It is not necessary for us to describe the machinery used in pin-making, to make the reader comprehend its effects. A pin is made of brass. We have seen how metal is obtained from ore by machinery; and therefore we will not go over that ground. But suppose the most skilful workman has a lump of brass ready by his side, to make it into pins with common tools,—with a hammer and with a file. He heats it upon an anvil, till it becomes nearly thin enough for his purpose. A very fine hammer, and a very fine touch, must he have to produce a pin of any sort,—even a large corking-pin! But the pin made by machinery is a perfect cylinder. To make a metal, or even a wooden cylinder, of a considerable size, with files and polishing, is an operation so difficult that it is never attempted; but with a lathe and a sliding rest it is done every hour by a great many workmen. How much more difficult would it be to make a perfect cylinder the size of a pin? A pin hammered out by hand would present a number of rough edges that would tear the clothes, as well as hold them together. It would not be much more useful or ornamental than the skewer of bone with which the woman of the Sandwich Islands fastens her mats. But the wire of which pins are made acquires a perfectly cylindrical form by the simplest machinery. It is forcibly drawn through the circular holes of a steel plate; and the hole being smaller and smaller each time it is drawn through, it is at length reduced to the size required.
The head of a pin is a more difficult thing to make even than the body. It is formed of a small piece of wire twisted round so as to fit upon the other wire. It is said that by a machine fifty thousand heads can be made in an hour. We should think that a man would be very skilful to make fifty in an hour by hand, in the roughest manner; if so, the machine does the work of a thousand men. The machine, however, does not do all the work. The head is attached to the body of a pin by the fingers of a child, while another machine rivets it on. The operations of cutting and pointing the pins are also done by machinery; and they are polished by a chemical process.
It is by these processes,—by these combinations of human labour with mechanical power,—that it occurs that fifty pins can be bought for one halfpenny, and that therefore four or five thousand pins may be consumed in a year by the most economical housewife, at a much less price than fifty pins of a rude make cost two or three centuries ago. A woman's allowance was formerly called her pin-money,—a proof that the pins were a sufficiently dear article to make a large item in her expenses. If pins now were to cost a halfpenny apiece instead of being fifty for a halfpenny, the greater number of females would adopt other modes of fastening their dress, which would probably be less neat and convenient than pins. No such circumstance could happen while the machinery of pin-making was in use.
Needles are not so cheap as pins, because the material of which they are made is more expensive, and the processes cannot be executed so fully by machinery. But without machinery how could that most beautiful article, a fine needle, be sold at the rate of six for a penny?
As in the case of pins, machinery is at work at the first formation of the material. Without the tilt-hammer, which beats out the bar of steel, first at the rate of ten strokes a minute, and lastly at that of five hundred, how could that bar be prepared for needle-making at anything like a reasonable price? In all the processes of needle-making, labour is saved by contrivance and machinery. What human touch, without a machine, would be accurate enough to make the eye of the finest needle, through which the most delicate silk is with difficulty passed? There are two needles to be formed out of one piece of wire; in the previous preparation of which the eyes are marked. The workman, holding in his hand several wires, drops one at a time on the bed-iron of the machine, adjusts it to the die, brings down the upper die upon it by the action of the foot, and allows it to fall into a little dish when done. This he does with such rapidity that one stamper can stamp four thousand wires, equivalent to eight thousand needles, in an hour.
Stamping the eye of a needle.
Needles are made in such large quantities, that it is even important to save the time of the child who lays them all one way when they are completed. Mr. Babbage, who is equally distinguished for his profound science and his mechanical ingenuity, has described this process as an example of one of the simplest contrivances which can come under the denomination of a tool. "It is necessary to separate the needles into two parcels, in order that their points may be all in one direction. This is usually done by women and children. The needles are placed sideways in a heap, on a table, in front of each operator. From five to ten are rolled towards this person by the forefinger of the left hand; this separates them a very small space from each other, and each in its turn is pushed lengthways to the right or to the left, according as its eye is on the right or the left hand. This is the usual process, and in it every needle passes individually under the finger of the operator. A small alteration expedites the process considerably; the child puts on the forefinger of its right hand a small cloth cap or finger-stall, and, rolling from the heap from six to twelve needles, it keeps them down by the forefinger of the left hand; whilst it presses the forefinger of the right hand gently against the ends of the needles, those which have their points towards the right hand stick into the finger-stall; and the child, removing the finger of the left hand, allows the needles sticking into the cloth to be slightly raised, and then pushes them towards the left side. Those needles which had their eyes on the right hand do not stick into the finger-cover, and are pushed to the heap on the right side previous to the repetition of the process. By means of this simple contrivance, each movement of the finger, from one side to the other, carries five or six needles to their proper heap; whereas, in the former method, frequently only one was moved, and rarely more than two or three were transported at one movement to their place."
A large number of people are employed, at Birmingham chiefly, in the manufacture of buttons. The census return gives about seven thousand. In the manufacture of a single button there is great division of labour amongst piercers, cutters, stampers, gilders, and burnishers. The engraving exhibits the operations of stamping, pressing, and punching, as carried on in a great factory. The shank of a button is made by very complicated machinery as a distinct class of manufacture, and the button-makers buy the shanks. It has been stated that three firms in Birmingham annually make six hundred million of button-shanks.