"The mercantile part of the Sheffield trade is performed chiefly by travellers, but the principal shops in London deal directly with the manufacturers here. To humour public prejudice in regard to "_Town make_," as it is called, and to serve as an advertisement for various retailers in London and other large towns, their connexions in Sheffield keep steel brands, with which their names are placed on the articles, and they thereby pass with the public as the real manufacturers. I saw in different workshops, in Sheffield, the steel brands of our famous _town makers_, and the articles in wholesale quantities packing up to meet the demand in London for "_real town made_." This is a standing joke at the expense of cockney credulity among the Sheffield cutlers. "Sheffield is noted for the manufacture of superior files; and many anecdotes are told of the artifices which have been made use of to aggrandize or to repudiate the celebrity of the marks of some well-known makers. "In Sheffield generally the workmen get from 20s. to 24s. per week. Dry grinders get £2, and some £5 or £6, and these high wages are paid as an equivalent for the shortness of life. Many women are employed as filers, burnishers, polishers, finishers, &c. &c.; and they get from 6s. to 12s. per week. "Very _fine_ cutlery is manufactured by Mr. Crawshaw. I saw in his warehouse all those elegant patterns of pen-knives which, in the best shops of London, Bath, &c. excite so much admiration. His lobster knives, with four or more blades, on slit springs, with pearl and tortoiseshell handles, are the most perfect productions of British manufacture. His pen-knives with rounded or beveled backs, to turn in the quill and shave the point, are simple and effective improvements. He showed me plain pocket-knives so highly finished, that the first cost is 38s., yet so deceptive is cutlery, that I might have preferred others which I saw at only 7s. or 8s. It is the same in regard to the scissors of Champion and Son,--articles at two or three guineas did not appear to my uninstructed eye worth more than others at a few shillings; yet in all these high priced articles, nearly the whole cost is in workmanship, and there are but few workmen who can produce them. At the same time, Mr. Crawshaw deals in pen-knives at 5s. per dozen, and Mr. Champion in scissors at 2s. or 3s. per dozen.