ALL ABOUT PINS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 441, 29 January 1890, Page 4

ALL ABOUT PINS.

England the Greatest Pin-Making Country in the World. England is the greatest pin-making country of the world. Its product is something like fifty million pins a year, and Birmingham is the centre, with an out-turn of 37,000,000, says the American Analyst. There are made the pins of the old trademarks and the great reputations, and it matters not that America is abie to produce exactly as good, very many papers of these are always saleable there. In America the first attempt at pin manufacturing was made soon after the war of ISI2. Then, with war-time prices, a paper of pins sold for sl, and they were of inferior quality to pins bringing now but 6 cents. Brass is now, as ever, the most approved material used. Iron and steel have been tried, but iron and steel will rust. The pin trade is not growing. Appreciably, it has no greater volume than 1880. The calculation was then made that every man, woman, and child in America used 144 pins a year. Why no more are used now is explained by the fact of there being so many safety pins to take their place. These latter, in fact, form a separate business, and since their invention, eighteen years ago, have popularised rapidly. The making up of a paper of pins—entirely by machinery it is—is in two ways. The American “stuck” is fourteen rows of twenty pins each ; the English “stuck ” twelve rows of thirty pins each.