St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1889-04-25
THE cHRIsTMAs TOY INDUSTRY

According to a pamphlet recently
published at Basic on Christmas TOYS
and their production, they may be
divided into two main classes-those
of German and those Of French man
ufacture The German are noted for
the extreme variety of their forms,
due to the fact that the orr nal
forms have been altered 49, BY
year until a long series varieties
have been produced. They deal
mainly with ordinary everyday life,
house and garden, kitchen and par
and town. The number of toys re-
lating 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 pa
picr-mache, more rarely of lead and
tin. Cheapness in price isinvariable.
The French toys are wholly differ
ent. Here all is elegance, ingenuity,
taste, fashion, and refinement. The
famed taste of the French artisan is
exhibited here in the highest degree.
Workmen and manufacturers are al
ways 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 initiated; the advances of science
are applied, sometimes in grotesque
form. Every material is used-wood,
iron, lead, copper, clay, leather, skins,
feathers, paper, straw, reeds, India
rubber, and much else. If an article
is q success, in a short time it makes
the round of the habitable globe
Complicated toys, such as animals
with mechanical movements, loco
motives, etc, are produced largely
iii America; but the American toys
do not exhibit the same taste as the
French. In elegance and refinement
French toys have no competitors.
The dolls are veritable works of art
toys change rapidly, and sometimes
politics exercises an influence on
them
The history of the toy industry in
Germany reaches back to the Middle
ages. In the thirteenth century Nu-
remberg toys were celebrated, and
to this day it is the centre of German
production. Berlin and Stuttgart
also manufacture large quantities,
and, in addition, in the thickly
wooded districts, where the people
are poor and the agriculture bad,
tOy-making has become household
industry. Indeed, the industry all
over Germany is essentially a domes-
tic one, in which every member of the
family takes a part, and it is carried
side by side with the work of the
house and the field The large facto-
ries are mainly for special articles,
such as transfer pictures, picture
books, metal soldiers, and the like.
In France the industry is. compare
lively modern and is concentrated in
Paris, where recently 34OO persons
were engaged in it, 24OO being wOm-
en-. For the most part they work
independently and sell their produc-
lions to wholesale houses. There
are also factories of special articles,
such as toy balloons, magic lanterns,
dolls heads, articles for dolls kitch-
ems, and the like. In Paris special
factories for making children's
watches employ hundreds of hands,
and 3O,OOO,OOO watches are annual
ly produced; in other words, Paris
provides every year a toy watch for
every child between five and ten in
France, Germany, Russia, Great
Britain, Italy, and Austria. The
writer sums up by saying that Ger
man toys appeal to children, while
the French interest the intelligence of
grown persons.-[ London Times.