PROCESSES OF THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE. measures were passed, either by parliament or by corpo- | ing to be completed, however, the wool undergoes the pro It has been before explained that the woollen manufacture relates to such fabrics as require the use of short or feiting wool. This wool undergoes a very large number of processes in the course of the manufacture. If we take a piece of broad-cloth as a representative of this manufacture generally, the following are the successive processes by which it is produced : 1 Sorting the wool. 10 Spinning. 2 Scouring or washing. 3 Dyeing (when dyed in the wool). 4 Willying. Picking. The Oiling. Scribbling. B Carding. L Slubbing. 11 Reeling. 12 Warping. 13 Singeing. 14 Weaving. 18 Fulling. 17 Burling. About one-half of these, in the most improved forms of oceeding, are effected by machinery; and the other half hand. The sorting of the wool is the first operation, and is one much importance, since the quality of the cloth depends greatly on a due admixture of different kinds of wool. ach pack of wool contains many different qualities, acrding to the part of the fleece whence it was taken, and ther circumstances; and much tact and discrimination are uled for in the separation. The sorter has to make his election in relation to the fineness, the softness, the regth, the colour, the cleanness, and the weight of the nath Fool; and in reference to these qualities he separates the d into many parcels, which receive the names of Prime, choice, super,' 'head,'' downrights,'' seconds,' fine abb,' 'coarse abb,' 'livery,' &c. With respect to neness, Dr. Parry found that the finest fibre is that of Spanish ewe, the mean diameter of which is of an inch; the the coarsest is that of Wilts ewe, measuring of an inch. All woolly fibres are thicker at one end than the Mer; bot the less the difference in that respect, the more aluable is the wool; and this is one of the favourable Pats in Merino wool. According to the kind of goods to made, so do the several qualities in wool require to be ced and hence the importance of the wool-sorter's, pation. When the proper kinds are selected, they are next Zared or aired, to free them from the grease which in-, acy attaches to them. The wool is soaked in a ley of Levine and soap at a temperature of about 120°, and ards rinsed with cold water. In large manufactories is passed between the rollers of a powerful press to free it from nearly all moisture. maring. the cath is dyed in the wool, that operation succeeds Mang; but if dyed in the piece,' many other pro tervene; and it depends a good deal on the kind of tor as to which plan is followed. Supposing the dye-, These cardings are then spun into yarn for the use of the woollen-weaver; the process of spinning being generally effected by means of the stubbing-billy or slubbing-machine, and afterwards by the common jenny or mule-spinning machines; the slubbing-billy bringing the wool to the state of a soft weak thread, and the spinningmachine giving it the proper firmness and hardness for yarn. The following will give an idea of the appearance and mode of action of the slubbing-billy, as described by Dr. Cre: A A is a wooden frame, within which is a moveable carriage DD, running on lower side-rails aa, on fric tion-wheels 1, 2. The carriage contains a .mber of steel spindies, such as 3, 3, which receive a rapid motion from a long cylinder F, by means of separate cords passing round the pulleys of the respective pindies; this cyander is a long drum of tin plate, six inches in diameter, covered with paper, and extends across the whole breadth of the carriage. The spindles are placed in a frame so as to stand nearly upright at about four inches apart, their lower ends being so formed as to act as pivote. The d: in lies horizontany before the spindles, with its centie a little lower than the line of the spindle-plays. The drom re ceives motion by a pulley at one end with an enota bard from a wheel F, which, is placed on the tale of the main frame, and which is timed by the spurnar, paced at Q, with his right hand applied to a witch, wód by tha movement the spindies are made to revolve rapidly, Kres spindle receives a soft card or slubbing, which comes | This is the object of a second scouring process, in wi through beneath a wooden roller CC, at one end of the frame. A child is employed here, who brings the cardings from the card-engine, and places them upon an inclined cloth between B and C. These cardings, being drawn beneath the roller, are then caught between two rails at G, and there held fast. The wire 7, the lever 6, and the wheel 5, are all concerned in the loosening of the carding from the rails at a particular period in the operation. The movement then is very similar to that in Hargreave's spinning-jenny; a small portion of each carding is allowed to pass between the rails or clasp; and this portion is then drawn out or elongated to the state of a thread by the recession of the carriage towards the other end of the frame. Meanwhile the spindles have been kept in motion, by which a slight twist is imparted to the thread or slubbing. The faller-wire 8, and the rail 4, assist in regulating the winding of the thread uniformly on the spindles. The process then is thus conducted: a child, called a piecener, takes the cardings from the cardingmachine, and lays them on the inclined apron; they are thence carried up beneath the roller and between the clasp, and the workman or slubber,' by managing his moveable carriage with one hand, and the wheel which turns the spindles with the other, elongates the carding' into 'slubbing,' and winds it on the spindles. The pieceners are employed and paid by the slubber; and some years ago great cruelty was said to be inflicted on the children by the workmen for any neglect of their duty; but the inspectorship of factories has removed such sources of discredit to the factory system. In the spinning of the wool, which follows the slubbing, the kind of machines employed and the general character of the processes are so similar to those exhibited in the cotton manufacture, that it will suffice to refer to COTTON SPINNING and SPINNING for details. the cloth is beaten with wooden mallets in a kind of the or mill; soap and water being let in upon it first, and th clear water. Being then carried to the drying-roc. the tenter-ground, it is stretched out by means of hooks rails, and allowed to dry in a smooth and extended sis It is then taken into a room and examined by 'burk who pick out all irregular threads, hairs, or dirt. A this it is ready for the important process of fulling felting, which imparts to woollen goods that peculiarity surface whereby they are distinguished from all others. large mass of cloth folded into many plies is put into fulling-mill, where it is exposed to the long-contin action of two heavy wooden mallets or stocks. Supert cloth has four fullings of three hours each, a thick solutad of soap being spread between each layer of cloth ev. time. During the violent percussions which the ch thus receives for twelve hours, the fibres, being at ( stroke strongly impelled together, and driven into closest possible contact, at length hook into each other b means of the little serrations on their surfaces, until the become firmly and inextricably united; each thread. b of the warp and weft, being so compacted with those are contiguous to it, that the whole seems formed into substance, not liable, like other woven goods, to unra when cut with the scissors. This compacting proces the cloth manufacture is effected by beating, and is cal fulling; in the hat-manufacture it is effected by pre and rolling, and is called 'felting; but the two are clear analogous in principle. This process thickens the clo remarkably, but diminishes it both in length and breadt nearly one half.* In the fulled state the cloth presents a woolly and ro appearance, to improve which it goes through the p cesses of teazling or raising, and shearing or cutte the object of the first being to raise the ends of the fibres The process next following that of spinning is weaving, above the surface, and of the second to cut them off to a by which the yarn is worked up into a textile fabric. If it uniform level. be a plain cloth, the loom employed is very simple in its thistle-heads, teazling-cards, or wire brushes. Teazles sit The raising of the fibres is effected b arrangements; if it be a twill or an ornamental fabric, the the seed-pods of the dipsacus fullonum [TEAZLE], having loom is somewhat more complex ; but the general arrange- small hooked points on their surfaces; and they wer ments will be sufficiently understood by a reference to formerly used in the cloth manufacture thus: a number WEAVING. Hitherto woollen cloths have been principally these were put into a small frame with handles, so as to woven by hand-weavers; but the power-loom is every year form a kind of curry-comb; and this was worked by t becoming more and more applied to this purpose. Some men over the surface of the cloth, which was suspended of the cloths are woven as broad as twelve-quarters, to horizontally, the direction of working being first paralle sequent process of fulling, but for an edging or 'list,' made trouble required to clean the barbs of the teazles when allow not only for the shrinkage occasioned in the sub-with the warp, and then parallel with the weft. From the either of goats' hair or of coarse yarn, into which the tenter-hooks are thrust in the process of tentering. As the wool has been dressed with oil before spinning, and of weaving to augur Attempts have from time to time been made to produce a cloth f with size before weaving, it becomes necessary to cleanse great strength in the felt of a hat (similarly produced) would seem tot ber well for such attempts. But hitherto the encouragement given has not it from these impurities immediately after the weaving. such as to render the project commercially successful., filled with woollen fibres, from the weakening of their points by the water with which the cloth was saturated, and from the high price which the large demand enabled them to command in the market, numerous attempts were made from time to time to substitute metallic points; but we believe that from various causes the teazles are still preferred, and are now used in a more efficacious way than formerly. The teazles are arranged on a cylinder in a machine called a 'gig-mill; the cloth is stretched on two cloth-beams; the cylinder moves in one direction and the cloth in another, and the fibres become thereby worked or h Gig-Mill. combed up. The annexed cut shows the section of such a machine; where the cloth, passing from a roller h, round the roller i, comes in contact with the brushes con the wheel a, and afterwards passes round g and to the roller k; the roller g being so regulated by the pinion and the rack m as to keep the cloth thoroughly stretched; and the revolving brush f being so adjusted as to clean the teazling-cards c. In some recent machines the teazling-points are made of wire, to obviate the waste of 3000 natural teazles, which takes place in the dressing of one piece of cloth; but still the old teazles seem to maintain their supremacy. When the ends of the fibres have been thus raised to the surface, they are next sheared or cropped, a process of great beauty and singularity. Originally this process was performed by means of large hand-shears, the cloth being stretched over a stuffed table, and the workman proceeding to clip the ends of the fibres in a regular and equable manner. This was an operation requiring great dexterity; and the men who worked at it, being in the receipt of good wages, were so alarmed at the introduction of shearing machines, in the early part of the present century, that serious riots occurred in the west of England. But the machines became by degrees extensively employed. They consisted each of a pair of shears, as in the handmethod; but all the movements were effected by machinery. More recently a machine has been introduced whose action is regulated on a different principle, as will be seen from the annexed cut: bbb are disk-formed cutters, working against a thin bar of steel a a a, of a semicircular form; which cutters in their revolution travel round against the edge of the bar or blade in such a way as to shave off the filaments standing up on the surface of the cloth beneath. The cloth is represented by the shaded part. The wheel ccc, set in motion by machinery, imparts action to the circular cutters attached to it through the medium of the rack d d. It is easy to see that, whether the machine travels along over the cloth, or the cloth travels along beneath the machine, every part of the fibrous surface is acted upon in precisely the same way by the double rotation of the wheel and the disk-cutters. When the cloth has been raised and sheared (which operations are repeated two or three times for superfine cloth), it is brushed by a machine consisting of a system of brushes affixed to cylinders; the cloth being exposed at the same time to the action of the brushes and of steam. A few subsequent operations are carried on, having for P. C., No. 1749. Cloth-shearing Machine. A few remarks might here be made on the different kinds of goods coming under the denomination of 'woollen manufactures;' but it will be convenient first to notice the chief PROCESSES OF THE WORSTED MANUFACTURE. All The long wools for worsted fabrics, not requiring to undergo the felting process, pass through a circle of operain view is rather to lay the fibres in a parallel position than tions different from those hitherto noticed; since the object to twist and entangle them one among another. combing-wools are longer in fibre than the clothing-wools, but they are subject to the division into 'long' and 'short' combing-wools; the long, varying from six to twelve inches in length, being used principally for coarse worsted goods, and the short, from four to seven inches, being used for hosiery and some other purposes. 6 from the adherent grease, and dried in a heated room, it is After the wool has been sorted, washed, and scoured carried to a machine called a plucker,' containing a pair of spiked rollers, by the action of which the wool is cleansed, separated, and the fibres straightened, preparatory to the process of combing.' In hand-combing, which, until rather laborious work, the proceedings are somewhat as modern times, was the only mode followed, and which is follow:-The comber is provided with a pair of combs such as are here represented, a comb-post to which to Wool-Combs. d attach the combs, and a comb-pot or stove for heating the teeth. Each comb consists of two rows of steel teeth, b, one row longer than the other, inserted in a wooden stock or head c, from which protrudes a handle d, at right angles to the direction of the teeth. Some combs have three rows of teeth. The workman first heats the teeth of one of the combs in the stove, and fixes it in the post, teeth uppermost. He then takes a small handful of wool, consisting of about four ounces, sprinkles it with oil to increase the pliancy and ductility of the filaments, and works it about between his hands to equalize the oil on every part of the fibres. The comber then takes half the bundle of oiled wool, and dashes it on the upturned teeth of the comb, till it is all deposited there, and caught between the teeth sufficiently firm to be retained. The comb with its wool is placed, points downwards, in the stove; and t VOL. XXVII-4 B way to others, point to the diverse applications of longwool in the production of woven fabrics; while kerseymere and other names indicate distinctions in the felted-wool goods. But besides these diversities, there are others depending on various circumstances; such as the admixture of woollen with worsted, or of either of them with cotton or silk, in the same fabric; the dyeing of the material, sometimes in the piece, sometimes uniformly in the yarn, and sometimes in a party-coloured mode called 'clouding; and the printing of devices on one surface. A few examples may suffice to illustrate this diversity, and may also show why it has not been deemed necessary to devote separate articles to these fabrics in previous parts of the Cyclopædia,' except in a few cases. Plain broad-cloth is a specimen of plain weaving, followed by the fulling process; whereas kerseymere is a twilled fabric, similarly fulled. Serges are twills, having worsted warp and coarse woollen weft. Blankets are made of very soft yarn, afterwards worked up into a kind of pile by milling; and many varieties of coarse cloth are of analogous structure. Bombazeen [BOMBAZEEN] is a twilled mixture of worsted and silk; whereas Poplin is an untwilled mixture, showing more silk than worsted at the surface. Modern goods called Saxonies and Orleans are made of woollen, sometimes mixed with cotton, and afterwards printed. Stuff is made wholly of worsted; while Merino is a fine woollen twill, sometimes printed. The material called Cashmere, if properly so named, is made of the shawlgoat wool, much in the same way as merino; but most of the fabrics so called are made of sheep's wool. Challis is a mixture of woollen weft with silk warp, and is generally printed. Mousseline-de-laine was originally all wool, but is now frequently mixed with cotton, and generally printed. Norwich crape, unlike common crape [CRAPE], is composed of wool and silk, something like challis, but without being printed. Crépe de Lyon is formed of worsted and silk; and Italian net of worsted only. These examples are only intended to indicate the sources of the varieties in woollen and worsted goods, for to enumerate all the varieties themselves would be nearly impossible. This is particularly the case in respect to Waistcoatings, where ancy-weaving adds another to the sources of diversity. Various details have been given, at different times and in different forms, to illustrate the distribution of these manufactures, in respect to the towns where they are carried on and the goods produced at each; but the most satisfactory, perhaps, are those given by Mr. McCulloch, in the Statistical Account of the British Empire;' and from that work we will borrow the following details. The West Riding of Yorkshire, the most important clothing-district in England, exhibits an area of nearly 40 miles by 20 occupied by clothing towns and villages. Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and Wakefield are the great manufacturing centres. Mixed or coloured cloths are made principally in the villages west of Leeds and of Wakefield; white or undyed clothis are made chiefly in the villages occupying a belt of country extending from near Wakefield to Shipley. These two districts are tolerably distinct; but at the margins of the two, both kinds of eloth are manufactured. Flannels and baizes are the principal woollen articles made in and near Halifax, together with cloth for the use of the army. Blankets are made on the line between Leeds and Huddersfield. Bradford provides very largely the spun worsted required for the various manufactures. Stuffs are made at Bradford, Halifax, and Leeds; and narrow cloths at Huddersfield. Saddleworth furnishes broad-cloth and kerseymeres. In the neighbourhood of Batley and Dewsbury are establishments called 'shoddy mills,' employed in the manufacture of yarn from old woollen rags, which is used in the weaving of some coarse kinds of goods. The West of England takes rank next to Yorkshire, and formerly took precedence of it. The finest kinds of broadcloth, from Saxony, Australia, and Spanish wool, are made in Gloucestershire. The manufacture is carried on in a district called the Bottoms, and in other parts of the county; the town of Stroud being a kind of centre for the whole. There are more than a hundred woollen factories in GlouCestershire, besides the numerous villages of small houses inhabited by hand-loom weavers. Wiltshire produces very ne cloths, at Bradford, Trowbridge, Westbury, Melksham, Chippenham, and the surrounding villages; while cloth of various kinds is made at Wilton, Warminster, Heytes fi | bury, and Calne. Taunton, Frome, Tiverton, and the surrounding villages constitute the Somersetshire clothing district. Devonshire and Dorset have little woollen manufacture. There is another district as distinctly marked from the two just noticed as they are from each other: this is the Norfolk district, which was long the principal seat of the stuff' or worsted manufacture. Indeed the name worsted' is said to have been derived from the name of a parish in Norfolk, where stuffs were first made; but there are not wanting those who refer it to Ostudes, the name given to them by the early Flemish weavers. Bombazeens, crapes, camlets, and shawls have constituted the chief fabrics for which Norfolk has been celebrated; but the manufactures in this county are understood to be declining, chiefly on account of the absence of coal, which has caused a large share of the operations from both Norfolk and the West of England to be transferred to Yorkshire; indeed it is said that most of the yarn now used in Norfolk is spun at Bradford in Yorkshire. These are the three great districts engaged in the consumption of wool; to which may be added Leicestershire, where nearly all the worsted stockings are made, employing ten or twelve thousand stocking-frames. But besides these, there are minor articles of manufacture which seem to have become located in particular spots in various parts of England. Druggets and long-el's, the latter of which were formerly much purchased by the East India Company, are made in Devon and Cornwall. Plush is made at Modbury in Devonshire. Baize, which used to be made largely in Essex, is now chiefly made at Rochdale. Salisbury produces flannels; and Witney and Chichester blankets. Kidderminster, Wilton, Cirencester, Worcester, and Axminster are the chief seats of the carpet-manufacture. Coarse woollens and druggets are made largely at Kendal, Keswick, and Ambleside. Druggets, shalloons, and serges are made at Andover, Basingstoke, and Alton; worsted shag at Banbury and Coventry; rugs at Burford; fleecyhosiery at Godalming; bunting and crape in many parts of Suffolk. In Wales the principal manufactures relating to wool and worsted are strong webs' or high-country cloths,' small webs' or low-country cloths,' flannels, stockings, socks, wigs, and gloves; the chief counties being Montgomery, Merioneth, and Denbigh. The strong webs' are used principally for workmen's jackets, ironing cloths, &c.; while the small webs' are largely used for slaves' clothing in the West Indies. In Scotland the fine woollen manufacture is upon a very limited scale; but a good deal is done at Aberdeen, Stirling, Galashiels, Jedburgh, Hawick, Inverness, Kilmarnock, and Paisley, in the production of various kinds of woollen and worsted goods, such as coarse plaiding, clan-tartans, woollen-hose, blankets, flannels, and especially carpets and shawls. The manufactures of woollen and worsted goods in Ireland, owing to the unsettled state in which that country has unfortunately been placed, are quite insignificant. MODE OF CONDUCTING THE MANUFACTURE AND SALE. Different usages prevail in different counties respecting the connection between employers and employed, buyers and sellers, in the woollen and worsted manufactures. In the West of England the general plan of operation is this:The master-clothier buys his foreign wool from the importer, and his English wool from the wool-stapler. He employs in all the different processes through which the wool passes in the course of manufacture, distinct classes of persons, who sometimes work at their own houses, and sometimes in the factory of the master-clothier. Each workman confines himself exclusively to a particular branch of the manufacture; and this has been supposed to have led to the excellence of the West of England cloth. A second mode is on the factory-system, now extensively adopted in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The mastermanufacturer, who sometimes possesses a large amount of capital, employs a great number of workmen in one or more buildings, under the inspection of himself or a superintendent. In this system, as in the master-clothier system, the workman has no property in the material on which he in employed. In the domestic system, which was the one origina" adopted, the arrangement is altogether different. 4B2 |