Bobbin-net meshes.
But a time was coming when as much bobbin-net as the patentees of the first frame charged five pounds for would be sold for half-a-crown; and when, as a necessary consequence of this cheapness, lace-making as a domestic employment would wholly cease, or be confined to the production of an expensive article, supposed to be superior to machine-made lace. That the old hand-labour could compete with the machine was an impossibility. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made on the pillow at the rate of about three meshes per minute. A bobbin-net machine will produce similar lace at the rate of twenty-four thousand meshes per minute, one person only beingrequired to wait upon the machine. Those who have watched the cottage lace-maker, working with her bobbins and pins, were unable, without long observation, to understand the principle upon which she intertwined the threads. But to explain the more rapid working of the bobbin-net machine would require such a minute acquaintance with all its parts as belongs to the business of the practical machinist, and which words are inadequate to exhibit. The accompanying engraving offers the best notion we can furnish.
Essential parts of the bobbin-net machine.
The warp, ascending from the beam A, passes through small holes in a guide-bar B, and thence to the point C, where the bobbins in their respective combs, driven by the ledges on the two bars beneath, traverse the warp to and fro, and interlace the threads as shown at D; the points E assisting to maintain the forms of the meshes.
Instead of England being now supplied with lace from France and Belgium, we are now an exporting lace-country. In 1848 we exported cotton lace and net to the amount of 363,255l.; in 1853 to the amount of 596,578l.
According to the census of 1851, the number of persons employed in the lace manufacture was 63,660; of whom 54,080 were females. The same returns give the number of 4658 embroiderers.
There is an article employed in dress which is at once so necessary and so beautiful that the highest lady in the land uses it, and yet so cheap that the poorest peasant's wife is enabled to procure it. The quality of the article is as perfect as art can make it; and yet, from the enormous quantities consumed by the great mass of the people, it is made so cheap that the poor can purchase the best kind, as well as the rich. It is an article of universal use. United with machinery, many hundreds, and even thousands, are employed in making it. But if the machinery were to stop, and the article were made by human hands alone, it would become so dear that the richest only could afford to use it; and it would become at the same time so rough in its appearance, that those very rich would be ashamed of using it. The article we mean is a Pin.