Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1889-05-16
The Christmas Toy Industry.
London Times. !

According to pamphlet recently pub
lished at Basle on Christmas toys and theil
production, they may be divided into two
main class ses-those of German and those Of
French manufacture. The German are
noted for the extreme variety Of theil
forms, due to the fact that the original
forms have been altered year by year, until
a long series of varieties have been pro-
duced. They deal mainly with ordinary
every-d day life, house and garden, kitchen
and parlor, stable and coach house, village
and town. The number of toys relating to
these is legion, and a we'll equipped toy
warehouse would have 10000 to $4,000
varieties. They are made mainly of wood
and paper-mache, more rarely of lead and
tin. Cheapnessin price is invariable.
The French toys are wholly different
Here all is elegance, ingenuity, taste fash
ion and refinement. The famed taste OF
the French artisan is exhibited here in the
highest degree. Workmen and manufac-
turers are always on the lookout for new
ideas, and it is amazing what clever heads
can evolve in the way of~new toys. All
the machinery of real Industries is imi-
tated; the advance of science are applied
sometimes in grotesque form. Every
material used-woOd, iron, lead, copper,
clay, leather, skins, feathers, paper, straw,
reeds, India rubber and much else. If an
article is q success, in short time it makes
the round of the habitable globe.
Complicated toye, such as animals
with mechanical movements, locomo-
tives, ETC., are produced largely
in America; but the American toys do not
exhibit the same taste as the French. In
elegance and refnem ment French toys have
10 competitors. The toys are veri'able
works of art. Like the Partisan dress
the Partisan toys change rapidly. and
some times politics exercises an influence
on them.
The history of the toy industry in Ger
many reaches back to the Middle Ages In
the thirteenth century Nuremberg toys
were celebrated, and to this day it is the
center of German production. Berlin and
Stuttgart also manufacture large quanti-
ties, and, in addition, in the thickly wooded
districts, where the people are poor and the
agriculture bad, toy making has be-
come a household industry. Indeed,
the industry all over Germany is
essentially a domestic one. in which
every member of the family takes part,
and it is carried on side by side with the
work of the house and the field. The ]arl Q
factories are mainly for special articles,
such as transfer pictures, picture books,
metal soldiers and the like. In France the
industry is comparatively modern and is
concentrated in Paris, where recently 3,400
persons we're engaged in it, 2,4OO being
women. For the most part they work in
dependently and sell their productions to
wholesale houses There are also
factories of special articles, such as
toy balloons, magic lanterns dolls
heads, articles for dolls kitchens, and the
like. In Paris special factories for making
children's watches employ hundreds Of
hands, and 100000 watches are annually
prod uced F; in other words, Paris provides
every year toy watch for every child be-
tween and 10 in France, Germany, Rus
sia, Great Britain, Italy and Austria. The
writer sums up by saying that German toys
appeal to children, while the French in
terest the intelligence of grown persons.