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GILLOTT'S STEEL-PEN FACTORY.--In the first department, sheets of steel
received from Sheffield are passed through rolling mills driven by steam,
under charge of men and boys, until they are reduced to the thinness of a
steel pen, to the length of about thirty inches, and the breadth of about
three inches. These steel slips are conveyed to a large roomy workshop, with
windows at both sides, scrupulously clean, where are seated in double rows an
army of women and girls, from fourteen to forty years of age, who, unlike
most of the women employed in Birmingham manufactories, are extremely neat in
person and in dress. A hand press is opposite each; the only sound to be
heard is the bump of the press, and the clinking of the small pieces of metal
as they fall from the block into the receptacle prepared for them. One girl
of average dexterity is able to punch out one hundred gross per day. Each
division is superintended by a toolmaker, whose business it is to keep the
punches and presses in good working condition, to superintend the work
generally, and to keep order among the workpeople.

The next operation is to place the blank in a concave die, on which a slight
touch from a concave punch produces the shape of a semitube. The slits and
apertures which increase the elasticity of the pen, and the maker's or
vendor's name, are produced by a similar tool.

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 te