Manufacturing
By 1759, a House of Commons committee heard that at least 20,000 people in Birmingham and the surrounding area were employed in the "toy trade", manufacturing buttons, buckles and other trinkets, with the trade being worth around £600,000 per annum (five-sixths of it for export). Matthew Boulton, in 1770, claimed that Birmingham's superiority as a manufacturing town was largely due to the "superactivity" of the people, and the "mechanical contrivances and extensive apparatus which we are possess'd of". The use of hand-operated machinery and division of labour (which might see a button pass through fifty hands in the course of manufacture) was commented on by many visitors to Birmingham. Children were often employed in this sort of labour, their work being made easier by machines.
In 1767, there were 35 gun-makers, and 27 manufacturers of other gun parts. The firm of Farmer and Galton supplied most of the weaponry to the Company of Merchants in Africa (i.e. the African slave trade). Pins, jewellery and papier-mâché were also produced in large quantities in the city, and goods of all sorts were exported to North America and Europe (Boulton, in the same year, claimed that half his correspondence was in German).
Read more about this topic: Economic History Of Birmingham