In spite, then, of changes in fashion, Birmingham is still—­I will not say a button hole, but a city where billions of buttons are made.  Witness, for instance, the turn-out of such a manufactory as that of Thomas Carlyle, Limited.  Here is a great and extended concern grafted upon an old-established business, and which at the present time gives employment, regularly, to over 1,000 hands.  Buttons are made to go to all people, save the rude and nude races, and a few odd millions produced for home use.  And speaking of all this reminds me how in the days of my boyhood I sometimes saw a queer character known as “Billy Button.”  He was a sight to behold, for he was decorated with buttons, mostly brass, from top to toe, and presented a sight that was enough to make a thoroughbred quaker swoon.

Birmingham, as I have remarked, is sufficiently enterprising not to let opportunities slip through its fingers.  Its trades are still increasing, and increasing in number and variety, and though there is a tendency in some of the big industries that do a large foreign trade to get nearer to the sea-board, there are those who are sanguine enough to believe that the number of our works and our workpeople will increase and multiply till the large supplies of water that are to be conducted to us from Mid-Wales will be none too copious for the great unwashed and other inhabitants of our city a few years hence.

Referring again to outsiders and their ideas of Birmingham trades, when visitors—­distinguished or otherwise—­come to see our factories there are two that they generally begin and often end with—­namely, Mr. Joseph Gillott’s pen manufactory and the electro-plate works of Messrs. Elkington.  Of late years the Birmingham Small Arms establishment at Small Heath has gained attention and made a good third to our show industries.

Visitors to Messrs. Elkington’s are, of course, largely attracted by the artistic contents and triumphs of the famous Newhall Street show rooms.  The name of the Elkington firm has a world-wide fame, and their splendid artistic achievements may almost be said to be epoch-making in the way of combining utility with beautiful design to the highest degree.  Those, however, who fancy that Messrs. Elkington’s great and extending manufactory is kept going by designing and producing splendid vases, shields, cups, and sumptuous gold and silver services, are, of course, hugely mistaken.  The ordinary spoons, forks, &c., that are to be seen—­I won’t say on every table, but on the tables of millions of people, are the staple productions of such firms as that of which I speak.  Indeed, if I could probe into the secret chambers of Messrs. Elkington’s back safe, I should probably find that the production of those exquisite artistic articles of theirs has not been the department of their business that has brought the greatest grist to the mill and made a commercial success of their trade.