line of business; however, he undertook to make one as a trial. The
holes for the rivets were punched by hand-punching with presses, and the
1,680 holes which each tank required cost seven shillings. The Navy
Board who required a large number, proposed that he should supply forty
tanks a week for many months. The magnitude of the order made it worth
while to commence _manufacturer_, and to make tools for the express
business. Mr. Maudslay therefore offered, if the Board would give him an
order for two thousand tanks, to supply them at the rate of eighty per
week. The order was given: he made the tools, by which the expense of
punching the rivet-holes of each tank was reduced from seven shillings
to ninepence; he supplied ninety-eight tanks a week for six months, and
the price charged for each was reduced from seventeen pounds to fifteen.

_Brass-plate Coal Merchants._--In the recent examination by the
committee of the House of Commons into the state of the Coal Trade, it
appears that five-sixths of the London public is supplied by a class of
middle-men who are called in the trade "Brass-plate Coal Merchants:"
these consist principally of merchants' clerks, gentlemen's servants,
and others, who have no wharfs, but merely give their orders to some
true coal-merchant, who sends in the coals from his wharf. The
brass-plate coal merchant, of course, receives a commission for his
agency, which is just so much loss to the consumer.

_Raw Materials._--Gold-leaf consists of a portion of the metal beaten
out to so great a degree of thinness, as to allow a greenish-blue light
to be transmitted through its pores. About 400 square inches of this are
sold, in the form of a small book, containing twenty-five leaves of gold
for 1_s_. 6_d_. In this case, the raw material, or gold, is worth rather
less than two-thirds of the manufactured article. In the case of silver
leaf, the labour considerably exceeds the value of the material. A book