s moulded by
the potter, and burned, dried, and hardened. Therefore, if brass and
pearl buttons are in limited demand, there are other materials from
which a new useful and cheap article can be made--the "very button" for
the time--and this is produced in much larger quantities than the more
costly articles of a few generations ago.

In spite, then, of changes in fashion, Birmingham is still--I will not
say a button hole, but a city where billions of buttons are made.
Witness, for instance, the turn-out of such a manufactory as that of
Thomas Carlyle, Limited. Here is a great and extended concern grafted
upon an old-established business, and which at the present time gives
employment, regularly, to over 1,000 hands. Buttons are made to go to
all people, save the rude and nude races, and a few odd millions
produced for home use. And speaking of all this reminds me how in the
days of my boyhood I sometimes saw a queer character known as "Billy
Button." He was a sight to behold, for he was decorated with buttons,
mostly brass, from top to toe, and presented a sight that was enough to
make a thoroughbred quaker swoon.

Birmingham, as I have remarked, is sufficiently enterprising not to let
opportunities slip through its fingers. Its trades are still increasing,
and increasing in number and variety, and though there is a tendency in
some of the big industries that do a large foreign trade to get nearer
to the sea-board, there are those who are sanguine enough to believe
that the number of our works and our workpeople will increase and
multiply till the large supplies of water that are to be conducted to us
from Mid-Wales will be none too copious for the great unwashed and other
inhabitants of our city a few years hence.

Referring again to outsiders and their ideas of Birmingham trades, when
visitors--distinguished or otherwise--come to see our factories there
are two that they generally begin and often end with--namely, Mr. Joseph
Gillott's pen manufactory and the electro-plate works of Messrs.
Elkington. Of late years the Birmingham Small Arms establishment at
Small Heath has gained attention and made a good third to our show
industries.

Visitors to Messrs. Elkington's are, of course, largely attracted by the
artistic contents and triumphs of the famous Newhall Street show rooms.
The name of the Elkington firm has a world-wide fame, and their splendid
artistic achievements may almost be said to be epoch-making in the