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Hewitt abroad to purchase guns. The English gunmakers at once saw the trouble he was in and took advantage of it. They demanded prices several times greater than they were asking from other customers, and refused to give him any information about the manufacture of gun-metal.
As time went on, few people were to be seen about the streets, but there was a run on the gunmakers' and sword-smiths'. By day no cheerful shouts or songs rang out, but children of six or seven years of age would go hand in hand in rows down the street in the evenings, singing "Mourir pour la patrie," to its own beautiful, affecting melody. But these were the only gentle sounds one heard.
McIntyre, sen., was pale and furtive-looking, with a thin straggling red beard shot with grey, and a sunken downcast face. Ill-fortune and ill-health had both left their marks upon him. Ten years before he had been one of the largest and richest gunmakers in Birmingham, but a long run of commercial bad luck had sapped his great fortune, and had finally driven him into the Bankruptcy Court.
I should say about one man and boy out of every five hundred. Up to this time, the great mass of men who handle guns have left it to the gunmakers to make their codes of ethics, and hand them out with the loaded cartridges, all ready for use.
I wandered along London streets, comparing the noise and bustle with the deep solitudes of Ceylon, and I felt like the sickly plants in a London parterre. I wanted the change to my former life. I constantly found myself gazing into gunmakers' shops, and these I sometimes entered abstractedly to examine some rifle exposed in the window.
But in the course of time, the iron vessel naturally raised the possibility of protecting warships by armour, and the matter, was forced to the front when gunmakers followed the lead of the shipbuilders and engineers, and set themselves to see what could be done in the way of improving ordnance, that had remained practically unchanged for hundreds of years, saving for more accurate workmanship.
The system which the gunmakers worked out and developed to meet their own requirements was capable of indefinite expansion. It was easily adapted to other kinds of manufacture. So it was that as new inventions came in the manufacturers of these found many of the needed tools ready for them, and any special modifications could be quickly made.
Even the renowned fortress of Bergopzoom was left almost defenceless. Field pieces, bombs, and tumbrels from all the magazines of the United Provinces were collected at the head quarters. All the bakers of Rotterdam toiled day and night to make biscuit. All the gunmakers of Utrecht were found too few to execute the orders for pistols and muskets.
This very large bullet is sufficiently formidable to require no expansion. Gunmakers will not advise the use of pure lead for bullets, as it is apt to foul the barrel by its extreme softness, which leaves a coating of the metal upon the surface of the rifling.
Finally, the gun-suppression bill passed the two houses of the legislature with a total of only fourteen votes against it, and after a full hearing had been granted the attorneys of the gunmakers, was promptly signed by Governor Woodrow Wilson. Governor Wilson could not be convinced that the act was "unconstitutional," or "confiscatory" or "class legislation."
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