re necessary to complete
the brushing out, as ties must be left, as in the case of ordinary
stencils, and these have to be brushed out with additional plates. Two
or three colors may be introduced by this process, but each separate
color means separate firing. If the letters are dark on a light
ground, the process is exactly the same, the stencil only being
modified. In addition to the letters and tablets thus described, the
company also undertake the production of large enameled signs, and to
cope with the rapid expansion of this department of their work they
are erecting special furnaces, to enable them to deal with any demand
likely to be made upon them. The call for things permanent and
washable in the way of advertising is on the increase, and the
enameled plates made by the company is one of the most successful ways
of meeting the demand.

[Illustration: "THE SMITH A MIGHTY MAN IS HE."]

* * * * *

BURNING BRICK WITH CRUDE OIL FUEL.

At the present time there is not the least reason why either wood,
coal, or any other solid fuel should be used for the burning of brick.
This style of burning brick belongs to a past age. The art of
brickmaking has made tremendous progress during the past quarter of a
century. It is no longer the art of the ignorant; brains, capital,
experience, science, wide and general knowledge, must in these days be
the property of the successful brick manufacturer. There are some such
progressive brick manufacturers in Chicago, who use neither coal nor
wood in the drying or burning of their clay products. Crude oil is the
fuel which they employ, and with this fuel they obtain cheaper and
better brick than do manufacturers who employ solid fuel. Some of
these manufacturers have expressed themselves as preferring to quit
the brick business rather than return to the use of wood or coal as
fuel in brick burning.

This shows plainly that progress in our art, when it does come, comes
to remain. It is true that crude oil for brick-burning purposes is not
everywhere obtainable. But there is a fuel which is even better than
crude oil, namely, fuel gas, and which can be produced and employed on
any brick yard at a saving of seventy-five per cent. over coal or
other solid fuel.

The Rose process for making fuel gas gives a water gas enriched by
petroleum. Roughly, about half the cost of this gas as made at
Bellefonte, Pa., was for oil. The gas cost 6.68c. per