SHEFFIELD AS AN INDUSTRIAL CENTRE.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13317, 18 January 1912, Page 4

SHEFFIELD AS AN INDUSTRIAL CENTRE.

The London "Times'" states:— Sheffield is a good cure for a fit of pessimism about England's industrial progress. It is still the centre of the world's cutlery trade; it is progressive, busy, alert, and alive. Its age may be a surprise to some people. There are legends that the iron-work-ers there were famous long before the Norman conquest, aud it is known for certain that they were so in the loth century. Tho English bowmen who turned the fortunes of the day at Agincourt,, are said to have displayed a marked preference for Sheffield arrow-tips, and tho gfeat firms of the ■ Sheffield of to-day play a leading part in building and arming Dreadnoughts. The trade-marks of a house doing a world-wide business to-day date back tn 1082, the present head of the firm being a lineal descendant of the founder. For more than two hundred years "llussinu and Afghan, Mongol and Turk, have learned to associate m their minds Sheffield trade mark* with sterling quality and workmanship." The introduction and extension' of machinery, and tho application of science to manufacture, have not anected Sheffield's position. We hoar a great deal about the unwillingness of English manufacturers to spend money in research, but enormous, sums have been spent quietly m S.iefheld in such work, with hirdilv important results. All of tho nine micro-constituents of steel, on a knowledge of which progress depends, wore discovered there. Plainly Sheffield is something for England Vo ha proud of.