Richmond Palladium

Bead Manufactory.--

Went to see the manufactory of Beads, for which Venice has been famed for 400 years. We saw sheaves of glass waving like corn, in the laps of women, who sat assorting the vitreous harvest according to its size. In another stage, a number of men with shears were clipping the long threads into very small bits, the elements of the beads. In the next room lay fragments of 300 colors, and patterns innumerable, filling 10 or 50 baskets.

A very distressing part of the operation was to be seen below, where, on approaching a long shed, open on one side to the air, and glowing with thirty fires in all its length, stood a number of poor wretches, whose daily and hourly employment it was, to receive the bits of sifted glass, cut as we had seen above, and melt them into beads, by means of charcoal and sand, in the midst of these dreadful fire blasts, which they are constantly feeding, and within three feet of which they stood, streaming at every pore, stooping to draw out the cauldron and pour its contents upon a tray, which they then, in this state of their own bodies, drag forth into the air. A new copper of cold materials already awaits them, which must be thrust forthwith into the furnace, and a cool superintendent is there to see there is no remission! The turning, the feedings, the renewed sweat, cease not until night comes to put a pause to miseries which are to last for life! The galleys is a joke to this work. The workmen all die young.

We never thought of beads as such an expensive luxury before. A sixpenny necklace may cost the life of the artisan! Look at a rosary in this light!--[Blackwood, for June.