Percival's Patent Pinless Chain Clothes Line. The Only Line Ever Invented to Hold Clothes Without Pins

(Worcester, MA): The Pinless Clothes Line Co., 1880. Good. Small broadside, n. d. (1880s); 10 1/2 x 4 1/2; off-white stock, printed in black and illustrated with a woodcut of two elephants pulling a pair of pants and tearing it off a clothesline; uniform age-toning; top and bottom edges brittle with small chips affecting a few words at the bottom margin (reinforced with archival paper); in about good condition."No more use for clothes pins" boldly proclaimed the broadside, issued by the Pinless Clothes Line Company of Worcester, Massachussetts. The pinless clothes line was patented in the 1880s and was advertised as the only line "that holds clothes without pins." It was made of galvanized steel wire (not rusting and allowing for the line to be left out to the elements, with no need to re-hang it every time). The garments' edges were to be put into small slots in the line and then thrown over it, thus relying on the weight of the clothes to keep them pinned. The driving force behind the invention was most probably a fierce competition with the increasingly-common spring-based clothespins - the latter first appearing in the 1850s and being constantly manufactured and improved into the 1880s. The Pinless Line was sold exclusively through the company's own salesmen, with each one given a specific territory to sell the product.