e nimble fingers and deft hands of many girls
finding useful employment, without fatiguing labour, in the various
processes of the pen-making business.

Pen-making is, of course, a great industry, but there are pens and pens,
and for some of the lower qualities the trade price is of incredible
cheapness. I sometimes think that if an enterprising merchant were to
try and place an order for a million gross of steel pens at 1d. per
gross, and 75 per cent. discount for cash, he would succeed in doing it.
The quantity it is that pays.

The pleasure and interest of going over Mr. Gillott's establishment is
enhanced by the fact that visitors see the popular pens of commerce and
the aristocratic pens of what Jeames calls the "upper suckles" made, so
to speak, side by side. The Graham Street works could not be kept going
by merely making dainty gold pens, fine long barrelled goose quills, and
other such superior productions. The everyday person muse be considered
and supplied with everyday pens, and the everyday person, although he
buys cheap pens, is a more profitable customer than he looks.

A well-known mustard maker has been known to say that he makes his
profit out of what people leave on their plates. In other words, the
everyday waste of people vastly increases mustard consumption. In the
same way the everyday pen is so cheap that it is not used with care and
economy. It is lightly thrown aside often before it is half worn, and is
often objurgated and wasted because it is dipped into bad ink. But what
does it matter when you can get a gross of pens for just a few pence.

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 typewrite