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FORGED RIBBON-BACKED CHIPPENDALE CHAIR.

tery. At first the Italians told the tourists there were no antiques left; but, finding the truth of no avail, and being an obliging people, they invented a new industry-the counterfeiting of antiqueswhich has to-day become almost a fine art.

An English gentleman of many years' residence in Italy, says: "I have stood in more than one sculptor's studio, both

BOWL WITH COVER.

Imitation of Imari Porcelain.

formed me that the greater part of his output was shipped to an agent in New York, who judiciously distributed it to dealers all over America." So clever is this mode of giving age, that the combination of acids applied is absorbed by the marble and turns it yellow right through, so that even experts can be deceived by those ingenious imitations of Michael Angelo, Donatello, and other celebrated sculptors.

At Athens there is a factory busy all the year round turning out by the score "ancient" Tanagra terra-cottas. One of these imitations will be sold for fifteen hundred dollars when fifteen dollars is every penny it is worth.

When old silver became the fashionable craze, the little stores on the Ponte Veccheio contained many genuine chalices, goblets, sugar basins, and the like

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a genuine piece-say a fine old gobletand produce exact copies. By a chemical process they give them an appearance of age that would deceive the eyes of an expert. For years there has been an increasing demand by collectors mediæval armor and arms. In a back street of a prosperous Italian city is the workshop of a man who is a genius at manufacturing every conceivable kind of armor, from breastplates to gauntlets, from halberds to swords and daggers, all stamped with the monograms of some famous Spanish or Italian armorer.

The steel is treated with acids; the bronze hilts of swords are dipped in some kind of solution to give the appearance of age and use; then the pieces are placed in boxes of damp earth to induce rust; and in a week or two they are ready to be sold to the dealers at so much a dozen.

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the false from the true, he sold the entire collection for what it would bring.

In Manchester, England, a large number of men are employed in making old furniture. The large majority of the supposedly genuine Sheraton, Chippendale, and Happlewhite sold in London, each with a certified pedigree that runs back to the middle of the eighteenth century, are probably not more than three months from the factory. A dealer described the making of a sixteenth century chair in these words: "You make the chair to pattern, soak it in a certain fluid, then shoot a few rounds of small shot into it, to give it a worm-eaten appearance, and there you are!"

Grecian terra-cottas, Louis Seize, Queen Anne furniture, Tanagra statuettes, Egyptian pottery, ancient brasses, pictures, armor, arms-in fact, you have

only to say what particular antique you want, and the London, Paris, or Italian dealer will in a week's time secure it and supply gratis an unimpeachable history, sworn to by the descendant of six generations.

Sacred scarabs, little Egyptian charms, are manufactured by a Connecticut firm. They are carved and chipped by machinery, colored in bulk, made to simulate age, and shipped in casks to the Moslem dealers in Cairo. The Arabian guides are the chief buyers, many of them being adepts at "salting" the sands at the base of the pyramids or about the sacred temples, where they artfully discover these scarabs before the very eyes of the Yankee tourist, and sell him, for an American dollar, an article manufactured at a cost of less than a cent, perhaps within a stone's throw of his own home.

A

The Worth of a Patent

S SOON AS the average man obtains a patent upon any device, he considers that his fortune is made, and that he has only to let people know what he has done and where he lives to be overwhelmed with offers for it at his own price. The facts are that a patent is no more and no less than documentary evidence that the holder of it is entitled to its exclusive use. If he does not wish to use it, and will not sell it at a reasonable price, the inventor holds a piece of paper only, which deteriorates rapidly from the competition of other inventors in the same field. What is a reasonable price for an invention, depends wholly upon circumstances and conditions. If it relates to an article that will have only a moderate sale, a very moderate sum is all that can be expected, if, indeed, a manufacturer be found who desires to take the matter up.

Inventors, however, are often without experience or knowledge in regard to the business side of the question and the difficulties which attend the introduction and marketing of even a meritorious article. Before a patent can make returns to any one, much time and money must be put into it, and all this is to be recovered before the investor can recoup himself for his outlay, to say nothing of making money on the venture. The large sums said to be paid for patents that are not remarkable for novelty, being mere improvements upon existing machines or relating to some unimportant article, are mostly fiction. Inventors are apt to have an exaggerated idea of the value of their patents, and to think that they should receive for their patent what it may be worth after all the work required has been done and the demand has been created.

The Technical World A wise girl is known by the company she

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Occasionally a man who runs for an office wins in a walk.

A brick manufacturer needs the earth in his business.

Some society women have better clothes than manners.

If a man makes no enemies, he has but few friends.

Intellectuality is the cause of baldness. So says a baldheaded scientist.

A thousand-dollar boy with a ten-thousanddollar education is over-capitalized.

Don't get gay. It is easier to keep the lid on than it is to put it back on again.

The next time Russia wants a war loan, she might apply to the St. Louis hotel men.

The trouble with many a young man is that he spends his fortune before he makes it.

Sometimes a man loses his job because he doesn't know enough, and sometimes because he knows too much.

People often make the excuse that they have bad memories, when the truth is, they are too slovenly to use their brains.

One of the greatest mistakes that a man can make is to sit down at a desk and worry himself sick over business and then call it a day's work.

doesn't keep.

Habit may be a man's best friend or his worst enemy.

Expert testimony depends upon who employs the expert.

Nearly all commuters imagine Hades is a suburb of Heaven.

A gentleman is a man who agrees with you; a crank is one who doesn't.

Love is a serious matter the first time a young man bumps into it.

If the average girl doesn't play the harp in the next world any better than she plays the piano in this, there's going to be trouble.

If people would only give as much thought to governing themselves as they do to the government of the nation, the welfare of all would be assured.

Our Commercial Ad

THE

vance

HE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1904, marks the best all-round business year in the history of the United States. The exports of American manufactures were larger than in any preceding year, and the exports of domestic products exceeded those of any other country. This, in a single sentence, is the record of the year's commerce just announced by the Department of Commerce and Labor through the Bureau of Statistics.

The United Kingdom is, next to the United States, the world's largest exporter of domestic products, and, until within recent years, surpassed the United States in its total. During the past few years, however, the United States has rapidly gained upon and finally overtaken the United Kingdom in the race for supremacy as an exporter of domestic prod

ucts.

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practical answer to the old-time objection that the electric system was too costly, and the perfection of the electric locomotive too remote, to constitute a practical commercial issue. Taken in conjunction with the proposed electric equipment of the leased South Shore line, which parallels the New York Central to Buffalo, and the proposed creation of a gigantic system of trolley transportation throughout the State by the absorption of all electric roads that interfere with local traffic, in order to make them feeders of the main line-an absorption already far advanced-this incident calls attention to one of the most significant developments of our industrial life today.

All over the more populous parts of this continent, the "electrifying" process has, during the past five or six years, been working a revolution in the relations of men to one another. First Ohio, then Indiana, then Illinois and Iowa, and now New York, have been paralleling their railroads with trolley lines. In the Middle States, perhaps, are found the largest contiguous reaches of fertile soil in the world, which not only yield rich crops at small cost of cultivation, but which are almost all underlain by coal or petroleum within easy reach; and nowhere are there fewer obstacles to line construction than on those prairieseither in the way of physical difficulties, or of indisposition to grant a right of way on the part of the intelligent farming communities who will be served. In all cases these lines have developed, almost from the start, a paying business which grows from year to year at a surprising rate; and—a feature even more remarkable the traffic on the steam lines has also increased. The trolleys, running at brief intervals from point to point, and starting from the heart of the cities and towns, have simply created their own business and set people moving about who otherwise would have remained as inert as the proverbial snail.

As these electric lines become connected endwise in longer and longer stretches, flouting the railroads everywhere, it is not to be wondered at if the steam companies should wish to have them as feeders, rather than as competi

tors, which, up to distances of 40 miles. or so, they certainly are. Thus the absorption movement is bound to continue, and we may look for more and more consolidation until the time comes, prophesied by the late Jay Gould, when we shall be face to face with the problem whether the railways shall run the government, or the government shall have to run the railways. The issues are serious, but not beyond the power of the American public to work out an intelligent solution.

Need of a Parcel Post

IN GERMANY a package weighing four pounds may be sent by mail to any part of the country for a postage of four cents. To mail a similar package in the United States would cost 64 cents. A parcel may be mailed from England to Canada for three-quarters the postage it would cost to send the same parcel a dozen miles in this country.

One of our greatest public needs is a parcel post. Education in Business, in discussing the subject says: "The immense advantages of the parcel post system-to which any well-informed traveler will bear witness-are being denied us because of the power of the great private corporations, the Express Companies, in our legislative halls.

Amalgamated

"WHEN ROGUES fall out, the devil

is to pay." But then, it almost seems, as Mr. Barnum once said, that the American people "like to be humbugged," and it is an admitted fact that substantial and meritorious enterprises will often "go begging" for the sinews of strength, while the wildest of wildcat schemes provided only they hold out the promise of "easy money" and "big money"-have little difficulty in imposing themselves upon a confiding public.

Mr. Lawson's alleged "inside" history of the Amalgamated Copper deal, to which he was himself a party, is-if it be not to be taken with a grain of salt— merely one more eye-opener to the methods of stock manipulation which in recent

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