Pin

a well known article of daily use in the toilet. Ordinarily a pin may be described as a bit of wire having a sharp point at one end and a blunt, round head at the other. In early days pins were made by hand and were sold in bulk by the ounce. Each pin was hammered straight, pointed, headed, and polished by hand work. Now these operations are performed by a machine into which the wire is fed from a reel. The pins fall rather faster than one per second into a chemical bath and are tinned to prevent rust. A sticking machine crimps the paper and thrusts the pins into uniform rows. The same factory is likely to engage in making pins, needles, hairpins, safety pins, and hooks and eyes. In 1900 the people of the United States used 9,500,000,000 pins, an average of over 125 for each person. Pins are not of modern invention. They have been found in the burying places of the ancients. Costly pins with gold heads have been found in Egyptian tombs. Gloucester and London were early centers of pin-making, but the British business centered finally in Birmingham, the home also of steel pens. Pin-making, like many other enterprises, was undertaken in America during the Revolutionary War when the supply from the Old World was cut off. The first pin machine appeared in 1824. A better one was invented in 1831. Connecticut leads the Union in the manufacture of pins and needles. In 1908 the merchants of the United States imported common pins to the value of $151,779, the duty on which at thirty-five per cent amounted to $53,123. In 1905 American factories made 133,000,000 gross of common pins, valued at $1,129,000.

Consul Albert Halstead, of Birmingham, states that while exact statistics of the British trade in pins are not available he consulted a large manufacturer of pins and obtained information that would appear to be sufficiently accurate:

Of brass, iron, and steel pins between fifteen and sixteen tons (2,240 pounds to a ton) are made each week in the United Kingdom. In view of the great difference in the size of the pins, which necessarily affects their weight, it is impossible to calculate how many millions of pins are represented in this output but the number must be almost incalculable. A great majority of the pins manufactured in the United Kingdom are made in Birmingham by two firms, one of which has been manufacturing pins for over eighty years and the other for about a century. The only other country except the United States which manufactures pins in great quantities is Germany, whose output is said to be about twelve tons per week. A few steel pins are made in France, and the United States makes an enormous quantity of pins. In view of the prominence of the British pin-making industry, comparatively few pins are imported into the United Kingdom. These come from Germany and, I am informed, are of the cheapest grade, but the aggregate is not more than fifteen tons a year. The chief pin-using countries are the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France.

Of the United Kingdom production, about twenty-five per cent is exported by the manufacturers, not including pins purchased by merchants, many of whom undoubtedly buy for export. None of these go to Germany, but large quantities go to the United States and France, while other countries take pins in comparatively small quantities. The pins that are exported to the United States from the United Kingdom come almost exclusively from Birmingham, from the two firms mentioned, and the pins exported from the United Kingdom are almost exclusively pins of the highest grade, and are invoiced at prices as high or, perhaps, higher than pins of American make are sold in wholesale quantities in the United States. In fact, the American market demands on the average a pin far better than the British market, and one can not buy in the shops in the United Kingdom as good a quality of pins as in the United States. The German pin, it appears, is not as good as the English pin of the best quality and ranks about with the American pin, although the color of the German pin is said to be a little better.--U. S. Consular Report.