Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/140

126 The making of Pins was commenced in Birmingham more than a century ago. Up to 1824, they were all made by hand; and so minutely was the labour on them divided that fourteen persons were employed in performing all the manipulations requisite for perfecting one. In that year an American inventor by the name of Wright elaborated a machine, and patented it in England, which would take in the wire from a reel at one end and turned out a full-made pin at the other. Or that was the aim and intent of the inventor, though a great deal of time and vast sums of money were expended on the machine to bring it to this productive capacity. To this machine succeeded an apparatus for sticking the pins when made and for folding the wrappers. The leading establishment in Birmingham for their manufacture is that of Messrs. Edelsten and Williams, who also produce vast quantities of hair-pins, hooks and eyes, thimbles, eyelets, and a great variety of other articles of brass and steel wire.

We have left to the last place in our notice of the special industries the manufacture of Small Arms for war upon men, beasts, and birds. After all that the town has done in the production of pens, pins, buttons, thimbles, hoes, shovels, and other useful tools, it is widest if not best known to the outside world for these varied and ingenious weapons of death. For naturally the largest