Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/132

118 to the emery-wheel, and to the last touch that is given to it.

To show what improved machinery has done to cheapen and multiply their production, it may suffice to say, that pens that were sold at wholesale thirty years ago at five shillings a gross are now sold as low as a halfpenny per gross, or two dozen for a single farthing! The Birmingham pen-makers are beginning to encounter considerable competition in the foreign market from manufactories recently established in the United States, in France, and Germany. But there is room for all, and there will be plenty of business for them when the paternal authorities of states, towns, and villages shall make the necessary provision, and then insist that every child shall learn to write before it goes to field or factory. If any men have a large and direct interest in compulsory education and world-wide civilization they are the makers of metallic pens.

Although Gillott's Pen Factory is the great lion of Birmingham manufacturers to Americans visiting the town from their childhood associations with his pens, there is another which excites their special admiration when they visit it. This is the famous Electro-Plate establishment of Elkington and Co., which, with its affiliations or branch dépôts, is the most extensive in Great Britain. They may be considered the very fathers