But by and by the time comes when the wire is so fine it cuts the steel of the die and loses its rotundity. Then a harder material is needed and the wire drawer goes the whole figure and uses a diamond. Cutting the steel dies is a cunning craft enough, but the expert, who, with a hair-like drill and a dab of diamond dust can penetrate a diamond with an opening that will be regular and measure to a thousandth of an inch, is a man who would think it no trick at all to pass a well fed camel through the needle's eye. * * * * * It would take a larger book than this to tell all the things that are done in the making of wire for various uses. In the main, the entire volume produced either goes to market as wire of one sort and another, to be applied to its various objects or for sale, or else it is twisted into rope, of which the Roebling Company manufactures four hundred kinds, sizes and many qualities. The common fence wires are not among the Roebling specialties, but wire nettings are manufactured from a soft variety of basic steel which lends itself to the weaving process with almost the ease of animal and vegetable fibres. [Sidenote: THE ENDLESS MANUFACTURES FROM "FLAT WIRE"] The "flat wire," which has now attained immense volume of production, is, for the most part, rolled down from the round, in many qualities, and shipped as material to the makers of many things. There are wide, thin, beautiful ribbons which find their way to the shoestring factories and are cut and clinched to the laces as tips. The list of novelties and parts that are made from various forms and widths of flat wire is as long as the list of Smiths in a New York directory. In the novelty shop, which does a million things, wires are cut and mechanically bent in hundreds of thousands of shapes, for clothes hangers, pail ear staples, daubers for bottles, meat skewers, hog rings, thread guards for textile machinery, basket fasteners, shackles for car seals, saddlery parts, Welsbach mantles, clips and links for bedsprings, wiring for toys of all descriptions--and so on and on and on. And all this novelty business is a side line, like the square and triangular wires that are used by oil well drillers to keep the sand from getting into the oil. The special shapes of high quality wire that are made to order, to provide hard-wearing parts for typewriters and many other machines, are almost without number. [Sidenote: SALVAGING "MILL ENDS"]