TEXTILES.
_Spinning_:--A bunch of combed fibre fixed in the forked end of a stick
called a distaff, held under the left arm, while with the right
forefinger and thumb the housewife or maiden deftly drew out and twisted
a thread of yarn of the fibre and wound it upon a stick called a
spindle, was the art of spinning that came down to Europe from Ancient
Egypt or India without a change through all the centuries to at least
the middle of the fourteenth century, and in England to the time of
Henry VIII. Then the spinning wheel was introduced, which is said to
have also been long in use in India. By the use of the wheel the spindle
was no longer held in the hand, but, set upon a frame and connected by a
cord or belt to the wheel, was made to whirl by turning the wheel by
hand, or by a treadle. The spindle was connected to the bunch of cotton
by a cord, or by a single roving of cotton or wool attached to the
spindle, which was held between the finger and thumb, and as the spindle
revolved the thread was drawn out and twisted and wound by the spindle
upon itself.
In the cloth of the ancient East the warp and weft were both of cotton.
In England the warp was linen and the weft was cotton. The warp was made
by the cloth and linen manufacturers, and the weft yarns furnished by
the woman spinsters throughout the country. By both these methods only a
single thread at a time was spun. The principle of the spinning
operation, the drawing out and twisting a thread or cord from a bunch or
roll of fibre, has remained the same through all time.
The light and delicate work, the pure and soft material, and the beauty
and usefulness of raiments produced, have all through time made woman
the natural goddess, the priestess, the patroness, and the votary of
this art. The object of all modern machinery, however complicated or
wonderful, has simply been to increase the speed and efficiency of the
ancient mode of operation and to multiply its results. The loom, that
antique frame on which the threads were laid in one direction to form
the warp, and crossed by the yarns in the opposite direction, carried
through the warp by the shuttle thrown by hand, to form the woof, or
weft, comprised a device as old as, if not older than, the distaff and
spindle.
The ancient and isolated races of Mexico had also learned the art of
spinning and weaving. When the Spaniards first entered that country they
found the natives clothed in cotton, woven plain, or in many colours.
After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to John Kay of
Bury, England, that the weaving process might be improved. In 1733 he
had succeeded in inventing the picker motion, “picker peg,” or “fly.”
This consisted of mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the
web by a sudden jerk of a bar--one at each side--operated by pulling a
cord. He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by
hand--make wider cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men
had done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the
weavers were continually calling on the spindlers for more weft yarns.
This set the wits of inventors at work to better the spinning means.
At the same time that Kay was struggling with his invention of the
flying shuttle, another poor man, but with less success, had conceived
another idea, as to spinning. John Wyatt of Lichfield thought it would
be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton or wool between two
sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held and fed by one set of
rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn by the other set of
rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention, although not then
used, was patented in 1738 by Lewis Paul, who in time won a fortune by
it, while Wyatt died poor, and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt
was the true inventor.
About 1764 a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreaves,
an English weaver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an
invention that was as important as that of Kay. He was studying hard how
to get up a machine to meet the weavers’ demands for cotton yarns. One
day while Hargreaves was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of
them upset the spinning wheel, probably in a children’s frolic, and
after it fell and while lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle
in a vertical position, and the wheel and the spindle still running, the
idea flashed into Hargreaves’ mind that a number of spindles might be
placed upright and run from the same power. Thus prompted he commenced
work, working in secret and at odd hours, and finally, after two or
three years, completed a crude machine, which he called the spinning
jenny, some say after his wife, and others that the name came from
“gin,” the common abbreviated name of an engine. This machine had eight
or ten spindles driven by cords or belts from the same wheel, and
operated by hand or foot. The rovings at one end were attached to the
spindles and their opposite portions held together and drawn out by a
clasp held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently
it was wound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus
finally were means provided to supply the demand for the weft yarns. One
person with one of Hargreaves’ machines could in the same time spin as
much as twenty or thirty persons with their wheels. But those who were
to be most benefited by the invention were the most alarmed, for fear of
the destruction of their business, and they arose in their wrath, and
demolished Hargreaves’ labours. It was a hard time for inventors. The
law of England then was that patents were invalid if the invention was
made known before the patent was applied for, and part of the public
insisted on demolishing the invention if it was so made known, so that
to avoid the law and the lawless the harassed inventors kept and worked
their inventions in secret as long as they could. Hargreaves fled to
Nottingham, where works were soon started with his spinning jennys. The
ideas of Kay, Wyatt and Hargreaves are said to have been anticipated in
Italy. There were makers of cloths at Florence, and also in Spain and
the Netherlands, who were far in advance of the English and French in
this art, but the descriptions of machinery employed by them are too
vague and scanty to sustain the allegation.
And now the long ice age of hand working was breaking up, and the age of
machine production was fast setting in. Hargreaves was in the midst of
his troubles and his early triumphs, in 1765-1769, when Richard
Arkwright entered the field. Arkwright, first a barber, and then a
travelling buyer of hair, and finally a knight, learned, as he travelled
through Lancashire, Lichfield, Blackburn and Nottingham, of the
inventions and labours of Wyatt, Kay and Hargreaves. Possessed as he was
of some mechanical skill and inventive genius, and realising that the
harvest was ripe and the labourers few, entered the field of inventions,
and with the help of Kay, revived the old ideas of John Wyatt and Lewis
Paul of spinning by rollers, which had now slumbered for thirty years.
Kay and Arkwright constructed a working model, and on this Arkwright by
hard pushing and hard work obtained capital, and improved, completed and
patented his machine. The machine was first used by him in a mill
erected at Nottingham and worked by horses; then at Cromford, and in
this mill the power used to drive the spinning machine was a water
wheel. His invention was therefore given the name of the _water_ frame,
which it retained long after steam had been substituted for water as the
driving power. It was also named the _throstle_, from the fact that it
gave a humming or singing sound while at work; but it is commonly known
as the _drawing_ frame. Arkwright patented useful improvements. He had
to contend with mobs and with the courts, which combined to destroy his
machines and his patent, but he finally succeeded in establishing mills,
and in earning from the Government, manufacturers, and the public a
great and well-merited munificence.
It is a remarkable coincidence that Watt’s steam engine patent and
Arkwright’s first patent for his spinning machine were issued in the
same year--1769. The new era of invention was dawning fast.
Then, in 1776, came Samuel Crompton of Bolton, who invented a
combination of the jenny of Hargreaves and the roller water frame of
Arkwright, and to distinguish his invention from the others he named it
the “mule.” The mule was a carriage on wheels to which the spindles were
attached. When the mule was drawn out one way on its frame the rovings
were drawn from bobbins through rollers on a stationary frame, stretched
and twisted into threads, and then as the mule was run back the spun
threads were wound on spools on the spindles. The mule entirely
superseded the use of the jenny. Notwithstanding the advantage in names
the mule did more delicate work than the jenny. It avoided the
continuous stretch on the thread of the jenny by first completing the
thread and then winding it. Crompton’s mule was moved back and forth by
hand. Roberts subsequently made it self-acting. Next, followed in
England the Rev. Edward Cartwright, who, turning his attention to
_looms_, invented the first loom run by machinery, the _first power
loom_, 1784-85. Then the rioters turned on him, and he experienced the
same attentions received by Hargreaves and Arkwright. The ignorance of
ages died in this branch of human progress, as it often dies in others,
with a violent wrench. But the age of steam had at last come, and with
it the spinning machine, the power loom, the printing press, and the
discovery among men of the powers of the mind, their freedom to exercise
such powers, and their right to possess the fruits of their labours.
The completed inventions of Arkwright and others, combined with Watt’s
steam engine, revolutionised trade, and resulted in the establishment of
mills and factories. A thousand spindles whirled where one hummed
before. The factory life which drew the women and girls from their
country homes to heated, and closely occupied, ill ventilated buildings
within town limits, was, however, not regarded as an improvement in the
matter of health; and it was a long time before mills were constructed
and operated with the view to the correction of this evil.
The great increase in demand for cotton produced by these machine
inventions could not have been met had it not been for Eli Whitney’s
invention of the saw gin in America in 1793. The cleaning of the seed
from the cotton accomplished by this machine produced as great a
revolution in the culture of cotton in America as the inventions of
Arkwright and others accomplished in spinning and weaving in England.
America had also learned of Arkwright’s machinery. Samuel Slater, a
former employee of Arkwright, introduced it to Rhode Island in 1789, and
built a great cotton mill there in 1793. Others followed in
Massachusetts. Within twenty years after the introduction of Arkwright’s
machines in the United States there were a hundred mills there with a
hundred thousand spindles.
As has been said, it was customary for weavers to make the warp on their
looms at one place, and the spinners to furnish the yarns for the weft
from their homes, and even after the spinning machines were invented the
spinning and weaving were done at separate places. It remained for
Francis C. Lowell of Boston, who had been studying the art of spinning
and weaving in England and Scotland and the inventions of Arkwright and
Crompton, to establish in 1813 at Waltham, Mass., with the aid of Paul
Moody, machinist, the first factory in the world wherein were combined
under one roof all the processes for converting cotton into cloth.
The task of the century in this art has been to greatly extend the
dominion of machinery in the treatment of cotton and wool in all stages,
from the reception of the raw material at the door of the factory to its
final completion in the form of the choicest cloth, and to increase the
capacity of machines sufficiently to meet an ever-increasing and
enormous consumption. There are from twenty to forty separate and
distinct operations performed both in spinning and weaving and the
completion of a piece of cloth from cotton or wool, and nearly all of
these operations are accomplished by machinery.
The century’s improvements and inventions in machines for treating and
spinning cotton comprise machines for first opening and tearing the
matted mass apart as it is taken from the bales, then cleaning, carding,
drawing, roving, stretching, spinning, winding, doubling, dressing,
warping, weaving, etc. Formerly, the opening machines were simply
cylinders armed with spikes, to which the cotton was led through nipping
rollers, and then delivered in a loose, fluffy condition. When such a
machine was associated with a blowing machine to blow out the dust and
cleanse the fibre, the loose and scattered condition in which the cotton
was left gave rise to a great danger from fire, and destructive fires
often occurred. The object of the later opening machinery is to confine
the cotton within a casing in its passage through the machine, during
which passage it is thoroughly stretched, beaten and blown and then
rolled into a continuous sheet or lap. At the same time, by nice
devices, it is evened, that is, freed from all knots, and made of
uniform thickness, while a certain quantity only of cotton of known
weight is allowed to pass through to constitute the required lap.
Finally the lap is wound upon a roller, which when filled is removed to
the carder. Although the cotton is now a white, soft, clean, downy
sheet, still the fibres cross each other in every direction, and they
require to be straightened and laid parallel before the spinning. This
is done by carding. Paul, Hargreaves, Robert Peel, and Arkwright had
worked in constructing a machine to take the place of hand carding, and
it was finally reduced by Arkwright, towards the close of the 18th
century, to its present form and principle.
But to make those narrow, ribbon-like, clean, long lines of rolled
cotton, known as slivers, by machinery with greater precision and
uniformity than is possible by hand, and with a thousand times greater
rapidity, has been the work of many inventors at different times and in
different countries. The machine cards are cylinders clothed with
leather and provided with separate sets of slender, sharp, bent fingers.
The different cards are arranged to move past each other in opposite
directions, so as to catch and disentangle the fibres. Flat, overhead
stationary cards are also used through which the cotton is carried. As
one operation of carding is not sufficient for most purposes the cotton
is subjected to one or more successive cardings. So ingenious is the
structure in some of its parts that as the stream of cotton passes on,
any existing knots do not fail to excite the attention of the machine,
which at once arrests them and holds them until disentangled. In
connection with the cards, combers and strippers are used to assist in
further cleaning and straightening the fibre, which is finally removed
from the cards and the combs by the doffer. The cotton is stripped from
the doffer by the doffer knife and in the form of delicate, flat narrow
ribbons, which are drawn through a small funnel to consolidate them, and
finally delivered in a coiled form into a tall tin can. The material is
then carried to a drawing frame, which takes the spongy slivers, and,
carrying them through successive sets of rollers moving at increased
speed, elongates, equalises, straightens and “doubles” them, and finally
condenses them into two or more rolls by passing the same through a
trumpet-shaped funnel. As the yarns still need to be twisted, they are
passed through a roving frame similar to a drawing frame. An ingenious
device connected with the winding of the roving yarns upon bobbins may
be here noted. Formerly the bobbins on which the yarns were wound
increased in speed as they were filled, thus endangering and often
breaking the thread, and at all times increasing the tension. In 1823
Asa Arnold of Rhode Island invented “a differential motion” by which the
velocity of the bobbin is kept uniform. The roving having been reduced
to proper size for the intended number of yarns, now goes to the
spinning machine, to still further draw out the threads and give to them
a more uniform twist and tenuity. The spinning machine is simply an
improved form of Crompton’s mule, already described.
Great as have been the improvements in many matters in spindle
structure, the drawing, the stretching and the twisting still remain
fundamentally the same in principle as in the singing throstle of
Arkwright and the steady mule of Crompton. And yet so great and rapid
has been the advancement of inventions as to details and to meet the
great demand, that the machinery of half a century ago has been almost
entirely discarded and supplanted by different types. A great
improvement on the spinning frame of the 18th century is the ring frame
invented by Jenks. In this the spindles, arranged vertically in the
frame, are driven by bands from a central cylinder, and project through
apertures in a horizontal bar. A flanged ridge around each aperture
forms a ring and affords a track for a little steel hoop called a
traveller, which is sprung over the ring. The traveller guides the
thread on to the spool. As the spindles revolve, the thread passing
through the traveller revolves it rapidly, and the horizontal bar rising
and falling has the effect of winding the yarn alternately and regularly
upon the spools.
The bobbins of the spindle frame were found not large enough to contain
a sufficient amount of yarn to permit of a long continuous operation
when the warp came to be applied, and besides there were occasional
defects in the thread which could not be detected until it broke, if the
yarn was used directly from the bobbins. So to save much time and
trouble spooling machines were invented which wind the yarn from the
bobbins holding 1200 to 1800 yards, to large spools, each holding 18,000
to 20,000 yards; and then by passing the yarn through fine slots in
guides which lead to the spool, lumps or weak places, which would break
the yarns at the guide, could at once be discovered and the yarn retied
firmly, so that there would be no further breaking in the warper. After
the yarn is finally spooled it is found that its surface is still rough
and covered with fuzz. It is desirable, therefore, that it shall be
smoothed out and be given somewhat of a lustre before weaving. These
final operations are performed by the warping and dressing machines. In
the warping machine the threads are drawn between rollers, the tension
of which can be regulated, and then through a “reed,” a comb-shaped
device which separates the threads, and then finally wound upon a large
cylinder. In this machine a device is also arranged which operates to
stop the machine at once if any thread is broken. When the cylinder is
filled it is then taken to the dresser, which in its modern and useful
form is known as the “slusher,” by which the yarns are drawn through hot
starch, the superfluous starch squeezed out, and the yarns, kept
separated all the time, dried by passing them around large drying
cylinders, or through a closed box heated by steam pipes, and then wound
upon the loom beam or cylinder.
In weaving, as in spinning, however advanced, complicated and improved
the means may be beyond the hand methods and simple looms of past ages,
the general principles in the process are still the same. These means,
generally and broadly speaking, consist of a frame for two sets of
threads, a roller, called the warp beam, for receiving and holding the
threads which form the warp, a cloth beam upon which the cloth is wound
as it is woven, the warp threads, being first laid parallel, carried
from the warp beam and attached to the cloth beam; means called heddles,
which with their moving frames constitute “a harness,” consisting of a
set of vertical strings or rods having central loops through which the
threads are passed, two or more sets of which receive alternate threads,
and by the reciprocation of which the threads are separated into sets,
_decussated_, forming between them what is called a shed through which
the shuttle is thrown; means for throwing the shuttle; and means, called
the batten, lay or lathe, for forcing or packing the weft tight into the
angle formed by the opened warp and so rendering the fabric tight and
compact, and then the motive power for turning the cloth beam and
winding the cloth as fast as completed. It is along these lines that the
inventors have wrought their marvellous changes from hand to power
looms.
Prior to 1800, in the weaving of figures into cloths, it was customary
to employ boys to pull the cords in the loom harness in order to arrange
the coloured threads in their relative positions. In that year appeared
at the front Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French mechanician and native of
Lyons, whose parents were weavers, a prolific inventor in his youth, a
wayward wanderer after fortune and a wife, a soldier in the Revolution,
losing a son fighting by his side, eking out a poor living with his
wife’s help at straw weaving, finally employed by a silk manufacturer,
and while thus engaged, producing that loom which has ever since been
known by his name. This loom was personally inspected by Napoleon, who
rewarded the inventor with honours and a pension. It was then demolished
by a mob and its inventor reviled, but it afterward became the pride of
Lyons and the means of its renown and wealth in the weaving of silks of
rich designs.
The leading feature of the Jacquard loom consists of a chain of
perforated pattern cards made to pass over a drum, through which cards
certain needles pass, causing certain threads of the warp to rise and
fall, according to the holes in the cards, and thus admitting at certain
places in the warp coloured weft threads thrown by the shuttle, and
reproducing the pattern which is perforated in the cards. The Jacquard
device could be applied to any loom, and it worked a revolution in the
manufacture of figured goods. The complexity and expensiveness of
Jacquard’s loom were greatly reduced by subsequent improvements. In 1854
M. Bonelli constructed an electric loom in which the cards of the
Jacquard apparatus are superseded by an endless band of tin-foiled
paper, which serves as an electrical conductor to operate the warp
thread needles, which before had each been actuated by a spiral spring.
The Jacquard loom was also greatly improved by the English inventors,
Barlow, Taylor, Martain and others.
Radcliffe and Johnson, also of England, had invented and introduced the
machines for dressing the yarns in one operation before the weaving;
Horrocks and Marsland of Stockport greatly improved the adaptation of
steam to the driving of looms, and Roberts of Manchester made striking
advances in their mechanical parts and in bringing them to their present
state of wonderful efficiency.
In America, in 1836, George Crompton of Taunton, Massachusetts,
commenced a series of inventions in power looms for the manufacture of
fancy woollen goods, and in the details of such looms generally,
particularly in increasing the speed of the shuttle, which vastly
increased the production of such goods and gave to his looms a
world-wide reputation.
E. B. Bigelow of Massachusetts in 1848 invented a power loom, which was
exhibited at the Exhibition at London in 1851, and astonished the world
by his exhibition of carpets superior to any woven by hand. By the later
improvements, and the aid of steam power, a single American Bigelow
carpet loom can turn out now one hundred yards of Brussels carpet in a
day, far superior in quality to any carpet which could possibly be made
by hand, when a man toiled painfully to produce five yards a day. Mr.
Bigelow was also a pioneer inventor of power machines for weaving coach
lace, and cotton checks and ginghams. James Lyall of New York invented a
power loom applicable either to the weaving of very wide and heavy
fabrics, such as jute canvas for the foundation of floor oil cloth, or
to fabrics made of the finest and most delicate yarns.
It would be interesting, if space permitted, to describe the great
variety of machines that have been invented for dressing, finishing and
treating cloths after they are woven: The _teasling_ machine, by which
the nap of woollen cloth is raised; the cloth _drying_ machine, with
heated rollers, over which the cloth is passed to drive off the moisture
acquired in dyeing, washing, etc., the cloth _printing_, _figuring_,
_colouring_ and _embossing_ machines, with engraved cylinders; cloth
pressing and _creasing_ machines, and the _cloth_ cutting machines for
cutting the cloth into strips of all lengths, or for cutting piles of
cloth in a single operation into parts of garments corresponding to the
prearranged pattern; machines for making _felt_ cloth, and stamping or
moulding different articles of apparel from felt, etc., etc.
For the making of ribbons and other kind of narrow ware, the needle
power loom has been invented, in which the fine weft thread is carried
through the web by a needle instead of a shuttle. This adaptation of the
needle to looms has placed ribbons within the reach of the poor as well
as the rich girl.
What a comparison between the work of the virtuous Penelopes and the
weavers of a century ago and to-day! Then with her wheel, and by walking
to and from it as the yarn was drawn out, and wound up, a maiden could
spin twelve skeins of thread in ten hours, producing a thread a little
more than three miles in length, while the length of her walk to and fro
was about five miles. Now one Penelope can attend to six or eight
hundred spindles, each of which spins five thousand yards of thread a
day, or, with the eight hundred spindles, four million yards, or nearly
twenty-one hundred miles of thread in a day, while she need not walk at
all.
It was when the weaver threw the shuttle through the warp by hand that
Job’s exclamation, “My days are like a weaver’s shuttle” was an
appropriate text on the brevity of human life. It may be just as
appropriate now, but far more striking, when it is realised that
machines now throw the shuttle one hundred and eighty times a minute, or
three times a second. Flying as fast as it does, when the shuttle
becomes exhausted of yarn a late invention presents a new bobbin and a
new supply of yarn to the shuttle without stopping the machine.
As to _knitting_, the century has seen the day pass when all hosiery was
knit by hand. First, machines were invented for knitting the leg or the
foot of the stocking, which were then joined by hand, and then came
machines that made the stocking complete. The social industry so quietly
but slowly followed by the good women in their chimney corners with
their knitting needles, by which a woman might possibly knit a pair a
day, was succeeded a quarter of a century ago by machines, twelve of
which could be attended to by a boy, which would knit and complete five
thousand pairs a week. Such a machine commences with the stocking at the
top, knits down, widening and narrowing, changes the stitch as it goes
on to the heel, shapes the heel, and finishes at the end of the toe, all
one thread, and then it recommences the operation and goes on with
another and another. Fancy stockings, with numerous colours blended, are
so knit, and if the yarn holds out a mile of stockings may be thus knit,
without a break and without an attendant. By these machines the
astounding result was reached of making the stockings at the cost of
one-sixth of a mill per pair.
The wonderful reduction in the cost of all kinds of textile fabrics due
to the perfection of spinning and loom mechanisms, and its power to meet
the resulting enormous increase in demand, has enabled the poor of
to-day to be clad better and with a far greater variety of apparel than
it was possible for the rich a hundred years ago; and the increased
consumption and demand have brought into these fields of labour, and
into other fields of labour created by these, great armies of men and
women, notwithstanding the labour-saving devices.
The wants of the world can no longer be supplied by skilled hand labour.
And it is better that machines do the skilled labour, if the product is
increased while made better and cheaper, and the number of labourers in
the end increased by the development and demands of the art.
Among the recent devices is one which dispenses with the expensive and
skilful work by hand of drawing the warp threads into the eyes of the
heddles and through the reed of the loom.
Cane-backed and bottomed chairs and lounges only a few years ago were a
luxury of the rich and made slowly by hand. Now the open mesh cane
fabric, having diagonal strands, and other varieties, are made rapidly
by machinery. Turkish carpets are woven, and floors the world over are
carpeted with those rich materials the sight of which would have
astonished the ordinary beholder a half century ago. Matting is woven;
wire, cane, straw, spun glass; in fact, everything that can be woven by
hand into useful articles now finds its especially constructed machine
for weaving it.