THE GOLD PEN — ITS HISTORY AND MANUFACTURE. 267 



gold and silver, are also required annually. In addition to these, about 

 10,000 pencil-cases, without the pen, are called for ; the establishment 

 largely supplying the trade in all parts of the country, besides satisfying a 

 very extensive retail demand. A large amount of iridium is of course con- 

 sumed every year for the immense number of pens manufactured, each of 

 which requires a selected " point," carefully chosen from the mass imported 

 in bulk. Here occurs the great waste of this material, of which we have 

 before spoken. We have understood that an average of 200 ounces of 

 iridium is used up every year for the gold-pen manufacture, in the different 

 establishments of the United States. 



Multiply the business thus transacted from one year to another by the 

 single firm whose operations we have cited, and the reader will have 

 obtained an idea of the enormous aggregate valuation of this apparently 

 simple, but really intricate, most interesting, and now quite indispensable 

 branch of industry. It is a striking evidence of the ability of the New World 

 to compete with, and even to surpass the Old, in different departments of 

 manufacturing industry, that the American manufacturers have been enabled, 

 by their superior facilities for obtaining competent workmen and labour- 

 saving tools, but still more by the far greater extent of the demand in that 

 country, and the fact that the makers there early obtained control of the 

 market, to furnish the gold pen, for years, at rates vastly lower than those 

 still charged in England. When first introduced in London, the riding 

 price for the pen alone (without any description of holder) was ll, or 

 nearly $5. In New York the whole brings but half that price, $2 50c. (in 

 ordinary silver cases), although additional expense is entailed upon the 

 manufacturers by the simple circumstance of the reimportation of the 

 iridium through English hands. A handsome and well-merited compliment 

 has been paid by Mr Hawkins to the skill and ingenuity of the American 

 manufacturers, in the following language, used while contrasting the pro- 

 gress of his invention in England and America. " I am free to confess," he 

 says, " that the New York manufacturers have advanced much beyond me 

 in despatch; the ingenuity of the American workmen, who delight in ' going- 

 ahead,' having been encouraged and exerted in the construction of several 

 labour-saving tools and ready methods of working — while the sluggish and 

 let-well-alone feeling of the English workmen in my employ formed a clog 

 to the introductin of new tools and methods of working into my manufac- 

 tory, even when plainly indicated by experience." 



