522 A VISIT TO THE BRITISH NEEDLE MILLS. 
noise is heard in the room, arising from the great rapidity of revolution 
among a number of wheels, and it is not difficult for the ear to detect a 
difference of tone or pitch among the associated sounds, due to differ- 
ences in the rate of movement. The workman takes up a layer or row 
of needles, between the fingers and thumbs of the two hands, and 
aj^plies the heads to the stones in such a manner as to grind down any 
small asperities on the surface. As the small grindstones are revolving 
three thousand times in a minute, it is plain that the steel may soon be 
sufficiently worn away by a slight contact with the periphery of the 
stone. 
The grinders and the polishers sit near together, so that* the latter 
take up the series of operations as soon as the former have finished. 
The polishing wheels consist of w T ood coated with buff leather, whose 
surface is slightly touched with polishing paste. Against these wheels 
the polishers hold the needles, applying every part of the cylindrical 
surface in succession ; first holding them by the pointed end, and then 
by the eye end. About a thousand in an hour can thus be polished by 
each man ; and, when they leave his hands, the needles are finished. 
We have still to see the needles papered. In one of the rooms a 
number of females are cutting the papers, separating the needles into 
groups of twenty-five each, and folding them into the neat oblong form 
so well known to all users of a " paper of needles." So expert does 
practice render the workwomen, that each one can count and paper three 
thousand needles in an hour. The papered needles then pass to another 
room, where boys paste on the labels bearing the manufacturer's name. 
Even here there are sundry little contrivances for expediting the process, 
which would scarcely be looked for by common observers. "When the 
papers have been dried on an iron frame, in a warm room, they are 
packed into bundles of ten or twenty papers each ; which are further 
packed in square parcels containing ten, twenty, or fifty thousand 
needles, inclosed, if for exportation, in soldered tin cases. As a means 
of judging the bulk of the needles, we may state that ten thousand 6's 
form a packet about six inches long, three and a half wide, and under 
two in thickness. 
Thus have we followed the manufacture to its close. None but the 
best needles undergo the whole of the processes enumerated ; but we 
have wished to give them as a means of estimating the complexity 
of the manufacture of an article apparently so humble. 
The arrangements of the " British Needle Mills," as to apparatus, &c, 
are adapted to the production of two hundred millions of best needles 
per annum. These are startling results, and show that, in considering 
the seats of manufacture in England, we must not forget to include the 
remarkable Worcestershire village of Redditch. 
