Christmas Crackers by Leonard Larkin.

If there is one thing inseparable from Christmas in general, and the little one seasonable gatherings in particular, it is a cracker with what a delightful look of expectation they have waited for it to go bang, And how they have screamed as they scrambled after the surprise which came in response to the explosion, and reveled in a complete outfit in the way of paper, garments, hats and caps, jewels, toys, puzzles and what not.

But there are others who love the cracker.

Have you not seen them?

She is merry eighteen, and he with just enough mustache to twirl.

They each seize an end of that convenient little cracker, Bang it goes.

Why doesn't he pick up the gaily decorated paper cap or she the pecorn little apron with the blue bows.

Simple because there is a tiny slip of paper inside, and they are eager to read it.

That little scrap of paper.

May say, the sweet crimson rose, with its beautiful hue, is not half so deep as my passion for you.

Twill wither and fade, and no more will be seen.

But whilst my heart lives, you will still be its queen, and the next moment they are in the quietest corner of the room.

It was Cupid himself who hopped out of that cracker.

Christmas crackers have much to answer for, considering the many moments of merriment which these small rolls of paper will surely bring, and the countless chats on courting topics they are sure to give rise to.

We are inclined to hasten from romance to reality and take a peep in upon the workers whose busy fingers provide the crackers, in short to find out exactly how they are made, from the moment the paper arrives at the factory to the time the completed article is ready to be packed up in dozens and sent away.

Messrs Tom Smith and Co.

Of Wilson Street, Finsbury are really the creators of the Christmas Cracker as we now know it.

About forty years ago a sweetmeat and Love motto was wrapped in a piece of fancy paper and in those days answered the same purpose as Christmas crackers do now.

They were called kiss mottoes.

Then it got converted into somebody's luggage, and finally the elaborately got up Christmas cracker of today.

Oscar Wilde did much, however, for its welfare.

Even the crackers caught the esthetic movement and became wrapped up in esthetic colors.

Messrs Tom Smith and Co.

Manufacture eleven millions in a single season.

Our own country will claim some eight or nine millions of these, and the remainder will get scattered over the world, India claiming a big parcel.

The first room visited at their immense factory was on the ground floor.

Here is a miniature quarry.

Hundreds of stones imported from Germany are stacked everywhere.

Men are busy in the far corner grinding and grinding them until a perfectly pure and level surface is obtained.

If you feel inclined, you might endeavor to raise from the floor.

The largest litho stone used it measures sixty inches by forty and would turn the scale at a ton.

The stones are then passed on to the litho artists, for lithography plays a most important part in the manufacture of a Christmas Cracker.

Upstairs is the artist's room.

Clever artists are constantly engaged in making fresh designs year in and year out, and it is nothing extraordinary for some of them to spend weeks in completing a single set of designs.

The literary work, too, is no small item, and a man who can write good verse can earn good money.

Ladies seem to be the most adept at this sort of thing, which is paid for at so much a set of verses.

Mister Walter Smith, who accompanied us on our tour, goes to a desk and takes out a handful of sheets on which all sorts and conditions of bards have written.

Some of them are very funny.

Here is one which is immediately waste paper basketed, whilst sweets are eaten and crackers cracked.

Naughty boys are sure to be whacked.

The poet asked five shillings for this, and offered to supply them in unlimited quantities at the same price.

The next one is a gem and is at once accepted.

Half hidden neath the spreading leaves, a purple violet bent its head, yet all around the moss grown path in love its fragrance.

Softly shed my living violet, whisper low that o'er my life, Your fragrant sweet will make a garden of my life, where love its counterpart may meet.

We now pass through innumerable avenues of Christmas crackers, all in huge parcels.

In one stack alone, there are no fewer than fifty thousand boxes in a line one hundred feet long and ten feet wide.

This represents a month's work, and every one is sold.

We can quite realize this when we are told that one retail firm alone in London will send in such an order for crackers that it would take sixteen of the largest delivery vans built to convey them, with twelve hundred boxes packed away in each van.

It is no unusual thing for an order of five hundred, one thousand, or fifteen hundred pounds worth of Christmas crackers to be received, the biggest of all, totaling up to three thousand pounds, the highest in the trade.

This reminds us of the number of cardboard boxes which must be needed.

The box making is a distinct industry.

A plant of machinery for their manufacture costs anything between two thousand and five thousand pounds, and during a busy week, thirty thousand would be made and used in that time.

The card is all cut to shape and stacked away, and the patterns are many, for there are over one hundred and fifty varieties of boxes.

Just look at this pile of sacks in the corner.

It is all waste cuttings, and often ten and fifteen bags will come down the lift in the course of a day.

On the floors above, the printing is going on.

A number of litho machines are running, for the most part, presided over by men assisted by girls who certainly take off the sheets with marvelous rapidity.

One machine is printing funny faces to go outside the crackers.

Another is turning out sheets with hundreds of flowers on it, and yet another is giving us countless little cupids.

Every rose and cupid is cut out, and it is the same with any other picture with which it is intended to decorate a cracker.

We shall be safe in saying that the contents of crackers come from every part of the world, and a peep into the store room where they are kept in huge bins and great boxes will substantiate this.

On one corner of the counter are thousands of tiny pill boxes.

These are filled with rouge and powder, with a little puff thrown in.

Such are the contents of one of the crackers.

For spinsters, those estimable single ladies also being allotted faded flowers, a nightcap, a wedding ring, and a bottle of hair dye.

This pile of bracelets came from Bohemia, fans from Japan, toys from Christiania, with little wooden cups and saucers from the same place, scarf pins from Saxony.

The little miniature pipes as played on by the accompanies to a Punch and Judy show are made by Parisians Jews.

Harps come from Germany, and tiny wooden barrels from America.

The familiar flexible faces, which can be squeezed and pulled into every conceivable shape, are made in London.

Hundreds of little glass bottles are here supposed to be filled with a certain intoxicant known as gin.

A young girl is filling them with the very reverse of anything intoxicating, although the label on the bottle says a million overproof.

Italy, Turkey, India, China and South Africa all contribute to the store.

The sight would set a child pining with pardonable envy, to play about this part of the factory, to enumerate every item which finds its way inside the crackers would call for a catalog the size of the strand magazine.

We are now on our way to the top of the building where the Christmas cracker is really made.

First there is the giving out counter.

Here come the girls and receive into their hands a certain quantity of what is wanted to make the particular part on which they are engaged.

Every strip of paper is counted.

Close by the giving out counter, a number of young women are fringing the edges of the paper to be rolled.

This is done on a small machine capable of taking four thicknesses of ordinary paper and six of the brighter looking gelatine.

The material to be fringed is put against the teeth of the apparatus, the girl stamps it, and it is ready to give a neat and gay appearance to either end of the body of the cracker.

The main workroom presents a busy sight.

It is nearing one o'clock when the dinner bell will ring, and the hands are working at high speed so as to finish their self allotted task.

Ere the bell tolls.

Four hundred feet of benches are ranged from end to end of the room, and here are scores of girls sitting in front of partitioned of spaces ranged along the lengthy counters.

Every girl has her glue pot by her side.

Turn round and look at the immense stove, where twenty pots are being constantly warmed up, so that as soon as a worker's glue cools down, she has only to cross to the stove when there is another pot ready at hand for her.

It is noticeable how cheerful the young women are, and to what a superior class they apparently belong.

A good cracker hand can easily earn fourteen shillings sixteen shillings, and at a busy time, eighteen shillings a week, and the cracker trade of this firm alone means the constant employment, directly and indirectly of close upon a thousand people.

One young woman is rolling the paper paper of all the colors of the rainbow are before her, and dozens of completed crackers are arranged in front, waiting to be carried away and the manufacturer of them booked to her credit.

The paper is rolled on a brass tube so that a trim appearance is obtained.

Colored string ties it up and the gelatine is quickly placed round it.

The girl we were watching said she could roll two dozen best work in a quarter of an hour, though she could do commoner work much quicker.

Her next door companion was blessed with busy fingers.

First she took a slip of paper.

This was the inner lining.

Round this she wrapped the gelatine, added two decorating ends or fringes, and then put in the detonator the explosive paper tape, and it was ready to receive its contents.

She could do a gross an hour.

Her fingers traveled faster than the pencil in our notebook.

Passing girl after girl, we find them all surrounded by the brightest of colors in gelatine and paper.

One is making paper dresses for a doll, a neat, little white tissue frock trimmed with red braid.

This formed part of a rather novel box of crackers.

A good looking doll is placed in the box, and each cracker has some article of a tire inside, so that when everyone was pulled, the doll could be provided with a complete outfit.

Others were making hats and caps.

The paper is rolled round a tin to shape, pasted together, and there is your chapeau.

All is very simple, but nothing could be more effective when the article is completed.

The card board alone used in the manufacture of the empty boxes in which the crackers are packed exceeds one hundred tons in weight during a single season, and the tiny strips of card constituting the detonators over five tons.

Twenty tons of glue and paste.

Between six and seven thousand reams of colored and fancy papers are used, whilst the total weight of the thin, transparent sheets of colored gelatin, which add so much to the brilliancy of a Christmas cracker, amounts to nearly six tons.

The process by which gelatine is manufactured is a most interesting one.

The raw gelatin in five hundred weight casks from Switzerland.

It arrives on these shores in thick, rough sheets measuring six feet by three feet, weighing about three to four ounces each.

It is then reduced to a liquid by steam power water being added.

It is clarified, and while in its liquid state, dyes of the richest hues are poured in to render it of the shade of color desired.

While the gelatin is thus in a liquid form, it is poured upon frames of glass measuring twenty four inches by eighteen inches, much resembling window panes.

Workmen, by the movement of the glass, allow the melted gelatin to spread over it and so form a sheet of uniform thickness.

These sheets of glass are then arranged in stacks and the film of gelatine allowed to set.

When the gelatine sheets are hard upon the glass, they are then transferred to a room in which a strong current of air is allowed to pass in and out to complete the drying process.

This takes from twelve to eighteen hours, after which a knife is run round the edges of the gelatine, which, then being cut with a knife, peels easily off the glass and is now ready for use.

We were curious to know what was the biggest cracker ever made.

Crackers are made three feet long, containing a full sized coat, hat, collar, frill, whiskers, umbrella, and eyeglass.

A story is told of a well known member of the aristocracy who entered a West End shop one day and saw one of these gigantic crackers.

He inquired the size, and when he heard it, exclaimed, three feet not big enough for me.

Just you order me three dozen crackers, each six feet long.

The six feet crackers were made and delivered.

Whether the noble and congratulated himself on the fact that he had obtained the largest cracker up to date, we do not know.

But the biggest of all was that made every night for Harry Pane as clown to pull with the pantaloon in the pantomime at Drury Lane.

It was seven feet long and contained costumes large enough for the merry couple to put on, and a multitude of crackers which were thrown amongst the children in the audience.

End of Christmas Crackers by Leonard Larkin