"SEE A PIN PICK IT UP"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 19

"SEE A PIN PICK IT UP"

A GIFT FOR A FAIR LADYE

"See a pin, pick it up, tnen you're sure to have good luck," is still a popular superstition, states an exchange. Who does not know the story of the man who won a job for himself by just such thrift? But a hundred years ago, when it took twenty people to make a pin, each pin costing quite a few pennies, a pin lying about would be snatched up—and not for superstitious reasons. . ' ;

Metal pins were first used by English ladies about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and they were very expensive. A single pin was quite an imposing gift for a fair ladye. That is how the expression "pin-money" first came into use. Pin-money is the amount given to ladies by fathers and husbands to spend for their clothes.

Even a hundred years ago making pins was still an expensive business. It took twenty pedple to do it—one to draw out the wire, another to straighten it, a third to cut it, a fourth to point it, a fifth to grind the top, and so on. But nowadays, since machinery is so swift, pins are turned ' out so cheaply that the expression "not worth a pin" has come into use, with more reason.

The machine for making pins works quickly and is very interesting. First the end of the wire is seized by the machine, and from then on the cutting, pointing, heading, polishing, etc.. goes steadily on. the machine handling each motion without help from' human' hands, until at last the pins are shot into a tray with slots where they hang by their heads, until they are ready for packing in whatever way they are to be sold.

With a machine capable of making hundreds of pins in an hour, and with so many pins sold for a few pence, it is no wonder that now to express how little a thing is worth, we repeat almost unconsciously, "not worth a pin."