Textile machinery

“ Sharpe, Roberts, & Co. would probably afford a view of some parts of the most improved textile machinery in a state of rest, as well as a very excellent idea of the rapid progress of mechanical arts. Improvements in manufacturing machines are so constant and rapid, that it is almost a proverb—“that before a foreigner can get the most improved machinery which he has purchased in England home and at work, something better will be invented.”
A Manchester manufacturer, on the approach of a busy season, will sometimes stop his factories to put in new machines, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Factories are, again, subdivided into textile and non-textile: they are textile if the machinery is employed in preparing, manufacturing or finishing cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, tow, China grass, cocoanut fibre or other like material either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material, or any fabric made thereof; all other factories are non-textile. ”

“ The introduction of the sewing machine meant a tremendous increase in output over the old manual method of production, and as a result made thousands of needle women superfluous. It has been estimated that 70,000 women employed in the sewing trades were displaced by the machine. But the invention of machinery in this line of industry did not have the same immediate result as the invention of machinery in the textile trades. It did not make the sewing of garments a factory occupation. ”

“ When automatic machinery for thread spinning was invented, English intelligence and enterprise were quick to utilize and develop it, and thus gained that supremacy in textile manufacture which has remained up to the present time, and which will doubtless long continue. ”

“ It should be distinctly understood that the mention of any machinist does not imply any approval or otherwise of his particular appliance, but is simply given in order to identify the maker of it, which it is only fair to do. The Author’s opinions can be easily gathered, but it is no part of the scheme to enter into controversy about different methods, or to make the book a treatise on comparative textile mechanics. ”

“ In New York State 35,168 women worked in textile-mills making silks, woolens, cottons, carpets, knit underwear, etc. The din of machinery is deafening [Pg 225] in many of these factories, and often the machinery is so closely placed that there is difficulty in passing without danger of skirts catching.
The whole development of machinery in industry has been worked out for the purpose of extending trade and output, without consideration of the human factor involved. Machines have been watched so they did not wear out or break, and they have been carefully repaired. ”

“ The silk trade had received new life from the flow of intelligent French workers, and the first modern factory with elaborate machinery was that set up for silk throwing by Lombe. Yet by far the larger number of the important textile inventions of the eighteenth century were either applied in the first instance to the cotton manufacture and transferred, sometimes after a lapse of many years, to the woollen, worsted, and other textile trades, or being invented for woollen trades, proved unsuccessful until applied to cotton. ”

“ Grain, in the elaborate machinery of a steam flour mill, passes through a score of different stages, cleaning, winnowing, grinding, etc. The American machine-made watch is the product of 370 separate processes. The organisation of a modern textile factory provides a dozen different processes contributing to the spinning or weaving of cotton or silk. New processes of cleaning, finishing, and ornamenting are continually being added. The subsidiary process of packing, the manufacture of packing cases, the printing of labels, etc., are taken on in many factories. ”

“ As early as 1812 a man, using the improved appliances, could produce 200 times as much as could be got from the old spinning-wheel. Yet it was not until 1820 or 1830 that361 cotton-spinning machinery had been practically developed and introduced on such a scale that the yarn exports began to show the full strength of this new force; while power weaving came even later, and the exports of cloth increased most rapidly in the second quarter of the century. Other processes connected with the textile manufacture present the same history. ”

“ To manufacture these cloths, three shuttles are employed, and as yet no successful attempt has been made to imitate them on the power loom. The bordered cloth weavers do not suffer from the direct competition of machine-made piece-goods, and the depression in their branch of the industry is due to changes in the tastes of the people.* [3] In the manufacture of a cloth from the raw material there are three distinct processes: spinning, warping, and weaving. Modern machinery has absolutely and completely ousted hand-spinning ”

“ The razor he shaves with, the mirror which helps him in the operation, the very brush and soap, all are machine-made. With his clothes he adds to the burden of his indebtedness to mechanism. The power-loom span the linen for his shirts, the cloth for his outer garments. Shirts and collars are glossy from the treatment of the steam laundry, where machinery is rampant. His boots, kept shapely by machine-made lasts, should remind him that mechanical devices have played a large part in their manufacture, very possibly the human hand has scarcely had a single duty to perform. ”

“ STRETCHING MACHINE. Cotton goods and other textile fabrics, either white or printed, are prepared for the market by being stretched in a proper machine, which lays all their warp and woof yarns in truly parallel positions. A very ingenious and effective mechanism of this kind was made the subject of a patent by Mr. Samuel Morand, of Manchester, in April, 1834, which serves to extend the width of calico pieces, or of other cloths woven of cotton, wool, silk, or flax, after they have become shrunk in the processes of bleaching, dyeing, &c. ”

“ These comprise the making of men's and women's suits and dresses, coats, hats, shirts, underwear, collars and cuffs, gloves, etc. As we have seen, the making of wearing apparel has always been woman's work. During the domestic period of industry the same hands that spun the thread and wove the cloth also sewed the garments. When spinning and weaving had been taken out of the home and made specialized factory occupations, the making of clothes still remained a domestic occupation because no machinery had as yet been applied to this branch of manufacture. ”

“ To go back to our two cents' worth of cotton, which has been converted into yarn. It is subjected to the action of several machines before it reaches the loom, where it is converted into cloth. Weaving, like spinning, is old, and some sort of machinery has always been employed in the process, but the power-loom of our factories is a modern invention. I sometimes think it is the most wonderful machine used. To make one yard of cloth, a shuttle carrying the filling-thread is thrown across the web perhaps 1,500 times, at the rate of a hundred crossings a minute. ”

“ True, other branches of the textile industry have also benefited by the application of machine methods of spinning and weaving similar to those above described; but no other important textile has seen such a remarkable growth under the stimulus of machine production as has cotton. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
The major steps in the manufacture of clothes are four: first to harvest and clean the fiber or wool; second, to card it and spin it into threads; third, to weave the threads into cloth; and, finally to fashion and sew the cloth into clothes. We have already seen the influence of Eli Whitney's cotton gin on the first process, and the series of inventions for spinning and weaving, which so profoundly changed the textile industry in Great Britain, has been mentioned. ”

“ The prospect of the maker of knitted goods of all kinds, is further enhanced by the enormous production possible on the present-day knitting machinery and on the fact that the garments are made ready-to-wear. In this work an effort is made to outline the principles underlying the technology of the industry, and endeavours have been made to clarify certain problems of fabric structure which require still greater attention from the students of technology before they can be regarded as solved. ”

“ Excepting the bark mill, various kinds of tumblers, the fulling stocks, glazing and rolling machines, there were practically no efficient mechanical aids to lighten the exceedingly laborious operations incidental to leather manufacture two decades ago; but so many improvements have lately been made in the construction of machinery for practically every operation in the trade that most of the machines require very little skill to work them, and can be operated by intelligent youths after a few weeks' experience. ”

“ The machine-made cloths of this day and generation do not last a lifetime, or sixty years, or even twenty-five years, either in the United States or in Europe. The fabrics which so excited his admiration were the homespun products of hand manufacture. It is true that they had great endurance, and this quality they secured at the sacrifice of lightness and compactness. Heavy cloths of the homespun characteristics are not now made by machinery, because the people prefer lighter fabrics, even though they wear out quickly. ”

“ The result was the invention in 1825 of his delicate and complex automatic spinning mule in which hundreds of spindles “run themselves” with only the attention of a few unskilled helpers to watch for broken threads and mend them. This was one of the great textile inventions and has had an enormous influence on the development of the cotton industry. The next year, 1826, he went to Mülhouse in Alsace and laid the foundation of modern French cotton manufacture. Later he invented and patented a number of other important textile machines. ”

“ On the circular machine a seam is not necessary, for the complete cylinder of fabric is made at once. While it is possible to manufacture underwear on a circular frame, its use is far better adapted to the knitting of hosiery, and a very large industry for the manufacture of this product has grown up in and near Philadelphia. ”

“ In China, for example, large quantities of cotton are turned into yarn by hand spinning, and into cloth by hand weaving, and there is reason to believe that the quantity of cotton cloth manufactured in China by hand weaving, partly from yarns spun by hand and partly from yarns manufactured by machine methods, is greater than that manufactured by modern machinery. ”

“ An eminent woollen manufacturer having been asked what cloth he would recommend for wear and warmth to a backwoodsman, answered quickly, “Nothing can wear like a good blanket.” The small manufacturers generally dispose of their cloth in the rough state.
The progress of machinery has called into existence a great number of factories, especially in worsted and mixed stuffs, has given value to many descriptions of wool formerly valueless, and, coupled with the repeal of the duty, brought into the market many kinds unknown a few years ago. ”

“ In the fabrication of such textiles as are woven by millions of yards, and can be best produced with the aid of a complicated machinery, the competition of the hand-loom against the power-loom is evidently nothing but a survival, which may be maintained for some time by certain local conditions, but finally must die away. ”

“ Let us be active in procuring machinery that will manufacture our cotton and flax into fine yarns for thread of every number and fabric of every quality; then our sisters can knit and manufacture in different ways their frills, ruffles and laces to suit their tastes. ”

“ A characteristic feature of the manufacture is that the garment, or a portion of it, is knitted in a flat web which, in the course of knitting, is shaped by variation of its width, in such a way that it conforms to the contour of the body to be fitted, when its shaped edges are united in a seam. The desired variations in width are secured through control of the traverse or 'throw' of the yarn guide which brings the yarn to the needles of the machine as they knit the web. ”

“ The invention and application of machinery, that began to revolutionize the manufacture of shoes at about the same time when the sewing machine began to revolutionize the clothing trades, had two distinct and opposite results. First it drove the women out of this industry, and then, after an interval of thirty years, it brought them back again in greater numbers. ”

“ Special machines are also made for knitting both plain and ribbed plaited goods, that is, with both sides wool while the center is of cotton, or with a silk or worsted face on one side and the back of an inferior yarn. In the form of auxiliary appliances are produced many kinds of stitching machines; circular latch-needle machines for plain ribbed, mock seam, and striped goods; steam presses; hose rolling machines; hose cutting and welting machines, and many other accessories to hosiery manufacture. ”