The inseparable duties of studying the composition of the various animal and vegetable fabrics, as also their nature—when in contact with the various mineral, vegetable, animal, and gaseous bodies applied in the individual industries—should not devolve upon the heads, chemists, or managers of firms alone. It is most important that every intelligent workman, whom we cannot expect to acquire a very extensive knowledge of chemistry and perfect acquaintance of the particular nature and component parts of fabrics, should, at least, be able to thwart the possibility of the majority of accidents brought about in regard to the quality and aspect of materials treated by them.
In the treatment of wool the first operations are of no mean importance, and the whole subsequent operations and final results, almost as a whole, depend on the manner in which the fleece washing had been effected. In presence of suintine, as also fatty matters, as well as the countless kinds of acids deposited on the wool through exudation from the body, etc., the various agents and materials cannot act and deposit as evenly as might be desired, and the complete obliteration of the former, therefore, becomes an absolute necessity.
For vegetable fabrics a great technical and practical knowledge is already requisite in their cultivation itself, and before any operations are necessary at all. One of the greatest points is the ripeness of the fibers. It is almost an impossibility to produce delicate colors on vegetable fabrics which were gathered inopportunely. Numerous experiments have been made on cotton containing smaller or larger quantities of unripe fibers, and after the necessary preceding operations, have been dyed in rose, purple, and blue colors, and the beauty of the shades invariably differed in proportion to the greater or lesser quantities of unripe fibers contained in the samples, and by a careless admixture of unripe and unseasoned fibers the most brilliant colors have been completely spoiled in the presence of the former. These deficiencies of unripe vegetable fibers are so serious that the utmost precautions should be taken, not only by planters to gather the fibers in a ripe state, but the natural aspect of ripe and unripe fibers and their respective differences should be known to the operators of the individual branches in the cotton industry themselves.
The newest vegetable fabrics, as ma (China grass), pina, abaca, or Manila hemp, agave, jute, and that obtained from the palm tree, must be tended with equal care to that of cotton. The ma, or China grass, is obtained from the Boehmeria nivea, as also from the less known Boehmeria puya. The fibers of this stalk, after preparing and bleaching, have the whiteness of snow and the brilliancy of silk. By a special process—the description of which we must for the present leave in abeyance—the China grass can be transformed into a material greatly resembling the finest quality of wool. The greatest advantage afforded in the application of China grass is, moreover, that the tissues produced with this fiber are much more easily washed than silks, and in this operation they lose none of their beauty or their quality.
The abaca is produced from the fibrous parts of the bark of the wild banana tree, found in the Philippines. Its botanical denomination is Musa troglodytarum. The abaca fiber is not spun or wrung, but is jointed end to end. The threads are wound and subsequently beaten for softening, and finally bleached by plunging in lime water for twenty-four hours, and dried in the sun.
The pina is a fiber obtained from the leaf of the anana tree (Bromelias ananas), and is prepared in the same way as the abaca, but extreme care must in this case be observed in culling the fibers, in order to sort in accordance with their degree of fineness.
The Arabs manufacture the stuff for their tents with a mixture of camel's hair and the fibrous flocks (kind of wadding) obtained from the stalks of the wafer palm (the Chamærops humilis).
The tissues used by the Arabs are coarse and colored, but the palm fibers—when freed from gluten, which makes them adhere more strongly—are susceptible to divide in a most astonishing manner.
The Agave americana is a coarse fiber, mostly used in France for the manufacture of Gobelin carpets and the production of ropes. Great efforts have been made to bleach it in a satisfactory manner, as is done with the Phormium tenax, but the former kind of fiber resists the ordinary treatment with lyes, etc., and an appropriate bleaching process has only been discovered quite recently.
Jute, which by many is confounded with Phormium tenax, or New Zealand lint, is a fiber which can be divided as finely as desired, and can be most beautifully bleached.