A Modern Blacksmith
Blacksmith T. came to the forge after the war and brought ideas he had gathered in the army. The old bellows are no longer in use, having been replaced by a blower fan. The work, too, has changed, and a large quenching tank is used for tempering car-springs, a job which he gets by sub-contract from some distant place. Every week he takes delivery of gas-cylinders and does a tot & welding with acetylene. I remember going to the smithy when his predecessor had it. The old smith had a war job, an order for thousands of mule-shoes of standard size, and he had designed a fixture for bending the hot iron to the required shape. He was, nevertheless, the old kind of craftsman, capable of making a fine set of gates, an artistic lamp-bracket or a plough. Trade had not been good since tractors came to the farms, and he viewed the future with little hope. His retirement left ,the forge padlocked until T. came home. He does well, this modern smith, and refuses nothing but shoeing. Horses are sent elsewhere. The smithy has changed, because depots do most of the repairing of implements, and mechanics service tractors with mobile workshops. Our modern smith is more of a general engineA- and the smithy by no means the integral part of country life that it used to be.
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