Nature's Aristocracy: A Plea for the Oppressed

Chapter 10: How Cotton Is Manufactured.—Factory Friendships

chapter 10 How Cotton Is Manufactured. —Factory Friendships Brotherly Affection.—The Destitute Wife.— The Widow’s Trial.—The Country Girl and the Actress.—Drunken Pickard and Bob. 1 In order that the reader may be able to understand the terms which I shall be obliged to use in the chapters that follow, a few words may be necessary in explanation of the processes through which the cotton passes while being manufactured into cloth. The cotton when taken from the bale is passed through a machine, usually placed in the basement of the factory, which picks and combs out the sticks, seeds, and hard lumps, leaving only the light, feathery cotton. This machine is called a “picker.” Then the cotton passes into another apparatus near by, which draws it from the pile into a long straight roll, without twist or strength. This machine is called a “drawer.” From the drawer the roll passes into the “speeder,” when it is pressed into a smaller size and slightly twisted. The cotton is then called “roping,” and is wound upon great spools, as it comes from the speeder. The spools of roping are taken to the spinning-room, where, by means of rollers to press and flyers to twist, it is reduced to thread. The thread which, as it comes from the spindles, is wound by machinery upon small spools called “bobbins,” is very fine, and is known in the factories as “the warp.” From a large number of these small spools, which are placed near together, in a large frame, the threads are wound upon a very large spool called a “warping- 104 | Nature’s Aristocracy beam.” The warping-beams, when full of thread, are taken to the “dressing-machine,” where the threads, a great number at a time, pass from the warping-beam over a roller that turns in a trough of starch, then under a series of constantly moving brushes which equalize the starch and brush away lint or any foreign substance that may be adhering to the thread. From the brushes it passes over a large heated copper roller which dries the starch; and then is wound upon another enormous spool called a “web-beam.” These great web-beams are then put upon a “drawing-in frame,” where an operator draws every end—and there may be thousands—through a “reed,” in which there is a little aperture for each thread. These reeds are parts of the “loom,” and keep the threads separate when the machinery is in motion; and, together with the web-beams, are placed in the looms whenever they are required for weaving. From the looms in which the threads that wind from the webbeams through the reeds combine with the threads which braid in from the “shuttle,” the “cloth” is taken, which, after inspection, is packed for market. Should the manufacturer wish to make calico, the cloth is put through a chemical process called “bleaching,” and taken to the print-works. Calico “printing” is done by passing the cloth under an engraved roller which is so ingeniously supplied with dyes that it prints all the different colors and figures at the same time. Until the recent invention of roller-printing it required the greatest skill to dye calico; and it was never sold for less than fifty cents per yard. Then there was a different stamp for every figure, and the workman was obliged to dip each stamp in the color and strike it with a mallet when placed on the cloth. Hence it was a slow and expensive process. Now it is so rapidly done by machinery that the cost is reduced a hundred-fold, while the only great skill required is in mixing the colors. 2 All the different processes of cotton manufacture have their divisions and subdivisions, each of which requires the attention of intelligent laborers; consequently there is in nearly every factory a number of persons employed in the same room who, as they are Nature’s Aristocracy | 105 constantly in one another’s society, become intimately acquainted with each other’s manners and disposition. This leads to the formation of friendships and associations, many of which are as sincere and lasting as any of earth. The circumstances which surround their individual lives, and the hardships which they endure together, have a great effect upon these friendships. Like the soldiers in the field, the sailors on the sea, the travellers...