PIERRE TAKES ANOTHER JOURNEY
During the next few weeks many a letter passed between Pierre and his
new friend Henri St. Amant; and by and by came an invitation for Pierre
to come again to Pont-de-Saint-Michel and spend the day visiting the
Gaspard throwing mills, where the raw silk was twisted and prepared for
weaving. The boy was all eagerness to go and his mother, too, favored
the trip, for Pierre had been working very steadily and now had few
pleasures. It seemed impossible to complete the never-ending round of
duties, although with uncomplaining zeal Pierre kept patiently at them.
Marie, it is true, helped with some of the lighter work; but she was
not strong enough to do much outside the house. As for Josef, faithful
as he was, the old man was aging rapidly and could do little more than
potter about the place and direct things. Therefore the cutting of trees
for fuel, the drawing of water, the building of fires all fell to
Pierre's lot.
What wonder that with such constant use the boy's strength was daily
increasing until he was becoming a veritable young giant? With no small
satisfaction he beheld the muscles of his arms tighten and stand out;
and when he swung his axe and brought down a sturdy sapling it was with
a glow of pleasure that he heard it crash to the ground. Certainly there
were compensations in hard work! Moreover was not every French boy who
was too young to serve in the army being a man at home? He was but doing
what all his friends were. Nevertheless the thought of a holiday did
fill him with anticipation. To get into something beside his workaday
clothes, and to mingle for an entire day amid new scenes, to say nothing
of seeing Henri St. Amant again--what a delight it would be!
Madame Bretton caught a reflection from his happiness and that nothing
should be left undone that should enhance the joy of her son's outing
she broke over her rules of strict frugality and packed a luncheon for
him, to which she added a few of the little luxuries which for a long
time the family had denied themselves.
And so in high spirits Pierre set forth for Pont-de-Saint-Michel. How
familiar every step of the journey seemed this time! And how good it was
to find Henri St. Amant awaiting him in the office of the Gaspard mills!
"I have been working over time all the last week, so they are letting me
have this morning to show you about the throwing mills," he explained,
his eyes shining into Pierre's still brighter ones. "And at noontime
when we have finished our round of the factory we can go down by the
river, and while we eat our luncheon we can talk together. Therefore
suppose we do not waste precious moments in visiting now, for we shall
scarcely have time to see all I want to show you before the noon whistle
blows."
Accordingly Pierre's box of lunch was stowed away in Henri's locker, and
speeding across the little bridge that connected the filature with the
throwing mills, the two boys entered the great factories.
"Before we go another step there is one question I must ask you," said
Pierre, stopping in the doorway. "I want you to tell me why the twisting
of raw silk into thread is called _throwing_."
"I'll try to explain it as well as I can, Pierre," answered Henri.
"Maybe you have stuck me on the very first question you've asked," he
added smiling. "All I know is that the operation of twisting, or
throwsting, the fibres of raw silk has come to be abbreviated into
throwing. The workmen are known as silk throwsters. It is an old trade.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were throwing mills at
Bologna which were so good that it is from them our present day
machinery has been copied and perfected. Usually the work is done on
commission--the manager, or throwster, receiving orders from weaving
mills for exactly the sort of thread they wish to use."
"Isn't it all alike?"
"No, indeed! It varies in size according to the number of threads in a
strand, and the number of twists and turns to the inch. Some materials
that are to be woven require heavy, loosely twisted thread; others, that
which is fine and tightly twisted. And in addition to these differences
some thread is not made from pure silk, or even from silk of the best
quality; raw silk which is imperfect can just as well be used for
certain purposes, or silk that is twisted with a strand of cotton or
some other filling. There are a great many qualities and kinds of thread
and each one has to be specified."
Pierre opened his eyes.
"Organzine, for example, is used for the warp of woven silk materials
and is generally spun from the best quality raw silk, the threads being
firm and strong. Tram, on the other hand, is silk of a second grade and
is composed of a greater number of fibres. Many of the mills
manufacturing woven silks prefer not to own throwing mills. Often their
plants are in large cities where land is expensive and they must
economize space; or the manufacturers estimate that they can get thread
thrown for them cheaper than they can do it themselves. Anyway, they
either send their own raw silk here to be thrown according to certain
specifications, or they tell us to get the raw silk ourselves and throw
it into the varieties required. If the firm sends its own silk it comes
to the throwster in bulk with an order to throw a certain proportion of
it into organzine of so many threads and twists; and the rest into tram
of specified size, the price being computed by the pound."
"I understand."
"The throwsting of silk is a great test of the reeling. If the reeling
has been well done, and the size of the strand is uniform, we have no
trouble; but if the reeling has been poor, and the gum not thoroughly
soaked out of the filament, the threads will snarl and break when they
are put on the machines. Frequently there is great loss from poorly
reeled cocoons, as I think I told you. And you must keep in mind that
the cocoon gives us two kinds of silk thread--the reeled silk, which is
of the best quality and is the continuous filament wound from the cocoon
requiring no textile machinery to prepare its fibres; and the spun silk,
which is made from the loose floss taken off before the cocoon is
reeled, or comes from cocoons that were too imperfect to be wound off by
the reelers. The latter variety must be treated much as are the fibres
from the cotton plant, or those of sheep's wool. By that I mean that the
short lengths have to be twisted and spun together before they can be
woven on a loom. Do you see the difference?"
Pierre nodded.
"Reeled silk comes direct from the cocoon, leaving the filatures on
spools, as you saw when you were here before. After that it is brought
to these mills and wound over into hanks or skeins of a specified
length--usually from 333 to 500 yards. The foreman told me that long ago
they had to employ one person to attend to every reel; but now with
modern machinery a single girl can watch twenty-four spools at once. One
of the interesting things is that all the finest reels used in France,
Italy, China, and Japan, come from America."
"But why don't the Americans reel their own raw silk, then, instead of
importing it?"
"They have no cocoons. My father says they tried raising silk in
America, but it was not successful. Mulberry trees will grow in some
parts of the country, but there is no cheap labor to be had over there
as here, and therefore it costs too much to feed and care for the
silkworms, and reel the raw silk. It is far less expensive for American
merchants to import the reeled silk for their looms. But they can beat
us at making machinery, if not at raising cocoons."
Henri chuckled.
"My father says," he went on, "that the Americans did not perfect the
reeling machines so much for our good as for their own. They used to get
all kinds of silk thread from the different parts of Europe; and it
could not be woven on their looms, which are finely adjusted and
require material of uniform size and strength. So they perfected
machinery for the preparation of silk thread, and practically insisted
that if they were to buy of us in Europe the material ordered must be
made as they wanted it. Most of the countries over here were glad enough
to comply with their demands, for the Americans are not only enormous
buyers, but their machines are much better than ours."
"Why couldn't they have cocoons shipped to them in bulk?" speculated
Pierre.
"They could not be easily packed, for they are not in form to ship. It
would be foolish. Besides, there is the same old problem of the lack of
cheap labor. You see, reeling silk is often slow work. Different breeds
of silkworm turn out, as you know, different qualities of thread. You
wouldn't believe how it varies as to size, cleanliness, lustre, and
perfection of filament. The Americans cannot afford to pay people to
classify all these varieties; nor stop their machinery at irregular
intervals to pick out the imperfections, or slugs, as we call them; also
the many knots must be tied by hand. It is fussy work. It would cost an
American manufacturer lots of money to get the sort of thread he wants.
You remember, too, how some of the best reelers that you saw when you
were here before sometimes had to take as many as five or more filaments
from different cocoons to get raw silk of a necessary coarseness; even
then, in spite of all their care, the skeins have to be sorted and
sometimes re-reeled to perfect the thread and make it acceptable to
American buyers. Our weavers over here would not begin to be so
particular; and in fact they often rate as _fair_ stuff that the Americans
consider _poor_, and refuse to take. You can readily see that all this
preparation of the material can be done for less price in Europe, where
workmen do not expect such high wages."
"What a lot of trouble the caterpillar makes people before his silk is
ready for the loom!" exclaimed Pierre laughing.
"I guess you'll think so when you see all we have to do to it," agreed
Henri. "I hope you won't mind the smell of the factory. It is horribly
stifling, and makes some of the men sick at first. It is the oil and
water in the silk. Silk must be damp for winding and spinning, otherwise
it breaks. It is never, even at best, thoroughly dry, for it has the
faculty of absorbing and holding moisture. Some time you'll learn more
about how they have to allow for the moisture in silk when they weigh
and ship it. Raw silk will often take up as much as thirty per cent. of
its weight in moisture without any one suspecting it. Therefore, in
order to be fair to the buyer who purchases his material by weight, they
have in all great silk centres what they call silk-conditioning houses,
where they test the goods to find out how much water is in it. This is
done by an apparatus known as a _desiccator_, which tells what the silk
would weigh if dry. To this estimate they add a definite percentage,
ordinarily about eleven per cent., to total what the raw silk would
weigh with a normal percentage of moisture. Every purchaser must expect
to pay for some moisture in his material--that is, pay more for it than
the silk itself actually weighs."
Pierre regarded Henri mischievously.
"There seems to be so much to learn that I do not believe I shall get
through this mill to-day. Maybe I'll have to spend the night here."
"I wish you could!" cried Henri. "Why didn't you plan to come home with
me and stay until to-morrow?"
"I couldn't be away over night, Henri," answered Pierre, "although it is
kind of you to ask me; there is so much that I have to do at home."
"Let us make haste then," Henri cried. "You have not seen anything yet,
and the morning is passing."
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