The tinning or "silvering" process is next in order. To accomplish this,
the pins are put into a vessel containing a solution of cream of tartar
and tin, and boiled for four or five hours. From this they come forth
bright and silvery-looking, to be dried again as before, previous to the
final operation of polishing.

The pins are now ready to be put on papers. The machine which does this is
perhaps one of the most ingenious ever constructed. Quantities of pins are
thrown from time to time into a rapidly vibrating hopper, which causes
them to pass, one by one, into a trough-like slide, that holds the pins by
the head; consequently the imperfect ones are automatically rejected. They
then slide along a groove to the main body of the machine, where they fall
into slits properly distanced, and are pressed into the paper in rows,
twelve in all, containing five hundred and sixteen pins.

Shield or safety-pins are made in about the same way, only there are
twelve instead of three different stages before the pin issues from the
machine absolutely complete. After this it has to be washed and tinned as
above described.

The factory has more than fifty machines, which operate themselves so
perfectly that they require the supervision of about ten men only.

It has been estimated that more than fifteen thousand gross of pins per
day, or five million gross per annum, are turned out by this one concern.

GEORGE C. CANNON.

March 29th, 1897.