HEAT FOR TEMPERING STEEL.

There are many intermediate grades between the extreme conditions of hard and soft steel, although the common index for which is the oxidation of the brightened surface, is generally sufficient for practice. These tints, and their approximate temperatures, were tabulated by a Mr. Stoddart.

HATCHETS, CHIPPING CHISELS, AND OTHER PERCUSSIVE TOOLS; SAWS, ETC.

FRENCH MANUFACTURES AND ARTISANS.

A Paris correspondent of the Journal of Commerce writes:

"Alsace, in France, (half German and half French,) is celebrated for the importance and abundance of its fine manufactures, which are exported in large quantities to the Americas, Spain, Germany, and Italy.

They occupy a hundred thousand workmen; those of cotton are the largest. In the Department of the Upper Rhine, the number of spindles is a million; of operatives, twenty thousand. The number of spindles throughout France is estimated at four and a half millions; the weaving of raw cotton employs in Alsace nearly fifty thousand hands, and the printing ten thousand. The metallic, chemical, and woolen factories are considerable; all the details concerning the peculiar condition, training, dispositions, and habits of the operatives and their relations with their employers, are curious and instructive.

"Alsace contains between six and seven hundred thousand acres of forest, with which all the rural population are connected in one mode or another. The forest laws were minute and severe, and the cause of bitter disaffection to the government. With a view to conciliation, they have been already modified; they may be judged of by one concession, solicited in vain for more than twenty years; the people are permitted to gather and carry away the dead leaves on two days of every week, instead of two per month. The race of Jews is multitudinous in Alsace; they live for the most part by usury in small sums apportioned to the wants of the operatives and the cultivators; they and the forest guards are objects of popular hate. During the anarchy of 1848, their dwellings were sacked, and extensive devastation was committed in the forests.

The manufacturing population is better off than the cultivating or rustic; but misery and vice abound with both; there is an excess of numbers for the means of subsistence; families are wonderfully prolific-it is not rare to find in a wretched hut, from fifteen to eighteen children.

"The population is divided into Protestant and Catholic; a little intolerance is shown by each in the elections. Strasburg, the renowned capital, has few factories, except the breweries: Mulhausen is the emporium of manufactures. Fifty years ago, its inhabitants were not more than six thousand; now they are forty thousand; the number of operatives varies from twenty to twenty-five thousand: the Protestants amount to twelve thousand-the Jews to three thousand"

MACHINE FOR WEAVING BAGS.

If the following statement of a correspondent of the Boston Journal is correct, our esteemed friend BENJAMIN FLANDERS, (and others in New York,) largely engaged in the manufacture of bags, will be compelled to relinquish that branch of his extensive business, or introduce the new machine, in operation at the Stark Mills, which is thus described in the Journal.

While in one of the rooms of the Stark Mills, we were much interested in witnessing the working of a machine recently invented and put into operation by Mr. Cyrus Baldwin of Manchester, and which is called a bag-loom machine. It weaves bags whole-without seam-at the rate of 45 per day, and one girl can tend two, and in some cases three machines. The principal feature of this machine is that is selfacting. When it has wove the length which is desired for the bag, it changes the action so as to weave the bottom of the next bag, which being done it changes back again and weaves the body of the bag. Its operation is very simple and ingenious. The Stark Corporation have now in operation 26 of these machines, and have between 30 and 40 more ready to set up. They can be made to weave bags of any size, even as large as bed-ticks.

ZINC A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEAD.

Zinc may be made a preventive for many diseases that have of latter years become alarmingly prevalent. Lead in water pipes, beer-pumps, kitchen utensils, &c., comes in contact with and poisons what we eat and drink, daily. The diseases thus engendered are Cholic, Dysentery, Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Paralysis, Delirium, Coma, and many modifications of these diseases too numerous to be at once called to mind, though all of our readers may recognize in their own cases various symptoms that indicate their approach, and may trace the cause to the increased use of lead in their household utensils. A small portion of lead each day is taken into the system; slowly, yet surely, preparing it for the outbreak of the diseases we have specified, which by the reports of death, every one may perceive are becoming more prevalent every year. A law should be passed immediately prohibiting the manufacture and use of leaden utensils for the conveyance or cooking of food and drinks, substituting zinc instead. This law should also apply to paints-especially as zinc paints are generally known to be cheaper by about 40 per cent than white lead, and much more durable. This is a fair subject for legislation, and laws of this kind will be approved and obeyed by by all classes. Pure zinc is commercially 50 per cent superior to lead; sanatarily its superiority is incalculable.

MANUFACTURE OF CANDLES.

The Iowa Farmer and Artisan says, that this dificult and offensively laborious operation is simplified and rendered easy, by an apparatus owned by Mr. George Watkins of Johnson-street, Keokuk, by which the cost of making candles at once becomes nominal, and the operators of the machine may, if they desire it, avoid becoming bedaubed by tallow, as the apparatus itself does the work perfectly, and with extraordinary dispatch. One man may do the work of five, by the common system of hand molding, and besides the wicks are more perfectly centered, and the candles of a more uniform quality than can be made by hand. With the small force of one man and three smart boys or girls, some twelve or fifteen years old, a stock of ten thousand dollars worth of tallow could be worked up in a year with this machine, and the business, even if the whole were sold at wholesale prices, would afford a very handsome income.

DEPRESSION IN THE SHOE MANUFACTURE.

The depression, it is stated in the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald," which has weighed heavily upon all our other manufacturers, for two or three years past, had at last reached the shoe business, and that among the departures for California, were many who had been thrown out of business in this department of industry. We find, as far as our inquiries extend, that the reduction of wages in the shoe manufacture, in all branches except the first class of work, is 30 per cent. We find that shoes which last year

workman obtained 10 or 12 cents a pair for making, are now made at 6 to 8 cents; those for which employers formerly paid 15 and 17 cents, they now pay only 10 or 12 cents; and those for which 30 to 35 cents was formerly paid, are now made for 20 to 28 cents. There are a great many journeyman shoemakers, now employed on ordinary work, 12 to 15 hours a day, who earn less than fifty cents a day.

PHENIX CUMBERLAND COAL COMPANY.

The Wall Street Journal in reply to inquiries, in relation to this new coal company says:-"We are informed that the capital is $2,000,000; that its mineral lands amount to 22,000 acres; its surplus capital $100,000; its permanent debt, (FLOATING DEBT, IT HAS NONE,) amounts to $15,000, represented by bonds, payable in 1872, and negotiated at par. With relation to its business prospects, we learn that the works to connect the mines of the company, with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, will be ready to bring coal to market by the middle of next month, and are, in length, 1810 feet. The cost of transportation of a ton of coal to Baltimore will be less than $2, and that of mining and loading the cars of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad about 35 cents. The Phenix Company being essentially free from all debt, whatever profits are made will go to the stockholders; consequently, there is a reasonable anticipation that a fair dividend will be earned and paid this year."

MERCANTILE MISCELLANIES.

MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK.

The thirty-first annual report of the Board of Direction of the Mercantile Library Association of New York, covering some thirty-six pages, gives renewed evidence of the progressive character of this institution, and of its stability. Its example has been followed by the merchants of every considerable commercial city and town in the United States, and the similar associations which have been established in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Charleston, St. Louis, &c., are all, as may be learned from the pages of past numbers of the Merchants' Magazine, in a flourishing condition. They have been eminently successful in fostering a thirst for knowledge, and a taste for reading, among the rising generation of merchants, and in many instances laid the foundation of honor and success in life. The New York Mercantile Association, with a library of rare value, a reading room surpassed by none in the country either in extent or completeness, and with every prospect of continued and increasing prosperity, may well feel grateful to those far-seeing and devoted men to whom it owes, in a great measure, all these advantages.

From the report we learn that the number of members at the close of 1850 was 3,348, and the total number on the 1st of January, 1852, 3,797. Of this number, 3,611 pay $2 per annum, and 186, $5 per annum. The report of the Treasurer exhibits a large increase in the receipts over that of the preceding year. The receipts of the year ending December, 1851, were $8,290, which, with a balance from the previous year of $320, makes the total income of the year $8,612. The expenditures for increasing the library, &c., amounted to $8,416, leaving a balance in the Treasury, on the first of January, 1852, of $195. On the first of January, 1852, the institution was entirely free from debt. The number of volumes in the library on the first day of January, 1852, was 33,140; the additions made during the year 1851 amounted to 2,957-a greater number than has been added in any one year during the existence of the library except in the year 1839, when the number amounted to 3,583. The additions made in 1851 are classified as follows:-Works of fiction, 806; works of sci

ence and art, 327; general literature, 1,824. The reading-room is in the regular supply of periodicals as follows:

Years.

Making in all 176 publications, and being an increase of 44 over the number in receipt at the close of the last year.

The following table gives a very comprehensive statement of the statistical progress of the association since its foundation, and with it we close our abstract of the very interesting report of the Board of Direction, uniting with it in the hope that the "Mercantile Library Association of the City of New York will be honored as the proudest monument that has been reared in this Republic to the cause of learning, by the energy and liberality of the mercantile profession:

ANNUAL ADDITIONS OF MEMBERS AND BOOKS, EXPENDITURES FOR BOOKS, TOTAL RECEIPTS, ETC., FROM THE 9th November, 1820, to 1ST JANUARY, 1852.

1820-21....

$600 00

$900 00

Total...

.

16,773 41,841 $52,015 20 $9,268 33 $2,580 75 $129,103 14

MALT TRADE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

From a parliamentary paper recently issued, it appears, that in the year ended the 10th of October, 1851, there were made 4,853,118 quarters of malt; 4,128,422 in England, 531,935 in Scotland, and 192,761 in Ireland.

HONESTY IN 'MERCANTILE LIFE.

If our merchants do not cultivate the sterling virtues of mercantile honor and honesty, they cannot charge the Merchants' Magazine with being derelict of duty. We have given them "line upon line, and precept upon precept;" and now having ourself almost exhausted the subject, we may, perhaps, be allowed to reproduce a homily from our clever cotemporary of the Merchants' Ledger ::

There are a good many merchants who think that honesty in every-day business matters is incompatible with success. They seem to think that in order to get along they must practice a certain degree of trickery and deception. They argue that the up-and-down honest man, who will not swerve from the path of rectitude, is sure to fail in whatever he undertakes; and hence they justify themselves in practicing petty as well as wholesale dissimulation, and in taking advantage of the verdancy of their customers, under the plea that custom and necessity compel them to adopt this course. The highwayman might, with as good a degree of plausibility, advance a similar theory to justify his depredations, only that his "calling" is not quite as general as that of the merchant. There are not so many men who threaten your life, if you do not comply with their demands, as there are dealers who justify general imposition and fraud, and that makes the seeming difference between the honesty of the highway robber and that of the merchant who deliberately utters untruths, and misrepresents the value of an article in order that he may effect a sale of goods.

We firmly believe that the man who possesses the requisite business qualifications, can succeed better in the mercantile field by pursuing an honest straight-forward course, than if he were to deaden his conscience and disregard all moral obligations by amassing riches (to last for a brief period) at the expense of the unwary and inex perienced, and in defrauding people generally, not openly, but " on the sly," as the custom is. We frequently hear the expression made in reference to some good-natured, inactive, old-womanish man, “ O, he's too honest to get along." Now this is a false inference, for in nine cases out of ten the honest man's failure does not arise from the practice of an honest course, but from his unfitness for the business in which he is engaged. We do not by any means intend to convey the impression that honesty will cause a man who is not qualified for the business in which he is engaged to succeed. What we mean to assert, and the impression that we would leave on the minds of the readers of the Ledger is, that a man who is adapted for a certain pursuit will and must necessarily succeed better by dealing honestly and uprightly than by cheating and defrauding when he thinks he will not be detected.

But in addition to the matter of success, how cheerful and pleasant is the condition of the man who knows and feels that he is doing an honest business-a business which his conscience approves! This is of more value to him than the possession of millions. It is a source of happiness which the fashionable swindler never can realize nor appreciate. Let every honest merchant, then, be encouraged by these reflections, and if he does not amass wealth as rapidly as he could desire, he can find abundant consolation in the old version of the words of the "sweet singer of Israel:"

"A little that a just man hath

Is more and better far,

Than is the wealth of many such

As false and wicked are.

"I have been young, but now am old,
Yet have I never seen

The just man left, nor that his seed
For bread have beggars been."

THE SOCK SELLER OF THE POYDRAS MARKET, NEW ORLEANS.

A strange old man is he, who may be seen any day, be it cold or hot, in the neighborhood of the Poydras Market, with a bundle of socks in his hand or on the banquette beside him. Selling socks is now his only business; yet time was when it was not so. Of the multiform mutations of human life, that old man has experienced more than mortal's share. See how he mutters to himself, and smiles, half insanely, as he praises his wares to his real or pretended customers! One eye is closed, and the lid is swollen, and the face of the stock seller is covered with scars. These are traces left in the old man's face by assassin burglars, who, some two years ago, robbed