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Rh of a deflection in the quality of the iron produced. With his unlimited capital, and all the machinery and other means it could command, he raised the standard and recovered the prestige, producing an article which brought a higher price than any other branded house in the district realizes. It is a token of a very interesting industrial copartnership or connexion to see a large invoice of iron to an edge-tool-making company in a Massachusetts village, bearing the name and arms of "The Earl of Dudley" as manufacturer. It conveys a good, healthy suggestion, that one of the very wealthiest noblemen in England supplies the hammers of a New England axe factory from his own mines and furnaces worked by himself. And no better test could be applied to the quality of the iron he manufactures than its exclusive use by the Douglas Edge Tool Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts, which probably turns out the best implements of the kind to be found in the world.

This personal connexion with the manufacture of iron is not only laudable but legitimate in the Earl of Dudley. For it runs in the family back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. An illegitimate or half-son of one of the fast and prodigal representatives of the house distinguished himself by the active and successful interest he took in the great industry of the district. His name was Dud Dudley. He had a good deal of the