mper and colour, whether bronze or
blue. The last process is that of slitting, which is done by women, with a
sharp cutting tool. One girl, with a quick practised finger, can slit as
many as 28,800 pens in a day. They are now ready for the young girls whose
duty it is to count and pack them in boxes or grosses for the wholesale
market.

It has lately been stated by one of a deputation to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, on the subject of the paper duties, that steel pens for the French
market are sent in bags instead of arranged on cards to the loss of paper
makers and female labour, in consequence of the heavy excise duty on card
board.

* * * * *

BRASSWORK.--Birmingham is by far the greatest producer of ornamental and
useful brasswork. In the directory will be found a list which affords some
idea of the number and varieties of the brass trade, as all these employ a
certain number of working hands, varying from two or three apprentices to
many hundred skilled workmen. It includes bell-founders, bottle-jack makers,
brass founders, bronze powder makers, brass casters, clasp makers, coach lamp
furniture, ornament makers, cock founders, compass makers, copper-smiths,
cornice pole makers, curtain ring, bronze wire fender, gas-fitting, lamps,
chandeliers (partly brass, partly glass), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern,
letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military
ornament, brass nail, saddlers' ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and
weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers,
tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other
trades less directly connected with brass.

New articles are made in this metal every day. One manufacturer, who first
hit upon the hand-clip for papers, made a very handsome sum by it. The
Registration of Designs Act has been a great stimulus to certain branches of
this trade. Lucifer boxes are quite a new article, unknown the other day,
now manufactured in thousands for all quarters of the globe, Germany, Russia,
Holland, India, Australia, California. Then there are ornaments for South
American and Cuban saddles and harness; rings for lassos, and bells for
sheep, cattle, and sledges, brass rings, as coins for Africa; and weights for
weighing gold in California.

Among the branches of the brass trade which have become important, since the
increase of emigration about 5000 ship lamps have been mad