The day for boring auger holes with gimlets is past. In all mechanical business, and particularly in clay industries, in these days, it takes capital to start a business and carry it on. The profit is made to-day on the amount of business done—on the use of the best machinery, and appliances, and conveniences for handling and shipping. Little fish can't swim safely in streams where big fish live and thrive. The point I want to make is, that to be successful in any branch of the clay busi ness, in these days, you must have money enough to get the best machinery, and to meet all bills until your business gets on a paying basis. This is particularly true in the tile business. Many have the idea that the roofing tile business is a small one— that it is like the drain tile business—a neighborhood affair. It is not. It is a business as large as you have the money and busi ness brains to make it. No tile factory I know of in this coun try has been able to keep a stock on hand to supply immediate demands. It has been necessary to order the tile for the roof before the cellar was dug, and then often wait weeks or months, with the building exposed to the weather, before you get them. The consequence of this uncertainty and delay has compelled architects and owners to substitute other roof covering—they would not be deviled to death waiting. Tile will stand ship ping—the business is a large and growing one, but it must not be started and carried on in the gimlet principle.
You have read in your papers of the trials and tribulations of the man who tried to run a brickyard. He had read about making brick in the papers, and therefore knew all about it. All he had to do was to buy a machine, start a yard, and the machine would make the brick. He tells of his troubles ; the time lost, money lost, brick lost, temper lost, and even his re ligion lost, before he succeeded in becoming a good brick maker. If this is true of brick, it is doubly true of tile. It is possible some of you have had experience in trying to make tile, and could tell interesting stories of how sanguine you were when you started in, and how disgusted you were when you started out. If you have not been there, others have. I have met them—plenty of them. I have heard of men that could tell you all about making tile—but their tile never got on the roof. I suppose I am talking to practical men, that can ap
preciate a practical business proposition. When I tell you that if you want to start in the tile business, buy experience and knowledge from the successful man, you will understand it. If the knowledge is of the right kind it is cheap at any price. It will save you much more than you pay for it. Experimenting costs a great deal more than practical knowledge and experi ence. The man that has the knowledge and experience has paid for it. You see the point ? Will tile sell? is a question that may be asked. I have been in a position to know they will. Of course tile, as compared with other roofs, is not a cheap roof, and will not be used on the cheaper class of buildings. But tile has qualities for roof ing no other material has, and if a tile looks well, has the fire and frost properties, can be laid at a small cost, is not too heavy, and can be sold at a reasonable price, every building that has valuable records and property to protect, churches, school houses, railroad depots, and elegant private residences, will use them. The trouble is not to sell them, but to have them to sell; so that architects and builders know they can get them, when wanted, without delay. I know what I am saying when I tell you the only trouble about selling tile is in keeping a stock on hand to supply the demand. Tile is the coming roof in the United States.
I have shown you from the best authority that there is no roofing material equals tile. Slate is the next best, and in comparing prices with an inferior article, you must bear in mind the relative qualities. The American Architect quotes prices on building materials. In looking' at the quotations on slate in Chicago, to builders and contractors, the prices range from $5.5o to $14.00 per square. Red slate is $12.00 to $14.00 and unfading black and purple $7.10 to $9.00. Now the tile made under the patents of the Clay Shingle Company can be sold, at a good profit, for $8.00 per square, and can be laid on the roof as cheap or cheaper than slate ; so you see the modern tile, made by machinery, having all the valuable quali ties of the old tile, has the advantage in weight and price over the better class of slate. With these points in their favor, who can say that tile is not the coming roof ?