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In all factory work it is essential to have as complete a system of checks upon defective work as possible, especially since the opposition of the unions to improved machinery has made payment by the piece obligatory. In cotton-mills to-day more than seventy per cent of the hands are paid by the piece, in shoe factories ninety per cent, in brass-ware factories eighty per cent, and in paper-mills sixty per cent. The visitor to any big cottonmill will notice that the spools of yarn from the spinners all bear a colored chalk mark, the finished roll of cloth from the looms a similar mark, and so on, from first to last, every piece of work bearing a mark, sometimes red, sometimes blue, all the colors and shades of the rainbow being used, and often two colors together. By this means each piece is traced back. The weaver who finds that the yarn furnished to her is defective in the spinning has only to examine the chalk-mark on the spool to find out who spun it, and so on through the whole operation till the finished piece of goods reaches the packer.

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A factory having been put up in a suitable spot, equipped with proper machinery, and a force of competent hands engaged, the important question arises: What kind of goods shall be made? This is a question to be decided by the persons who sell the product of the mill selling agents. Under the direction of these agents, the art director, so to speak, of the corporation seeks high and low for designs, takes suggestions where he can, employs designers and artists.

We can surpass the world at machinery, but as yet we have to go to Paris for our designs. Each of the big mills where printed goods are made keeps its man in Paris watching the new designs and buying the best he can from the professional designers, of which there are a hundred in Paris, some of them earning as high as $20,000

a year. A designer of international reputation commands his own price, inasmuch as the design makes or mars the product; it sells or does not sell according to the favor the pattern meets with. The question is often asked: How do the men who make designs know what kind of goods the public is going to demand? The designs for next winter's goods are already finished. How does the artist know that the fickle public is not going to discard all that it has admired this year, and go wild over what it now ignores? This year the colors are faint and suggestive; next year they may be kaleidoscopic in brilliancy. This year ladies' shoes run to a point, next year they may be square-toed. Upon an accurate forecast of the public's whims in these matters depends success.

Well, the truth seems to be that sudden or violent as these fluctuations appear, there is really an evolutionary process involved. Each style or fashion has in it the germs of what is to follow, perhaps visible only to experts, but to be discerned. The designer accents the peculiar attributes of a pattern that has found favor one year in order to create his design for the next season. The short life of a design is somewhat surprising. Out of the six or eight hundred patterns made during this last year by the largest calico-mill in the country it is not likely that ten will be called for two years hence. The designs (the word design covering the texture of the material as well as its ornamentation) for every class of goods have to be virtually new every year, and the explanation given for this is hardly flattering to the fair wearers of these pretty mousselines, lawns, organdies, cashmeres, serges, and brocades.

The element of chance thus enters more or less into any manufacture dependent upon changes of fashion. As the styles for summer have to be made in winter, and

those for winter in summer, a manufacturer can not wait to see what the public wants; he has to take his chances. What he has made may or may not meet with favor. If it does not, his whole product will have to be sold at cost or less, to be sent to the confines of civilization. Upon the other hand, fortunes are often made when fashion veers in favor of a particular style of goods.

Some factories, usually very small ones, depend wholly upon novelties. Each year some new trifle comes up upon which the whole establishment is put to work. Holiday goods, the trifles sold by sidewalk pedlers, and many cheap toys are of this class where the ingenuity of the deviser or designer is everything.

THE STORY OF STEEL1

BY FRANK FAYANT

HIS is the age of steel. Our country, with a production of two-fifths of the iron and coal of the world, stands to-day preeminent among the steel-making nations. The rank of world powers is indicated by their position in the steel industry, and America produces more than England and Germany together. England held her rank as the world's most powerful nation as long as she led her rivals in the steel trade; but, now that both America and Germany lead her in the manufacture of this product, her commercial supremacy is waning. Our commanding position in this industry is the result of our possession of enormous deposits of iron and coal, of the highly productive power of our workingmen, and of our mechanical genius, which has enabled us to reduce the cost of mining, transportation, and manufacture, through the development of labor-saving machinery.

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The railroads are the real foundation of the industry. Steel is "prince" or pauper," accordingly as the railroads make large or small expenditures for the products of the steel mills. When the crops are large and the general business of the country is healthy, the railroads have a large demand for the product they sell, transportation, and they make heavy outlays for new rails, locomotives, cars and bridges, and materials for the building of new stations and terminals. During periods

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Republished by special permission of the Copyright, 1906.

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of reaction in commercial activity, railroad tonnage and earnings fall off, and the railroads postpone all but absolutely necessary purchases until they see a revival of business at hand. Commercial optimism and commercial pessimism spread over the country by turns. In "good times," the railroads expend their surplus earnings for new materials to the point of extravagance; in "bad times," they hoard their funds to the point of parsimony. When earnings are rising, a railroad will spend thousands of dollars for flower gardens at its stations; when earnings are falling, it will refuse to spend money to keep its cars in repair. The steel industry, more than a third of whose product is bought by the railroads, is booming or stagnant, therefore, accordingly as the railroads are lavish or miserly in their expenditures.

The building of new railroads is not the foundation of the rail business, but the maintenance and improvement of those already in operation. There are down in this country about twenty-five million tons of rails. The life of a rail is about ten years; so that, roughly speaking, it may be said that we need from two million to two million five hundred thousand tons of rails a year for renewals. Railroad construction grows heavier year after year. In this country we believe in big trainloads, because they reduce operating costs. Instead of fiftyton locomotives, we use one-hundred-ton locomotives; for twenty-ton cars we have substituted fifty-ton cars.

The increasing weight of the rolling stock has made necessary the increase in the weight of rails, and, instead of forty-five-pound and sixty-pound rails, we now are laying rails of eighty-five and ninety pounds to the yard. Railroads like the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Northern Pacific have been rebuilt in the past few years. In the East, roads have not only been rebuilt,

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