CULT OF THE SHINGLE

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12393, 12 March 1926, Page 5

CULT OF THE SHINGLE

LOSSES OF ENGLISH FIRMS. NEEDLES STILL IN FAVOUR. “See a pin and pick it up,” runs the old adage; but the pin trade is being sorely embarrassed nowadays by the application of a method which makes it possible to pick up pins without seeing them, (says a London paper). Pin manufacturers, like the makers of mustard, have always depended on the necessary waste to make profits possible. Now, thanks to the post-war economy, people are no longer wasting pins. This information was given by the London manager of one of the largest pin manufacturers. “The large tailoring and dressmaking establishments,” he said, “are among the largest users of pins. They used to throw away the used pins at the end of each day, and leave them to be swept out with the_ rest of the waste. Now the usual thing is to go round at night with a large magnet on the end of a long stick, picking up those that have been thrown aside. Pins are thus used again and again. The demand from dressmakers used to be for good brass pins, but now they have to use steel pins instead.” Bobbed and shingled hair is costing this particular mannfacturer £IO,OOO a year in London alone, because of the decrease in the number of hairpins sold. While bobbed hair and magnets have been playing havoc with the English trade a 35 per cent, duty imposed by America—which up to the war period never produced any pins at all—has ruined the export business. The production to-day is less than 30 per cent, of the pre-war production. Not only the ordinary straight pin, hut the old reliable safety-pin, has gong out of fashion. Safety-pin manufacturers bewail the fact that woman seems no longer to he pinning herself together.

They blame lingerie clasps, dome fasteners, and other modern “gadgets” for the decline in the safety-pin business, which, if it continues, will result in these formerly useful contrivances developing into museum pieces. The fate of the hatpin ia even sad-

der. A maker of hatpins remarked with a sigh that one 1925 girl had come into his retail shop, and, gazing at a dusty trav of hatpins, asked curiously, “What are those?”

Needlemakers, however, do not see eye to eye with pin manufacturers. A y point in their favour is that the United States has never developed a needle trade, with the result that nearly 20,000,000 needles a week cross the Atlantic during the season—which is from September to Christnias. The sale of needles in America decreases ’ during the summer, presumably because of the heat. ,

Ono town in England, Redditch, produces at present more than 30.000,000 needles a week, and has a capacity of twice that quantity. An official of Messrs Abel Morrall and Co.,’ one of the Redditch manufacturers, explained that there are about 30 processes in the making of a needle, and the operation takes from two to three weeks.