One more little remark about the Graham Street works and I have done.  I take leave to doubt if Mr. Joseph Gillott turns out any of the very cheapest and commonest pens, but I feel pretty certain that he makes the best and most costly productions of their kind.  There are still very many people at home and abroad—­especially Americans—­who do not like to put a little common, “vulgar” pen on their writing tables.  They prefer to see something more superior in style and finish.  On such pens as these will generally be seen the name of Mr. Joseph Gillott.  There are, of course, other makers of good steel pens in Birmingham, but their places are not so much visited or their productions so widely known as the pens of Graham Street works.

A few years ago Birmingham penmakers, as well as others, were disposed to be rather terrified at the advent of the typewriter, and fancied in their sable moments that the steel pen would sooner or later be superseded.  They are not now so dismayed as they were, and I hardly think they need be.  The electric light has not put out gas; in spite of railway engines I still see a few horses about sometimes; and even motor cars and the like will not at present run locomotive engines off the line.  I, therefore, think that makers of fine points, broad points, medium points, &c., may rest securely in their pens, notwithstanding a Yost of typewriters, Remington, or what not.

Few people outside our own borders quite realise, perhaps, what a large and important industry the jewellery trade is in Birmingham.  Yet one quarter of the city—­the Hockley district—­is chiefly devoted to what cynical people call the production of baubles.  If anyone doubts the extent to which the jewellery trade is carried on, and the number of hands engaged in it, let him station himself somewhere Hockley way at the hour of one o’clock in the day, and he will see for himself.

No sooner has the welcome sound of the tocsin been heard—­almost indeed before it has time to sound—­hundreds, aye thousands of men emerge from their workshops, and for a time quite throng streets that just before the magic hour of one p.m. were comparatively quiet and empty.

Curiously enough these working jewellers seem to come from hidden and obscure regions, and appear in the open from their industrial cells through many small doors and entries, rather than through large gateways which are opened at certain regulation hours.

The jewellery trade is not carried out in large factories with tall, towering stacks, powerful steam engines, &c.  Machinery may be used in certain branches of the trade for all I know, but, speaking generally, working jewellers sit at their bench, play their blow-pipe, and with delicate appliances and deft hands put together the precious articles of fancy they make.

Handsome lockets are not turned in a lathe.  Diamond and ruby rings are not productions that are run through a machine and sold by the gross, “subject.”  Nor are jewelled pendants made in presses, nor beautiful bracelets banged into shape by the mechanical thump of a stamping machine.  The consequence is that jewellery work of the finest fashion is made in small establishments, but as I have said there are so many of these that the “turn-out” in the way of “hands” is a formidable element in our local population.