise which came in response to the explosion,
and reveled in a complete outfit in the way of paper, garments,
hats and caps, jewels, toys, puzzles and what not. But
there are others who love the cracker. Have you not
seen them? She is merry eighteen, and he with just
enough mustache to twirl. They each seize an end of
that convenient little cracker, Bang it goes. Why doesn't he
pick up the gaily decorated paper cap or she the
pecorn little apron with the blue bows. Simple because there
is a tiny slip of paper inside, and they are
eager to read it. That little scrap of paper. May say,
the sweet crimson rose, with its beautiful hue, is not
half so deep as my passion for you. Twill wither
and fade, and no more will be seen. But whilst
my heart lives, you will still be its queen, and
the next moment they are in the quietest corner of
the room. It was Cupid himself who hopped out of
that cracker. Christmas crackers have much to answer for, considering
the many moments of merriment which these small rolls of
paper will surely bring, and the countless chats on courting
topics they are sure to give rise to. We are
inclined to hasten from romance to reality and take a
peep in upon the workers whose busy fingers provide the crackers,
in short to find out exactly how they are made,
from the moment the paper arrives at the factory to
the time the completed article is ready to be packed
up in dozens and sent away. Messrs Tom Smith and Co.
Of Wilson Street, Finsbury are really the creators of the
Christmas Cracker as we now know it. About forty years
ago a sweetmeat and Love motto was wrapped in a
piece of fancy paper and in those days answered the
same purpose as Christmas crackers do now. They were called
kiss mottoes. Then it got converted into somebody's luggage, and
finally the elaborately got up Christmas cracker of today. Oscar
Wilde did much, however, for its welfare. Even the crackers
caught the esthetic movement and became wrapped up in esthetic colors.
Messrs Tom Smith and Co. Manufacture eleven millions in a
single season. Our own country will claim some eight or
nine millions of these, and the remainder will get scattered
over the world, India claiming a big parcel. The first
room visited at their immense factory was on the ground floor.
Here is a miniature quarry. Hundreds of stones imported from
Germany are stacked everywhere. Men are busy in the far
corner grinding and grinding them until a perfectly pure and
level surface is obtained. If you feel inclined, you might
endeavor to raise from the floor. The largest litho stone
used it measures sixty inches by forty and would turn
the scale at a ton. The stones are then passed
on to the litho artists, for lithography plays a most
important part in the manufacture of a Christmas Cracker. Upstairs
is the artist's room. Clever artists are constantly engaged in
making fresh designs year in and year out, and it
is nothing extraordinary for some of them to spend weeks
in completing a single set of designs. The literary work, too,
is no small item, and a man who can write
good verse can earn good money. Ladies seem to be
the most adept at this sort of thing, which is
paid for at so much a set of verses. Mister
Walter Smith, who accompanied us on our tour, goes to
a desk and takes out a handful of sheets on
which all sorts and conditions of bards have written. Some
of them are very funny. Here is one which is
immediately waste paper basketed, whilst sweets are eaten and crackers cracked.
Naughty boys are sure to be whacked. The poet asked
five shillings for this, and offered to supply them in
unlimited quantities at the same price. The next one is
a gem and is at once accepted. Half hidden neath
the spreading leaves, a purple violet bent its head, yet
all around the moss grown path in love its fragrance.
Softly shed my living violet, whisper low that o'er my life,
Your fragrant sweet will make a garden of my life,
where love its counterpart may meet. We now pass through
innumerable avenues of Christmas crackers, all in huge parcels. In
one stack alone, there are no fewer than fifty thousand
boxes in a line one hundred feet long and ten
feet wide. This represents a month's work, and every one
is sold. We can quite realize this when we are
told that one retail firm alone in London will send
in such an order for crackers that it would take
sixteen of the largest delivery vans built to convey them,
with twelve hundred boxes packed away in each van. It
is no unusual thing for an order of five hundred,
one thousand, or fifteen hundred pounds worth of Christmas crackers
to be received, the biggest of all, totaling up to
three thousand pounds, the highest in the trade. This reminds
us of the number of cardboard boxes which must be needed.
The box making is a distinct industry. A plant of
machinery for their manufacture costs anything between two thousand and
five thousand pounds, and during a busy week, thirty thousand
would be made and used in that time. The card
is all cut to shape and stacked away, and the
patterns are many, for there are over one hundred and
fifty varieties of boxes. Just look at this pile of
sacks in the corner. It is all waste cuttings, and
often ten and fifteen bags will come down the lift
in the course of a day. On the floors above,
the printing is going on. A number of litho machines
are running, for the most part, presided over by men
assisted by girls who certainly take off the sheets with
marvelous rapidity. One machine is printing funny faces to go
outside the crackers. Another is turning out sheets with hundreds
of flowers on it, and yet another is giving us
countless little cupids. Every rose and cupid is cut out,
and it is the same with any other picture with
which it is intended to decorate a cracker. We shall
be safe in saying that the contents of crackers come
from every part of the world, and a peep into
the store room where they are kept in huge bins
and great boxes will substantiate this. On one corner of
the counter are thousands of tiny pill boxes. These are
filled with rouge and powder, with a little puff thrown in.
Such are the contents of one of the crackers. For spinsters,
those estimable single ladies also being allotted faded flowers, a nightcap,
a wedding ring, and a bottle of hair dye. This
pile of bracelets came from Bohemia, fans from Japan, toys
from Christiania, with little wooden cups and saucers from the
same place, scarf pins from Saxony. The little miniature pipes
as played on by the accompanies to a Punch and
Judy show are made by Parisians Jews. Harps come from Germany,
and tiny wooden barrels from America. The familiar flexible faces,
which can be squeezed and pulled into every conceivable shape,
are made in London. Hundreds of little glass bottles are
here supposed to be filled with a certain intoxicant known
as gin. A young girl is filling them with the
very reverse of anything intoxicating, although the label on the
bottle says a million overproof. Italy, Turkey, India, China and
South Africa all contribute to the store. The sight would
set a child pining with pardonable envy, to play about
this part of the factory, to enumerate every item which
finds its way inside the crackers would call for a
catalog the size of the strand magazine. We are now
on our way to the top of the building where
the Christmas cracker is really made. First there is the
giving out counter. Here come the girls and receive into
their hands a certain quantity of what is wanted to
make the particular part on which they are engaged. Every
strip of paper is counted. Close by the giving out counter,
a number of young women are fringing the edges of
the paper to be rolled. This is done on a
small machine capable of taking four thicknesses of ordinary paper
and six of the brighter looking gelatine. The material to
be fringed is put against the teeth of the apparatus,
the girl stamps it, and it is ready to give
a neat and gay appearance to either end of the
body of the cracker. The main workroom presents a busy sight.
It is nearing one o'clock when the dinner bell will ring,
and the hands are working at high speed so as
to finish their self allotted task. Ere the bell tolls.
Four hundred feet of benches are ranged from end to
end of the room, and here are scores of girls
sitting in front of partitioned of spaces ranged along the
lengthy counters. Every girl has her glue pot by her side.
Turn round and look at the immense stove, where twenty
pots are being constantly warmed up, so that as soon
as a worker's glue cools down, she has only to
cross to the stove when there is another pot ready
at hand for her. It is noticeable how cheerful the
young women are, and to what a superior class they
apparently belong. A good cracker hand can easily earn fourteen
shillings sixteen shillings, and at a busy time, eighteen shillings
a week, and the cracker trade of this firm alone
means the constant employment, directly and indirectly of close upon
a thousand people. One young woman is rolling the paper
paper of all the colors of the rainbow are before her,
and dozens of completed crackers are arranged in front, waiting
to be carried away and the manufacturer of them booked
to her credit. The paper is rolled on a brass
tube so that a trim appearance is obtained. Colored string
ties it up and the gelatine is quickly placed round it.
The girl we were watching said she could roll two
dozen best work in a quarter of an hour, though
she could do commoner work much quicker. Her next door
companion was blessed with busy fingers. First she took a
slip of paper. This was the inner lining. Round this
she wrapped the gelatine, added two decorating ends or fringes,
and then put in the detonator the explosive paper tape,
and it was ready to receive its contents. She could
do a gross an hour. Her fingers traveled faster than
the pencil in our notebook. Passing girl after girl, we
find them all surrounded by the brightest of colors in
gelatine and paper. One is making paper dresses for a doll,
a neat, little white tissue frock trimmed with red braid.
This formed part of a rather novel box of crackers.
A good looking doll is placed in the box, and
each cracker has some article of a tire inside, so
that when everyone was pulled, the doll could be provided
with a complete outfit. Others were making hats and caps.
The paper is rolled round a tin to shape, pasted together,
and there is your chapeau. All is very simple, but
nothing could be more effective when the article is completed.
The card board alone used in the manufacture of the
empty boxes in which the crackers are packed exceeds one
hundred tons in weight during a single season, and the
tiny strips of card constituting the detonators over five tons.
Twenty tons of glue and paste. Between six and seven
thousand reams of colored and fancy papers are used, whilst
the total weight of the thin, transparent sheets of colored gelatin,
which add so much to the brilliancy of a Christmas cracker,
amounts to nearly six tons. The process by which gelatine
is manufactured is a most interesting one. The raw gelatin
in five hundred weight casks from Switzerland. It arrives on
these shores in thick, rough sheets measuring six feet by
three feet, weighing about three to four ounces each. It
is then reduced to a liquid by steam power water
being added. It is clarified, and while in its liquid state,
dyes of the richest hues are poured in to render
it of the shade of color desired. While the gelatin
is thus in a liquid form, it is poured upon
frames of glass measuring twenty four inches by eighteen inches,
much resembling window panes. Workmen, by the movement of the glass,
allow the melted gelatin to spread over it and so
form a sheet of uniform thickness. These sheets of glass
are then arranged in stacks and the film of gelatine
allowed to set. When the gelatine sheets are hard upon
the glass, they are then transferred to a room in
which a strong current of air is allowed to pass
in and out to complete the drying process. This takes
from twelve to eighteen hours, after which a knife is
run round the edges of the gelatine, which, then being
cut with a knife, peels easily off the glass and
is now ready for use. We were curious to know
what was the biggest cracker ever made. Crackers are made
three feet long, containing a full sized coat, hat, collar, frill, whiskers, umbrella,
and eyeglass. A story is told of a well known
member of the aristocracy who entered a West End shop
one day and saw one of these gigantic crackers. He
inquired the size, and when he heard it, exclaimed, three
feet not big enough for me. Just you order me
three dozen crackers, each six feet long. The six feet
crackers were made and delivered. Whether the noble and congratulated
himself on the fact that he had obtained the largest
cracker up to date, we do not know. But the
biggest of all was that made every night for Harry
Pane as clown to pull with the pantaloon in the
pantomime at Drury Lane. It was seven feet long and
contained costumes large enough for the merry couple to put on,
and a multitude of crackers which were thrown amongst the
children in the audience. End of Christmas Crackers by Leonard
Larkin