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242 CASSIER'S MAGAZINE 2300 workmen. The exports of type- writing machines and parts for 1897 amounted in value to $1,566,916. There is no reliable statement available as to the number of type-writing ma- chines in use. It was estimated in 1895 that there were then not less than 400,- 000. One firm engaged in this industry published a statement more than a year ago that in thirty-four office buildings in New York City 3426 type-writers were then in use. Agencies for the sale of type-writers, dealers in type-writer supplies, and schools for teaching the use of the type- writer are found in every city and large town. The great indus- trial value of the type- writer has been, however, in the employment it has af- forded, particularly to women. A bulletin of the Bureau of Education gives the number of schools teaching the use of the type-writer and its neces- sary accompaniment, stenography, in 1890 as 108 1, with 57,375 pupils, nearly all of them women. The census of 1 890 reported that 33,418 persons were em- ployed in the United States as stenog- raphers and type-writers, of which 21,- 270 were women, while in 1870 the census reported only 154 shorthand writers in the United States, of which but seven were women. no volts, the needed current can be taken from any regular electric lighting main in or about a shop. The conven- ience of the device, especially for small work, is so obvious that it need not be emphasised, but any one more particu- larly interested will find its good points detailed in a leaflet published by the maker, Mr. O. S. Walker, of Worcester, Mass. A magnetic holder for an electric incandescent lamp, brought out by Messrs. Jenkins Brothers, of New York City, is another electric shop conven- ience which, no doubt, will be quick to commend itself. The holder is simply a lamp socket containing a small electro- magnet which will make the whole con- trivance stick to any piece of iron or steel with which it may be brought in contact. The coil through which the magnet is energised is within the base of the holder, and the lamp current sup- plying the energy passes through it on its way to the lamp. In machine and boiler shops, in engine and boiler rooms aboard ship, in fact, wherever light is needed for machine work, the contriv- ance ought to prove a convenience of the first order. To hold down to a lecture platform a light iron object by means of an electro- magnet underneath, out of sight, and thus appear to multiply its weight many times over at will, — to make it impossi- ble even to lift the object in question, providing the magnet be powerful enough, — is an old conjurers' trick which has served on many occasions to mystify the public. Its principle, how- ever, has been applied to several more useful purposes, and one of these, of recent date, is embodied in a magnetic chuck for miscellaneous work, for sur- face grinding principally, but adapted also for the planer or the lathe The magnetic effect in this chuck is pro- duced by an electric current circulating in a coil in the interior of the device, and as this coil is wound, preferably, for The end of this century, which is now near at hand, will, in the estimation of even those who are deeply interested in wrought iron, see the end of wrought iron as a distinctive designation, except, perhaps, in the case of Swedish iron or some other high-priced iron specialty. Ordinary bar iron, says The Iron Age, apropos of this, will have completely disappeared from the trade. It is be- coming increasingly difficult to secure material from which to manufacture gen- uine bar iron. Scrap has long been the chief dependence of the bar iron manu- facturer, who is prohibited by its cost from using puddled iron except for those who insist upon having muck bar iron without regard to price. But the great stocks of scrap iron are nearing exhaustion, iron rails are becoming a