[Illustration: NOW.] Continued familiarity with the present system of making hats has the tendency in a great degree to prevent a recognition, until brought to our notice by comparison of the wide difference existing between the old and new methods, and this common every-day experience assists in making us unappreciative of the remarkable improvements that have been made in this branch of business. Only a half a century ago the time required to make a single fur hat from the prepared material was fully a week, and the average production was two hats per day per man. With the bowing of the fur, the forming and shrinking of the bodies, and the handwork of finishing and trimming, all of which by the aid of modern science and invention is to-day done by machinery more perfectly and completely at the rate in production of twenty times that of fifty years ago, while the sewing of a straw hat, which could hardly be done in an hour by the plodding work of the hand, stitch by stitch, is, by the rapid sewing-machine, made in a minute. When we think of the largest number of stitches our mothers and sisters could take in their needlework by hand and contrast it with the result of the sewing-machine that spins its twenty-two hundred stitches a minute, we are able to gain some adequate idea of the saving of labor, and while we complacently accept these marvellous accomplishments, the question whether it be to the poor and needy a loss or gain is still an undecided problem. With all the advantages now at our command, it appears to us a matter of surprise how our forefathers, with their apparently indifferent methods, could profitably succeed in their labors. With steam engines, sewing-machines and electricity, the quick accomplishments of the present compared with the slow movements of the past tend to make one think we are living in an age of wonders amounting almost to miracles. What would be the exclamation of the ghosts of our great-grandfathers who, with the rapid trot of an ox-team, drove to church miles away through the storms of winter to exemplify their devotion to the truth of their faith, if suddenly they could rise and observe the luxury of the present modes of transportation in convenient palace cars and palatial steamships, our comfortable and gaudy churches, and our easy ways of communicating instantly with those thousands of miles away from us? Aladdin's wonderful experiences, or the magical change by Cinderella's fairy god-mother, would appear tame to their intense surprise. [Illustration: RAPID TRANSIT IN OLDEN TIMES.]