Schutzenberger’s Traité des Matières Colorantes, t. ii. (the most recent and best modern authority); Bancroft’s Philosophy of Permanent Colors, vol. i.; Edinburgh Encyclopædia; Berzelius, Traité de Chimie, t. vi; Chevrueil, Leçons de Chimie Appliquée à Teinture, t. iii.; Dumas, Chimie Appliquée aux Arts, t. viii; Wurtz, Dictionnaire de Chimie, 1872, art. Indigo; Indigo et son Emploi, par De Kæppelin; Annales du Génie Civil, 1864, t. iii.; Lectures of Dr. Grace Calvert, Chemical News, Aug. 9 and 23, 1872; O’Neill’s Dictionary of Dyeing and Printing; Napier’s Chemistry Adapted to Dyeing; Muspratt’s Chemistry Applied to the Arts, articles Indigo and Dyeing; Ure’s Dictionary of Manufactures, ed. of 1860; Proceedings of Royal Society, vol. xvi.; Proceedings of Literary and Philosophic Society of Manchester, vol. iv.; McCulloch’s Dictionary of Commerce, ed. 1869; Dictionnaire Universel du Commerce, &c., ed. 1861; South Carolina Production.—Ramsay’s History; Drayton’s South Carolina; Silliman’s Journal, vol. xviii. A more complete bibliography is given in Schutzenberger’s work.
PART II.
PART II.
We entered upon the subject of indigo, which we have treated at some length in our last issue, as much in the interest of the people as of manufacturers, for we were deeply impressed with the conviction that no improvement in our manufacturing processes would confer more benefit upon the masses than imparting stability of color to the clothing of the people. When one has a deep conviction upon a subject, upon which others have equal opportunities for judging, he may be sure that he is not alone in his impressions. He is moved by one of those waves of thought which, operating simultaneously upon many minds, gives that uniformity to public opinion at which we so often wonder. We are gratified to find, from responses to our last article, that we are not alone in our conviction of the importance of reviving “true blue” dyes. The head of a mercantile house, the extent of whose clientèle in mills both of wool and cotton is hardly surpassed, has assured us that we have not overstated the reform in dyeing which we have advocated. He had long shared in our convictions. Pointing to the throng of men in the crowded street, where we were conversing, he remarked that there was hardly a man in the crowd whose clothing would not have been improved by indigo dye. “The failure to use indigo dyes,” he emphatically said, “costs the laboring people of this country millions of dollars every year. The fault is not to be charged to our own manufacturers alone; for the blue coat which I wear, and which I bought in Paris, annoys me by the crocking caused by its aniline dye.” In one very large mill of which he is director as well as selling agent, he is putting his principles in practice. All the heavy blue cloths intended for popular consumption are faithfully dyed, and each bears a stamp, “Warranted indigo dyed.” The ready-made clothing establishments which largely consume these goods have already found their advantage in purchasing them, and a similar stamp is attached to each article made from this cloth.
Some of our most celebrated cotton fabrics have won and still retain their reputation by the use of indigo dyes. The ginghams are a signal illustration. The blue check is formed by weaving cotton yarns dyed blue in the cold indigo vat with undyed yarns. These goods can be washed indefinitely without change.
Another illustration is the famous A.B.A. Amoskeag tickings, an article of such excellence that the question of the right to use trade-mark A.B.A. gave rise to the leading American case in this branch of law. [3] A prominent feature in these goods was and still is the permanence of the dye in the blue stripe, produced by the cold indigo vat. Still another illustration is the blue and white “shirting stripe” first made by Mr. Samuel Batchelder, at the Hamilton Mills, now so generally adopted for sailors’ shirts. The indigo dye enables the color to resist the roughest possible usage.
To recur to the application of indigo dyeing to wool and woollens. We have been unable, although we have written more than fifty letters of inquiry upon the subject, to learn of any peculiarity or improvements in the American processes of wool dyeing with indigo. [4] Our dyers are for the most part foreigners. For this reason, or because the art of indigo dyeing has long since reached perfection in the best establishments abroad, they rigidly pursue the old European methods. The best dyers regard the successful management of the warm fermenting vats for wool as the highest test of their art. We have already spoken of the complicity of the phenomena in fermentations. Practical dyers endow the fermenting vat with a sort of personality. “An indigo vat,” says one to us, “is more like a sick man than any thing in the world: you have to watch it as you would a sick patient, and give it physic or ferments to stir up the system and purify it.” [5] The diagnosis of a sick vat requires that sort of instinctive knowledge which experience gives to the practised physician. The impatience of our young Americans will not permit them to serve the long apprenticeship necessary to acquire the proper experience. The artisans not thoroughly trained will naturally prefer the dyes and processes introduced by modern science, which require but little skill in their application. It is a curious fact that the influence of the national government has been largely instrumental in preserving the old system of indigo dyeing. Thanks to the Quartermaster-General’s Bureau, or the man of science, General Meigs, who presides over it, indigo dyed cloths have been persistently insisted upon for the army. The late war gave a new impulse to indigo dyeing. A skilled dyer, whom we have consulted, was constantly employed in Connecticut, on a tour of professional inspection of a dozen or more different establishments making army goods. No doctor, he says, ever found in hospital practice more complications of disease than he found in the ailing vats. Among other difficulties there was a deficiency of imported woads, although the cultivation of excellent woad immediately sprung up in Connecticut. In the mean time carrot and rhubarb tops were used as substitutes for the fermenting material of the woad. Carrot-tops grown expressly for that purpose brought as high as twenty-five cents per pound. Since the war the requisitions for indigo dyed woollen goods have not relaxed, and the art is not likely to be lost.
With the real difficulties which attend the process, it is hard for indigo dyeing to sustain itself in the face of cheap substitutes of easy application, such as the Nicholson blue. It is exceedingly difficult to piece dye with indigo and preserve a uniform hue upon the cloth. Hence indigo dyes are generally given in the wool. The wool absorbing the foreign material of the dye is more difficult to work in the operations of carding and spining. In other words, a finer and costlier wool is required. A great desideratum therefore is a means of piece dyeing with indigo so as to preserve a perfect uniformity of hue throughout the piece. This, we are happy to say, has been recently successfully accomplished by one of the largest and most faithful of our cloth-making establishments. It would be premature, before the patents are secured for this invention, to explain the ingenious and expensive apparatus devised for this purpose, which constitutes in fact a battery of vats so arranged that the operation may be continuous. The experiments authorize the statement that bottom dyes of indigo, so desirable for a great variety of colors, can be applied with no other additional cost than that of the dyeing material. When this establishment, as it proposes, stamps upon the cards which designate goods, already so admirable in material and texture, “Warranted indigo dyed,” we shall regard it as an era in the American card-wool manufacture.
The old European woad vat process is that used in all our establishments. Mr. Henderson of the Washington Mills, whose experience as a practical dyer of wool is exceptionally large, informs us that he has found no work so instructive upon this process as Napier’s “Chemistry of Dyeing” (published by Henry Carey Baird, of Philadelphia, 1869). Napier’s description of the process is extracted from Dumas’s “Lectures on Dyeing.” The appreciation expressed by so competent a judge induces us to reprint Dumas’s description in an appendix to this article.