When complete all but the slit, the pens are soft and pliable, and may be bent or twisted in the hand like a piece of thin lead.  They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat.  They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers.  On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, rapidly revolving, extracts the last drop of moisture from the pens, on a principle that has been successfully applied to drying sugar, salt, and a vast number of other articles of the same nature.  By this invention Mr. Gillott saves in oil from 200 to 300 pounds a-year.

The pens having been dried are placed in other cylinders, and polished by mutual friction, produced by reverberatory motion.  They are then roasted or annealed, so as to procure the requisite temper and colour, whether bronze or blue.  The last process is that of slitting, which is done by women, with a sharp cutting tool.  One girl, with a quick practised finger, can slit as many as 28,800 pens in a day.  They are now ready for the young girls whose duty it is to count and pack them in boxes or grosses for the wholesale market.

It has lately been stated by one of a deputation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the subject of the paper duties, that steel pens for the French market are sent in bags instead of arranged on cards to the loss of paper makers and female labour, in consequence of the heavy excise duty on card board.

* * * * *

BRASSWORK.—­Birmingham is by far the greatest producer of ornamental and useful brasswork.  In the directory will be found a list which affords some idea of the number and varieties of the brass trade, as all these employ a certain number of working hands, varying from two or three apprentices to many hundred skilled workmen.  It includes bell-founders, bottle-jack makers, brass founders, bronze powder makers, brass casters, clasp makers, coach lamp furniture, ornament makers, cock founders, compass makers, copper-smiths, cornice pole makers, curtain ring, bronze wire fender, gas-fitting, lamps, chandeliers (partly brass, partly glass), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern, letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military ornament, brass nail, saddlers’ ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers, tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other trades less directly connected with brass.

New articles are made in this metal every day.  One manufacturer, who first hit upon the hand-clip for papers, made a very handsome sum by it.  The Registration of Designs Act has been a great stimulus to certain branches of this trade.  Lucifer boxes are quite a new article, unknown the other day, now manufactured in thousands for all quarters of the globe, Germany, Russia, Holland, India, Australia, California.  Then there are ornaments for South American and Cuban saddles and harness; rings for lassos, and bells for sheep, cattle, and sledges, brass rings, as coins for Africa; and weights for weighing gold in California.