ars several parts
of the process were thus performed. Gradually, his machines were
discarded, and for many years before his retirement, every portion of
the work was done by hand.

Each hammer is hammered out from a piece of iron, and is tempered over a
slow charcoal fire, under the inspection of an experienced man. He looks
as though he were cooking his hammers on a charcoal furnace, and he
watches them until the process is complete, as a cook watches mutton
chops.

I heard some curious things about the management of this business. The
founder never did anything to "push" it. He never advertised. He never
reduced the price of his hammers because other manufacturers were doing
so.

His only care, he said, had been to make a perfect hammer, to make just
as many of them as people wanted, and _no more_, and to sell them at a
fair price. If people did not want his hammers, he did not want to make
them. If they did not want to pay what they were worth, they were
welcome to buy cheaper ones of some one else.

For his own part, his wants were few, and he was ready at any time to go
back to his blacksmith's shop.

The old gentleman concluded his interesting narration by making me a
present of one of his hammers, which I now cherish among my treasures.

If it had been a picture, I should have had it framed and hung up over
my desk, a perpetual admonition to me to do my work well; not too fast;
not too much of it; not with any showy false polish; not letting
anything go till I had done all I could to make it what it should be.

In telling this little story, I have told thousands of stories. Take the
word _hammer_ out of it, and put _glue_ in its place, and you have the
history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, you can make the
true history of every great business in the world which has lasted
thirty years.

The true "protective system," of which we hear so much, is _to make the
best article_; and he who does this need not buy a ticket for Colorado.

ICHABOD WASHBURN,

WIRE-MAKER.

Of all our manufactures few have had a more rapid development than
wire-making. During the last thirty years the world has been girdled by
telegraphic wires and cables, requiring an immense and continuous supply
of the article. In New York alone two hundred pianos a week have been
made, each containing miles of wire. There have been years during which
a garment composed chiefly of wire was worn by nearly every woman in th