Cotton thread

“ For instance, the most delicate or fine quality of thread is produced from the Sea Island cotton, and usually this type is quite expensive; it has so many seeds and they take up so much room in the pod that after they have been removed only a small quantity of cotton remains and that makes it costly. Almost every other kind gives more lint (or picked cotton) than does this variety. The Egyptian cotton is somewhat on this same order. ”

“ Manufacturing Processes. The raw cotton for the manufacture of thread must be of long staple. If the fiber is short the thread made of it will be weak, and hence unsuited for the purposes required of it. Ordinary cotton is not adapted to the manufacture of the better grades of spool cotton on account of the shortness of its fiber. Egyptian and Sea Island cotton are used because they have a much longer fiber and are softer in texture. ”

“ It is admitted, however, that six-cord spool cotton is the thread most largely used for domestic consumption, and, put up on spools of 200 yards length, in numbers from 8 to 100, is best known and purchased by the great mass of consumers, and that it is as manufactureres of this description of thread that the plaintiffs are, and have for a long time been, known throughout the country. ”

“ Sometimes a twisted yarn was made of one thread of cotton and one of wool which was knit into durable stockings. Cotton sewing-thread was unknown in England. Pawtucket women named Wilkinson made the first cotton thread on their home spinning-wheels in 1792.
Cotton was planted in America, Bancroft says, in 1621, but MacMaster asserts it was never seen growing here till after the Revolution save as a garden ornament with garden flowers. This assertion seems oversweeping when Jefferson could write in a letter in 1786:—
"The four southermost States make a great deal of cotton. ”

“ The spongy and size-absorbent properties are obtained at the expense of the strength of the yarn, and therefore a good sizing twist [34] often winds badly. The colour of the warp yarn is not important, and therefore whiter cottons are often reserved for weft. Fine twists are spun out of longer and finer cottons forming a close spun thread, which is used for better classes of cloth lightly sized. Strength and elasticity are great advantages in twist, and these properties should be obtained and preserved for the last process of weaving. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the unpractised eye cannot see any difference between the sliver or soft rope of cotton as it reaches, the drawing frame and as it leaves the frame.
The experienced eye of the practical man can, however, detect a wonderful difference.
It has been shown that the immediately preceding operation of carding—amongst other things—reduces the heavy lap into a comparatively thin light sliver; thus advancing with one great stride a long way toward the production of the long fine thread of yarn ready for the market. ”

“ The cotton fiber is subjected to further processes of cleaning, carding, etc., before it is ready to be manufactured into cloth fabrics, thread, etc.
Nearly all parts of the cotton plant find a use. After the cotton is picked, the stalks are burnt upon the fields or “plowed under” to serve as a fertilizer for the soil, which would otherwise become impoverished very rapidly. The bark of the root is collected and employed medicinally, its medicinal properties being highly lauded by the negroes of the South. The seeds yield the cottonseed oil, which is not unlike olive oil. ”

“ If the threads are found to be strong and without flaws two to half a dozen of them are put together in a loose skein and they are twisted in a doubling machine. Afterward the thread is polished, cleaned, and run off on spools or bobbins. That is the road Mother's spools of cotton have to travel before they get to her. How seldom we think of this or are grateful for it!
There are in addition other ways of preparing cottons for embroidery, crocheting, or knitting, not to mention methods used to finish cotton yarn so that it will look like woolen, linen, or silk fiber. ”

“ For very fine sewing-thread great care had to be used in drawing the strand of cotton evenly, as well as finely. It was a wearisome task, and great patience had to be exercised, as there was continual snapping of the fine hand-spun thread. From broaches of [55] such spun sewing-thread balls of the cotton were wound from two to three strands double, according as coarse or fine thread was needed. The ball was then placed in a bowl of warm soapsuds and the thread twisted on to a bobbin of corn husks placed on the spindle of the wheel. ”

“ Many of our women, when cotton was at its prime in opening, and before any rain had fallen on it, would select and pick themselves from the bolls that were the longest and fullest of the white fleecy staple, enough for their finest knitting purposes. They would also pick the seed from the white silky locks with their fingers, which would spin a longer, finer thread than if it had been ginned. ”

“ The value of cotton depends upon the strength, and evenness of the fiber. In ordinary cotton the individual fiber is about an inch in length. The sea island cotton grown chiefly on the islands off the coast of Georgia, Carolina, and Florida is the most valuable variety, having a fine fiber, one and one-half to two inches in length. Some of the Egyptian cotton belongs to this species. Sea island cotton is used chiefly for fine laces, thread and knit goods and for the finest lawns and muslins. ”

“ The sliver of cotton, as it leaves the card, is by no means sufficiently uniform in weight per yard for the production of a uniform and strong finished thread. It will easily be conceived by the readers of this story of the cotton plant that the strength of any thread is only that of its weakest portions. ”

“ Sewing Thread.—A very large quantity of spun yarn is subsequently made into sewing thread. It is a fact well known to practical men that we have no means in cotton spinning by which a thread can be spun directly of sufficient strength to be used as sewing thread. For instance, suppose we wanted a 12's sewing thread, i.e., a thread containing 12 hanks in one pound of yarn; it would be practically impossible to spin a thread sufficiently good to meet the requirements of the case. ”

“ Now of this cotton, not all can be used for fine spinning. Some cottons have a fibre so short that it will not make fine thread. All cottons really separate into two groups: the cottons over an inch long, which they use in America and Lancashire for making fine cloth, and the shorter cottons less than an inch long, which are spun and woven abroad into coarse cloths or are mixed with other fibres. Mostly, the world wants and uses long cotton, and nearly all this comes from America. ”

“ As is well known, the great principle of drawing rollers is, that the cotton is passed through three or four pairs of rollers in quick succession, and attenuated by each pair in turn, each pair being made to revolve more quickly than the preceding pair. This identical process is repeated in machine after machine, until finally the bulk of cotton is reduced to a fine thread, of which, in some cases, it takes two or three hundred miles to weigh one pound. ”

“ I was a little surprised to find they made no spool cotton on any of these machines. Up to date no machine has been invented that will directly spin thread strong enough for sewing. All that has to be a separate process and therefore the yarn is taken to other machines where it is drawn finer and where several of the fine threads can be twisted into one. The spinners know just how many fine threads to put together to get certain sizes of cotton. ”

“ The height of this species varies from 3 to 4 feet if cultivated as an annual, and from 6 to 8 feet if allowed to grow as a perennial. When in full leaf and flower, it is a most graceful-looking plant. Yarns having the finest counts, as they are called, are all spun from Sea Islands, which belongs to this class. When we are told that a single pound of this cotton is often spun into a thread about 160 miles long we can see that it must be exceedingly good and strong cotton to do this.
[Pg 24]
Fig. ”

“ The cloth is woven from the thread made from the cotton-trees, kapok, that grow luxuriantly around their houses, and the women use the same kind of spindle for making thread as is common among the Dusums of the west coast, holding the cotton in the left hand and occasionally giving a twist to the spindle with the right hand. ”

“ The mixing should be made with reference to the kind of yarn required, whether for warp or weft, coarse or fine, &c., and the sorting of the cotton for this purpose requires experience and good judgment. Some cottons, particularly those of long and short fibres, cannot be made to draw, rove, or spin well together. The cotton taken from the bing is too impure for spinning until it has been passed through several processes, by which the dirt is winnowed out and the matted lumps are opened and the fibres loosened and cleaned. ”

“ As the tree only attains to a height of from twelve to twenty feet, it is difficult to distinguish the tree cotton and the shrub cotton when referred to by travellers.
The cotton plant, in all its varieties, requires a sandy soil. It flourishes on the rocky hills of Hindostan, Africa, and the West Indies, and will grow where the soil is too poor to produce any other valuable crop.
Cotton has always been regarded as indigenous to India, and as the characteristic clothing material of that country, as flax is of Egypt, silk of China, and the wool of sheep and goats of Northern Asia. ”

“ Unlike the bobbin and fly frames, the roving or yarn is not wound on its cop or spindle as it is delivered, but a certain definite and regulated length of cotton is given out to each spindle, and fully twisted and attenuated before it is wound into a suitable shape for transit and for subsequent treatment. ”

“ When the bolls are ripe, they open, and then the picking commences. As a rule, the first pickings are the best as to color and cleanness, and the longer the bolls are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather in Autumn and Winter, the more the quality will deteriorate. The picked cotton consists of two thirds of seed and one third of actual cotton. In order to obtain the fibre, the cotton is passed through a ginning machine. From the seeds, edible oil is gained and the residue is manufactured into food for cattle, while the cotton is formed into bales in specially constructed presses. ”

“ This has for its object the combination of the warp and weft yarns, interlacing one with the other in such manner as to produce a firm texture, fitted for the varying uses to which cotton cloth is adapted—for warmth, for ornament, for trade purposes—for sale. The power looms of the present day, as employed in the cotton industry, vary very little in construction in the most widely separated districts, unless for very different classes of work, then what modifications are required consist of extra mechanism added to our common type—the plain loom. ”

“ Their beauty, unhappily, is their only recommendation, for the herbage is rough and coarse, and altogether unfit for pasture, and the cotton, so called, is cotton only in name. It cannot be manufactured; the hairs are too straight and too brittle. Instead of twining and entangling, like the filaments of true cotton, they lie rigidly side by side, resembling true cotton merely in their whiteness, and could no more be spun into yarn than slate–pencils could be twisted into a cable. ”

“ Two kinds of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the sea-islands and along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but only the hardier and more prolific green-seed or short-staple cotton could be raised inland. The labor of cultivating and harvesting cotton of any kind was very great. The fiber, growing in bolls resembling a walnut in size and shape, had to be taken by hand from every boll, as it has to be today, for no satisfactory cotton harvester has yet been invented. ”

“ This description by Theophrastus is remarkably correct as applied to the herbaceous variety of the cotton-plant, from which the chief supply of cotton for spinning and weaving into cloth has always been obtained. In its mode of growth—branched, spreading, and flexible—it may well be likened to the dog-rose; and its palmate leaves bear a close resemblance to those of the black mulberry, which differ little from the leaves of some varieties of the vine. ”

“ Under the low power, the first thing that will attract our attention is the fact that the fibres are twisted, corkscrew fashion, though not regularly nor throughout their whole length. This curious twisting makes raw cotton easily recognised and it is, at the same time, a very valuable peculiarity of these plant hairs. The greater the number of twists and the greater their regularity, the more valuable the cotton becomes for weaving purposes. ”

“ In all of them the fiber is really an appendage of the seeds, and each pod as it splits open is found to be packed full of a white cottony mass of these fibers with the seeds attached. These white masses of cotton, or bolls, have to be picked by hand, as no really successful machine has ever been found for this purpose. Women and children do a large part of the picking, and the wastage due to careless picking is tremendous. The whole value of the cotton crop depends upon an invention by Eli Whitney, an American, of a machine to separate the cotton from its seed. ”