CHAPTER XVII
FROM FIBER TO FABRIC
IT IS NOT very long since the spinning wheel and the clacking loom were an indispensable furnishing of every farmhouse and of many city dwellings as well. With infinite patience the fleece of sheep, the lint of flax, the filaments of silk and the fibers of cotton were spun into yarn and then woven into cloth, and it was the nimble fingers of the housewife that carried the process through from the matted raw product to the finished garment.
It is comparatively easy to comprehend the development of machines for dealing with such gross material as earth, rock, iron, and wood, but when we come to consider the infinitely delicate and almost imponderable fibers that go to make up our textiles, the marvel is that any but highly skilled human hands, guided by keen eyesight, could combine the tangled and obstreperous filaments into fine yarn and weave this yarn into complicated patterns of cloth. But the spinning wheel and hand loom could not stand long in the path of power-driven machinery, and now huge, blind machines, with stiff, unbending fingers of metal, comb out the matted masses of raw material, remove the dirt and twigs, straighten out the snarls far quicker and better than could be done by hand, and transform the fibers into beautiful fabrics such as in former days would have been the envy of kings.
We cannot attempt to describe all the machinery involved in the spinning and weaving of yarn, but it is highly important that every well-informed person have a general knowledge of textile machinery. Because cotton cloth is more widely used than either linen or wool, we shall confine ourselves to the cotton branch of the textile industry, particularly as the difference between the treatment of cotton and other textile materials lies chiefly in the preparation of the thread or yarn.
The predominance of cotton among textiles may be traced back to the invention of a young New Englander fresh from college, who went to Georgia as a private tutor, only to find when he got there that some one else had been engaged in his stead, leaving him stranded and practically penniless in a strange land. We had occasion to refer to this man in Chapter III. Eli Whitney was a born mechanic, and before entering college had not only shown great skill but had actually built up a thriving business in the manufacture of nails, hatpins and knife blades.