I take The Great Round World, and like it very much. In your last number you spoke of "Singing Mice." Can you tell me, where can they be got? If they can be bought, where and how much?
Singing mice are very rare; but we have been to the store where we get our lizards, and tadpoles, and goldfish, and the man who keeps it has promised to see if he can hear of one. If he is fortunate enough to find such a mouse he is to let us know, and if you send us your address we will tell you how much he wants for it, and where you can see it.
Editor.
A number of us girls have formed a society named The Daffodil Reading Circle, of which I am the president. We meet at the different girls' houses every week. I subscribe for The Great Round World. It is one of the principal things we read, and we all enjoy it very much. We were very much interested in the article about the cuttlefish or octopus found on the coast of Florida, in Number 16. I am surprised to hear to-day that it has been examined by some scientific men, who say that it is not an octopus at all, but only the head of a deformed whale. I am very anxious to hear what the truth is about it.
Your interested reader,
Florence C.R.
Jersey City, N.J., March 20, 1897.
We have written to the Smithsonian Institution about the cuttlefish. The reply has not reached us in time for this number, but next week we hope to be able to tell you what the scientific men have decided about it. That the monster found was the head of a whale was only the opinion of some of the gentlemen who examined it. We believe that no absolute decision was arrived at.
We were very much pleased to get an account of a gold mine published in a recent number, for we want our boys and girls to write letters describing the different industries of the United States. A number of New York boys a few days since went to Waterbury, Conn., and visited various factories; we publish two of their letters, and hope that we may receive similar letters from boys and girls in different parts of the country. In almost every town there is something which can be written about.
On Thursday last the three upper classes visited Waterbury, Conn., to inspect some of the numerous industries for which the town is so famous, and returned Friday night, filled with great thoughts of the wonders of Yankee inventive genius.
While there we had the good fortune to be admitted to a pin-factory, an iron-foundry, a watch-factory, and the most extensive brass-works in the world.
I shall here limit myself to a brief description of the last.
Brass is made by melting together in large crucibles certain proportions of copper and zinc. The heat applied must be considerable, for during the fusion of the two metals a white flame from the zinc and a green one from the copper flash from the mouth of the crucible. When properly mixed the molten alloy is poured into rectangular or cylindrical moulds. After cooling, the bars are driven between immense rollers, to be formed into sheet-brass. This process is very much like rolling out dough for pie-crust, and is repeated many times. But the great pressure to which the sheets are subjected makes the alloy very brittle, so that it has to be softened or "annealed," as it is called, by being heated red-hot in very large ovens before each re-rolling. When the sheets have attained the required thinness, they are cut into widths and lengths suitable for easy handling, transportation, and manufacture.
We also saw sheets of copper and German silver made in a similar manner. The latter is simply brass that has had some nickel added to it to make it white like silver.
The cylindrical casts above mentioned are placed in machines that draw them into wire or tubing. The process is a most interesting one, though rather difficult to describe.
A large quantity of the products of these works is used directly in the very town, in factories for making clocks, watches, pins, and other articles.
It is interesting and curious to note how the manufacture of brass in this country originally started.
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.
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.
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.
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