astfut 3r#5, 5as4ions, Eratt, &r.
Tam continued cold weather unfavourably influences the trade of those who deal in textile fabrics, both wholesale and retail. The linen- drapers of London complain of dull business, while the wholesale dealers find that their customers do not purchase so freely as usual. Many of the shippers to the Continent, as may be expected during the present condition of affairs there, decline to do business, and in some instances will only execute orders for which the cash has been positively remitted.
We regret to have occasion to point out to the notice of the public, a manufacturing fraud that is getting very common. The practice we refer to is that of making articles, which should be square, some inches narrower one way than the other. The remedy for this evil lies with the public itself, which should make a practice, when buying handkerchiefs, shawls, or goods of any kind sold in squares, to institute an examination on this point before completing the purchase. The defect is invariably the case with the low-priced cambric handkerchiefs that are sold, which are generally longer than they are wide. We have lately seen some men's black silk neckerchiefs manufactured at Macclesfield, that ought to be thirty-four inches square, but which are two inches narrower one way than they should be. The fair-dealing manufacturer who is willing to sell at a small profit, in cases like these, when an article is laid before him, which he measures one way only, and finds to all appearance correct in size, often cannot understand how he is beaten in price ; when he knows he buys his silk as cheap, and pays the same wages as his neighbours. If he were to measure across the article as well, he would find a solution of the puzzle. If the public will take care, when buying, to have none but square goods, where squares are needed, it will soon put a atop to this dishonest practice.
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