Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1874 — The Manufacture of Pins. [ARTICLE]

The Manufacture of Pins.

In writing about the manufacture of pins by the American Pin Company at Waterbury, Conn., a correspondent of the Hartford Times says: They employ about sixty hands, which is less than half the number employed in a driving season. Last week they turned out two and a half tons of pins. They have capacity for eating up twenty tons ofwireinaweek. Each machine is complete in itself. All that is necessary to do is to place one end of the coil of wire into its greedy .maw, and it will bite off the wire the right length, point it, swedge up the head, and spit out the pins at the rate of 175 a minute. Now a slight knowledge of arithmetic will enable us to get at the capacity of the concern, supposing they were driven to the utmost, with two sets of hands, day and night. They have seventy-two machines, each machine capable of turning out 175 pins a minute. What do we see? For one machine 10,500 pins an hour; for ten hours ten times as many, or 105,000. Now the night hands come along, and before daylight the never-tiring brasseater has made the number 210,000. Then let us see what the seventy-five machines have been doing in the same time. Seventy-five times 210,000 is 15,750,000. Now this is the sum total for a single day. Multiply it by six, the number of days in the week, and you have 94,500,000 a week. If you have any curiosity to follow farther, you can multiply it by the number of weeks in a year, and the grand total will be 4,914,000,000. Whew! Enough to take one’s breath away. That beats the national debt. They actually have the capacity to make more pins in a year than the United States owes dollars. The principal manufactories for making pins in this country are at Waterbury, Birmingham and Winsted, of this State. No wonder the question is asked: “ Where do all the pins go to?” For sticking them in paper the pins are fed in a hollow revolving cylinder, and are taken up in the compartments of longitudinal ribs which extend along the inner surface of the cylinder and drop open upon an inclined plane, down which they slide and are caught in the links of an endless chain. Each link is notched for as many pins as make a row, and each notch receives its pin hanging in by the head. The whole is then left together in the paper. The only attention the machine requires is to supply it with paper and pins. The first attempt to manufacture pins in this country was made soon after the war of 1813, whom pins were sold for one dollar a paper. —An extraordinary scene occurred recently at Zion Chapel, Nottingham, England. The appointment of Mr. Langford as minister is disputed by a section of the congregation. Mr. Langford entered the pulpit on the morning of Nov. 15, in spite of a request that he would not do so, and conducted the service, but in the evening the opposing body obtained possession, and Mr. Langford was stopped at the pulpit steps. He then gave out a hymn, m,which part of the congregation joined, the opposition party at the same time starting another hymn, thus producing great discord. Mr. Langford began to preach and the minister appointed by the oppositiop party commenced reading a psalm. Mr. Langford preached his sermon while his opponents were singing, Idli by the harmonium. Some police officers were in attendance but no violence occurred —Kennebec Dodgers. —One egg; cup of molasses; three cups sour milk; one teaspoonful soda; Indian meal sufficient to make a little stiffer than flapjacks. Bake in a shallow pan. Winp done should be just thick enough to split; split while hot; butter and serve at bnce. ‘