SLIPS SHOWING PENCILS IN SEVERAL STAGES OF PROGRESS: THE are put together so as to make a full strip "Filling" the leads is done by girls, sitting at a brass-covered table. The first takes a grooved slip with her left hand, and a bunch of leads in her right; spreading these out in her fingers like the sticks of a fan, she dexterously lays them in the grooves and passes the filled slip to the girl at her left, who puts over it another slip which has just received a coating of hot glue from a brush wielded by a third. Any two slips. fit together, and the united pairs are laid in a row, which is pressed together in an iron frame by a screw, and the row of slips is left to dry. The European makers, until they recently learned to imitate the better way, compressed their glued slips by simply tying a string around them. The rough ends of the slips and the projecting leads are next ground smooth against a wheel covered with sand-paper, and are then ready for the most interesting and characteristic process of all-that of separating and shaping. The foreign maker still persists in making each pencil separately, in RAFTING THE CEDAR IN FLORIDA. of little gouges in the wood; these gouges, which would otherwise leave the surface very irregular, are made to leave it tolerably smooth by following one another so closely that the gouges become one long gouge or cut; but usually the board is not smooth enough to answer for nice work without further finishing. Yet, so perfect is the operation of these revolving cutters, which make nine thousand strokes upon the wood per minute. that they leave the surface not only "true," but so smooth that the finest sand-paper in ordinary use would scratch it. The machine separates and shapes probably fifty pencils while the foreign maker is shaping one, and requires nobody to complete its work. As the stream of pencils fall, six abreast, they are finished, in poin: of utility, and are ready to be sharpened and put to use. Before they leave the room,-and several times afterward,-they are counted by means of the "counting-board." This is merely a board, on which are fastened two strips of wood, about four inches apart, having in each strip one hundred and forty-four grooves. Catching up a handful of pencils. the workman rubs them along this board once and back, thus filling all the grooves. THE RAILROAD, WITH BUNDLES OF PENCILS. too literal fulfillment of the injunction to do one thing at a time; his glued slip is one pencil, and he formerly shaped it by hand, but now does that by a plane driven back and forth by machinery. Yet it is still "one at a time" with him, and after shaping his pencil,' he has to smoothen it with sandpaper. Not so in the American factory. The slip is six pencils, in one piece, and the work of separating and shaping them is done by the same operation of a single machine. The slips are fed one by one under a revolving cutter, which separates and rounds them on one side by cutting away the superfluous wood; as they come from under the cutter, they are turned over and passed under a second one, which does the same work on the other side, so that they fall into a basket in a continuous stream, six wide, of finished pencils. The illustrations herewith show the slip in each stage of its progress. The familiar operation of planing is essentially that of cutting with a pocket-knife. The planing-machine, on the contrary, uses revolving knives, which make a succession THE COUNTING-BOARD. -the pencils lying in them as a pen lies in its rack on the ink-stand, and he has counted a gross of twelve dozen without possibility of mistake, and in five seconds' time. By a similar device, the employment of a tray having a number of round depressions of the size of a coin, into which coins are shaken, -counting of gold coins is sometimes performed. In deference to custom and the habit of associating the desired blackness of the leads with that of the wood, the natural beauty of the cedar is concealed, in the standard commercial grades, by coloring. After being immersed in dye, the pencils go to the very curious little varnishing-machines. From a little hopper they settle through sidewise, and are seized between two wheels which thrust them endwise, one at a time, through a hole in a tube wetted with varnish from above; each pencil, pushed on by its follower in the single-file movement, emerges from the tube and drops on a horizontal belt; it then moves slowly with the belt some thirty feet, drying as it goes, and when the belt, reaching the pulley, releases it, drops in a basket. If you place a pencil in the mouth, pushing it well back, and then, compressing the lips tightly on it, expel the air, it will shoot out with some force; in a similar manner this comical little machine "spits" out from its cylinder a stream of pencils at the rate of one hundred per minute. The other operations are of minor consequence, consisting of shaving a little from the ends, sharpening certain styles on a wheel, stamping each with its proper marking, and the various manipulations in packing. The patent package is a stroke of inventive genius, the dozen pencils being grouped, each in its groove, around an oval piece of wood; the oval package is more showy than the round, and eight pencils can be slipped out and replaced at will without disturbing it. The same mechanical skill runs all through the work, all the pencils being exactly uniform in size, length, and finish, and even the stamp falling on all in exactly the same relative position. Except the lead-makers and the attendants on the shaping-machines, the operatives are girls, the machines being so automatic that neither strength nor skilled labor is requisite. The work is singularly cleanly. The shapingmachines are covered by a metallic hood connecting with pipes through which all the shavings and dust are sucked down by a blower to the engine-room, where they are used for fuel; thus the floors are kept free VOL. XV.-56. from litter. The work is in no respect unhealthy, and the factory is peculiar in being permeated by the aromatic odor of the red cedar, which is so strong that it may be perceived in the street outside before reaching the premises. 66 A most rigid system of discipline prevails. Not a pencil can be taken by an operative without being missed, and the understood rule is, that if one is missed from a room, every person employed in that room must be discharged, unless it is found. Some months ago an employé in the crucible factory strolled into the pencil factory, where he had no right to go, and not being aware of the counting-board" and the various checks, supposed a pencil could not be missed out of a million; so he quietly took one. But it was missed, and upon investigation somebody who noticed his presence at the time reported it. He returned the pencil but was discharged, and although he begged for re-instatement, the rule that no discharged employé can be taken back excluded him. If the visitor, on passing through the rooms with his escort, notices the employés, he will see the eyes of volunteer detectives upon him, watching to note whether, when he picks up a handful of pencils, he lays them all down. The advantage the foreign manufacturer has is the cheapness of labor. This has been shown in many branches,-notably in textile fabrics and in watches. But in both of these, particularly in the latter, a change has come. The Centennial has shown that Switzerland is beaten, as confessed and reported by her own representatives of watch-making, and nothing but the swift and successful copying of the American use of machinery can save the American market for the Swiss watch; it is questionable, indeed, whether the time for doing that is not past, and whether the only thing remaining to be saved is not the foreign market, which the American watch is already invading. A similar course of trade is almost certain to follow in the matter of pencils. The European has the advantage of cheap labor, and only this has enabled him to compete; but machinery counts so heavily upon the other side that he is destined, unless he can modify his methods so as to keep his position, to lose the American market, as the Swiss watch-makers have lost it, and then to find himself obliged to compete for the home. market. The American pencil-makers have proceeded from the first upon the American plan of having machinery do the work and using human hands to wait upon it. Their machinery is so perfect and gives them such vantage-ground that they can now produce a fair pencil, although not the best, at a cost of one-third of a cent each. They experimented for several years, until they could enter the market with a product of the first quality; indeed, the superiority of their work over the foreign, like that of the American watch, follows necessarily from the methods they employ. to Boston for sale, he was informed that his whole label was a commercial mistake, and that it would be necessary to put a foreign label on if he wished anybody to buy them. Other inventors had been similarly rebuffed, but he was so enraged that he confined himself to crucibles, and never made another pencil. Yet his successors in Jersey City, although only six years in the market, now make ten grades, in respect to hardness, of "American Graphite " pencils, and The prejudice against home manufactures than four hundred different styles. Mr. resisted the American lead-pencil at first, as Cleveland, the head of the Dixon manuit has resisted nearly everything which was factory, estimates the consumption in this not original here. The late Joseph Dixon, The late Joseph Dixon, country at 250,000 pencils a day; this is after successfully undertaking to make cru- at the rate of one per day to every 160 of cibles, resolved, in 1830, to make pencils population, or 78,000,000 a year. Assuming also. He was a lithographer as well, and the average cost to the purchaser to be five made his own labels. One of his first dozens cents each, the people pay for them $12,500 of pencils is still preserved by his successors. a working day, or $3,900,000 a year. They are gritty in the leads and roughly Dixon manufactory, the largest in America, finished by hand, the leads being unevenly if not in the world, is producing eighty placed; they were made in the ancient town thousand pencils a day, nearly one-third of Salem, Massachusetts, and the "a" in the of the present consumption in the country, word Salem on the label was omitted by—and aims at nothing less than the whole mistake. But when he carried his pencils world for a market. The TWO SAINTS OF THE FOOT-HILLS. Ir never was clearly ascertained how long they had been there. The first settler of Rough-and-Ready-one Low, playfully known to his familiars as "The Poor Indian" -declared that the saints were afore his time, and occupied a cabin in the brush when he "blazed" his way to the North Fork. It is certain that the two were present when the water was first turned on the Union Ditch, and then and there received the designation of Daddy Downey and Mammy Downey, which they kept to the last. As they tottered toward the refreshment tent, they were welcomed with the greatest enthusiasm by the boys; or, to borrow the more refined language of the "Union Recorder," "Their gray hairs and bent figures, recalling as they did, the happy paternal eastern homes of the spectators, and the blessings that fell from venerable lips when they left those homes to journey in quest of the Golden Fleece on Occidental Slopes, caused many to burst into tears." The nearer facts that many of these spectators were orphans, that a few were unable to establish any legal parentage whatever, that others had enjoyed a state's guardianship and discipline, and that a majority had left their paternal roofs without any embarrassing preliminary formula, were mere passing clouds that did not dim the golder imagery of the writer. From that day the Saints were adopted as historical lay figures and entered at once into possession of uninterrupted gratuities and endowment. It was not strange that, in a country largely made up of ambitious and reckless youth, these two-types of conservative and settled forms-should be thus celebrated. Apart from any sentiment or veneration, they were admirable foils to the community's youthful progress and energy. They were put forward at every social gathering, occupied prominent seats on the platform at every public meeting, walked first in every procession, were conspicuous at the frequent funeral and rarer wedding, and were god father and godmother to the first baby born in Rough-and-Ready. At the first poll opened in that precinct, Daddy Downey cast the first vote, and, as was his custom, on all momentous occasions, became volubly reminiscent. "The first vote I ever.cast," said Daddy, "was for Andrew Jackson; the father o' some on you peart young chaps wasn't born then, he he!-that was 'way long in '33, wasn't it? I disremember now, but if Mammy was here, she bein' a schoolgal at the time, she could say. But my memory's failin' me. I'm an old man, boys; yet I likes to see the young ones go ahead. I recklect that thar vote from a suckumstance. Squire Adams was present, and seein' it was my first vote, he put a goold piece into my hand, and, sez he, sez Squire Adams, 'let that always be a reminder of the exercise of a glorious freeman's privilege!' He did; he! he! Lord, boys! I feel so proud of ye, that I wish I had a hundred votes to cast for ye all." It is hardly necessary to say that the memorial tribute of Squire Adams was increased tenfold by the judges, inspectors and clerks, and that the old man tottered back to Mammy, considerably heavier than he came. As both of the rival candidates were equally sure of his vote, and each had called upon him and offered a conveyance, it is but fair to presume they were equally beneficent. But Daddy insisted upon walking to the polls a distance of two miles,—as a moral example, and a text for the California paragraphers, who hastened to record that such was the influence of the foot-hill climate, that "a citizen of Rough-and-Ready, aged eighty-four, rose at six o'clock, and, after milking two cows, walked a distance of twelve miles to the polls, and returned in time to chop a cord of wood before dinner." Slightly exaggerated as this statement may have been, the fact that Daddy was always found by the visitor to be engaged at his wood-pile, which seemed neither to increase nor diminish under his ax,-a fact, doubt less, owing to the activity of Mammy, who was always at the same time making pies, seemed to give some credence to the story. Indeed, the wood-pile of Daddy Downey was a standing reproof to the indolent and sluggish miner. "Ole Daddy must use up a pow'ful sight of wood; every time I've passed by his shanty he's been makin' the chips fly. But what gets me is, that the pile don't seem to come down," said Whisky Dick to his neighbor. "Well, you derned fool!" growled his neighbor; "spose some chap happens to pass by thar, and sees the ole man doin' a man's work at eighty, and slouches like you and me lying round drunk, and that chap, feelin' kinder humped, goes up some dark night and heaves a load of cut pine over his fence, who's got anything to say about it? Say?" Certainly not the speaker, who had done the act suggested, nor the penitent and remorseful hearer, who repeated it next day. The pies and cakes made by the old woman were, I think, remarkable rather for their inducing the same loyal and generous spirit than for their intrinsic excellence, and it may be said appealed more strongly to the nobler aspirations of humanity than its vulgar appetite. Howbeit, everybody ate Mammy Downey's pies, and thought of his childhood. "Take 'em, dear boys," the old lady would say; "it does me good to see you eat 'em; reminds me kinder of my poor Sammy, that, ef he'd lived, would hev been ez strong and big ez you be, but was taken down with lung fever, at Sweetwater. I kin see him yet; that's forty year ago, dear! comin' out o' the lot to the bake-house, and smilin' such a beautiful smile, like yours, dear boy, as I handed him a mince or a lemming turnover. Dear, dear, how I do run on! and those days is past! but I seems to live in you again!" The wife of the hotel-keeper, actuated by a low jealousy, had suggested that she "seemed to live off them," but as that person tried to demonstrate the truth of her statement by reference to the cost of the raw material used by the old lady, it was considered by the camp as too practical and economical for consideration. sides," added Cy Perkins, "ef old Mammy wants to turn an honest penny in her old age, let her do it. How would you like your old mother to make pies on grub wages? eh?" A suggestion that so affected his hearer (who had no mother) that he bought three on the spot. The quality of these pies had never been discussed but once. It is related that a young lawyer from San Francisco, dining at the Palmetto restaurant, pushed away one of Mammy Downey's pies with every expression of disgust and dissatisfaction. At this juncture, Whisky Dick, considerably affected by his favorite stimulant, approached the stranger's table, and, drawing up a chair, sat uninvited before him. 66 "Be Mebbee, young man," he began gravely, "ye don't like Mammy Downey's pies?" The stranger replied curtly, and in some astonishment, that he did not as a rule, "eat pie." "Young man," continued Dick, with |