Show 1 I bINS BY f THE BILLIONS II I I A VIEW OF A PUT FACTORY HT OPERATION INGENIOUS AND DELICATE 3EECHANIS3T EMLOY HI TH ScEANUFACTURE OF THE SIMPLEST OBJECT REQUIRED I DAILY USE MACHINES CHINES THAT THEN OUT THE HUNDRED PINS E H UTE EVEN MOUNTED ON PAPER BY MEANS OF MACHINERY a WOMEN MAR THE BEST INSPECTORS AND SORTERS WHAT BECOMES OF THEM A Copyright 1897 The S S McClure Co What becomes of all the pins It tis an old question and one that has never been answered Even the celebrated Mr Sherlock Holmes who solves seemingly seem-ingly hopeless puzzles as easily as most of us read a primer lesson has thus far hesitated to risk his reputation for infallibility in-fallibility by attacking this knotty problem Take it In everyday life No I body ever wilfully destroys or throws t away a pin On the contrary all tradition tra-dition is in favor of care in preserving these useful little articles The catechism cate-chism sacred relic of youthful days enforced the eighth commandment on our minds by telling us It is a sin to I I rwwi I I J A I MACHINE I steal a pin The connection between I good luck and pins Is brought out by an ancient AngloSaxon saw which runs See a pin and pick i up And all the day youll have good luck See a pin and let it lay Bad luck youll have then all the day This may be a little weak in grammar gram-mar but the point is obvious enough Ever student of household supersti tion knows too that to come upon a pin lying with the point toward one means bad luck while the opposite end is an equally potent harbinger of good fortune And so a long story might be made of the romantic and historical associations of the pin but lest ems prove a tender subject for schoolmasters It may be well to turn to the more prosaic and practical side of pinology To come back to the starting point once more the pins certainly do disappear dis-appear and it takes some billions of them every year to sustain the falling skirts mend the ripped waistbands and replace the missing suspender buttons of the American people And yet few of those in whose daily economy the pin plays so important a part whom Its humble services may have saved from most embarrassing situations ever think of the amount of skilled and careful labor l involved in the production pro-duction of a single pin few i is to be feared are even properly grateful for the boon that i confers Can anything be more simple than the making of a pin you say and you hold one up to look at it There is nothing to it except body head and point You may be surprised then to i learn that this pin in the course of its i manufacture passed through from 10 to 16 proce3ses journeying from basement to roof of a great factory in which are employed hundreds of skilled operatives all giving their minds and muscles to the task of turnIng turn-Ing out so simple an object as the ordinary or-dinary pin And besides the human workers the industry engages dozens engages < I of different kinds of machines operating oper-ating with the mysterious and almost I intelligent action which makes modern machinery so highly machlner interesting As might be expected the pin production pro-duction of the United States is centered I cen-tered in Connecticut a commonwealth famed almost as much for Yankee notions no-tions as for its wooden nutmeg It is estimated that ninetenths of all American I Amer-ican pins are made in Connecticut and the largest pin factory in the country is in that state The number of pins I i eJht teihi en ofnPf turned out by this one factory in the I course of the year if placed end to end would form a line reaching three times around the earth The total production pro-duction of the country is about twice this number or nearly enough to extend ex-tend in a straight line from the earth to the moon The pins make their appearance at the factory In the form of coiled wire packed in barrels The ordinary pin is made from brass wire though iron is used for the cheapest grades The first step in the transformation process Is the straightening of the wire The coils are placed on revolving rocks and fed from these into a machine from the viselike grasp of which the wire emerges perfectly straight Then it goes directly to the pin machines where the most interesting step in the work of manufacture goes oU The pin machine like the printing press combines com-bines In one compact piece of mechanism mechan-ism a number of Interesting processes As the wire Is fed into the machinery It encounters a sharp knife which cuts it off Into uniform lengths of whatever size may be desired As each little length of wire drops from the knife i falls upon a wheel perhaps 10 inches in diameter set upright in the frame of the machine The edge of this wheel is notched into a number oiJlttle grooves i each one just large enough to hold one of the bits of wire The embryo pins settle into these grooves and are carried along by the revolving wheel until an iron thumb and finger seizes and holds them firmly while an automatic hammer ham-mer by a single smart blow puts ahead a-head on one end Then they fall upon another grooved wheel which revolves horizontally and looks like a miniature barbican with the bits of wire projecting project-ing from its rim As the wires move on in the elaspaTsf this second wheel the projecting ends pass over th surface of a number of rapidly revolving wheels I whlch may be described as circular i i ot T steel flies These wheels grind the end I of wire to a neatly tapered point and after leaving them the points pass across a pumice stone wheel to give ge them the smoothness which the flies cannot impart and then drop Into a wooden box placed beneath the machine ma-chine to receive them The process is the same for all grades of pins except that in the best ones a stream of oil falls upon the points as they pass over the surface of the flies This pointing point-ing In oil is said to impart a toughness tough-ness and durability not otherwise obtainable ob-tainable I will be seen that since the wire was fed into this complicated machine it has passed through four distinct processes cutting heading pointing and smoothing There are over 100 of these machines ranged along the sides of the manufacturing room I each one turning out 300 pins per minI min-I 1 ute Not all the machines are like 3sc Vbee t the one described but this is the newest new-est uptodate and most rapid in its operation Back in a corner of the room are some of the old hand machines I ma-chines of a decade ago capable under the direction of a skilled workman of turning out onetenth as much a the most improved modern machines In the square wooden boxes beneath the machines we have what may properly prop-erly be described as a pin looking very much as i does when it leaves the factory fac-tory although i has a number of processes pro-cesses to go through still The next step takes the pins to the whitening room Here they are first placed in a tumbling barrel which is simply a revolving cylinder half filled with sawdust saw-dust and rolled until they are cleaned of grease and dirtj Then they are passed through a blower which removes re-moves the sawdust and leaves the pins bright and shining Next they are placed in large square sieves and lowered low-ered into vats filled with a peculiar green fluid These are the nickeling vats and after remaining in them an hour or more the pins come out changed from a brass color to the familiar fa-miliar hue They are again rolled in sawdust until dry and then pass upstairs up-stairs to the stitching room Thus far the pins from each of the machines have been kept in separate boxes as the least variation in size would injure their appearance and sell ing qualities when placed in the papers Now however i there Is any doubt as to the exact uniformity of all the pins in each consignment If any of them have been bent or Imperfectly formed they are run through a sorter sort-er This curious machine has a hopper I hop-per at the top from which the pins feed down through a narrow groove to an I 1i TUMBLING BARRELS WHEBE THE FINS ABE CLEANED aperture graduated to any desired size I her every imperfect pin is thrown out while the others drop out into a receiver I re-ceiver I is impossible to get the bet I bt I ter of this machine Bend a pin ever so slightly mar the point or head the I least bit and the machine will instantly in-stantly reject it I Next comes the sticking room where the pins are mounted on papers as I they are to be seen on the shelves of dry goods stores It is i not so very y I Icng since this process was performed I by hand but now it is all done by a most ingenious machine From the I hopper into which the pins are poured as wheat Is in a flour mill they pass down into a narrow slit which holds I the pins upright In Indian file they move down this narrow line and at the j I bottom fall into a grooved screw which rejects all that are imperfectly formed The others It neatly turns upside down and leaves them standing point upward up-ward 30 in a line in a narrow frame As the pins enter the sticking machine ma-chine from one side the paper which has previously been cut into proper widths and gilded on the edges is fed into i on the opposite side from a big roll There are raised lines along the roller over which the paper passes and a press descends upon i making a double crlmn in the naner At the I same time the narrow frame which holds the line of pins is automatically raised and the pins are neatly thrust through the paper being released and left in exact and orderly array as soon as they have pierced it Th long strips of mounted pins are iIpt t PinSticking Machine Putting Pins in Papers cut into proper lengths as they emerge from the sticking machines and pass onto on-to the inspectors The inspectors form I the court of last resort where all deformed de-formed or injured pins that may by I any possibility have escaped the machine ma-chine are discarded and thrown out This work requires the greatest skill and only experienced hands are employed em-ployed I may be said in passing that all the Inspectors in the sticking department are women Men do the work in the whitening room and operate oper-ate the pinmaking machines I The Inspectors have the largest t and Piensantest plenty or n rom and in keen the vision factory for r go to gether The inspectors to esuhienr work befool = table inspetors sit in a row before a The mfIL Papers of pins are spread out < sprad before bfor them and they deftly re P defty re move caM all + blunt and Injured pins in sertng fresh ones in the laces By their work ° r handling thousands handlng of derfully pins every day their eyes become won trained so that they that teet the slightest flaw1 3f the can pins de s they throw out one will be found to have a little hook on the Point an other 01 lV an ishaped head but the Im perfections are so slight that the ordi i ffa ori nar peron untrained to such work would not detect one in a hundred A paper otpins of I of standardize contains a U rows with 30 pins In a row So deftly and qUickly does the Inntn ao her work that she handles sr thou a sands of pins In the course of an hour cour jet she almost never overlooks one that contains an Imperfection one After leaving the inspectors the pa per are folded labeled and packed In cases ready for shipment I may have been only two or three hours since the little pin now reposing in its neat case along with hundreds wih of its fellows was part Cif coil of wire many rods ln length but during that time It has passed through a dozen different oper ations and twice that number of pairs of hands The process described Is that through which the ordinary pin what may Le caiecI the house pin passes but of course there are endless variation on this I usual form Some of the brass plna are ailovefi to retain their original color ana these of course do not pass through the nlcklini baths Instead they are boiled In another solution Then there is the murderous hatpin and others which It is desirable to have of a dark color These are subjected to the treatment c known as japanning From the manu facturlns room they go to the basement where they are Pace < l in a revolving cylinder half filled with the hot Japan nlnir mixture When removed from hero they are hung on racks and placed In btg ovens under an Intense heat where they are allowed to bake for an hour or more Then they are removed cleaned iln sawdust and henceforth treated like the others There are other pins of odd and won derful shapes Simplest of all Is tho crimping pin which Is made by simply bending a straight piece of wire so that fie two ends are of equal length Safe ty pIns require more hand labor than ana other kind and are made by a sep orate process The point Is sharpened while the pin Is still a straight piece of wire Then It passes through machine which deftly winds it about an upright steel rod thus making the springs Tho heads are made separately by a machine ma-chine which stamps them out of long strliK of wire and the two parts are firmly Joined by a clomping machine No machine has yet been invented that will stick safety pins into the papers and this part of the work is done by hand Hero again experience lends speed however how-ever and a girl who is an expert can count 100 gross of safeties in a day A branch of the business to which the button craze and the recent campaign gave great impetus Is the manufacture of the pins used for mounting campaign badges and motto buttons Last fall the orders for these ran as high as 20000 per day and they could not be turned oit fast enough to satisfy the demand Then there are dressmakers pins bunk pins hooked and bent and circular pins In bewildering be-wildering variety The statement that 300 workmen and moro than 100 rapid working machine capable of turning out 300 or more pins per minute arc employed In a single factory gives no adequate impression oC the great mountain of pins that Is required re-quired to supply the market every year Perhaps a statement of some of tho orders received at one of the large Connecticut Con-necticut factories will give a clearer idea The big deportment stores In the great cities frequently order 100 cases at a time A case of pins consists of Ids dozen papers 360 pins In each paper These are the correct figures but nobody no-body except a person with a genius for multiplication would attempt to determine deter-mine from them how many pins the people peo-ple of the United States manage to lose destroy or In some way get rid of In the course of a year It is gratifying to note that In this as In so many other Industries the mechanical me-chanical genius for which Americans are famous has placed this country lathe la-the foremost of production It is an instructive in-structive lesson on the complication and specialization of modern industrial conditions con-ditions to note the many different processes pro-cesses Involved in the manufacturer of even tho simplest object required in daily use There is mystery and romance even In the making of a pin EARL MAYO |