the color and bias of masculine thought. As instance the poetic critic
of a New York periodical, who wantonly affronts the gifted author of
“Poems of Passion” by declaring that her “fervent verses are but the
burning of unseemly stubble that fails to give forth light or heat.”
Yet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, all fair-minded critics will admit, has won
a place in the ranks of poetic genius. Her poems throb with human
sympathy, and from the exalted plane of her splendid womanhood she
reaches down, fulfilling the law of Christly service, to lift up the
fallen and soothe and bind the bruised and bleeding. Such masculine
criticism is dying out, but it has not been uncommon in the past. Mrs.
Browning and Jane Austen were accused of “breaking down by their
writings the safeguards of society,” and they were admonished to “cease
their literary efforts and devote themselves to sewing and washing
dishes if they would retain the chivalrous respect of men.” “Jane Eyre”
was pronounced too immoral to be ranked as decent literature. “Adam
Bede” was classed as the “vile outpourings of a lewd woman’s mind.” Yet
Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mrs. Browning, and Jane Austen have
won an exalted and enviable place in the ranks of literature. Their
writings have thrilled, uplifted, and sweetened humanity.
The test of literary genius is to create a character of universal
acceptance. The record of half a century has but one world-wide,
world-known character of that kind. That character was created by a
woman. In all literature, no book since the Bible has been so widely
circulated, so extensively translated, or has so thoroughly commanded
the profound attention of all classes as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.” Mrs. Stowe impressed her genius upon the race and time,
and marked a new epoch for freedom. Previous to the publication of
her book only a few men recognized slavery as wrong, but a woman’s
sympathetic heart and throbbing genius laid bare the evil and disclosed
to a horrified world the wrong underlying slavery.
In philanthropy and the domain of morals there is none who is doing
more heroic and effective work than Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis. She
deals not with theories, but with real conditions. Her sympathies, her
broad work, her manifold charities, go out to flesh and blood, men and
women. She has the intuitive faculty of probing deep into human nature,
leading those she would reform to mourn real defects, rejoice in real
victories, and hope and struggle for better things.
[Illustration: FRANCES WILLARD.]
The constantly broadening sphere of woman’s usefulness is in a large
measure due to the organized forms of intellectual activity among women
known as clubs. Half a century ago club-life for women was unknown.
Their social sympathies were limited to the political party that
claimed the franchise of their male relatives, or the church at whose
shrine the women worshiped. But so rapid has been woman’s development
in this direction that to-day women’s clubs form a chain from ocean to
ocean, binding them as one great whole. The effect upon the members is
magical; nature is enlarged; charity broadened; capacity for judgment
increased; and hitherto unsuspected faculties are called into life and
power.
The first organized demand by women for political recognition in the
United States was made in 1848, at what was known as the Seneca Falls
Convention. Ridiculed, persecuted, kicked like a football from one
generation to another, this brave demand for political recognition was
destined to become an agency that would work a peaceful revolution.
That the movement is progressing, and will eventually succeed, is
evinced by the record of half a century. In that time school suffrage
has been granted in twenty-three States and Territories, partial
suffrage for public improvements in three States, municipal suffrage
in one, and in four States full political equality. Wyoming was the
first State to accord citizenship to her women, and she bears testimony
to its efficacy in the progress, honor, and sobriety of her people.
In 1893, the Wyoming state legislature passed resolutions highly
commendatory of woman suffrage and its results, and among other things
said, “We point with pride to the fact that after nearly twenty-five
years of woman suffrage, not one county in Wyoming has a poor-house,
that our jails are almost empty, and crime, except that by strangers in
the State, is almost unknown.”
From the banks of the far-off Volga come the good tidings that even
Russia is preparing to take a great step in advance by granting to
women many legal and political privileges now enjoyed only by men.
England granted municipal suffrage to women a quarter of a century
ago, and has more recently granted partial parliamentary suffrage.
And to the influence of English law, more particularly the Married
Women’s Act, is largely due the betterment of the legal status of
women throughout the world. In England we find women prominent in art,
literature, politics, the school and the church. While in this country
the middle classes have heretofore carried on the suffrage agitation,
in England it finds active workers among the peerage.
Woman in politics meets with the opposition of job politicians, but
she realizes that every step of her progress, from the unveiling of
her face to a seat in the legislature of a State, has been taken in
the face of fierce opposition and in violation of conventionalities
and customs. Undismayed she advances for the ultimate betterment of
humanity.
The historian of the future will record the nineteenth century as
the Renaissance of womankind. And the ultimate effect upon the human
race of having individuals, not servants, as mothers will surpass the
progress made in science and in art.
The eighteenth century found woman an appendage; the nineteenth
transformed her into an individual. The wonderful altruistic twentieth
century, whose dawn even now is breaking, will so develop this
individuality that women will contend for all the rights of the
individual, coöperating with the nation in the fulfillment of its
mission, and with the world in the development of the eternal law of
progress.
“Through the harsh voices of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt and storms of fear
A light is breaking calm and clear.”
THE CENTURY’S TEXTILE PROGRESS
BY ROBERT P. HAINS,
_Examiner of Textiles, U. S. Patent Office_.
Antiquity conceals nothing more completely than the origin of the
textile industry. Back in the dark ages and beyond authentic records,
evidence is furnished that this art was not unknown. Egyptian mummies
shrouded in fine linen fabrics give their silent testimony of ancient
knowledge, but when or where the art had its inception still remains
wrapped in mystery. Nearly every nation of the earth lays claim to its
invention at some epoch in traditional existence. Thus the Chinese
attribute it to the wife of their first emperor, the Egyptians to Isis,
the Greeks to Minerva; but probably it had its birth in the Orient,
where the making of cloth was known and practiced from the earliest
times.
Whatever the merits of rival claimants, certain it is that for many
centuries the simple distaff and spindle were the only instruments
used for spinning, while the warp and weft were woven together by hand
implements not less primitive in structure.
In the first spinning device, a mass of fibre was arranged on a forked
stick, and, as drawn therefrom by hand, it was twisted between the
fingers and wound on a spindle. During the reign of Henry VIII. of
England, however, the spinning-wheel replaced the distaff and spindle,
and in every cottage and palace it became an indispensable article of
household equipment. The young women in all walks of life were taught
to spin. Spinning became the female occupation of the age, and it is
interesting to note that the modern term spinster, meaning an unmarried
woman of advanced age, here had its origin.
The spinning-wheel, though superior to the distaff and spindle, was
yet a crude machine. It consisted of a stand on which was mounted in
horizontal bearings a spindle driven by a band from a large wheel
propelled by hand or foot, and as twist was imparted to the fibre drawn
through the fingers, the resulting yarn was wound on the spindle.
The art of weaving was not more advanced. It is true that the middle of
the eighteenth century found the hand loom developed from the original
Indian structure to contain many of the essentials of the modern power
loom. It embodied the heddles, the lay, the take-up and let-off beams,
the shuttle for passing the weft, and in 1740, John Kay added the fly
shuttle motion, whereby the shuttle was thrown through the shed by a
sudden pull on the picking stick; then in 1760, Robert Kay, son of John
Kay, invented the drop box, whereby several colors of filling might be
employed.
Brilliant as these achievements were, the hand loom remained the crude
embodiment of the simple principles of weaving until near the dawn of
the nineteenth century, when, by the invention of Cartwright, a period
of development was introduced in all lines of textile manufacture
unsurpassed in the annals of industrial progress. The first great
stride, and that which opened the door for further advance, was the
creation of the spinning-jenny, in England, by Hargreaves, about 1767,
whereby eight or ten yarns could be spun at one time. Drawing rollers
were subsequently added by Arkwright, and then traverse motion was
given the bobbins in order to automatically build the yarn into a cop.
It has developed since that the drawing-rollers constituted one of the
most important fundamental improvements in the spinning art. Their
function was to draw out the fibres into a proper size of roving, and
to feed this to be spun. Without them the modern spinning-frame would
not have been possible. Arkwright’s drawing-rollers and Hargreaves’s
spinning-jenny combined under the invention of Crompton to produce, in
principle at least, the modern spinning-mule.
[Illustration: DISTAFF AND SPINDLE.]
Fairly good machines were thus provided on the advent of the nineteenth
century for spinning unlimited quantities of yarn, but this, in turn,
required proper loom structures to use the same and a corresponding
supply of raw material. Inventive genius was abroad, and the necessity
met by Eli Whitney, who, while at the home of General Greene, of
Georgia, built the first practical machine for separating cotton fibre
from its seed.
Whitney’s gin was constructed on the broad and simple principle that
cotton fibre could be drawn through a smaller space than the attached
seed, and this same principle is the soul and spirit of every saw-gin
of the present day. Prior to Whitney’s gin, cotton fibre was separated
from the seed by hand, a day’s work being represented by two or three
pounds of cleaned fibre. The daily product of the gin now reaches
between three and four thousand pounds.
[Illustration: SPINNING WHEEL.]
Such figures demonstrate the important position taken by the cotton
gin among the developing agents of the cotton growing States. It has
rendered possible and profitable the cultivation of large districts
of otherwise waste lands; it has stimulated cotton production; given
employment to thousands of idle hands; cheapened the price of cotton
cloths, and placed within the reach of the humblest people wearing
apparel of fine and beautiful texture.
Unlimited supply of raw material being thus provided, attention
reverted to perfecting the machines for spinning it, and under the
magical touch of Richard Roberts, of Manchester, England, in 1830, the
crude mule of Crompton took practical shape. He gave to it the quadrant
winding motion, provided for the harmonious working of the counter and
copping faller wires, perfected the “backing off” and “drawing up”
mechanisms, and gave attention to construction of details that placed
the mule before the world as a practical success.
Equipped in its present form, the self-acting mule presents one of the
most striking examples of complex automatic mechanisms that can be
found in the industrial world. The work of the attendant is confined to
piecing broken ends and supplying roving, the machine passing through
the entire cycle of its complicated movements without human direction.
An idea may be had of its delicate and accurate operation when it is
considered that one pound of cotton has been spun by it into a thread
one hundred and sixty-seven miles long. Improvements have been made,
indeed, on Roberts’s mule, but aside from changes in details and form,
the machine, as it left the hands of this mechanical genius in 1830,
remains unchanged.
[Illustration: PRIMITIVE HAND LOOM.]
During this period, the fly frame was developed from the machines of
Hargreaves and Arkwright, but while it constituted a great advance over
these machines, it presented no radical departure in principle.
We may pause here, as we pass through the third decade of the present
century, to witness the introduction of a spinning-frame, which, for
originality of conception and far reaching influence on the textile
industry, closely approximates the achievements of the pioneer
inventions of this art. Reference is made to the ring frame in which
the flyer is omitted, the bobbin being attached to the spindle and
revolving with it. On the traverse rail, and surrounding each bobbin,
is secured a flanged ring having loosely sprung thereon a light
traveler, through which the yarn, as it comes from the drawing-rolls,
is led to the bobbin. Revolution of the bobbin carries the traveler
around the ring imparting twist to the yarn, and as it is spun it is
wound on the bobbin in proportion to the feed of the drawing-rolls.
The invention of this machine is attributed to John Thorpe, of Rhode
Island, in 1828, and so popular did it become by reason of decreased
power necessary to drive it, incidental to the omission of the flyers,
and good quality of yarn produced, that, between 1860 and 1865, it
nearly replaced all other machines in America for spinning cotton.
The speed of the ring frame, as well as its output, appeared unbounded;
but at high speeds, under unbalanced loads, the spindles were found to
vibrate in their bearings, and the quality of yarn, in consequence,
degenerated, the spindle bearings became worn, and the limit seemed
to be reached at five thousand revolutions per minute. A careful
examination of the ring frame revealed no vulnerable part of its
general structure that could be improved so as to readily secure
increased speed and steadiness of the spindles when unevenly loaded;
but with admirable foresight, developing intellects set to improve
the spindles themselves, and, in 1871, Jacob H. Sawyer introduced and
patented a spindle and bearing, which was one of the most important
improvements in the ring frame. He chambered the bobbin, and by
carrying the bolster T well up inside supported the former near its
load centre.
[Illustration: EARLY SPINNING JENNY.]
The evolution of the spindle was not yet complete. The Sawyer type, at
more than seven thousand revolutions, would vibrate, and of the many
attempts to cure the defect none succeeded fully until the very simple
change made by Mr. Rabbeth in 1878. He gave the spindle a small amount
of play by making the bolster loose in its supporting case, and placed
a packing between the two.
A. H. Sherman improved upon the Rabbeth structure by making the bolster
and step in one piece and omitting the packing, the cushioning being
dependent upon the lubricating oil.
[Illustration: GINNING COTTON. THE OLD WAY, PRIOR TO 1800.]
[Illustration: GINNING COTTON. THE NEW WAY.]
The acme of development in this small but most important part of the
ring frame was now reached; and in its approved form it embodies the
sleeve whirl extending into the bobbin, the loose, yet adjustable
bolster, tapering spindle, removable step, and lubricating reservoir.
Such spindles are capable of unlimited speeds,—twenty thousand
revolutions per minute have been given,—and under absurdly unbalanced
loads they run steadily and with less expenditure of power than the
older forms at their slower speeds.
Increased speed in the spindles, however, brought increased breakage
in the yarn, and although stop motion devices had been employed for
several years, yet economy demanded ready means of piecing broken
ends. This has been provided recently by mounting the stop clamp upon
the roving rod well up near the first pair of drawing rolls, so that
on pulling the stop wire into place the roving is at once fed between
the drawing rolls and issues in front, over the spindle, to be easily
pieced by one hand. Prior to this, the operative was required to reach
over the machine, feed the roving to the rolls with one hand, hold the
stop wire down with the other, and the broken end of yarn in his teeth.
[Illustration: THE MODERN MULE.]
Excessive ballooning was also incidental to the use of high speed
spindles, and, while inventive skill has never mastered it, yet the
injurious effects have been obviated by an ingenious mounting of
separators, one between each two spindles.
Aside from minor details perfecting the mechanical construction,
such has been the evolution of the modern spinning frame. In 1830,
it required the constant attention of one spinner to oversee twenty
slow-running spindles, whereas, in 1896, the same attendant could, with
less effort, “tend” seventy-five or more of the high speed type; and
whereas, in 1790, when the first American cotton mill was established
by Samuel Slater in Rhode Island, there were only seventy-five spindles
on cotton fibre, in 1830, the number had increased to 1,246,703, and in
1890, to 14,188,103.
Under such competition no wonder the spinning-wheel of our grandmothers
has followed the economic law, that the fittest alone survive, and has
been relegated to the wood-pile or garret, or, bedecked with ribbons,
finds a resting-place in the chimney-corner as a decorated curiosity.
Its mighty rival is here. Its attendants have been liberated to more
ennobling pursuits. The homespun has been replaced by beautiful
fabrics, and the monster spinning frames of to-day pour forth their
hourly product in miles of spun fibre, where the wheels of our
grandmothers were taxed to the utmost to produce a very small fraction
of the amount. To appreciate the wonderful change, pause beside the
domestic wheel used within the memory of the living, and compare its
“whirr,” in slowly producing its single thread, to the “buzz” of the
modern spinning frame turning out its product from a thousand spindles.
[Illustration: HAND COMB OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.]
The production of yarn required something more than spinning. The
fibres in the massed cotton or wool, as delivered to the manufacturer,
must be opened, untangled, straightened out, and laid parallel by a
series of preparing machines prior to being spun, among which the
carding engine ranks first. In the incipient form, this machine dates
as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century, when, by hand
manipulation, two cylinders covered with small teeth and working in
close proximity disintegrated the fibrous mass; but the fibres were
much broken and not evenly arranged. The addition of the workers and
strippers around a rapidly revolving swift gave increased utility to
the machine, and Bramwell’s feed, in 1871, so regulated the amount of
fibre fed at intervals that the resulting lap possessed the desired
even character. This feed weighs the fibre as it is fed, stops the
lifting apron while the scale pan dumps its load, resets the scale pan,
and automatically starts the lifting apron to again feed the scale,—a
cycle of operations indicating a near approach to human intelligence.
One additional machine at least, the comb, requires notice before
passing to the all-important progress made in the loom structure.
With advancing civilization and refinement came demands for superior
fabrics, which could only be answered by a supply of better fibre.
Such fibre could only be secured from the bale by separating the long
from the short, a problem well calculated to tax the ingenuity of an
enlightened age. Attempts had been made to do this by hand implements
not unlike the curry-comb of to-day, except that the teeth were long
and tapering. This remained the only means employed for years, while
other textile machinery passed through its phenomenal period of
development. At last, in 1841, it occurred to Heilman, while watching
a lady comb her hair, that a machine might be constructed to comb wool
by drawing a bunch of fibres over pins. He constructed a device on this
principle, and in a developed form it is used still and known as the
Heilman or nip comb.
[Illustration: NOBLE COMB OF 1890.]
In 1853, James Noble gave to the world the circle comb, wherein two
flat circular rings, having projecting from one face vertical pins,
were mounted, one eccentrically within the other, and revolved in the
same direction, the object being to dab the fibre on the rings where
they met; and then as they revolved and separated the short fibre
would be drawn off the large ring, leaving the long fibre freed from
the short. These machines were successful, and above all they were
practical—the operation of the hand comber disappeared from the face
of the earth.
The sudden birth and rapid development of mechanically perfect means
for preparing and spinning fibres were due largely to the comparatively
simple movements required to draw and twist the yarn, but in the loom
no such problem was presented. Here the movements were complicated
and varied, and the application of power to the manipulation of the
delicate threads was not susceptible of sudden and successful solution.
The warps, stretched in a sheet between two beams, had to be opened
to form the shed, the shuttle had to be passed therethrough, the weft
beaten to place, and means provided to feed the warp and to take up
of the fabric an amount at each beat-up corresponding to the size
of the weft. These were the movements necessary in the most simple
kind of weaving, and though fully understood for many centuries,
as evidenced by the Indian and Egyptian looms, and as embodied in
hand machines of the seventeenth century, it was not till 1787 that
they were clothed with the application of power. Even then the first
embodiment did not emanate from the hands of a weaver or engineer,
but from Dr. Cartwright, a clergyman in the church of England. It was
not surprising that these looms failed of their expectations, for the
shuttle would frequently get trapped in the shed, the driven power-lay
would break out the warp threads, the take-up and let-off motions were
not graduated to compensate for the decrease of the warp and increase
of the cloth beams, resulting in thin and thick places in the cloth.
But this application of power to the loom was the initial step in
the industrial supremacy of the machine, which to-day works with the
perfect cadence of an automaton.
[Illustration: PLAIN POWER LOOM, 1840.]
The first years of the present century were of unsurpassed activity in
the inventive field. The spinners were putting forth more yarn than
the hand-looms could use. It remained for the loom to keep pace with
the times. Miller, in 1800, Todd and Horrocks in 1803, Johnston in
1807, Cotton in 1810, Taylor in 1815, and many others, concentrated
their efforts to develop the plain power-loom; but the second decade of
the present century saw the old hand-loom with its slow and cumbrous
movements still mistress of the art.