A letter has been published from Mr. J. Latham, representing
the Wilkinson Sword Company, to the Director- General of Contracts, explaining the condition of the sword and bayonet manufacture in this country. Up to 1887 it was dead, all such articles being obtained from Solingen, in Germany. In that year, however, Messrs. Wilkinson obtained a contract from Government for a hundred and fifty thousand sword-bayonets, and started a factory in London which they believe will meet all require- ments. Their single difficulty has been to train a sufficient number of grinders to enable them to keep pace with their forging work ; but this is being overcome. They have during the interval been obliged to transmit certain orders to Solingen, but they will in a short time be independent. The letter, which reveals an unpleasant hiatus in the English toolmaking trade—for a sword-bayonet is, after all, nothing but a steel tool—is unusually frank, and is accepted as, "on the whole, reasonable," by the Director of Army Contracts ; and we may hope, therefore, that by-and-by English swords and bayonets will be as serviceable as English ploughshares. Is the Government, however, wise in. depending upon a single firm, however honest or well supplied? Why does it not set up a factory in India, where labour is cheap, iron plentiful, and the Administration able, if it pleases, to make deliberate fraud upon the State a highly penal offence ? We suppose it is too much to suggest that the best sword- makers would be convicts, who must work honestly.
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