Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/173

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In the home market, inferior but showy watches are made at a cheap rate, which are not warranted by the maker to go above half an hour; about the time occupied by the Jew pedlar in deluding his country customer.

(188.) The practice, in retail linen-drapers' shops, of calling certain articles yard-wide when the real width is, perhaps, only seven-eighths or three-quarters, arose at first from fraud, which being detected, custom was pleaded in its defence: but the result is, that the vender is constantly obliged to measure the width