Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1898 — Making Clothespins. [ARTICLE]

Making Clothespins.

“There are probably very few people outside the trade who know anything concerning the vast number to supply the millions of housekeepers throughout the United States,” said a wholesale dealer in such goods in New York to the writer. “It is estimated that as many as 50,000,000 dozen, or 600,000,000 single pins, are manufactured in eastern and western factories every year. The product is superior in workmanship and finish to anything of its kind turned out anywhere in the world, and is shipped largely to all parts of Europe, where it can be sold cheaper than the rough and poorly home-made article. “CSothespins are made in this country principally out of beach and maple. Blocks of this wood are fed to a very ingenious and exceedingly rapid-run-ning machine, which has three separate compartments. One of these cuts a block of wood up into a dozen or more pieces, each of which is suitable for forming a pin. It next seizes and cuts the ‘crutel,’ or place that is to grip the wash on the clothespin, and the final operation turns the neck and head of the pins and smoothes and finishes them off by the bushel, ready for use. The pins are then packed into boxes, each containing 720, and the boxes are then nailed up by another labor-saving machine, ready for the market “These are two grades of clothespins, firsts and seconds. The best quality are worth 35 cents and the inferior ones sell for 25 cents a box wholesale.”— Washington Star. Mortality Among French Troops. MM. Burot and Legrand, two eminent French naval surgeons, have for a long time given close attention to the mortality among French colonial troops. They estimate this from 18915 inclusive at 42.95 per 1000. During the same period the mortality in the Paris garrison was six in the 1000, and eleven in the 1000 in the fleet