Our main specialty is shoddy.
Ah yes. Shoddy is made from—
From woolen rags. The whole mass is put into a vat and the cotton dissolved out. It comes out in a great wet heap of stuff that has to be washed and dried.
Sometimes they burn the cotton out with gas. For instance you'll see a piece of cloth, grey cloth. The gas will take out the black cotton and leave the wool fibres all running in one direction. One of the secrets of the trade is the selection of the colors. That is red shoddy is made from red rags and so on. But they even take the dyes out of the cloth and use it over again.
You know the army coats the boys wore. They were 70% shoddy. It's all wool but the fibre has been broken. It makes a hard material not like the soft new woven woolens but it's wool, all of it.
After the stuff from the vats is dry they put it on the donkeys which turn it into loose skeins. From that stage it goes on to the making of the yarn for weaving when any quantity of fresh wool can be mixed that you desire.
The shortest fibre, that can't be used for anything else, is made into these workingmen's shirts you see. The wool is held in a container in the loosest state possible. This is connected up with a blower in front of which a loom is set for weaving a fairly tight cotton mesh. Then as the loom is working the wool is BLOWN IN! Where the cotton warp and woof cross the shoddy is caught.
Recently a Jew came in to complain of the lightness of the shirts he was getting. All we did was to yell out, "George turn on the blower a little stronger." One washing and the wool is gone. But the Jews are the smart ones. You got to hand it to them. They invent machinery to do anything with that stuff. Why one man made a million before the government stopped him by making cheap quilts.
He took any kind of rags just as they were collected, filth or grease right on them the way they were and teased them up into a fluffy stuff which he put through a rolling process and made into sheets of wadding. These sheets were fed mechanically between two layers of silkolene and a girl simply sat there with an electric sewing device which she guided with her hand and drew in the designs you see on those quilts, you know.
You've seen this fake oilcloth they are advertising now. Congoleum. Nothing but building paper with a coating of enamel.