446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The following are other notable results, gathered from other 

 sources, in what may be termed the minor industries : 



In the manufacture of jewelry, one skilled workman, paid at the 

 rate of two and a half to three dollars per day, and working accord- 

 ing to anti-machine methods in use a few years ago, could make up 

 three dozen pairs of sleeve-buttons per day. Now, one boy, paid five 

 dollars per week, and working on the most modern machinery, can 

 make up nine thousand pairs in a day. In gold (or imitation gold) 

 chain-making, the United States now exports the cheapest grade of 

 such jewelry produced by machinery to Germany, where cottage 

 hand-labor, in the same avocation, can be had for a pittance, and finds 

 a ready sale for them as against German manufacturers. 



Nothing has had a greater influence in making possible the 

 rapidity with which certain branches of retail business are now con- 

 ducted, as compared with ten years ago more especially the sale of 

 groceries than the cheap and rapid production of paper bags. At the 

 outset, these bags were all made by hand-labor ; but now machinery 

 has crowded out the hand-workers, and factories are in existence in 

 the United States which produce millions of paper bags per week, and 

 not unfrequently fill single orders for three millions. With machinery 

 have also come many improvements : square bags that stand up of 

 themselves, and need only when filled from a measure to have the top 

 edges turned over to make the package at once ready for delivery. A 

 purchaser can now also take his butter or lard in paper trays that are 

 brine and grease proof ; his vinegar in paper jars that are warranted not 

 to soak for one hour ; a bottle of wine wrapped in a corrugated case 

 that would not break if he dropped it on the pavement, and his oysters 

 in paper pails that will hold water overnight. A few years ago, to 

 have furnished gratuitously these packages, would have been deemed 

 extravagance ; but now it is found to pay as a matter of business. 



The sobriquet of an apothecary was formerly that of a pill-maker ; 

 but the modern apothecary no longer makes pills, except upon special 

 prescriptions ; inasmuch as scores of large manufactories now produce 

 pills by machinery according to the standard or other formulas, and 

 every apothecary keeps and sells them, because they are cheaper, 

 better, and more attractive than any that he can make himself. 



Certain branches of occupation formerly of considerable impor- 

 tance seem to be passing out of existence under the influence of re- 

 cent improvements. Previous to 1872, nearly all the calicoes of the 

 world were dyed or printed with a coloring principle extracted from 

 the root known as "marker"; the cultivation and preparation of 

 which involved the use of thousands of acres of land in Holland, Bel- 

 gium, Eastern France, Italy, and the Levant, and the employment of 

 many hundreds of men, women, and children, and of large amounts 

 of capital ; the importation of madder into England for the year 1872 

 having been 28,731,600 pounds, and into the United States for the 



