In June, on the average, the bell-shaped blossoms appear. On the first day they are cream colored or white; on the second day, they change to a beautiful wild-rose pink, deepening toward evening to a deeper magenta or carnation. On the third day they fade completely, and the development of the boll begins.

The Many Enemies of the Growing Boll

Of the plants upon which humanity depends, the various species of the genus Gossypium have probably more enemies, and more relentless enemies, than any other. Besides army worms, cut worms, locusts, green flies, leaf bugs, blister mites, and several others, nature has produced and rendered extremely prolific and hardy, these two particular pests, the boll weevil and the boll worm. It is said that the collective attacks of all the insects which feed upon cotton cost the country in the neighborhood of $60,000,000 every year at pre-war prices. The little gray beetle that the world knows as the cotton boll weevil is responsible for most of this. The mother weevil lays her eggs in the bud. As the grubs from the eggs develop, the bud drops. If a weevil arrives on the scene after the bolls have begun to form, she lays her eggs in those with a fine indifference. These bolls will not drop, but the grubs ruin the cotton they contain. There have been numerous investigations and experiments made to develop a variety of cotton impervious to the weevil's attacks, as well as to find another insect willing to meet him in combat and overcome him. Guatamalan cotton is said to be immune and efforts are being made to transplant it to the United States. A small ant-like creature called a "kelep" has also been found, which attacks, kills and devours the weevil, but, unfortunately, the kelep prefers a warmer clime, and pines away and dies in even the mild winters of the cotton belt. The boll worm is very similar to the corn worm with which all housewives are familiar, and indeed corn is its favorite diet. But cotton will do in a pinch, and, next to the weevil, he ruins more cotton than any other pest. The boll weevil cost the country about $25,000,000 yearly, pre-war prices, and the boll worm about $12,500,000 yearly, enough to justify an even greater expenditure for investigation and eradication than has yet been made.

Despite the ravage of insects and diseases, when a well-tended field of cotton is ripening, one would think from the number of bolls per plant, that the owner's fortune was surely made. Unfortunately, the plants shed bolls as well as buds and flowers, in great numbers. It has frequently been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good, carefully cultivated soil, will mature only fifteen to twenty per cent. of the bolls produced.



The planter will tell you that he would be willing to stand the boll weevil, the dropped bolls, the extra cultivations, and all the remainder of it, if he could only be sure that cotton which did mature would be picked when it should be picked, and picked with rapidity and care. Picking is the most laborious, as it is the most picturesque operation on the plantation. Many types of machine pickers have been introduced, but there are few planters who will admit that any of them suits his particular needs. Now, as a hundred years ago, the picking is done by hand. It is a simple operation, so simple that children ten years old can do it, and women excel in it. But the best pickers rarely average more than a hundred pounds a day, and most of them pull much less. Careless work plays its part, too, for cotton is easily dropped from the boll and soiled or lost altogether. Leaves and twigs as well as the shell of the boll frequently cling to the fiber, and are picked with it, and all these things tend to dirty and discolor it, and lessen its marketability. It requires about three pounds of cotton with the seed in it, as picked, to produce one pound of ginned or lint cotton.

There were in the United States, in 1917, a total of 24,272 ginneries, of which 3,921 were idle. Each active gin produced an average of 526 bales running bales of cotton. The number of gins shows a tendency to decrease every year, not rapidly, but surely, and this despite the opposite tendency of the crop. The Whitney gin of the old days has been improved beyond the dreams of its inventor. He boasted that one man could do as much with his machine as ten men without it. Today's gin averages about five bales a day—a quantity which the negro of old would find difficult to turn out in a year.

To the gin then, which is located either on the plantation or in the immediate neighborhood, the mule drawn wagons, driven by negroes as a rule, bring their loads of cotton.



As the downy lint, pulled from the tenacious seeds, rolls into the receiving bin of the gin, the huge compressors are put to work. The coarse jute bagging is on hand, and the steel straps spread out. The gin balers as a rule turn out a bale measuring approximately 28 by 56 by 42 inches, and weighing approximately 500 pounds including twenty pounds of bagging and straps. The cotton, in being separated from its seeds, has lost about two-thirds of its weight. But the first process in the long series that manufacturing entails has been completed, and the cotton is ready to begin its long journey to the mill. It is usually carted to the nearest railroad station, and from there shipped to the compressing point.

The small farmer almost always gets his money for the cotton as it leaves the gin. His interest in it, therefore, is ended when the buyer there pays him the current price. The cotton is a market commodity from that time forth.

The compress is a large and powerful hydraulic press, whose function is to force the loosely packed gin bale into a density that will make its handling by the railroads, ships, and warehouses more easy and economical. The compresses are frequently owned by the railroads.

Gin Bales and Compress Bales

Before being compressed, the bales are sorted according to grade, and are then compressed into a smaller sized bale, measuring approximately 28 by 56 by 18 inches, with a density of from twenty-eight to thirty pounds a square foot. It is this bale which is handled from that time forth, whether it be for export, for consumption in Northern or Southern mills, or whether, as sometimes happens, it is shipped from place to place as market conditions change, and the price offered makes reshipment profitable.

Movement for Improving the Bale

It is encouraging to note that the war brought about, under Government auspices, a very definite movement for the improvement of the bale. The proposal demands the installation of high pressure baling machines at the gin, capable of producing a bale with a density of thirty-five pounds a cubic foot. The trading unit in cotton is one hundred bales, and such a compression would mean that one hundred bales could be loaded into a single freight car, and shipped directly to the export point or warehouse. The present practice requires three cars to carry the ginnery bales to the compressor, and two cars to carry the compressed bales to the port, warehouse, or mill. The saving in freight and handling is obvious. It needs only a glance at the photograph of the two bales side by side to see the possible saving in waste and "city crop," or tare. The obstacles in the way of such an improvement are those which face any revolutionary change in commercial methods. Established practice, invested capital, and the natural conservatism of human nature militate against quick improvement.



CHAPTER VIII

In the Cotton Mill

The manufacture of cotton cloth may be divided into five departments:

1. Preparatory processes: Opening, carding, combing, and drawing.

2. Spinning.

3. Spooling, warping, sizing, slashing, entering or drawing-in.

4. Weaving.

5. Converting and finishing, including bleaching, mercerizing, dying, printing, and finishing.

Before the cotton fiber can be spun into the yarn from which the cloth is woven, the bales must be broken open, the impurities removed, and the fibers arranged so that they are parallel and contain no bunches or tangles. Care in these processes has become more and more necessary and important as the demand for a higher quality of cloth, possessing greater strength and evenness, has been developed. Hence, some of the most elaborate, complex, and admirable machinery in the mill is that devoted to these preparatory processes. The principle involved is always that of thoroughly cleaning the material, then opening it so that every fiber shall be thoroughly separated from its fellows, and then straightening out the fibers, no matter what types of machines may be used.

Conveying Fiber By Air Blast

The heavy laps of cotton are first thrown directly from the bale into the breaker, and the cotton is then usually blown through large pipes from the room in which the bales are broken to the room in which the openers are located.

The functions of the opener are two. The first is to clean from the cotton the dirt and bits of leaf, pod, and foreign substances, which may have clung to the fiber as it passed through the gin back on the plantation. The second is to roll the cotton into a more or less regular "lap," as it is called.

The Energetic Opener At Work

As the cotton goes into the opener (see diagram on following page), dusty and dirty, it is seized by strong teeth fastened upon a large cylinder (A), revolving rapidly, and is flung by centrifugal force against an iron grid (B) time after time. Sometimes there is a strong current of air blowing through the tangled mass, helping to loosen the particles. The dirt comes out through the grid and is carried away, while the lint itself, after being carried around an indefinite number of times, gradually works its way along a channel, and finally out between two large rollers (C), which compress it once more, so that it is, in effect, a sheet of batting. This sheet, or lap, is rolled up in a large roll (G), which may be two or three feet in diameter, and is then ready for the first doubling or blending process. In mills where strength and evenness of yarn are at a premium, the sheets from three or four laps may be fed through another opener, usually called a "scutcher," which breaks them all apart again, mixes up the fibers, cleans out more of the dirt, and produces a more even lap.

The cotton, as it comes from the opener and the scutcher, is much cleaner and more attractive. It begins to look like the riches it contains.



To convey the heavy opener-lap from the opener to the carding room, the more modern mills are doing away rapidly with hand-power, and carry the lap on a sort of travelling mono-rail conveyor.

The fibers of the lap which comes from the opening room are by no means parallel, but lie in all directions just as they happened to come from the grid of the opener. The function of the card is to straighten them, and at the same time to remove those which are knotted or immature and of a length below that required for the yarn to be spun, and to take out practically all of the impurities which may have escaped in the opening operations.

The principle of carding is one of the oldest of textile mechanical principles, and all the improvements that have been made have been in developments rather than in basic ideas. Hargreaves, inventor of the jenny, and Sir Richard Arkwright both expended their ingenuity upon it, the latter seeming to have been the first to provide a carding machine operated by other than hand-power. The basic principle involved is the straightening out of the fibers by combing or brushing them with wire brushes or cards.



In the revolving flat card, which dominates the field today, there are, as a rule, three principal cylinders. The lap passes first under the smallest of the three, called the taker-in, which is covered with very fine saw-teeth all in one long strip of steel, wound and fixed spirally in the surface of the cylinder. The taker-in receives the cotton from a feed-roller (C) that turns above a smooth iron plate (D) called the feed plate. The saw-teeth comb the fibers which are imbedded, so to speak, in the lap, and deliver the loose ones to the second cylinder, which is the largest of the group. This main cylinder is covered with wire teeth all bent at exactly the same angle. The cotton clings to them, and is carried around to the top of the cylinder, where it is engaged by teeth on the revolving-flat card which are bent in the opposite direction. This "card-clothing" arranged in strip, crosswise on a travelling lattice, moves in the same direction as the cylinder but moves very slowly, and so the fibers are carded between the two sets of wire points, the short and immature fibers remaining on the card wires of the lattice and the perfect and now almost entirely parallel ones being carried over from the main cylinder to the doffer cylinder, the third of the trio. From this they are removed by an oscillating comb (F), coming off in a light, fleecy lap, which is condensed through a funnel into a soft untwisted roping, or sliver, about the diameter of a man's thumb, and is then coiled into a can, usually about 45 inches high by 8 inches diameter.



The conveying of the sliver (pronounced with a long or short i) into the can is in itself an exceedingly ingenious operation, although a very simple one. The device is attached directly to the card, and is called a coiler. The sliver passes into it from the funnel. The hole from which the sliver emerges is off the center of a steel plate which revolves slowly, so that the sliver, as it comes out, has an eccentric motion which causes it to fall into the can in regular coils. Tangling is thus prevented, and ease of handling secured.

Combing Necessary in Spinning Fine "Counts"

Combing is necessary in the preparation of cotton for the spinning of fine "counts" or coarser yarns where great smoothness and regularity are desired. They are now quite extensively used in the United States, and it is significant of the trend of the industry here that the number is rapidly growing. The first cotton comber was invented by a Frenchman of Alsace named Heilmann. The patent was issued in 1845. Now there are on the market other machines, both English and American, similar in principle but improved in many ways.



The first of these preliminary processes is that which is done by the sliver-lapper. The slivers from 14 to 20 cans are drawn along side-by-side, passing between three pairs of drawing rollers which will be described later. From the drawing rollers the slivers now reduced in size, pass between two pairs of calendar rollers from which they emerge, not as a sliver, of course, but once more as a lap about a foot wide. These laps are usually passed to a ribbon lapper, where six of them are placed end-to-end, and unrolled simultaneously, passed between four pairs of drawing rollers, and then superimposed, one upon the other, and, calendered once more, issued as a lap a little less than a foot wide. This process may be repeated as many times as the quality of the yarn desired may require, for each drawing process served to straighten the fibers and so to render the thread more even and capable of finer spinning.

Combing is exactly what its name implies. The lap is actually raked by a fine-tooth comb with needle-like teeth of steel ranging from 16 to 90 per inch. This involves breaking the lap again and the intricacy of the comber rests in the mechanism which it employs for joining the separated ends.



Six or eight laps go through the machine at once, and the product is combined, condensed, formed into a continuous sliver, and deposited once more into cans. The process is not a fast one at best, and the chief contribution of American inventors is in the direction of speed. Each nip combs only 4/16 to 4/10 of an inch of fiber. The Heilman machine made about 85 or 90 nips per minute. The American improvement makes 130 to 135. The width of the lap in the American machine is likewise increased, and the saving in labor, therefore, is considerable. English improvements have been in the same direction, the resultant saving being almost as great.



Though many of the processes already described might be called drawing, in a sense, insomuch as they involve a continual lengthening and straightening of the lap or sliver, yet drawing in the strictest sense has not yet begun. It may be done only once, for coarse and cheap yarn, or it may be repeated a half dozen or more times to produce the finer and more expensive products. The frame for each repetition is slightly different, but several types may be isolated. They are, in the order of their use, the drawing frame, the fly frame, or slubber, the intermediate frame, and the roving and jack frames.

For fine counts the slivers from the comber, and for other grades that which comes directly from the card, are taken, then to the drawing frame. The slivers from the cans, six or eight in number, are fed through one aperture, and pass, thus combined, between several (usually four) pairs of rollers, so arranged that each succeeding pair revolves at a more rapid rate than that which preceded it. The last pair in the series revolve probably six or eight times as fast as the first pair. This combination of rollers pulls constantly on the more or less irregular slivers, rendering them always more nearly uniform in diameter and density, the thickness of one of the entering slivers serving to counterbalance the thinness of the other. The drawing frame consists usually of four or five "heads," and the sliver, after it passes through one of these "heads," is put through a second one, along with other slivers, so that the doubling and redoubling goes on constantly. There is an electric device to stop the machine when a sliver breaks, either at the back or the front of the frame.



From the last head of the drawing frame, the sliver passes to the fly frame or slubber, which not only continues the drawing and doubling, usually between three pairs of rollers, but through the aid of a device which gives the sliver a slight twist and winds it, for the first time, upon a spindle. This device is known as the flyer, and is, roughly, a U-shaped piece of metal, which, revolving, inverted, over the spindle, gives the thread a slight lateral twist as it coils upon the spindle. The latter also revolves, but with a diminishing motion so that the amount of twist may be kept uniform as the diameter of the coil upon the spindle increases. The sliver, now being twisted, is called a sliver no longer, but the slubbing.

The slubbing is passed between the rollers in pairs, the emerging product being less in diameter than the diameter of a single slubbing. The machine combines the fourfold process of combination, attenuation, twisting and winding. There are more spindles upon this frame than upon the slubber.

The last drawing frame, except for very fine yarns spun from Egyptian or Sea Island staples, is the roving frame, similar in principle to the last two but containing still more spindles. It receives the rovings from the intermediate frame, combines two of them into one, twists them a little more, and winds them upon the spindle tubes. The Jack frame is similar except that its product is finer and smoother.



It is interesting to note, however, that the majority of improvements have been the fruit of the brains, not of Americans, but of Englishmen. Copeland points out that this may be due to the English desire to save in the consumption of cotton, but that more probably it is due to the development of fine spinning in England, in which most of the machines here described are chiefly valuable; and he ventures the prediction that now that American mills have definitely gone in for the finer counts, it may be expected that engineers here will apply themselves to the improvement of this machinery.



The "Mule" Versus the Ring Spindle

Spinning is the final process which turns the cotton into firm, coherent yarn, sufficiently twisted, and ready for the loom. The twist given to the thread by the previous machines has been only enough to make the fibers hold together. They are still comparatively loose and fluffy, and their tensile strength is slight.

There are, in general, two types of spinning machines. The first, the mule, an English product. The second, radically different, is entirely American. It was invented in 1828 by James Thorpe, and immediately found some favor, but it was not until the Civil War that it was received on equal terms with the mule. Today, however, it dominates in the United States, the comparative figures in 1917 being: ring spindles 30,264,074; mule spindles 3,634,761. The disparity is growing greater every year, and the use of the ring is firmly established in other countries as well. The figures for 1907 were:

Mule Ring England (1909) 39,800,000 7,900,000 Germany 5,740,000 3,722,000 France 4,122,000 2,481,000 Austria 2,307,000 1,277,000 Italy 1,015,000 1,852,000 Russia 1,031,000 1,320,000

The mule, by reason of the great size to which it has been developed, and the impressiveness of its large, rhythmic motion, is one of the most formidable of all cotton machines, as indeed it is one of the most complex. It received its name from the fact that, performing two principal functions—drawing and spinning—it was regarded as a hybrid, just as the mule is a hybrid cross between the horse and the donkey.

In the mule (see diagram on page 53), which is a long and wide machine, carrying sometimes, in new models, as many as 1,300 spindles, the drawing and twisting are not continuous but consecutive. The rovings (B) are held on a creel (A) at the back of the machine, usually in three or four tiers, or on long beams or spools. They pass from the creel, or spools, between three pairs of drawing rollers (C.) Coming out of the rollers, they are fed to the spindles on the carriage which backs away from the creel and recedes somewhat faster than the rovings are unwound. This receding is the essential motion of the mule, for thus the cotton receives its final drawing. The spindles, meanwhile, are revolving rapidly, spinning the yarn. The twist goes first to the thin places where the least resistance is offered. Then, as the carriage carrying the whirling spindles continues to back away, the thicker parts of the thread, being comparatively untwisted are pulled down to the average diameter and are twisted in turn. The carriage usually runs back about sixty-three inches. At the termination of its run, or stretch, the spindles increase their speed until the twisting is completed and the carriage starts on its return trip. This reverses the spindles, and the thread which has been wound upon them is unwound, the slack being taken up by one guide wire (D) while the other guides the thread to the winding point, and winds it up in the opposite direction on the cone-shaped cops on the spindles. The rollers do not feed out more roving as the carriage returns. Hence, there is no slack when the round trip is completed.



Except for the use of drawing rollers, there is little similarity between the mule and the ring frame. The latter has no movable carriage, none of the splendid sweep of motion that makes the mule so fascinating to watch. The ring-frame is simple and business-like, and its speed is amazing. The bobbins holding the roving are placed directly over the spindles. Around each of the latter is a steel ring. There are at least 112 spindles on each machine, and all the machine rings for the spindles are fixed in a single frame. The upper edge of the ring is flanged, like a miniature railroad track, and snapped over the flange is a small but important C-shaped steel ring, called the traveler.

How Thread is Spun on the Ring Spindle

When the machine is in operation (See diagram on page 56) each roving (H) leaving its bobbin, runs through the usual drawing rollers (G) then through a guiding wire to the ring, where it is passed through its traveler (B) which is always at the winding point on the spindle. As the spindle and the rollers revolve, the roving is fed out at a considerably slower rate than the spindle takes it up, so that there is always a tension on the thread. The whirling spindle thus pulls on the traveler, drawing it round and round on its flanged track (A). It revolves just a little more slowly than the spindle and thus the yarn receives its twist. Meanwhile, the frame (C) on which the rings are fixed moves slowly up and down, so that the winding is properly regulated.

It is possible to operate the spindles at a remarkable speed. So perfect are the bearings which have been evolved that the average speed is ten thousand revolutions a minute, and on fine yarns it is sometimes 12,000 to 13,000 revolutions. The speed is limited by only two factors: the first is the ability of the operator to make splicings when threads break, and the second is the tendency of the traveler to fly off when the speed is too high. The number of travelers consumed is high at best, and in a mill which has long been in operation the floor in the front of the frame is likely to be paved with the little steel rings which have fallen and been ground into the planks by the heels of the worker.



The battle between the advocates of the ring frame and those who favor the mule is still on. For the American spinner the ring has undoubtedly many advantages. Because it spins continuously, and not intermittently, it turns out about a third more yarn per operator. It is usually admitted, however, that the thread from the mule is more even in diameter. Advocates of the mule say, moreover, that the thread from the mule is softer and "loftier", and that cloth woven from it has a more "clothy" feel. But others say they can produce soft yarn with the ring. In the United States, where the labor cost is a vital item, the ring-spindle has an assured place.



The yarn is now a finished product. It may be sold by the spinner to the weaver or it may be woven in the mill in which it is spun. Before it is ready for the loom, however, there are a number of operations which must be completed.

The yarn from the ring frame, or mule, is wound in a large cop, or on a bobbin. It must be put upon spools before it can be warped. The spooler is a simple machine, but one that requires constant attendance. In the spooler, bobbins are placed upon holders or spindles, and the thread is passed over a series of guides to the spool, up above. The spool revolves at a high rate of speed, and the thread is wound evenly upon it. The operator must watch for broken threads, retie them, replace the empty bobbins by full ones and see that the empty ones are gathered up uninjured. She—the operator is usually a girl or woman—must be alert and active, and especially nimble fingered.



One of the most important inventions, one that was received with acclaim by the American manufacturer, and one which actually reduced his labor cost on spooling no less than ten per cent. at one clip, is a tiny little thing that is held in the palm of the hand. This is the Barber knotter. When a thread breaks, the attendant places the two ends together in the machine and by the mere pressure of her thumb ties the knot much better than she could do it without the knotter. The economies which it effects extend beyond the mere spooling, for better knots mean fewer breaks in the warping process, and a better cloth at the end of weaving.

The spools from the spooler are placed on a large frame, called a creel. The creels have an average capacity of about 600 spools, and there are usually 16 to 20 in one tier. The threads from the spools are drawn between the dents of an adjustable reed, then under and over a series of rollers. From here they are led down to the beam, upon which they are wound. The revolving of the beam unwinds the yarn from the spools and winds it regularly and evenly upon the beam itself. There is a device for measuring the length of the warp wound, and stop motions for arresting the operation should a thread break or other accident occur.



The yarn of the warp must usually be impregnated with a sizing which will smooth out and stick down its furry surface and add as well to the tensile strength so that the strain of weaving may be withstood. For this the most effective and most generally used machine is the slasher, the chief feature of which is a roller, whose lower side is immersed in the sizing solution. Threads from the warp beam are run around this roller through the solution and then dried, after which it is finally wound on another beam for the loom. A considerable number of loom beams can be filled from one set of the warper beams mounted in the slasher.

The lengthwise threads of a fabric are called the warp. The crosswise threads are called the weft or filling. To make cloth, the warp and weft must be interlaced with each other in a suitable manner. The operation is called weaving, the machine in which it is performed is, of course, the loom. The principal operations of weaving are as follows:

1. Shedding, or the raising and lowering of the alternate threads of the warp, so that the weft may pass under and over them. This is done by means of the harnesses and their heddles.

2. Picking, or placing a thread of the weft between the warp threads so raised and lowered by means of the shuttle.

3. Beating-up, or pushing, each thread of the weft into its position close against the thread which has preceded it by means of the reed.

4. Letting-off, or permitting the warp to unwind from the beam only just as fast as is needed by the speed of the weaving. This is accomplished by friction bands and weights on the warp beam.

5. Taking-up, or winding upon a roller the cloth as it is manufactured.

In addition to these primary operations, the loom has attachments for performing several other functions, such as stop-motions for stopping the loom when warp or filling threads break, or when the shuttle fails to cross the loom completely; temples for holding out the cloth laterally as the weaving proceeds; a mechanism—in the most modern looms—for changing the shuttles, or the cops in the shuttles, as the weft thread on the cops becomes exhausted, etc.



The modern cotton loom, which automatically removes the filling bobbins without stopping the loom, is rapidly displacing the older types, and one weaver can now attend to a surprisingly large number of looms, being greatly assisted also by the automatic warp and filling "stop motions."



CHAPTER IX

The Finishing Operations

Following the manufacture of the cloth, come the operations necessary to prepare it for the market. These involve such treatments as bleaching, printing, mercerizing, dyeing, and finishing (in the narrow sense).

The number of machines involved in these various processes rivals the number which are used in the actual spinning and weaving operations.

Modern bleaching is a highly technical science, conceived and planned by engineers, and carried out with elaborate machinery by skilled workers.

Gray cloth, as it comes from the loom, is of an unattractive color, a dirty grayish yellow, and contains not only those impurities which it has picked up on its journey through the mill but those inherent in its natural state as well, all totalling some five per cent. more or less, of the total weight. In addition there may be numerous bits of leaf from the boll which have clung to the fibers through all the processing, and which appear finally in the cloth as little brownish specks, known to the trade as motes. Finally, there is the sizing which was put into the warp.



Bleaching an Intricate Chemical Process

In the bleaching of cotton, there is a series of operations which have for their object the elimination of the waxy, fatty matters embodied in the fiber, as well as any dirt which it may have acquired. Then, there is the actual whitening and the bleaching of the cloth which destroys any coloring matter which it may contain and finally there are treatments designed to neutralize the effect of the chemicals used in the bleaching. Thus, the sequence of treatments might be: first, boiling in plain water, which removes certain soluble substances; next, an extended boiling in a strong alkaline solution, which saponifies the waxy, fatty matters in the fiber, and thus removes them from the cloth or yarn. Third, a steeping in a bleaching solution—a solution of chloride of lime being largely employed for this purpose, and which treatment is known as the chemic. Next, after another thorough washing there is a treatment in diluted sulphuric acid to neutralize the effects of the chemic, and finally this is followed again by another thorough washing with possibly an additional mild alkaline treatment. The nature and the method of all these treatments varies considerably, and depends upon the character of the goods being treated, but, at the conclusion, if all has gone well, the cloth should be a good white and should not be impaired in strength.

Singeing Necessary in Some Finishes

For a certain class of goods, where a clean, smooth surface is required, it is desirable to singe the goods before the bleaching. This is accomplished by passing the cloth, stretched out at full width, very rapidly over heated plates, or through gas flames, so that the fine hairs or fuzz are singed off, but the fabric itself has not had time to take fire. Both sides may be singed and the goods may be passed more than once through the flame. When yarns are singed, the threads are passed through the flame very rapidly, being unwound from one set of bobbins and wound up on another.



In the dyeing operation the cotton piece goods pass through a series of machines, the goods being in rope form as already explained, so that a number of pieces can be put into each machine, side by side. The wash boxes, dye vats, etc. are equipped with overhead rollers, by means of which the goods, which have been sewn end to end, so as to make a continuous string of them, pass out of the dye, over the roller and down into the bath on the other side, continuing to circulate around thus until the desired results have been obtained. In addition to the preparatory washing and boiling, mordanting and dyeing, there are subsequent washings to free the goods from loose coloring matter, and other special treatments are frequently accorded them.

Finishing in its special and restricted sense, implies a series of treatments, such as stretching, starching, dampening, drying, pressing, smoothing, lustreing, glazing, stiffening, softening, and whatnot, which are given to them according to the use to which they are to be put.

The printing press is constructed with a large main cylinder (D), the size being dictated by the number of colors which it must take care of. As the printing operation is a continuous one, there must be a continuous feeding of the cloth, a continuous inking of the engraved rollers (C), and a continuous cleaning off of the unengraved surface after the inking.

Under each roller, where it is fixed in its place in the press, is a long copper trough or pan carrying the coloring material, and in the pan under the roller, and extending into the coloring matter, is an intermediate roller known as the "furnisher" roller, and, as the press revolves, this covers the surface of the copper roller with a heavy film of coloring. The surplus coloring is scraped off as the roller revolves, by a long, sharp blade or knife, known as "the doctor," and after the roller passes this it is quite clean, no coloring remaining on it except that in the engraved portion.

Each roller has its color pan with its own color in it. Then, as the cloth (A) passes between the main cylinder, properly covered by suitable intervening materials and the series of rollers, each roller in turn prints its own color, and, collectively, the finished pattern is produced.



The goods then pass into a drying room and are afterwards introduced into a steaming chamber, where they are given a good steaming at a slight pressure. This steaming develops the colors and causes them to impregnate the fibers more thoroughly. Subsequently, for good work, the goods should be washed to get rid of the thickening matters that are mixed with the coloring, and then the printing appears in all its beauty.

Printing on Full Ground Colors

The foregoing briefly describes the processes of direct printing. In this case, the penetration of the colors to the opposite side of the goods is not very good. If a solid and full ground color is needed both on the face and back of the goods, it can be had either by the "Resist" or "Reserve" method, or by the "Extract" or "Discharge" method. In the "Resist" method, when a white figure is wanted on a black or colored ground, the goods are first printed with some substance which will resist the action of the dye stuffs. Then, when the goods are dyed, the treated part does not take the color and the substance used as a resist is washed out, and thus a white figure is obtained on a solid colored ground.

In the "Discharge" method, the goods are first dyed in a solid color, and are then treated with certain chemicals which destroy the dyed color wherever they touch the fabric, these chemicals being subsequently washed out where they have been applied, and thus again a white figure can be had in the colored ground. By the "Discharge" method, moreover, colored figures can also be printed on colored grounds, as certain colorings have been developed which are not affected by the discharge materials used, hence, a whole series of beautiful colors can be printed on goods previously dyed with black or colored grounds, each color being mixed with a suitable chemical for discharging the ground color, and thus the colors of the printed pattern come out as desired.

Another important process which is applied to both cotton yarn and cotton fabrics is that known as mercerization, called after "Mercer" an English chemist who introduced the process. Cotton when subjected to the action of strong, caustic alkali contracts violently, but when again stretched and straightened it is found to have acquired a distinct silkiness of appearance, and under the microscope the twisted ribbon-like fibers of the material—already referred to—will be found to have become straight, glossy and rodlike, just as a bicycle tire would appear after air was blown into it.

Cotton may be mercerized either in the yarn, warp, skein, or in the piece, the first being more effective. The best and most satisfactory results are achieved when the material treated is made of fine long staple cotton, either Sea Island or Egyptian, the shorter cottons being relatively much less improved by the treatment. The mercerizing does not diminish the strength of the material, and gives to it a greater affinity for dye stuffs.

Internal Organization of Cotton Mills

The foremen are specialists in their particular departments. The warehouseman, at one end, is a judge of cotton stock, and the foreman of the weaving room at the other knows how many automatic looms may safely be trusted to each weaver on his staff.

In between these two there are, according to the individual mill, a dozen or more other foremen, all reporting regularly to the superintendent, all captains of their own companies of workers, and all keen, in the interests of their own reputations, to operate their departments as intelligently, as efficiently, and with as little friction with their individual operators as possible. For it is generally recognized throughout the cotton industry that profitable business depends as much upon the whole-hearted cooperation of the wage-earners, as upon any other single factor.

The Question of Individual Efficiency

As for the operators themselves, they are so varied, there are so many problems which they have to face, and such difficulties which those who employ and direct them have to solve, that anything like adequate consideration is impossible. From the impersonal viewpoint, leaving out of account the human elements, the problems of wages, and the correlated problem of trade organization, there remains the question of individual efficiency. It is that which we have chiefly to consider.



The number of men, women, and children employed in the cotton mills of the country has increased at a very high rate, but there has been an interesting diminution in the proportionate percentage of women and children under sixteen years of age employed.

The United States Census of Manufacturers gives the following figures:

AVERAGE NUMBER OF EMPLOYES IN AMERICAN COTTON MILLS

Men Women Children Total 1870 42,790 69,637 22,942 135,369 1880 59,685 84,539 28,320 172,544 1890 88,837 106,607 23,432 218,876 1900 134,354 123,709 39,866 297,929 1910 190,531 141,728 38,861 371,120

In percentages these figures express themselves as follows:

Men Women Children 1870 31.5 51.4 17.1 1880 34.6 49.0 16.4 1890 40.6 48.7 10.7 1900 45.1 41.5 13.4 1910 51.3 38.2 10.5

The question of nationality has had an important bearing upon the development of the industry in the United States. The constant influx into the country of successive waves of immigration from the different countries of Europe has often served in a decade to change the whole complexion of the labor question. In the original New England mills, the employees were of almost pure English stock. The sons and daughters of the Yankee farmers entered the mills, not as a permanent occupation, but merely as a means of getting a start in life.

Just before the Civil War, the Irish began to come rapidly, and the actual advent of that struggle saw a great number of the remaining natives leaving for the army, or thrown out of work. When the fighting was over they did not return, but the Irish came in even greater numbers. The next decade saw the arrival of the French Canadians in the New England states, and there also came, in quick succession, natives of Italy, and of the various states of eastern Europe.



This change in the national complexion had two very important results. It brought into the country a constant stream of cheap labor, polyglot, and lacking in homogeneity, and consequently slow at first to unionize and strike. This characteristic brought another in its train—a lack of stability, and a proneness to transiency. The second result was hardly less important. It meant that though labor was relatively plentiful, much of it was unskilled. This lack of skill put a premium upon quantity production, and led to efforts to develop automatic machinery and labor-saving devices of all kinds. It compelled most American manufacturers to specialize upon the coarser kinds of yarns and cloths, made in simple weaves and patterns, in the making of which the minimum amount of skilled labor was required.

Native Stock in Southern Mills

Conditions in the South were somewhat different. From the beginning, the employes here have been almost entirely of native stock. They came from a class which previously had little opportunity for any employment of a regular character outside of farming. When the mills were built these folks were given, for the first time, an opportunity for continuous employment. Whole families entered the mills, fathers, mothers and children serving in different or in the same departments. The South at first specialized on ducks, twills, denims, and such coarse work. Now, however, there is a growing tendency to diversify the product. The reason is found in the increasing capability of the workers, many of whom have by now spent many years of their lives in the mills, and whose fathers before them were operatives. Unless present conditions change and the South becomes the mecca of immigrants—a development probably less likely now than in the years before the war—there seems to be a strong possibility that a class of operatives, rivalling eventually in skill those of the English mill towns, will be developed. The stock is the same, and the latent capabilities are all there. The determining factors will probably be the economic changes of the next few years.

A remaining factor in the organization of the mill is the size of the individual plant, the number of spindles and looms it contains, the number of workers employed, etc. It is in just this particular that some of the most characteristic developments of the American industry are found. About the time of the Civil War, the average New England mill had less than ten thousand spindles. Today the average is probably between fifty and one hundred thousand, and perhaps nearer the latter figure than the former. Some of the mills have nearly, if not quite, a full million spindles in several buildings. The average in the South is much less than the New England average. The industry in the older section is definitely localized, even to the extent of having whole towns devoted almost exclusively to the manufacture of single grades of cloth. In the South the mills are more widely scattered, advantage having been taken of labor supply, water power, and other conditions. Local pride has sometimes caused the establishment of mills in regions economically unfitted for them. Such mills do not long survive. The advantage of large scale production has thus been seized chiefly by the New England mills, but the generally lower wages of the South have tended to equalize the situation.

THE END