CELERITY OF CLOTH-MANUFACTURE.
Many accounts have been published of the celerity with which manufacturers of cloth, both English and American, have completed the various parts of the process, from the fleece to the garment. In England the fleece was taken from the sheep, manufactured into cloth, and the cloth made into a coat, in the short space of thirteen hours and twenty minutes. Messrs. Buck, Brewster & Co., proprietors of the Ontario manufactory at Manchester, Vermont, on perusing an account of this English achievement, conceived, from the perfection of their machinery and the dexterity of their workmen, that the same operations might be accomplished even in a shorter time. A wager of five hundred dollars was offered, and accepted, that they would perform the same operations in twelve hours. The wool was taken from the sack in its natural state, and in nine hours and fifteen minutes precisely, the coat was completed, and worn in triumph by one of the party concerned. The wool was picked, greased, carded, roped, and spun,—the yarn was worked, put into the loom and woven,—the cloth was fulled, colored, and four times shorn, pressed, and carried to the tailor’s, and the coat completed,—all within the time above stated. The cloth was not of the finest texture, but was very handsomely dressed, and fitted the person who wore it remarkably well. The only difference between this and the English experiment was the time occupied in shearing the fleece; and any wool-grower knows that this part of the operation may be performed in ten minutes.
CRUDE VALUE versus INDUSTRIAL VALUE.
Algarotti, in his Opuscula, gives the following example to show the prodigious addition of value that may be given to an object by skill and industry. A pound weight of pig-iron costs the operative manufacturer about five cents. This is worked up into steel, of which is made the little spiral spring that moves the balance-wheel of a watch. Each of these springs weighs but the tenth part of a grain, and, when completed, may be sold as high as $3.00, so that out of a pound of iron, allowing something for the loss of metal, eighty thousand of these springs may be made, and a substance worth but five cents be wrought into a value of $240,000.
An American gentleman says, that during a recent visit to Manchester, England, a pound of cotton, which in its crude state may have been worth eight cents, was pointed out to him as worth a pound of gold. It had been spun into a thread that would go round the globe at the equator and tie in a good large knot of many hundred miles in length.