During the war of 1812 many useful articles became scarce; among these were buttons. A man named Benedict, who lived in Waterbury, began to make them out of bone, and became very prosperous.
About 1830 "Dame Fashion" ordained that brass or gilt buttons should be worn. At first Benedict imported brass from England, but as he could not get it of the required thinness, he resolved to make it himself. As copper was scarce, he travelled about the country, buying up old copper kettles and other things made of copper, which he melted with zinc, and had the resulting brass slabs rolled at a neighboring iron rolling-mill. In this way the great brass industry of the United States started. Its product is now valued at $60,000,000 a year.
H.H. Rogers, Jr.
April 6th, 1897.
PINS.
Among the factories of interest in and around Waterbury, Conn., is the Clinton Pin Factory. This is one of the largest in America, and has perhaps the most highly developed machinery in the world.
It is well to remember that the pin-machine is a purely American invention, and its immense advantage can be fully appreciated if we recall that it does the work that was required of eighteen distinct hands hardly more than fifty years ago.
Pins are made of either brass or iron wire. Those made of the latter are much cheaper, as the price of iron wire varies from three to five cents a pound, while brass wire is usually worth fourteen.
The wire is fed to the machine from large reels. It is first cut into the proper lengths by a small steel knife, so arranged that when the regular length of wire is drawn, the knife descends and cuts it off. Next, each small piece of wire, for we can hardly call it anything else yet, is headed by a sharp rap from a small automatic hammer. Lastly, the blunt ends are pointed by passing over a series of rapidly revolving emery-wheels, and the pin falls, the essentially completed article, into a large box, at the rate of three or four per second.
The pins are now placed in large vats, filled with soft soap and water, to be freed from the dirt and grease gathered while passing through the machine. After being thoroughly washed, they are put in the "hopper," mixed with bran or sawdust, to be dried. The hopper is shaken rapidly, and the clean, dry pins fall out at one side, the sawdust at the other.