WOOL SHEARING AND WEAVING
Sheep are of value for various things: their meat, which so many like; their skins, from which parchment and fine leather are made; their bones, used in making buttons; their fat, for soap and candles; but most of all their wool, which has long been the most valued product. So here I must tell the story of this very useful animal fibre.
Go back as far as we can in history we read of the sheep-shearing. You may find it spoken of in the early parts of the Bible as a time of feasting and merry-making. In many countries it is a festival time. In past ages people seem to have cared more for the wool than for the meat, though now sheep are kept as much for their mutton as for their wool.
In the past the custom was to pull the wool from the sheep at the molting season. This is the time when the sheep shed their wool and when it comes out easily. But it is at times a cruel process, as the skin may come off with the wool. It is still done in Ireland and in parts of Europe, but the common custom in these days is to cut the wool with a sort of tool or machine. This cuts the wool in a smooth and even manner and does not hurt the sheep. It also can be done in much less time. When in the old way it took half an hour to shear a sheep, in the new way it can be done in ten minutes or less.
The sheep should be washed and the wool cleaned before they are sheared and this is done in our country and in some others. But in many places it is not done and the fleece is cut with all the grease and sweat in it. Of course, these fleeces have to be washed by the buyers, and do not bring so good a price.
Shall I say something about the uses of wool? In all times it has been used for making cloth for clothing, and spinning and weaving are very old duties of the household. If wool is made damp and then pounded it clings together so as to form a kind of felt, and in our times much wool is used in this way to make felts for hats, carpets and shoes.
Felting is a simple process, but in weaving there are many things to be done. The wool has to be combed out, spun into yarn, and handled in other ways before it can be woven into cloth and fitted for making into clothes.
All this business of yarn-making and weaving is now done in great factories, fitted with machines, which rattle and roar as they swiftly change the rough fleeces of wool into smooth sheets of cloth. But all this work in former times had to be done at home, in a much slower way, from which there came a rough, coarse cloth called homespun.
This was the way in use in this country in the times of the colonies. Many of the old spinning-wheels, by which the wool was spun into yarn, are still kept and may be seen in museums, and some of the old looms by which the yarn was woven into cloth are also to be seen.
It was hard work for the women of the house to make the clothing of the family in this slow way. A suit of clothes then had to be worn for a long time, for they took too much labor in the making to be thrown aside as quickly as they now are. It was in these homespun clothes that our soldiers won freedom in the Revolution, and they were woven after that date. But in time the factory came, cloth grew plentiful and cheap, and the rattle of the old spinning-wheel was no longer heard in the land.