Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-12-22
G H r | S T Nj A S TOYS
In ventive Genius That Delights Santa
Claus Devotees.
The French and the German Lead All
Nations in the Production of
Fancy Playthings.
From the St. Louis obe-Democrat.

| From the St. Louis Globe Democrat.
The designing and manufacture of Christ
mas toys has become an important branch
| of the worlds industry, involving a large
| amount of capital and skilled labor. Toys
| and all the details pertaining to them are
| naturally divided in two main classes-th ose
| of German and those of French manufac-
| ture. The Germans are noted for the
| IRENE variety of their forms, due to the
| fact that the original forms have been al
| tered year by year until a long series of
varieties have been produced. They ieal
mainly with ordinary lffe house and gar
den kitchen and paror, stable and coach
house, village and town.
The number of toys relating to these are
legion, and a well-equipped toy warehouse
would have from 1900 to 1900 varieties.
They are made mainly of wood and papier-
mache, more rarely of lead and tin. Cheap
ness in price is invarable.
The French toys are radically different,
and the contrast is all the more apparent
by placing the two productions side by side.
1.-The French are all elegance, ingenuity
taste, fashion and refinement The fine
taste of the French artisan is exhibited
here in the highest degree. Workmen and
manufacturers are always 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 sp-
piled sometimes in a grotesque form. Every
material is uSed-wood. iron, lead, copper,
clay, leather, skins. feathers papers, straw,
reeds, india rubber and much else.
If an article is success, in a short time
| it makes the round of the habitable globe
Complicated toys, such as animals with
mechanical movements, locomotives, &c.
are produced largely in the United States
but can scarcely compete, as yet, with
the French in their finer grades of Christ
mas toy novelties. In elegance, nicely of
| finish and refinement French toys have no
competitors.
Dolls, Soldiers and Watches.
Their dolls are veritable works of art.
Like the Partisan dress, the Partisan toys
change rapidly. And sometimes politics ex-
ercises a controlling influence over the
trifies exhibited to catch the popular fancy.
Up to 1859 toys came to France from
abroad, from Nuremberg, from Tyrol, from
Belgium and Switzerland. But today Paris
has sufficient to satisfy the demands of the
children not only of France, but of foreign
countries as well. Paris sends all over
Europe and America talking dolls, mechan-
lCai rabbits, pistols, guns, little sets of
furniture, lheaterS, magic lanterns, punch
| inellos, animals, rubber balloons and tin
| soldiers. 1t a Partisan manufacturer
who substituted tin for lead in the manu-
| facture of soldiers, and the number of war
! riors that he mobiliZes each year amounts
| to 100000, an army about as numerous
as all the regular armies of Europe COM
bined. These tin soldiers are made from
the old boxes of preserves that the rag
pickers pick out of the rubbish heaps The
boxes are collected and sent to specialist
who heats them to separate the solder from
the tin plates. Not only tin soldiers but
railroad cars, jumping frogs, pistol barre Is
and sockets of Venetian lanterns made
from these plates.
The little watches with movable hands
are manufactured by the hundred thous-
and, and the greater portion of them find
market abroad. The watch that is sold
for trife in the street costs two centimes
at wholesale, and passes through the hands
| of twenty workmen, while the high priced
watch of fifty confines about thirteen
cents). with a key and movable hands, a
ring and chain, requires the labor of thir-
ty-two workmen. In Paris special factories
for toy watches employ hundreds of oper-
ators, and 30,000,COO watches are annually
produced. In other words, Paris provides
every year toy watch for every child be-
tween five and ten years of age in France,
Germany, Russia, Great Britain. Italy and
Austria.
Turning Waste to Wealth.
Give to small Paris manufacturer a few
tools and some refuse tin clippings, and 1t
is astonishing what he will produce. In
the first place he can make scales that
sell at p confines a Dozen also, little
truInpets, dishes, teapots and coffee pots.
There are factories for little military
equipments and the fashioning of uni
forms. Paris possesses about forty estab-
lishments for the manufacture of elastic
balloons. The largest house turns out TO-
900 dozen a year, without counting the
gutta percha dolls, punchinellos and ami
mails.
In Partisan mechanical toys great prog
ress has been made, and they can be pur-
chased at very reasonable prices AS a
general thing, they are not made in the
great manufactures, but find their origin
in the homes of the skilled workmen. The
workmanship IL
periority in design have almost entirely
driven from French soil the German toys
which once predominated. Since 1867
French toys have been rapidly making
their way, and during that year 100000
francs worth of toys We're sent abroad.
In 1878 the value of the exported toys
reached nearly 81 0OJ0U0 while for 1889 the
total reached the immense sum of $l2on0,
600. England is the best customer, she
taking over a seventh Of the whole toy
production of Paris, and Spain comes next.
other nations come in the following order
in their relative Importance as buyers of
French playthngs: The Argentine Repub-
lie, Belgium, the United States (where
dolls, dressed or undressed, pay no duty,
Italy, Germany Switzerland, Uruguay,
New Granada, Turkey and Russia.
The doll furniture and the boxes of tools
are made in the Faubourg st. Antoine
Eyerybody has seen the animals pnounted
upon bellows, which utter cry under
pressure They are also made in the same
quarter. are manufactured by hundreds of
thousands ana SOlu very cheaply'
German Toy Industry.
The history of the toy industry in Ger
many extends back to the middle ages. In
| the thirteenth century Nuremberg toys
were celebrated, and to this day it is the
center of the German production. Berlin
| and Stuttgart also manufacture large
ouantities and III addition, in the thickly
wooded districts, where the people are
poor and agriculture bad, toy-making has
become a household industry and tends TO
| keep the wolf from the door. Indeed, the
| Industry in Germany is essentially a do
nestle one, in which every member or the
| family takes a part, and it is carried on
| side by side with the work of the house
and the field.
The large factories are principally for
| special articles, such transfer pictures
picture books, metal soldiers. and the ike
| In France the industry IS comparatively
| modern, and is concentrated in Paris, where
nearly 1000 operatives are engaged in the
| business over 400 being women. They are
| by far the most successful in the Produc-
| ton of light and fragile toys. Their nm
| gers become skillful and deft in handling
| al md he nprcpOtaye of loss in