The Button Hole Department is 150 feet long and 50 feet wide, and here the new Singer Button Hole Machine is put together. This is an intricate and wonderful piece of mechanism, by which an expert operator can make from 1,500 to 2,200 button holes a day, and sew the same thoroughly. This machine has but recently been introduced into general use, but has come rapidly into favor with manufacturers, especially tailors and makers of shoe uppers. It makes and works a complete button hole in either cloth or leather, and has come so extensively into favor that the Button Hole Department has outgrown its original quarters, and must be considerably enlarged. This, indeed, is true of almost every Department in the entire factory. When this great establishment was built, in 1873, it was thought a good week’s work to turn out 4,000 complete machines; but at this time its weekly product is upwards of 8,000 complete machines. Besides these, the Singer Company’s other factory at Glasgow, Scotland, is turning out between 4,000 and 5,000 complete machines each week, and yet the offices throughout the United States and Canada are complaining of the injury their business receives because they cannot get enough machines. The factory at the time of writing is largely behind its orders. Enlargements of various departments have been made from time to time, but the demand is yet far ahead of the capacity for production. The Needle Department is one of the most interesting features of the entire establishment. Here a coil of steel wire of fine quality is put into a machine, which straightens, then grooves it on both sides above and below the spot where the eye of the needle should be, and cuts it to proper length. A girl then takes a handful of needles, and, feeding them into a machine, punches the needle eye at a single blow. Then they are ground down to a point; after which they are tempered, and then the inside of the needle eye is polished out to prevent its cutting the thread. The whole needle is finally polished, and nothing more then remains but counting the shining bits of steel and packing them away in boxes for the trade. The Needle Department gives employment to 100 men and 50 women. Below the main building is a three-story brick building 200 feet long, in which the cabinet work is partly done. The Company has a large factory at South Bend, Indiana, where most of the black walnut tables, covers, and cabinet cases are made. Portions of these are sent to Elizabethport in a partly finished condition, and all such receive their finishing in this shop. Still below is another similar building, the “Box Shop,” where some sixty men are employed in making the packing boxes and crates in which the machines are shipped from the factory. The Box Shop cuts up for this purpose no less than 300,000 feet of pine and spruce lumber every month.