Cotton is rarely manufactured where raised. It is carried to the seacoast as a rule by river steamers, though there have been instances where the laziness and ingenuity of man have combined to send it down-stream in bales completely covered with india rubber wrappings, so they floated to their destination with little care and no harm from water.
With all our boasted Yankee shrewdness and cunning in mechanics we do not make up the finer grades of cotton very extensively. As a rule the coarser kinds of cloth that take much material and less skill are made here, while the finer grades that get more value out of the pound of cotton are made abroad, chiefly in Great Britain.
As an indication of this the figures taken in the year 1884 form a striking illustration. The average amount of cotton spun by each spindle in Great Britain that year was thirty-four and a half pounds, while the amount consumed by each spindle in America averaged just sixty-five pounds, showing that the products of our spindles are just twice as heavy on the average as those of the English and Scotch. A fortunate thing about our goods when sent abroad is that they are accurately marked and prove to be very nearly what they are represented. This is not the case with goods shipped out of Great Britain, where their long experience in handling cotton has made them more expert than we in stuffing their goods with sizing and other adulterations which make the goods deceptive. There is so little tendency in this direction among American manufacturers that our good name has given us an advantage in China and India, where our manufactures are much more readily sold than what purport to be the same of British make.
Most of our cotton that is not exported is made up into yarns, threads, and the coarser goods, such as shirtings, sheetings, drills, print cloths, bags, and so forth. Yet there are several of our mills, especially in the North, that turn out the finer fabrics with great credit to the country. Large quantities of cotton are, of course, used up in woolen mills, where mixed goods are made, and hosiery mills, felt factories, and hat works consume it largely. Much cotton also goes into mattresses and upholstery.
It comes from a boll having three or five cells. This bursts open when it is ripe. Cotton fiber is either white or yellow, and varies in length from a little over half an inch to two inches. When gathered it is separated from its clinging seeds by the cotton gin, and is then pressed firmly in bales weighing about five hundred pounds each, although in some countries the customary sizes of bales vary two or three hundred pounds from this weight.
Of the twenty or more varieties of cotton but two are given much attention in the United States. These are the famous sea island cotton and the common, woolly-seed kind. The sea island cotton grows on the islands off the coast of South Carolina, in Florida, and on the coast of Texas. The peculiar salt air and humidity of these coasts seem necessary to its perfection, for when it is planted in the interior it quickly loses its best qualities and becomes similar to the common variety. Its fibers are long and silky, and used for the finest laces, spool cotton, fine muslins, and such goods, but there is so little of it as compared with the woolly seed cotton that it is but an insignificant part of our great crop.
Cotton is the only fibre that is naturally produced ready to be worked directly into cloth without special chemical or mechanical treatment. It is the great article of comfortable and cheap covering for man's person. When gathered and baled it is in a knotted and lumpy state, from which it is rather difficult to extricate the fibers and arrange them for spinning. As we follow the cotton through the mill we come to these machines in the following order: It goes to the opener first, where it is beaten and spread out so that a strong draft of air drives out much of its impurities; it then goes to the scutcher after being formed into laps; the lap machine makes it into flat folds; the carding engine not only cards it but straightens the fiber and gives it another cleaning; in the drawing frame it is arranged in loose ropes with the fibers parallel; then the slubbing frame gives it a slight twist; the intermediate and finishing frames twist it still farther, especially when preparing it for the higher numbers; the throstle frame prepares coarse warps; and on the mules, either self-acting or hand, the coarse or fine yarns are spun. In some systems several operations are performed by the same machine.
Weaving follows. It consists in passing threads over and under each other as a stocking is darned, the main difference being that in darning the needle passes up and down to get over or under the threads it meets, while in weaving the threads met by the moving thread move out of the way so the shuttle may pass straight through the whole width of the cloth. As the shuttle comes back the threads are reversed so that the ones that were up before are now down and those that were down are now up. The machine that holds many threads for this work is the loom.
An English clergyman by the name of Edmund Cartwright has the credit of inventing the power loom. His description of his labors is interesting. We copy from one of his letters: "Happening to be in Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with two gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright's spinning machinery. One of the company observed, that as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work and invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and, in defense of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing, by remarking that there had lately been exhibited an automaton figure which played at chess."
"Some little time afterward, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could only be three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there would be very little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately got a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such material as sail-cloth is usually made of. To my delight a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the product. As I had never before turned my thoughts to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had ever seen a loom at work or knew anything of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was placed perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundred weight and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket.