and for some of the lower qualities the trade price is of incredible cheapness. I sometimes think that if an enterprising merchant were to try and place an order for a million gross of steel pens at 1d. per gross, and 75 per cent. discount for cash, he would succeed in doing it. The quantity it is that pays. The pleasure and interest of going over Mr. Gillott's establishment is enhanced by the fact that visitors see the popular pens of commerce and the aristocratic pens of what Jeames calls the "upper suckles" made, so to speak, side by side. The Graham Street works could not be kept going by merely making dainty gold pens, fine long barrelled goose quills, and other such superior productions. The everyday person muse be considered and supplied with everyday pens, and the everyday person, although he buys cheap pens, is a more profitable customer than he looks. A well-known mustard maker has been known to say that he makes his profit out of what people leave on their plates. In other words, the everyday waste of people vastly increases mustard consumption. In the same way the everyday pen is so cheap that it is not used with care and economy. It is lightly thrown aside often before it is half worn, and is often objurgated and wasted because it is dipped into bad ink. But what does it matter when you can get a gross of pens for just a few pence. One more little remark about the Graham Street works and I have done. I take leave to doubt if Mr. Joseph Gillott turns out any of the very cheapest and commonest pens, but I feel pretty certain that he makes the best and most costly productions of their kind. There are still very many people at home and abroad--especially Americans--who do not like to put a little common, "vulgar" pen on their writing tables. They prefer to see something more superior in style and finish. On such pens as these will generally be seen the name of Mr. Joseph Gillott. There are, of course, other makers of good steel pens in Birmingham, but their places are not so much visited or their productions so widely known as the pens of Graham Street works. A few years ago Birmingham penmakers, as well as others, were disposed to be rather terrified at the advent of the typewriter, and fancied in their sable moments that the steel pen would sooner or later be superseded. They are not now so dismayed as they were, and I hardly think they need be. The electric light has not put out gas; in spite of railway engines I still see a few horses about sometimes; and even motor cars and the like will not at present run locomotive engines off the line. I, therefore, think that makers of fine points, broad points, medium points, &c., may rest securely in their pens, notwithstanding a Yost of typewriters, Remington, or what not. Few people outside our own borders quite realise, perhaps, what a large and important industry the jewellery trade is in Birmingham. Yet one quarter of the city--the Hockley district--is chiefly devoted to what cynical people call the production of baubles. If anyone doubts the extent to which the jewellery trade is carried on, and the number of