Cotton and its Manufacture. THINK I have, on some former occasion, given my young friends an account of the cotton tree and the natuaral history of cotton, and how it is grown, carded, spun, and woven. I wish now to say a few words to you concerning a particular branch of the cotton manufacture, namely, that which includes all the various kinds of cotton and thread brought into use of late years, for knitting, crotchet, and point lace, as well as the best kinds used in sewing. And I particularly address myself to Peter Parley's feminine readers. The various processes connected with the manufacturing of this kind of article are conducted at the village and factories of Darley Abbey, and situate about a mile north of Derby, on the river Derwent, and belong to Messrs. Walter Evans, and Co., known to ladies as the manufacturers of the Boar's Head Cotton. The superintendent of the works, who has been forty-nine years in the employ of the firm, conducted me into the first room, called the mixing room; the name seemed to me a misnomer, since the cotton which is brought their in bales from the ship is separated and piled in compartments according to its quality. Here were divisions extending from the floor to the ceiling, and each description marked. All these are of different qualities and used for distinct purposes, the best quality being manufactured into Boar's Head and the new tatting cotton. From this place the cotton wool is taken to a room where it is placed in the opening machine (set with iron teeth), revolving many hundred times a minute, which receives and opens the wool, impelling it upwards by its draught to the other end of the machine, in the course of which journey it loses much of the seed and other extraneous matter with which it arrives in England; already it begins to appear softer and more fleecy, when it is put into another machine which still further opens and purifies it. The wool having passed through this machine is placed on another, where it is pressed and rolled into a mass, something like a sheet of wadding; it is in this state taken to another machine, which forms the sheet into the first roving, every process making it softer and more fleccy. The rovings are afterwards placed together and formed into another roller, or sheet, and passed to the second carding engine, which forms a roving softer and more fleecy than before. It next undergoes drawing by various ways and principles of machinery, and is passed to the jack frames, which forms the cotton wool into a finer roving. |