way
of combining utility with beautiful design to the highest degree. Those,
however, who fancy that Messrs. Elkington's great and extending
manufactory is kept going by designing and producing splendid vases,
shields, cups, and sumptuous gold and silver services, are, of course,
hugely mistaken. The ordinary spoons, forks, &c., that are to be seen--I
won't say on every table, but on the tables of millions of people, are
the staple productions of such firms as that of which I speak. Indeed,
if I could probe into the secret chambers of Messrs. Elkington's back
safe, I should probably find that the production of those exquisite
artistic articles of theirs has not been the department of their
business that has brought the greatest grist to the mill and made a
commercial success of their trade.

Those visitors to Elkington's who penetrate beyond the show rooms will
find much to interest, and in some cases to mystify them.
Electro-plating is indeed almost a magical sort of craft. How it is that
dirty looking metal spoons can be put into a dirty looking bath and come
out white and silvered must amaze and bewilder many strange eyes.
Impassive as Asiatics can be, I should much like for once just to watch
the eyes of an eastern conjuror and magician when he saw the electro
bath trick, and especially when done in the way and on the scale that
may be witnessed at the Birmingham Newhall Street works.

With regard to Mr. Joseph Gillott's pen manufactory it is a very
interesting show place, but is practical and prosaic compared with the
art electro-plate establishment I have just now referred to. Those,
however, who like to see processes, and something going on quickly from
stage to stage, find Mr. Gillott's factory a place of almost fascinating
interest. They can, indeed, observe the steel pen emerge from its native
metal, see it pressed and stamped, and again pressed and stamped,
slitted, annealed, coloured, and finally boxed and packed. They can also
see the penholders produced and inhale the sweet and pungent fragrance
of cedar wood, and they can look on the production of the pen boxes
which are made in so many attractively coloured varieties.

All this is to be seen in the course of a little march through Mr.
Gillott's factory, which is, indeed, a pattern of order and
cleanliness, and so well conducted as to be almost like a real adult
school of industry. Female labour is largely employed--as is customary
in the pen trade--th