To M.E. Carter: "… busy fitting out a party for Maine on short notice and did not have time to look over my stock…shall work on your flies this week and will send assortment of large flies on 6,7,8 & 9 hooks…the size most used in your section, they will be 75 cts. per Doz. to you, that gives me but $1.25 per Doz. for my labor as 2 Doz. is a full days work and I employ no help." William W. Cone (1827-c.1905) was "one of the earliest professional fly tiers in the Catskill region" (Van Put and Merwin, 2007) and one of the first in America; he began tying flies 4 years after the Civil War, though he did not make a business of it until the 1880s. Living near Binghamton, New York, Cone sold some 60 varieties of American and British-pattern ties, aiming, as he wrote in his 1884 price list, "to furnish Anglers with the best fly for the least money and send out only my best work at a price that yields me but moderate wages".