Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1898 — What Becomes of All the Pins? [ARTICLE]

What Becomes of All the Pins?

Who has not heard the question, “What becomes of all the pins?’ Millions of them are made In a year, millions are sold* and yet the supply no more than keeps pace with the demand, which seems growing enormously all the time. By a computation made ten years ago, it was shown that at that time the weekly production of pins in Great Britain was 280,000,000. Then 120,000,000 were made In France, and 120,000,000 in Germany, Holland and Belgium. Since that time the production of pins has increased largely. The bigbest pin manufacturing city In the world is Birmingham, where 37,000,000 pins, on the average, are manufactured every working day. The other pin factories in Great Britain together turn out about 10,000,000 pins -daily. The dally output of pins In France exceeds 20,000,000, and Germany and other countries in Europe manufacture about 10,000,000 more dally, the total production of pins being 86,000,000 every day—oo2,ooo,ooo a week In Europe. This Is, of course, exclusive of the factories in the United States/which number forty-five, giving employment to about 1,600 persons, and turning out In a year pins to the value of about $1,000,000. It Is calculated that only about 1 per cent, of the pins manufactured are worn out or broken; the other 99 per cent, are lost.