The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1880-01-09

JOSEPH GILL0TT'S GOOD FORTUNE.
From Great Industries of Great Britain"
Joseph elliott was Sheffield artisan,
who, soon after he became of age, was
compelled by stress of poverty, OCCASION
ed by long depression of tIade, to leave
the parental hearth and to seek his for
tunes elsewhere. He found his way 10
Birmingham, and, entering the town on
foot, stopped for rest and refreshment at
an old public house in Digbeth. Long
| after, when Joseph elliott had become a
millionaire, and was buying up valuable
properties in and about the town, this
house came into the market for sale.
elliott bought it; and when it was being
razed to the ground he directed the work
man TO cut out a particular square of the
| settle, or seat, running round the tap
room, and to send it to his house to be
made up into chair that should be hand
| ed down as an heirloom in the family. 1t
was the first seat he had sat on in Bir-
mingllam, and the place where he had
/ spent his last penny before pushing ON
into the town whose fame and wealth he
was destined so largely to share and to
increase. He soon found employment as
| a maker of buckles, a trade then enjoying
a temporary squirt, and soon, with char
| acterIstic energy, was working on his
own account. In the garnet of very
small house in Bread street-a locality
marked down for destruction as "slum"
| elliott made buckles and other 'steel
toys" "He made very excellent goods"
soid the merchant who used to buy of
him, and "came for his money every
| week" His work showed evidence of
taste beyond that commonly possessed
by workman, and this insured him
plenty of orders; while a native ingenu-
ity enabled him to execute them in the
readiest way, with the least expenditure of
time and labor, and with the directest
| aid from mechanical means.
He was engaged to young woman IN
his own rank of life, whose two brothers,
John and William Mitchell, were work
ing in about the same style as himself
on the 'new thing''-just beginning to
be inquired after-steel pens. Their
sister was helping them, and in the con-
fidences of courtship would often
explain to her lover the nature of her
pursuits. No doubt the brothers were
| working by "rule of thumb" producing,
by painful labor of clipping, shearing,
| fling and punching by hand, fairly
salable article. But elliott saw at once
that the press could be made available
| for nearly every process, and that the
production could be multiplied al an
fRStum. Aided by his skill in tool-mak-
ing, which stood him in good stead dur
| ing all the greater part of his
career, he worked secretly in his garnet
till he had perfected appliances which
enabled him to make single handed as
many pens as could be made by twenty
persons in the same time under the old
| system, and of better and more uniform
quality than had yet been seen. He
| found ready sale for all he could make,
and in short time the demand grew
faster than his power of production, and
he wanted help. Then his sweetheart,
Miss Mitchell, agreed to his proposal
that they should marry and work to-
! gether and reap the golden harvest
while it was ripe. In after years Mr..
elliott used TO tell how, on the very
morning of his marriage, he began and
finished gross of pens, and sold them
for G. As. before going to church.