Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/462

446 The following are other notable results, gathered from other sources, in what may be termed the minor industries:

In the manufacture of jewelry, one skilled workman, paid at the rate of two and a half to three dollars per day, and working according to anti-machine methods in use a few years ago, could make up three dozen pairs of sleeve-buttons per day. Now, one boy, paid five dollars per week, and working on the most modern machinery, can make up nine thousand pairs in a day. In gold (or imitation gold) chain-making, the United States now exports the cheapest grade of such jewelry produced by machinery to Germany, where cottage hand-labor, in the same avocation, can be had for a pittance, and finds a ready sale for them as against German manufacturers.

Nothing has had a greater influence in making possible the rapidity with which certain branches of retail business are now conducted, as compared with ten years ago—more especially the sale of groceries—than the cheap and rapid production of paper bags. At the outset, these bags were all made by hand-labor; but now machinery has crowded out the hand-workers, and factories are in existence in the United States which produce millions of paper bags per week, and not unfrequently fill single orders for three millions. With machinery have also come many improvements: square bags that stand up of themselves, and need only when filled from a measure to have the top edges turned over to make the package at once ready for delivery. A purchaser can now also take his butter or lard in paper trays that are brine and grease proof; his vinegar in paper jars that are warranted not to soak for one hour; a bottle of wine wrapped in a corrugated case that would not break if he dropped it on the pavement, and his oysters in paper pails that will hold water overnight. A few years ago, to have furnished gratuitously these packages, would have been deemed extravagance; but now it is found to pay as a matter of business.

The sobriquet of an apothecary was formerly that of a pill-maker; but the modern apothecary no longer makes pills, except upon special prescriptions; inasmuch as scores of large manufactories now produce pills by machinery according to the standard or other formulas, and every apothecary keeps and sells them, because they are cheaper, better, and more attractive than any that he can make himself.

Certain branches of occupation formerly of considerable importance seem to be passing out of existence under the influence of recent improvements. Previous to 1872, nearly all the calicoes of the world were dyed or printed with a coloring principle extracted from the root known as "madder"; the cultivation and preparation of which involved the use of thousands of acres of land in Holland, Belgium, Eastern France, Italy, and the Levant, and the employment of many hundreds of men, women, and children, and of large amounts of capital; the importation of madder into England for the year 1872 having been 28,731,600 pounds, and into the United States for the