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TEXTILES. · Inventions of the Century

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  Section nineteen of Inventions in the Century. This is a LibriVox recording. All
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  Liberalvox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by yoganand Inventions in the Century by William
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  Henry Dolittle, Chapter eighteen. Textiles. Spinning a bunch of combed fiber fixed
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  in the forked end of a stick called a distaff, held under the left
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  arm, while with the right forefinger and thumb the housewife all maiden deftly drew
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  out and twisted a thread of yarn of the fiber, and wounded upon a
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  stick called the spindle. Was the art of spinning that came down to Europe
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  from ancient Egypt or India without a change through all the centuries to at least
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  the middle of the fourteenth century AD in England to the time of Henry the
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  eighth. Then the spinning wheel was introduced, which is said to have also
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  been long in New in India. By the use of the wheel, the
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  spindle was no longer held in the hand, but set upon a frame and
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  connected by a cord. A belt to the wheel was made to whirl by
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  turning the wheel by hand or by a treaddle. The spindle was connected to
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  the bunch of cotton by a cord, or by a single rowing of cotton
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  or wool attached to the spindle, which was held between the finger and thumb,
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  and as a spindle revolved, the thread was drawn out and twisted,
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  and worn by the spindle upon itself. In the cloth of the ancient East,
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  the warp and weft were both of cotton. In England, the wharf
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  was linen and the weft was cotton. The wharf was made by the cloth
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  and linen manufacturers, and the lefty arns furnished by the woman spinsters throughout the
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  country. By both these methods, only a single thread at a time was
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  spun. The principle of the spinning operation, the drying out and twisting a
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  thread a cord from a bunch or roll of fiber, as remained the same
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  through old time. The light and delicate work, the pure and soft material,
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  and the beauty and usefulness of raiments produced have all through time made woman,
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  the natural goddess, the patroness and the votary of this art. The
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  object of all modern machinery, however complicated or wonderful has simply been to increase
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  the speed and efficiency of the ancient mode of operation, and to multiply its
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  results. The loom, that antique frame on which the threats were laid in
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  one direction to form the warp, and crossed by the yarns in the opposite
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  direction, carried through the warp by the shuttle thrown by hand to form the
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  woof or whift, comprised a device as old as, if not older,
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  then the distaff and spindle. The ancient and isolated races of Mexico had also
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  learned the art of spinning and weaving. When the Spaniards first entered that country,
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  they found the natives clothed in cotton, woven plane, or in many
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  colors. After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to jaun K of
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  Berry, England that the weaving process might be improved. In seventeen thirty three
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  he had succeeded in inventing the picker motion picker peg of fly. This consisted
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  of a mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the web by a sudden jerk
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  of a bar, one at each side, operated by pulling a cord.
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  He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by hand, make wider
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  cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men had
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  done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the weavers were
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  continually calling on the spindlers for more left yarns. This set the wits of
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  inventors at work to better the spinning means. At the same time that kay
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  was struggling with his invention of the flying shuttle, another poor man, but
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  with less success, had conceived another idea as to spinning. John Wyatt of
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  Litchfield thought it would be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton
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  or wool between two sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held
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  and fed by one set of rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn
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  up by the eye set of rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention,
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  although not then used, was patented in seventeen thirty eight by Lewis Paul,
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  who in time won a fortune by it, while Wyatt died poor,
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  and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt, was a true inventor.
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  About seventeen sixty four, a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreave's,
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  an English waver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an invention that
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  was as important as that of k He was studying hard how to get up
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  a machine to meet the viewer's demands for cotton yarns. One day, while
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  Hargreave was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of them upset the spinning
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  wheel, probably in a children's frolic. And after it fell, and while
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  lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle in a vertical position, and
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  the wheel and the spindle still running, the idea flashed into Hargreaves's mind that
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  a number of spindles might be placed upright and run from the same power.
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  Thus prompted, he commenced burg working in secret and at awd, and finally,
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  after two or three years, completed a crude machine, which he called
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  the spinning Jenny. Some say after his wife, and others that the name
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  came from Gin, the common abbreviated name of an engine. This machine had
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  eight or ten spindles, driven by cords of belts from the same wheel,
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  and operated behind a foot. The rowings at one end were attached to the
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  spindles, and the opposite portions, held together and drawn out by a clasp
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  held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently, it
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  was bound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus,
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  finally were means provided to supply the demands of the weftyards. One person with
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  one of Hargreave's machines could in the same time spin as much as twenty or
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  thirty persons with their wheels. But those who had to be most benefited by
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  the invention were the most alarmed for fear of the destruction of their business,
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  and they arose in their wrath and demolished hargreaves labors. It was a hard
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  time for inventors. The law of England then was that patents were invalid if
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  the invention was made known before the patent was applied for, and part of
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  the public insisted on demolishing the invention if it was so made known. So
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  that to avoid the law and the lawless, the harressed inventors kept and worked
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  the inventions in secret as long as they could. Hargreaves fled to Nottingham,
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  where works were soon started with the spinning genies. The ideas of k Hyatt
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  and Hargreaves are said to have been anticipated in Italy. There were makers of
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  clothes at Florence, and also in Spain and the Netherlands, who were far
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  in advance of the English and French in this art. But the descriptions of
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  the missionary employed by them are too vague and scanty to sustain the allegation.
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  And now the long ice age of handworking was breaking up, and the age
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  of machine production was fast setting in Hargraves was in the midst of his troubles
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  and his early triumphs in seventeen sixty five to seventeen sixty nine when Richard Arkwright
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  entered the field. Arkwright, first a barber, and then a traveling buyer
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  of hair, and finally a Knight, learned as he traveled through Lancashire,
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  Litchfield, Blackburn and Nottingham of the inventions and labors of Wyat, Kay and
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  Hargreaves, possessed as he was, of some mechanical skill and inventive genius,
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  and, realizing that the harvest was ripe and the laborer's few, entered the
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  field of inventions and with the help of k revived the old ideas of John
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  Wyatt and Lewis Paul of spinning by rollers, which had now slumbered for thirty
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  years. Kay and Arkwright constructed a working model, and on this arkright,
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  by hard pushing and hard work, obtained capital and improved, completed and patented
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  his machine. The machine was first used by him in a mill erected at
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  Nottingham and worked by horses, then at Cromford, and in this smell the
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  power used to drive the spinning machine was a water wheel. His invention was
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  therefore given the name of the water frame, which it retained long after steam
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  had been substituted for water as a driving parker. It was also named the
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  throstle from the fact that it gave a humming or singing sound while at work,
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  but it is commonly known as a drawing frame. Arkwright patented useful improvements.
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  He had to contend with mobs and with the coats, which combined to
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  destroy his machines and his patent, but he finally succeeded in establishing mills and
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  in earning from the government manufacturers in the public a great and well merited munificence.
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  It's a remarkable coincidence that Watt's steam engine patent and Arkwright's first patent for
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  his spinning machine were issued in the same year seventeen sixteen nine. The new
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  era of invention was downing fast. Then in seventeen seventy six came Samuel Crompton
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  of Polton, who invented a combination of jenny of Hargreaves and the roller water
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  frame of Arkwright, and to distinguish his invention from the others, he named
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  it the mule. The mule was a carriage on wheels to which the spindles
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  were attached. When the mule was drawn out one way on its frame,
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  the rowings were drawing from bobbins through rollers on a stationary frame, stretched and
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  twisted into threads, and then as a mule was run backed, the spun
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  threads were wound on spools on the spindles. The mule entirely superseded the use
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  of the jenny. Notwithstanding the advantage and names. The mule did more delicate
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  work than the jenny. It avoided the continuous stretch on the thread of the
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  jenny by first completing the thread and then winding it. Crompton's mule was moved
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  back and forth by hand. Roberts subsequently made it self acting. Next followed
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  in England the Reverend Edward Cartwright, who, turning his attention to looms,
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  invented the first loom run by machinery, the first power loom seventeen eighty four
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  to eighty five. Then the rioters turned on him and he experienced the same
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  attention received by Hargreaves and Arkwright. The ignorance of ages tied in this branch
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  of human progress, as it often dies in others with the violent wrench.
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  But the age of steam and at last come, and with it the spinning
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  machine, the power alone, the printing press, and the discovery among men
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  of the powers of the mind, their freedom to exercise such powers, and
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  their right to possess the fruits of their labors. The completed inventions of Arkwright
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  and others, combined with Watt's steam engine, revolutionized trade and resulted in the
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  establishment of mills and factories. A thousand spindles swirled were one hummed before.
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  The factory life, which drew the women and girls from their country homes to
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  heated and closely occupied, ill ventilated buildings within town limits, was however,
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  not regarded as an improvement in the matter of health, and it was a
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  long time before mills were constructed and operated with a view to the correction of
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  this evil. A great increase in demand for cotton production by these machine inventions
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  could not have been met had it not been for Eli Whitney's invention of the
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  sored gin in America in seventeen ninety three. The cleaning of the seed from
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  the cotton accomplished by this machine produced as great a revolution in the culture of
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  court in America as the inventions of Arkwright and others accomplished in spinning and weaving
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  in England. America had also learned of Arkwright's machinery. Samuel Slater, a
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  former employee of Arkwright, introduced it to Rhode Island in seventeen eighty nine and
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  built a great cotton mill there in seventeen ninety three. Others followed in Massachusetts.
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  Within twenty years after the introduction of Arkwright's machines in the United States,
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  there were a hundred mills there with one hundred thousand spindles. As has been
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  said, it was customary for weavers to make the warp on their looms at
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  one place, and the spinners to furnish the yarns for the weft from their
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  homes, and even after the spinning machines were invented, the spinning and weaving
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  were done at separate places. It remained for Francis c. Lowell of Boston,
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  who had been studying the art of spinning and weaving in England and Scotland,
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  and the inventions of Arkwright and Crompton, to establish in eighteen thirteen at
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  Waltham, Massachusetts, with the aid of Paul Moody, machinist, the first
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  factory in the world wherein were combined under one roof all the processes for converting
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  cotton into cloth. The task of the century in this art has been to
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  greatly extend the domination of machinery in the treatment of cotton and woolen all stages
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  from the reception of raw material at the door of the factory to its final
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  completion in the form of the choicest cloth, and to increase the capacity of
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  machines sufficiently to meet in ever increasing and enormous consumption. There are from twenty
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  to forty separate and distinct operations performed both in spinning and weaving and the completion
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  of a piece of cloth from cotton or wool, and Nearly all of these
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  operations are accomplished by machinery. The centuries improvements and inventions and machines were treating
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  and spinning cotton. Comprised machines were first opening and tearing the matted mass apart
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  as it is taken from the bales, then cleaning, carding, shrawing,
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  rowing, stretching, spinning, winding, doubling, dressing, warping, weaving,
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  et cetera. Formerly, the opening machines were simply cylinders armed with spikes
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  to which the cotton was led through nipping rollers and then delivered in a loose,
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  fluffy condition. When such a machine was associated with the blowing machine to
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  blow out the dust and cleanse the fiber, the loose and scattered condition in
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  which the cotton was left gave rise to a great danger from fire, and
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  destructive fires often occurred. The object of the later opening machinery is to confine
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  the cotton within a casing in its passage through the machine, during which passage
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  it is thoroughly stretched, beaten, and blown, and then rolled into a
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  continuous sheet or lap. At the same time. By nice devices, it
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  is event that is freed from all knots and made of uniform thickness, while
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  a certain quantity only of cotton of known weight is allowed to pass through to
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  constitute a required lap. Finally, the lap is worn upon a roller,
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  which, when filled, is removed to the cardor. Although the courton is
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  now a white, soft, clean, downy sheet, still the fibers cross
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  each other in every day direction, and they are required to be straightened and
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  laid parallel before the spinning. This is done by carding. Paul Hargreaves,
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  Robert Peel and Arkwright had worked in constructing a machine to take the place of
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  hand carding, and it was finally reduced by Arkwright towards the close of the
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  eighteenth century to its present form and principle. But to make those narrow,
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  ribbon like clean, long lines of rolled cotton known as sliverts by machinery with
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  greater precision and uniformity than is possible be hand, and with a thousand times
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  greater rapidity, has been the work of many inventors at different times and in
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  different countries. The machine carts are cylinder's clothed with leather and provided with separate
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  sets of slender, sharp bent fingers. The different carts are arranged to move
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  past each other in opposite direction, so as to catch and disentangle the fibers.
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  Flat overhead stationary carts are also used through which the cotton is carried.
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  As one operation of carding is not sufficient for most purposes, the cotton is
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  subjected to one of the more successive cartings. So ingenious is a structure in
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  some of its parts that as a stream of cotton passes on any existing notes
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  do not fail to excite the attention of the machine, which at once arrests
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  them and holds them until disentangled. In connection with carts, combers and strippers
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  are used to assist in further cleaning and straightening the fiber, which is finally
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  removed from the carts and combs by the doffer. The cotton is stripped from
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  the doffer by the doupher knife and in the form of delicate, flat and
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  narrow ribbons, which are drawn through a small funnel to consolidate them, and
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  finally delivered in a coiled form into a tall tin can. The material is
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  then carried to a drawing frame, which takes the spongy slivereds and carrying them
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  through successful sets of rollers moving at different speed elongates equalizes, straightens and doubles
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  them, and finally condenses them into two or more rolls by passing the seine
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  through a trumpet shaped funnel. As the yarns still need to be twisted,
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  they are passed through a rowing frame similar to a drawing frame. An ingenious
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  device connected with the winding of the rowing yarns upon bourbin's may be here noted.
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  Formerly, the boarbmins on which the yarns were wound increased in speed as
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  they were filled, thus endangering and often breaking the thread, and at all
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  times increasing the tension. In eighteen twenty three, Asa Arnold of Rhode Island
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  invented a differential motion by which the velocity of the bobbin is kept uniform.
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  The rowing, having been reduced to proper size for the intended number of yarns,
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  now goes to the spinning machine to still further draw out the threads and
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  give to them a more uniform twist and tenuity. The spinning machine is simply
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  an improvement from Crompton's mule. Alderdy described great as have been the improvements in
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  many matters in spindle structure, The drawing, the stretching and twisting still remain
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  fundamentally the same in principle as in the singing throstle of Arkwright and the steady
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  mule of Crompton. And yet so great and rapid has been the advance of
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  inventions as to details and to meet the great demand, that the machinery of
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  half a century ago has been almost entirely discarded and supplanted by different types.
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  A great improvement on the spinning frame of the eighteenth century is a ring frame,
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  invented by Jenks. In this the spindles, arranged vertically in the frame,
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  are driven by bands from a central cylinder and project through a pictures in
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  a horizontal bar. A flant's ridge around each aperture forms a ring and afforts
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  a track for a little steel hoop called a traveler, which has sprung over
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  the ring. The traveler guides a thread onto the spool as a spindles revolve.
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  A thread passing through the traveler revolves it rapidly, and the horizontal bar,
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  rising and falling, has the effect of winding the yarn alternately and regularly
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  upon the spools. The bobbins of the spindle frame were found not large enough
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  to contain a sufficient amount of yarn to permit of a long continuous operation when
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  the warp came to be applied. And besides, there were occasional defects in
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  the thread which could not be detected until it probe if the yarn was used
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  directly from the bobbins. So to save much time and trouble, spooling machines
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  were invented which wind the yarn from the bobbins holding thousand, two hundred two
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  thousand, eight hundred yards to large spools, each holding eighteen thousand to twenty
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  thousand yards, and then by passing the yarn through fine slots and guides which
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  lead to the spool lumps or weak places which would break the yarns that the
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  guide could at once be discovered and yarn retied firmly so that there would be
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  no further breaking in the warper. After the yarn is finally spooled, it
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  is found that its surface is still rough and covered with fuss. It is
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  desirable therefore, that it shall be smoothed out and be given somewhat of a
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  lusture before weaving. These final operations are performed by the warping and dressing machines.
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  In the warping machine, the threads are drawn between rollers, the tension
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  of which can be regulated, and then through a reed, a comb shaped
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  device which separates the threads, and finally wound upon a large cylinder. In
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  this machine, a device is also arranged which operates to stop the machine at
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  once if any thread is broken. When the cylinder is filled, it is
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  then taken to the dresser, which in its modern and useful form is known
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  as a slusher, by which the yarns are drawn through heart starch and superfluous
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  starts, squeezed out, and the yarns kept separated all the time tried by
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  passing them around a large strying cylinders or through a clothes box heated by steam
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  pipes, and then wound upon the loom beam or cylinder. In weaving,
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  as in spinning, however advanced, complicated, and improved, the means may
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  be beyond the hand methods and simple looms of past ages, the gentle principles
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  in the process are still the same. These means, generally and broadly speaking,
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  consist of a frame for two sets of threads, called the warp beam
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  for receiving and holding the threads which form the warp, a cloth beam upon
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  which the cloth is worund as it is woven, the warp threads being first
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  laid parallel, carried from the warp beam and attached to the cloth beam means
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  called hurdles, which, with their moving frames, constue a harness consisting of
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  a set of vertical strings or rods having central loops through which the threads are
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  passed, two or more sets of which receive alternate threads, and by the
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  reciprocation of which the threads are separated into sets decusated, forming between them what
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  is called a shed through which the shuttle is thrown, means for throwing the
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  shuttle, and means called the batten lay or laith for foreseeing a packing the
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  weft tightened too the angle formed by the open warp, and so rendering the
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  fabric tight and compact, and then the motive power for turning the cloth beam
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  and winding the cloth as fast as completed. It's also along these lines that
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  the inventors have wrought their marvelous changes from hand to power looms. Prior to
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  eighteen hundred, in the weaving of figures into clothes, it was customary to
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  employ boys to pull the cords in the loom harness in order to arrange the
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  colored threads in their relative positions in that year appear at the front jo of
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  Merry Jackard, a French mechanician and native of Lyons, whose parents were weavers,
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  A prolific inventor in his youth, a wayward wander after fortune, and
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  a wife a soldier in the Revolution, losing a son fighting by his side,
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  eking out a poor living with his wife's help, but straw weaving,
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  finally employed by a silk manufacturer, and while thus engaged producing that loom which
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  has ever since been known by his name. This loom was personally inspected by
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  Napoleon, who rewarded the inventor with owners and a pension. It was then
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  demolished by a mob, and its inventor reviled, but it afterward became the
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  pride of lions and the means of its renown and wealth in the weaving of
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  silks of rich designs. The leading feature of the Jackard loom cultures of a
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  chain of perforated pattern cards made to pass over a drum through which cards a
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  certain needles pass, causing certain threats of the warp to rise and fall according
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  to the holes in the cart, and thus admitting at certain places in the
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  warp colored veft threads thrown by the shuttle, and reproducing the pattern which was
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  perforated in the carts. The Jackard device could be applied to any loom,
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  and it worked a revolution in the manufacturer of figured goods. The complexity and
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  expensiveness of Jackard's loom were greatly reduced by subsequent improvements. In eighteen fifty four,
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  Monsieur Bonelli constructed electric loom, in which the carts of the Jackard apparatus
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  are superseded by an endless spand of tin foiled paper, which serves an electrical
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  conductor to operate the warp thread needles, which before had each been actuated by
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  a spiral spring. The Jackard loom was also greatly improved by the English inventors
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  Barlow, Taylor, Martine and others. Ratcliffe and Johnson, also of England,
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  had invented and introduced the machines were a dressing the yarns in one operation
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  before the weaving Horrocks and mass Land of Stockport greatly improved the adaptation of steam
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  to the driving of looms, and Rawberts of Manchester made striking advances in their
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  mechanical parts, and in bringing them to their present state of wonderful efficiency.
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  In America, in eighteen thirty six, George Crompton of Taunton, Massachusetts,
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  commenced a series of inventions and power looms for the manufacture of fancy woolen goods,
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  and in the details of such looms gently, particularly in increasing the speed
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  of the shuttle, which vastly increased the production of such goods and gave to
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  his looms a worldwide reputation. E. B. Bigelow of Massachusetts in eighteen
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  forty eight invented a power loom which was exhibited at the Exhibition at London in
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  eighteen fifty one and astonished the world based exhibition of carpets superior to any woven
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  by hand. By the later improvements and the aid of steam power, a
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  single American Bigelow carpet loom can turn out now one hundred yards of Brussels carpet
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  in a day, fast, superior and quality to any carpet which could possibly
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  be made by hand when a man toiled painfully to produce five yards a day.
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  Mister Bigelow was also a pioneer inventor of power machines for weaving coach lace,
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  and cotton checks and jingams. James Lyle of New invented a power loom
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  applicable either to the weaving of very wide and heavy fabrics such as Jude canvas
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  for the foundation of floor oil cloth, or to fabrics made of the finest
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  and most delicate yarns. It would be interesting, if space permitted, to
• 24:15
  describe the great variety of machines that have been invented for dressing, finishing,
• 24:19
  and treating cloths after they were woven. The teaseling machine by which an app
• 24:23
  of woolen cloth is raised, the cloth trying machine with heated rollers over which
• 24:29
  the cloth is passed to drive off the moisture acquired in dyeing, washing,
• 24:33
  et cetera. The cloth printing, figuring, coloring, and embossing machines with
• 24:37
  engraved cylinders, cloth pressing increasing machines, and the cloth cutting machines for cutting
• 24:44
  the cloth into strips of all lengths or for cutting piles of cloth, and
• 24:48
  a single operation into parts of garments corresponding to the pre arranged pattern. Machines
• 24:52
  were making felt cloth and stamping or molding different articles of apparel from Feldt et
• 24:59
  cetera. For the making of ribbons and other kind of narrow ware. The
• 25:03
  needle power loom has been invented, in which the fine weft thread is carried
• 25:07
  through the web by a needle instead of a shuttle. This adaptation of the
• 25:11
  needle to the looms has placed ribbons within the reach of the poor as well
• 25:15
  as a rich gull. What a comparison between the work of the virtuous penelopes
• 25:21
  and the weavers of a century ago and to day? Then with a wheel,
• 25:25
  and we're walking to and from it. As a yarn was drawn out
• 25:29
  and wound up, a maiden could spin twelve skeins of thread and ten hours,
• 25:33
  producing a thread a little more than three miles in length, while the
• 25:37
  length of a walk too and fro was about five miles. Now one penelope
• 25:41
  can attend to six or eight hundred spindles, each of which spins five thousand
• 25:45
  yards of thread a day, or with the eight hundred spindles, four million
• 25:49
  yards or nearly twenty one hundred miles of thread in a day, while she
• 25:53
  need not walk at all. It was when the wea were through the shuttle
• 25:57
  through the warp by hand the job exclamation. My days are like a Weaver's
• 26:03
  Shuttle was an appropriate text on the brevity of human life. It may be
• 26:07
  just as appropriate now, but far more striking, when it is realized that
• 26:12
  machines now throw the shuttle one hundred and eighty times a minute or three times
• 26:17
  a second, flying as fast as it does. When the shuttle becomes exhausted
• 26:22
  of yawn. A late invention presents a new bobbin and a new supply of
• 26:26
  yorn to the shuttle without stopping the machine. As to knitting, the century
• 26:30
  has seen the day pass when all the hosiery was knit by hand. First
• 26:36
  machines were invented for knitting the leg or the foot of the stalking, which
• 26:40
  were then joined behind, And then came machines that made the stalking complete.
• 26:44
  The social industry, so quietly but slowly, followed by the good women in
• 26:48
  their chimney corners with their knitting needles, by which a woman might possibly knit
• 26:53
  a pair a day, was succeeded a quarter of a century ago by machines,
• 26:57
  twelve of which be attended to by a boy, which would knit and
• 27:02
  complete five thousand pairs a week. Such a machine commences with the stalking at
• 27:07
  the top, knits down widening and narrowing, changes the stitch as it goes
• 27:11
  on to the heel, shapes the heel, and finishes at the end of
• 27:15
  the toe, all one thread, and then it recommences the operation and goes
• 27:21
  on with another and another. Fancy stockings with numerous colors blendid are so knit,
• 27:27
  and if the yarn holds out, a mile of stockings may be thus
• 27:30
  knit without a break and without an attendant. By these machines. The astounding
• 27:36
  result was reached of making the stockings at the cost of one sixth of a
• 27:40
  mill per pair. The wonderful reduction in the cost of all kinds of textile
• 27:45
  fabrics, due to the perfection of spinning and loom mechanisms and its power to
• 27:48
  meet the resulting enormous increase in demand, has enabled the poorer of today to
• 27:52
  be clad better and with a far greater variety of apparel than it was possible
• 27:57
  for the rich one hundred years ago. And the increased consumption and demand have
• 28:02
  brought into these fields of labor and into other fields of labor created by these
• 28:07
  great armies of men and women. Notwithstanding the labor saving devices, the wants
• 28:11
  of the world can no longer be supplied by skilled hand labor, and it
• 28:15
  is better that machines to the skilled labor if the product has increased while made
• 28:21
  better and cheaper, and the number of laborers in the end increased by the
• 28:23
  development and demand of the art. Among the recent devices is one which dispenses
• 28:30
  with the expensive and skillful work by hand of thrawing the warped threads into the
• 28:33
  eyes of the headles and through the reed of the loom. Cane backed on
• 28:37
  bottom chairs and lounges, only a few years ago were a luxury of the
• 28:41
  rich and made slowly by hand. Now the open mesh cane fabric having diagonaled
• 28:48
  strands and other varieties are made rapidly by machinery. Turkish carpets are woven,
• 28:52
  and flows the world over are carpeted with those rich materials, the sight of
• 28:56
  which would have astonished the ordinary beholder of half a century ago. Matting is
• 29:03
  woven wire, cane, straw, spun glass. In fact, everything that
• 29:07
  can be woven beyhand into useful articles now finds its especially constructed machine for weaving
• 29:14
  it. The end of section nineteen