WOOL FRANK ORMEROD "\ STAPLE TRADES AND INDUSTRIES EDITED BY GORDON D. KNOX WOOL FRANK ORMEROD Q w r- 8 u 5 ri s STAPLE TRADES AND INDUSTRIES Edited by GORDON D. KNOX WOOL BY FRANK ORMEROD NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1919 o EDITOR'S PREFACE TO-DAY the world is faced with an expenditure so vast that only a rapid development of trade can restore prosperity. Various steps have been taken by the Governments to spread a greater knowledge of trading conditions all over the world. Government activity, however, has never succeeded in creating a nation's trade and must inevitably be dependent on the initiative of the trading community. Every year, partly because of and partly in spite of the increasing specialisation of trade, the need becomes greater for the closest possible study of the national trade. And a study of the national trade involves a close knowledge of trade conditions throughout the whole world. Experi- ence in every department of life has shown the weakness of purely ad hoc knowledge. Much has to be learnt by all classes of the community that has no direct bearing on their immediate con- cerns, and the penalty for not acquiring such knowledge is a narrowing of the outlook and a lessening of efficiency. In commercial life wide knowledge is equally essential to individual and vi EDITOR'S PREFACE national prosperity. The mistakes of the past the whole history of the dye trade is only one of many glaring examples are mistakes for which commercial men must share the blame with the politicians. New problems which can only be solved by those possessing that power of foresight which depends on wide, well-digested knowledge are continually arising and the old problems are perpetually requiring fresh solution. Knowledge of this essential sort is lacking largely because it is not available in a form that can easily be appreciated by those without expert training in the individual trades. Yet the knowl- edge is vital to all those who have the interests of the nation at heart. Events have shown that the public dare not remain in ignorance. It is the duty of the individual citizen to realise the factors on which the prosperity of the country depends, to have exact knowledge as to the sources both of the raw materials and of the manufactured prod- ucts that enter so largely into the life of the na- tion. It is the purpose of the present series to supply this want. Each volume in it is the work of an expert, and in every case care is being taken to give an exact but general view of the staple trades as a whole. It is hoped that the information so presented will be of value to those who may be EDITOR'S PREFACE vii brought actively into contact with the industries concerned, that they will enable the nation as a whole to form a sound judgment on questions of commercial importance. GORDON D. KNOX. AUTHOR'S PREFACE BOOKS on wool and the wool industry are many and of great value, but generally they are of sectional interest only, and incapable of being appreciated by any but those possessed of special technical knowledge. The present volume is in- tended to make a wider appeal, and, while main- taining strict scientific accuracy, to present a comprehensive survey of the subject in a more or less popular form. In other words, the object of the writer has been to bring together material upon which the general reader may form a sound opinion without being worried by detail and perplexed by technicality. It is hoped, also, that the student will find much to interest, especially in those chapters which deal with the introduction of the wool trade into Great Britain a phase of the subject which has hitherto hardly had the attention it deserved. The writer has to tender thanks to the various authorities quoted in the following pages, and especially to the officials of the Commonwealth ix x AUTHOR'S PREFACE and States of Australia, to whom he is indebted for much statistical and other information, and also for some of the most attractive pictures in the book. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE GENESIS OF WOOL .... 1 II. THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS . . 10 III. How ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD . .21 IV. SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE ... 34 V. THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY ... 50 VI. AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE . . 70 VII. THE MARKETING OF WOOL ... 85 VIII. SHEARING AND SORTING .... 99 IX. PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE . .113 X. FINISHING PROCESSES .... 137 XI. THE EXTREMES OF WOOLLEN PRODUCTION 147 XII. THE VARIED USES OF WOOLLEN . .162 XIII. THE FUTURE OF WOOL . . . .183 XIV. SOME SALIENT FACTS AND FIGURES . . 196 INDEX . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE " THE LANDS WHERE MILLIONS OF SHAGGY-COATED SHEEP ARE BEING RAISED*' . Frontispiece A GROUP OF LINCOLN SHEEP .... 36 THE LEICESTER RAM ..... 60 THE ROMNEY MARSH SHEEP .... 60 STUD MERINO RAMS 76 "To SEE THE MERINO is TO BE CONVINCED OF ITS MARVELLOUS WOOL-PRODUCING QUALITIES " . 76 A WOOL WAREHOUSE IN ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 88 SHEARING BY MACHINERY ON AN AUSTRALIAN STATION 104 CARDING 114 ENGLISH COMBING MACHINE . . . .118 SPINNING FRAMES AT WORK . . . .118 WEAVING ON THE OLD HAND-LOOM . . .126 AN UP-TO-DATE WEAVING SHED . . . 134 WOOL-SORTING AND CLASSING IN NEW SOUTH WALES 180 "THE GREAT SOURCE OF AUSTRALIA'S WEALTH is HER PASTORAL INDUSTRY" .... 204 rii WOOL CHAPTER I THE GENESIS OF WOOL THE industry of Wool is undoubtedly the oldest known to the round world. By this, of course, is meant the growth rather than the manufacture of the fibre, for wool remained purely domestic in use for ages before it figured as a marketable commodity. Many people on the principle that the hen must of necessity have existed before the egg have contended that priority should be given to Agriculture, but probability and recorded history are altogether against such a theory. Prehistoric man, we are led to believe, lived solely by his prowess as a hunter, but at the dawn of civilisation we find our less hairy ancestor laying aside his club and spear and taking up the shepherd's crook indeed, exchanging his cave dwelling for a nomadic life in which sheep invariably figured and provided him with a means of sustenance. The more care- ful arts of husbandry belong to a later date. 1 2 :::.: .'::..: /-WOOL In "the days that were earlier" man's immedi- ate wants were without doubt supplied almost entirely by members of that mild and faithful ovis family which had, no one knows how or when, appeared on the scene to provide him with food for his maintenance and a warm covering against the stormy elements, and that without imposing upon him the hardship of tilling the soil, or calling for any special care whatever. All that the keeping of sheep involved in that far-off day was the exercise of a guiding and protecting hand a shield from prowling beasts of prey, and liberty to roam where green pastures invited and limpid streams abounded. It may be safely assumed, then, that men were pastoralists long before they were agriculturists, and, therefore, that the gentle shepherd of song and story embodies for us the first idea of organ- ised industry in the history of the world. The main business of our early ancestors was to wander to and fro on the face of the earth feeding and watering their sheep, and giving no thought whatever to the tilling of the soil. Just at what period man began to live a more settled life it is difficult to tell when he began to sow his corn and call for a raiment more comfortable and pre- sentable than his rude sheepskin; but that the date is very remote can be gathered from the fact THE GENESIS OF WOOL 3 that we must go back to a time long anterior to the civilisations not only of Greece and Rome, but of Carthage and Babylon and even ancient Egypt itself. The Bible, as well as pagan literature, is full of allusions to sheep and shepherds, and there is also abundant evidence, both in Holy Writ and in the classics, that the ancients were familiar with the methods of manufacturing and dyeing wool. Probably wool was "felted" long before it was spun and woven, for we have Pliny pointing out that garments can be made without the aid of spinning and weaving, and also stating his belief that if vinegar be used in the felting, the garment can be made proof against both fire and sword! To show, however, that weaving is a very ancient branch of industry, we need only quote the words of Job, who lamented that his days were "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," while the frequent men- tion of people being clothed in purple and other colours proves that dyes were well known at a very early period of the world's history. Herodo- tus, too, makes it quite clear that woollen was one of the earliest of our commodities. Speaking of the proficiency of the Egyptians in making fine linen and with all our experience and mechan- ical aids we have not appreciably out-distanced in quality the linen product of that far-off day 4 WOOL he states that it was accounted profane to enter any temple wearing a woollen garment, or to be buried in anything made of wool. It is a curious fact, worth mentioning, that history quite re- versed this dictum many centuries later, when Charles II. commanded that all and sundry should be buried in woollen. In the case of the Stuart there was a hard commercial reason behind the order, and maybe if we could get down to the controlling influences of those Egyptian times we should find a somewhat similar reason. It might not have been so much a matter of profanation that was involved, as a special "pull" which the linen manufacturer of that day had acquired over the maker of woollens. It would be difficult, perhaps, to determine exactly which is entitled to historic precedence silk, or flax, or wool; but it can be said with some- thing like certainty that wool was the first of the textiles to be used to any extent for the clothing of Europeans. We have ample evidence of its popularity with the Romans, and we have good reason for believing that it was the Roman who introduced the methods of manufacturing woollen into England. Caesar records that at the time of his invasion the Britons of the interior were for the most part clad in skins, but he adds that the inhabitants of what is now Kent were much more THE GENESIS OF WOOL 5 civilised, and did not greatly differ from the Gauls. Many wore drapery similar to that of the Gallic and the Belgic tribes, he says, and they presumably imported the cloth from the Conti- nent. Whether the clothing was or was not made in Britain we are not definitely informed, but we have it on record that the Romans brought the manufacture of wool to England along with other arts of peace. The sheep is stated to have been a domestic animal in Britain long before the period of the Roman occupation, but it was the Romans who first taught the natives what possi- bilities there were in the fleeces. Camden states that the Romans established a large factory at Winchester for the production of clothing for their troops, but the industry thus started was practically wiped out again when the barbarous Saxons overran the country after the departure of the Roman hosts. It was not until William of Normandy reached our shores that the wool industry came to life again, and it was a good deal later that the impetus was given to it that was eventually to make Britain the foremost manu- facturing country in the world. The part the Golden Fleece has played in English history is a royal one, but it is apt to be forgotten in a day when few people stop to think why the Lord Chancellor takes his seat upon a 6 WOOL woolsack, and when the man in the street would have difficulty not only in naming off-hand the benefactors who first introduced the comfort of woollen into Britain, but even in specifying that "Royal Wool Merchant" who provided us with the technical knowledge necessary to become a great manufacturing nation. An obscure para- graph in a morning newspaper records now and then that so many thousands of bales of wool have been bought and sold somewhere in the great city of London, but seldom is a thought spared on what lies before and behind the bald announcement. It is a paragraph from which all the "picture" is excluded, and the reader is not encouraged to think either of the lands where millions of shaggy-coated sheep are being reared under the eye of careful flockmasters, or of the astonishing ingenuity that is daily being exercised in the great factory areas of the North to furnish a covering sufficient for health and comfort, and at the same time to provide that fine raiment which inexorable Fashion has decreed is almost as indispensable for personal adornment. Before the thirteenth century the historical records of this country were not a great deal con- cerned with either sheep or wool. True, we are sometimes told what was the ruling price of the sheep at one time it is said to be a shilling, and THE GENESIS OF WOOL 7 at another to have fallen as low as a penny and we occasionally hear of "fines for leave to export wool," but it is not until the time of the Second and Third Henrys that reports on wool and woollen become common. We are told with certainty that Henry III. visited Witney in 1221 and "expended 20 on his wardrobe," and that in 1300 woollen guilds were established in London, Norwich, and other places. The first of these guilds was for weavers and burrellers, the second was for dyers and fullers, and the third for tailors. This seems to be proof positive that the trade was well established in England seven or eight centuries ago, especially, too, as we find that a weaver of Bristol, by name Thomas Blanket, invented so early as 1320 the raised woollen material which still bears his name. A little later (1341) Norfolk, one of the special places where the weavers had settled, was stated on the strength of its assessment to be "the wealthiest county in England next to Middlesex," and nine years after this it was computed that England had an annual export of eleven and a half million pounds of wool, the value of which was 180,000. As evidence that the wool industry very early settled in the North, we have it on record that a fulling mill was founded in Bradford, and another 8 WOOL at Colne in Lancashire, during the reign of Ed- ward II., implying clearly (as Dr. Whitaker points out in his "History of Whalley ") that cloth was manufactured there early in the fourteenth century, and plainly contradicting the generally received opinion that English wool was universally manufactured in Flanders till the Act of the tenth of Edward the Third inviting over Flemish manu- facturers and granting them considerable privi- leges. There are said to have been fifty families invited over, and these, in return for substantial advantages, were to teach the natives of this country the arts of spinning, weaving, and dyeing wool. One of these manufacturers from Flanders was a distinguished person named John Kempe, who brought unproved methods of making woollen cloth and settled in Westmoreland, at Kendal. He is said to have founded the popular "Kendal green" spoken of by Shakespeare. Fuller, the historian, alluding to the time of this early settlement of Flemings, makes the following quaint comment: "The king and state began now to grow sensible of the great gain the Netherlands got by our English wooll. In memory whereof, the Duke of Burgundy, not long after, instituted the order of the Golden Fleece, wherein, indeed, the fleece was ours, the golden their J s, so vast their emolument from the trade of cloth- THE GENESIS OF WOOL 9 ing. Our king therefore resolved, if possible, to revive the trade of his own country, who as yet were ignorant of that art, as knowing no more what to do with their wooll than the sheep that weare it, as to any artificial and curious drapery, their best cloth then being no better than freeze, such their coarseness for want of skill in their making. But soon after followed a great altera- tion." It was, indeed, a great alteration which fol- lowed, so much so, in fact, that wool, in its raw and manufactured states, became the most im- portant source of wealth in the country, and remained so until the end of the eighteenth cen- tury, when cotton made such extraordinary strides in England. It was in those early days described as "the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England." All kinds of laws were enacted to protect and stimulate it, some threat- ening even life itself. One of the best known of these legal expedients one which has already been alluded to was that of Charles II., who decreed that all dead bodies should be buried in woollen shrouds. This enactment remained in being for over a hundred years although it has to be admitted that it ceased to be regarded long before it was removed from the Statute Book. CHAPTER II THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS THE coining of the weavers is one of the most interesting chapters in our industrial history. How the first Flemish people were lured into the country in Edward's days we cannot quite tell. There must have been some very special induce- ment to attract such home-staying people- something more, one would imagine, than the baits said to have been held out by the historian Fuller. That old chronicler states that the emis- saries employed by the king ingratiated them- selves with the journeymen and apprentices rather than the masters, and began to instil a spirit of discontent by pointing out that they were worked rather like heathens than Christians, and like horses rather than men. Why not then leave their long hours and heartless masters? why not give up their herrings and mouldy cheese and come to a land where they could feed upon fat beef and mutton feed until nothing but their fulness should stint their stomachs! Besides, wasn't England the country of the most beautiful 10 THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS 11 women, and were not the richest yeomen waiting to marry their daughters to them? The blandish- ments may or may not have had some effect, but, judging from the manner in which the people of the Low Countries usually conducted their busi- ness, one would imagine that something in the way of good hard cash would have to be forth- coming, as well, before the cautious burghers picked up their traps and sailed away. All this, of course, refers to what may be termed the first invasion. The coming of the second and much larger contingent in the sixteenth century was due to a totally different set of circumstances, and then the Netherlanders needed no feminine charms nor promises of stuffed paunches to attract them to the shores of Britain. They came with alacrity and on their own initiative, glad to escape to any haven of refuge. The textile trade of Britain received its greatest impetus while the infamous Duke of Alva was, as Froude puts it, engaged in "drowning heresy in its own blood" in the Netherlands. Previous to that, manufac- ture had been carried on in a more or less desultory fashion; in the latter half of the sixteenth century circumstances conspired to make England indus- trially great at the expense of a gifted but terribly unfortunate people. Spain, at the beginning of the second half of the 12 WOOL sixteenth century, it will be remembered, was the great world-power, controlling the destinies of the Netherlands, of Germany, of a great part of Italy, of Sicily, as well as settlements in Africa and the New World. The Netherlands at that time were enjoying a period of the greatest pros- perity. An industrious people, with a special aptitude for manufacturing, they had wrested the commercial supremacy from Venice. Trade flourished and wealth abounded. The people, la- borious, diligent and ingenious, lived in opulence and comfort, and desired nothing so much as to be allowed to live in peace and develop their in- dustries. Philip II., however, had come to the Spanish throne, and was ambitious of convert- ing the whole of Europe to Catholicism. One of his greatest obstacles, he found, was that the Netherlands had begun to imbibe too freely the reformed religious doctrines of the times, and he set himself with great zeal and energy to stamp out heresy and crush Protestantism throughout the provinces. The Netherlanders, seeing their liberties threatened, vehemently protested, but Philip replied by instituting an Inquisition which had results of the most terrible and far-reaching character. The history of that murderous op- pression reads to-day like a nightmare. The spirit of religious frenzy which then reigned can THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS 13 with difficulty be comprehended in our colder and more rational age. Before the tyranny was over- past it was difficult to find a fireside, Protestant or Catholic, which had not been made desolate by execution, banishment, or confiscation. Alva was Philip's zealous emissary, and long before he had finished his appalling task a multitude of the most able and industrious of the Dutch and Flemish people were wandering penniless in distant lands. Foreign merchants were scared from the great commercial cities, and every industrious artisan who could find the means of escape sought refuge among strangers, wherever an asylum could be found. That asylum was chiefly found in Protestant England, who received these intelligent and un- fortunate wanderers with cordiality, and drank in with eagerness the lessons in mechanical skill they had to teach. Already it was estimated that there were thirty thousand emigrant Nether- landers established in Sandwich, Norwich, and other places assigned to them by Elizabeth, and the refugees added thousands more to England's population. Later on, it may be incidentally mentioned, other religious persecutions brought refugees to our shores, notably after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. These men, 14 WOOL however, were French, principally silk weavers and makers of brocades and paduasoys, and relics of the prosperous era of industry they inaugurated in Kent, which did not die until the middle of the eighteenth century, are yet to be found in many place and family names, in buildings, even in a remarkably distinct physical type, especially near Eye and Winchelsea, and above all in the existence of the Huguenot church in the crypt of Canter- bury Cathedral. The peaceful invasions of the earlier "Dutchmen," as the Netherlanders were generally and indiscriminately named by the mass of the people of this country, have left their own special evidences in other parts of the country, both North and South. There are to-day, for instance, plenty of reminders in such old-world Kentish towns as Cranbrook, Tenterden, Hawk- hurst, Smarden, and Biddenden of a very large and flourishing woollen industry, and local records are full of evidence that the Kentish "grey-coats" were not only popular locally, but were appreci- ated to the full in other parts of the country. In connection with these two main invasions of Netherlanders mention may be made of two im- portant decisions which vitally affected the wool- len industry in this country, and demonstrated, moreover, how closely in the early days the Brit- ish kept their eyes fastened on the main chance. THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS 15 England, it will be remembered, was for centuries a grower of wool before she was a manufacturer of it; at least, before she was a manufacturer of anything beyond her bare domestic needs. In the first half of the fourteenth century England was very largely exporting the product of her sheep, and, after manufacture in the Low Countries, the cloth was brought back again to be made up into clothing. Edward IIL's queen, Philippa, herself a Netherlands woman, is always given the credit of making what would seem, in the circumstances, to be a fairly obvious suggestion the suggestion that Mahomet should be brought to the moun- tain, and not the mountain taken to Mahomet. In other words the queen asked why the wool could not be manufactured as well as grown in England, and so do away with the trouble, cost, inconvenience, and often the very great loss attached to sending cargoes of wool across the boisterous North Sea where dangers in those times abounded. The king, curiously enough, seems not to have thought of such an accommo- dating plan, but the moment it was suggested to him he acted upon it with alacrity. Indeed, so devoted did he become to the work of developing the wool trade in England from that time onward that he came to be known as its special patron, and to this day the woolsack in the House of 16 WOOL Lords, as well as a number of interesting statutes, remains as a monument to his zeal and enter- prise. The other important step taken to advance the native industry was contemporaneous with the settlement of the refugees in England at the time Alva was engaged in his terrible crusade. One condition imposed upon the settlers from the Continent was that they must not keep their precious textile secrets too jealously guarded. It was accordingly enacted that each of these weavers should take at least one English youth into ap- prenticeship, while at the same time the tariffs were adjusted so that England might obtain a maximum of advantage. This system of appren- ticeship, it need hardly be said, was the opening of the door to native enterprise, and how readily and capably the opportunity was grasped is to be read in the astonishingly rapid growth of the British textile trade. The system of apprentice- ship remained in force long after the "Dutch" had either been assimilated in the land of their adoption or had returned to their native shores, after Alva had ceased from troubling and their sorely-tried country was at rest. Smiles tells us many interesting things about the settlement of the Flemish weavers in this country. Although the English at a later date THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS 17 showed some animosity against the refugees who so rapidly waxed fat in England, there is no doubt that at the outset they were very heartily wel- comed, Elizabeth herself enjoining the Mayors of Deal, Sandwich, and other places to give the foreigners full liberty, as their coming was calcu- lated greatly to benefit the towns by "plantynge in the same men of knowledge in sundry handy- crafts in which they are very skilful." From about 1561 onwards the fugitives came from Flanders in a steady stream, and by 1573, when Queen Elizabeth visited Sandwich, the Flemish constituted about one-third of the entire popula- tion of the town. On the occasion of the royal visit referred to, it is recorded that "against the school-house upon the new turfed wall, and upon a scaffold made upon the wall of the school-house yard, were divers children, to the number of a hundred or six score, all spinning of fine bag yarn, a thing well liked both of Her Majesty and of the Nobility and Ladies." Norwich was one of the chief settlements of the Flemings, there being at one time between four and five thousand domiciled there. These ref- ugees brought great prosperity to the place, but when the foreign artisans had prospered, the natives of the city were among the first to turn upon their benefactors. The local guilds passed 18 WOOL stringent regulations against the weavers, who were eventually driven out of the place. Many left Nc ~vich for Leeds and Wakefield, in York- shire, where they prosecuted the woollen manu- facture free from the restrictions of the trades unions of that day; while others left England for Holland, to carry on their trades in the free towns of that country. The Flemish also spread themselves through the towns and villages in the West of England, as well as throughout the North, and wherever the woollen weavers set up their looms they carried on a prosperous trade. In the North they estab- lished themselves at Manchester, Bolton, and Halifax, where they made "coatings," or "cot- tons," which were at that day imitations in wool- len of the goods known on the Continent by those names, the importation of the vegetable cotton fibre from the Levant having only begun, even in small quantities, by about the middle of the seventeenth century. "There is one fact," says the editor of the " Shuttleworth Papers," "which seems to show that the Flemings, after their immigration, had much to do with the fulling mill at Manchester; for its ordinary name was the 'walken-milne* walche being the Flemish name for fulling mill. So persistent do we find this name, that a plot of THE COMING OF THE WEAVERS 19 land occupied by a mill on the banks of the Irk still retains its old name of the Walker's Croft (i. e., the fuller's field or ground), and in th earlier Manchester directories, the fullers^, were styled 'walkers."' The name of Walker, so common in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the clothing districts of the West of England, doubtless originated in this calling, which was followed by so considerable a proportion of the population. It might also be added that many old people in rural districts in the North still allude to fulling mills as walk mills, and constantly speak of fullers' earth as "walkers' earth" (or "yearth," as the last word is more commonly pronounced in the dialect). Fuller, the historian, specifies the following textile manufactures as having been established by the Flemings in various parts of the coun- try: in Norwich, cloths, fustians, &c.; Sudbury, baizes; Colchester, sayes and serges; Kent, Kent- ish broadcloths; Devonshire, kerseys; Gloucester- shire and Worcestershire, cloths; Wales, Welsh friezes; Westmoreland, Kendal cloth; Lancashire, coatings or cottons; Yorkshire, Halifax cloths; Somerset, Taunton serges; Hants, Berks, and Sussex, cloth. Kendal, it may be added, was also noted for the manufacture of cloth caps and the long woollen stockings which went with the knee breeches of the period. 20 WOOL The refugees, of course, brought other trades to England besides weaving, London, especially, being enriched by the new industries. They were, for instance, famous for their horticulture, and are said to have started the gardens still to be found at Wandsworth and other places on the outskirts of London, while their cultivation of the hop plant, which the Walloons brought with them, led to the making of the old distich "Hops, Reformation, Bays and Beer, Came into England all in one The rise of other trades and industries are foreign to the present purpose, and it is sufficient to say that through the apprenticeship system imposed upon the refugees the native population of England gradually learned to practise the same branches of manufacture as the immigrant wool- workers, and to build up a great and profitable trade for themselves. "The ribs of all people throughout the world," wrote Matthew Paris, "are kept warm by the fleeces of English wool," and at a later day it was possible not only to make a boast of having sup- plied the wool in its raw state, but of having as well a monopoly of the world's exports of the fully-manufactured article. CHAPTER HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD CHANCING to look in at the open door of a bleaching works in the North recently, I was surprised to see lying on the bench a couple of pairs of sabots in every way identical with those worn by the peasantry in France, Holland, Bel- gium, and other western countries of continental Europe. To the lad at work near at hand these clumsy wooden shoes were nothing more than " Dutch clogs" used occasionally by the workmen in place of their own iron-shod footgear to obviate damage to the cloth they were called upon to load and unload, but, had the boy known it, they were admirably calculated to light up and link up the whole of England's industrial history. In a flash the mind was carried back over seven centuries, to the times when those ingenious, peace-loving exiles first set foot in feudal England, and then to a still later day when England, improving upon the work of her benefactors, laid the foundation of our textile industries on a sure and lasting basis. But though they were long ago beaten in 21 22 WOOL the race, it says much for the pertinacity and en- terprise of those early settlers that their wooden shoes are heard clattering down the centuries, and that the trades they established in the land of their adoption are now among the greatest indus- tries in the world. Here and there a Flemish name, too, lingers to link up the present with the past, but beyond this, and the insistent evidence of the clog, there is hardly anything left to mark the peaceful invasion of a former day. The in- dustry of wool has taken upon itself an entirely modern aspect, and its romance is now distinctly of the Kiplingesque variety. The picture of Evan- geline beside her wheel has gone, and the hand- loom only remains as a frame upon which the up-to-date designer works out a complicated pat- tern in power-spun yarns. Natural advantages, coupled with the special genius of the people, no doubt accounts for subse- quent British supremacy, and more especially for the great bulk of the woollen trade finding its way to the district north of the Trent. The first immigrants, it is well to remember, knew nothing of cotton; they were all woollen spinners, weavers, and finishers, who would require fulling mills and an abundance of water. Where, then, would they be likely to get ideal conditions for turning their waterwheels and scouring the products of their HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 23 looms? Where better than in the cloughs and dells bordering upon the hills which make up the Pennine Chain? The Norfolk Broads, no doubt, supplied more or less adequately the early wants of the Flemings, but nowhere in the country were the natural conditions so propitious as among the hills and dales of Yorkshire and Lancashire. In the small valleys of the Pennines to-day can be found ruins of fulling mills which by their age may have done duty for the very people with whom we are now dealing. We all know, too, that the suitability of the northern climate for both spinning and weaving is unrivalled in any part of the country, and this, of course, would act as an extra inducement to settlement north of the Trent. This matter of climatic fitness is, indeed, worthy of special note. We know, of course, that it has become almost second nature to abuse everything connected with our damp and clammy atmosphere, and yet Englishmen, on reflection, ought rather to be paying daily tributes to the water deity. There is scarcely anything in which we excel which is not due either to the dampness of our climate or the virtues of our water-brooks. It is the water that makes Burton famous for its ale, that gives Sheffield an advantage in tempering steel, and obtains for certain parts of Ireland and Scot- 24 WOOL land supremacy in finishing linen fabrics; the hu- midity of the climate in the country lying near the Pennine range of hills has helped to make textile manufacturing in Lancashire and York- shire what it is. Germany at one time imported Sheffield water in hogsheads in order to produce, if possible, the best class of cutlery, and similarly to-day we find the American textile manufacturer calling to his aid the artificial humidifier, which, as every factory operative knows, cannot in any way compete with our own moist climate in keep- ing ends together and weaving "good." If we are to believe that the exceptional water facilities of the North had a great deal to do with the settlement of the Netherlanders in the first instance, we may conclude that the discovery of coal at a later stage would be responsible for their final adoption of the North as a place of habita- tion. Mr. Neil Munro, in one of his historical novels, speaks of the almost insuperable obstacles which were placed in the way of the Lowland "tradesmen" who were imported into the High- lands by one of the Dukes of Argyll how they were driven and harassed by the unruly clansmen amongst whom they had settled, and how their very peaceableness was an offence in the eyes of men whose lives were chiefly devoted to maraud- ing and fighting. No doubt the Flemish were HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 25 made to suffer in a similar way when they first settled in the North of England; indeed, it is on record that robbers and freebooters harried them so persistently that the king, unable to give them adequate protection in the wild North, moved them to the West of England, where they laid the foundations of the broad-cloth manufacture for which that part of the country was for so long famous. Macaulay states that the lawless manners of the people on the Scottish border had originally much to do with the difficulties of settlement in the North, the disturbances being not confined to the border line between the two countries, but spreading for many miles south of the Tweed. "Slowly and with difficulty," he says, "peace was established on the border. In the train of peace came industry and all the arts of life. Meanwhile, it was discovered that the regions north of the Trent possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that in the neighbourhood of these beds almost every manufacture might be most profitably carried on. A constant stream of emigrants began to roll northward." It therefore seems likely that, once the Netherlanders had settled as far north as Lancashire and Yorkshire, they would be retained there when coalfields began 26 WOOL to be developed and the introduction of steam caused the industry to become more profitable than ever for both master and man. In the early days practically every county in the three kingdoms did hand-spinning and weaving as an adjunct to the industry of agriculture, but gradually it happened that more attention was paid to the trade in those parts where the returns from agricultural pursuits were poorer. It was noticed in the sixteenth century that the trade in Yorkshire woollens was most actively engaged in "where the fertilitie of ground ys not apt to bring forth any corne nor good grasse," and Defoe in his tour through the country in 1722 also states that these auxiliary industries were to be found flourishing best in those parts where the land was poor, notably in the more barren places in and near the Pennine slopes. The houses on the Yorkshire side particularly were, he said, "full of lusty Fellows, some at the Dye-vat, some at the Loom, others dressing the Cloth; the Women and Children carding or spinning; all employed from the youngest to the oldest; scarce anything above four years old, but its hands were sufficient for its own support. Not a beggar to be seen, not an idle Person, except here and there in an Alms- house, built for those that are ancient and past working." HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 27 Indeed, anywhere in the North country in those days one might be almost sure to find that where a man had a few acres of ground and a small farm there would be in his house a place for three or four looms, and there the art which had been learned from the Flemings would be carried on by members of the family, aided, perhaps, by one or two apprentices. It was in these communities, larger and keener than in parts of the country where life was taken more easily, that specialisation and co-operation began to tell, and where curious and ingenious minds began to seek out means for so improving machinery as to give them distinct advantages over their competitors. As we have seen, the climate did much, but dogged determination and untiring energy did even more. Almost imper- ceptibly the industry changed. Shrewd heads began to see that there was more money in the manufacture of woollen "pieces" than in trying to till land which would produce "scarce enough corn to feed their cocks and hens," and the wealth- ier among them gradually developed into em- ployers of their less fortunate neighbours, and began to establish a regular and more substantial trade with the merchant class. Almost every cottager came to have his "loom- house," and there was hi the North in the seven- 28 WOOL teenth and eighteenth centuries no more familiar figure than the old hand-loom weaver in his blue apron, standing at odd moments at his doorway smoking his long clay pipe, or perhaps trudging along the country roads, under the weight of his heavy pack of cloth, on his way to the house of his employer. The small master furnished these domestic weavers with yarn to be woven in their cottages, receiving back from them the cloth to be dyed and finished, after which it was sold to the big clothiers who lived in the large industrial centres. Still, things went on in a rather jog-trot way for a long time, and it was not until cotton began to loom large on the industrial horizon that woollen manufacturers were enabled to take a great bound forward. The men who did so much for the Yorkshire trade in the early days were, curiously enough, mostly Lancashire men, some of whom were actually engaged in developing the newer industry. John Kay, of Bury, the first of the big inventors, however, may be said to have been a woollen man pure and simple, for it was to the problem of throwing the shuttle across the broad woollen loom that he so successfully addressed himself. By Kay's invention the production of the hand-loom was vastly increased. Before his time no man could weave a wide piece except HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 29 very slowly and with the most primitive appli- ances. The shuttle was attached to something like a long skewer, which had to be passed on from hand to hand. When wide goods, such as sheeting, were being made, it actually took two men to hand the shuttle along and work the beam as well. This antiquated method, of course, meant that as both hands were occupied with the shuttle the reed could only be advanced to beat up the weft while the shuttle was at rest at one end of the loom. Kay introduced a "picker" or thrower to the shuttle, which could be worked by one hand and left the other free to work the reed, thus greatly increasing the speed at which the weaver could work. It was undoubtedly a great step forward, and there is no question that the invention placed this country in the front rank in the world's markets for textile manu- factures. As Kay's invention quadrupled the productive power of the weaver, there was naturally a much greater demand for weft, and this started another Lancashire man James Hargreaves, of Blackburn on the search for a means of increasing the out- put of the spinning wheel. The story goes that the idea of the spinning jenny was revealed to him through his wife, who was named Jenny, accidentally overturning a Saxony wheel, and 30 WOOL disclosing to him how a spindle, placed vertically, might be made to work on a manifold system. The result of his efforts, with small means and the most primitive tools, was that he at length suc- ceeded in making a hand-frame which enabled eight threads instead of one to be spun, and, with this invention as a basis, Richard Arkwright, of Preston, and Samuel Crompton, of Bolton, later on made spinning frames which would spin not only weft, but warp as well, and that at a vastly higher rate of speed, while Crompton also made it possible to spin the finest material on the largest frames, a problem which for a long time seemed well-nigh impossible of solution. Later again, when spinning had had its turn, Edmund Cart- wright, of Marnham, in Nottinghamshire, took up the loom practically where Kay and his son had left it, and after much trouble and opposi- tion made weaving by steam-power practicable. Meanwhile, Yorkshire was turning its attention to the improvement of some of the earlier processes of worsted manufacture, and especially to the problem of combing wool by mechanical means. In this connection there is one name particularly deserving of mention, belonging as it does to one who is worthy to rank with the master minds who first revolutionised the textile trade not only of this country, but of the whole world. It is the HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 31 name of Samuel Cunliffe Lister (afterwards Lord Masham), who did no little to raise Bradford to its dominating position in the woollen trade of the world. Lister was born in the famous year of 1815, and by the time he was old enough to enter business trade was in a state of rapid expansion, presenting splendid opportunities to men of inventive skill and business aptitude. When he and his brother commenced business as manufacturers of worsted stuffs, the power-loom had only been invented by Dr. Cartwright some ten years, but spinning and weaving had arrived at a comparatively efficient stage. Hand-labour, however, still prevailed in the earlier stages of the preparation of wool, and rich rewards awaited the solution of the problem of how to comb wool by machinery subsequent to the wool being washed and dried. Some meas- ure of success had already been achieved by Cartwright, Donisthorpe, and others in dealing with the coarser wools, but it still remained im- possible to treat by mechanical means the finer qualities which go to the manufacture of the best kinds of worsteds. Lister and Donisthorpe, in this country, and Heilmann, of Alsace, arrived almost simultaneously upon the solution of the problem, but Lister, through purchasing Heil- mann's English patent rights and improving the 32 WOOL machine almost out of recognition, held for many years a practical monopoly of the wool-combing industry. It was at Manningham Mills, in Brad- ford, that fine, or botany, wool was first combed by machinery, and so great was the success of Lister's wool-comber that spinning firms were glad to buy the machines and pay him a royalty of a thousand pounds on each. It was by such inventions as these, aided by the introduction of the factory system, that the manu- facturers of Yorkshire and Lancashire were able to out-distance all competitors. It was facility rather than superiority of production which won in a day when the world was crying out to be more cheaply clothed; and, despite the progress in machinery, even to-day the best and most durable woollen materials are made by hand. It is not necessary here to do more than mention the troubles which have marked almost every step in the progress of woollen manufacture. The early textile workers exhibited the same opposition to machinery that was shown in later years, and as long ago as 1482 a petition was presented to those in authority against the use of fulling mills. Among many obstacles put in the way of develop- ing trade may be mentioned the onslaught made upon John Kay, the man who first speeded up the hand-loom by means of the "picking-stick." Kay HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE LEAD 33 not only had his invention pirated, but in 1753 his house at Bury was broken into and sacked by a mob of operatives jealous of innovations which they believed threatened their livelihood, and he barely escaped with his life. As a consequence, he migrated to France, and there died in poverty and obscurity. Other inventors who succeeded him were persecuted in a similar way, and the whole history of the rise of the industry is punctu- ated with riots of a more or less serious nature, both before and after the introduction of ma- chinery driven by steam-power. Bradford, being the centre of the wool trade, has always been a stormy district, and strikes, some attended with great violence, have been frequent. Perhaps in recent years the wool-combing section has been more involved in quarrels between master and man than any other, for, apart from the labour- saving devices introduced into wool-combing, there have always been difficulties with regard to the ir- regularity of the hours and the casual character of the employment. CHAPTER IV SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE SHEEP have always been more or less of a puzzle to naturalists owing to the difficulty they present in the matter of origin and classification. It is not very helpful, perhaps, to speak of them as "a genus of ruminant quadrupeds of the family Capridse, so nearly allied to goats that the propri- ety of generic distinction is very doubtful"; it would be much more interesting if we could say with more exactitude from which of the wild species the domesticated animal has sprung, and what country or race first discovered and devel- oped it. All we know is that its origin is lost in antiquity, and that it seems to have been "tended" (and consequently domesticated) long before history was recorded. While it is sup- posed by some that all the wild sheep existing in the world are mere varieties of one species, that species cannot be identified, nor can it be said from which of these branches the domestic sheep is to be traced. We are perhaps on safe ground when we say that the sheep was the first animal 34 SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 35 domesticated by man, as the weaving or felting of wool was among the earliest of the arts. What we do know, also, is that wild sheep have but a scanty supply of short wool, with an outer cover- ing of hair, and that the more the sheep is brought into cultivation the shorter and scarcer the hair and the greater the yield of pure and good wool. It must, from the very earliest times, however, have been an animal much prized by man, for not only do we find its fleece and its flesh greatly esteemed, but dead and alive it can be put to many excellent uses. Its milk, though somewhat strongly flavoured, has always been sought after in Oriental countries; it has been found particu- larly useful as a beast of burden in hilly and rocky country in India and elsewhere; and in more modern times its skin has been tanned into leather and used extensively for bookbinding and the making of gloves. Indeed, the carcase of a sheep can nowadays be used almost as economically as that of the pig. The sheep has many characteristics peculiar to itself, and many which are contrary to those which govern other animals. For instance, most animals intended for human food will have their flesh greatly improved in flavour by feeding on rich foods or in lush pastures; but the sheep shows a decided preference for bare living, and the 36 WOOL mutton produced on the short, scanty grass of upland places is generally of better quality than that of the sheep pastured on richer lands. It is contrary in other respects its stupidity in blindly following the leader of the flock has made its "silliness" proverbial among country people; but a shepherd will tell you that it is by no means so devoid of intelligence as casual observance supposes. Neither do the folk sayings which cluster round the sheep argue great wisdom on the part of those who tend the flocks. What foundation, for instance, can there be for the contention that "Leap year is never a good sheep year"? Surely an added day to the calendar cannot prejudice either sheep or man very greatly, and the saying must have originated with one whose rhyme was vastly superior to his reason. The breeds of sheep are as numerous as they are varied. Apart altogether from the many kinds of wild mountain sheep, which must be countless in number, the domesticated animals are bewilder- ing in their quantity and variety. Nearly every nation on the face of the globe boasts flocks of one kind or another, the types differing in every climate and every latitude. All sorts and con- ditions of fleeces are to be found in which wool and hair are present in varying quantities, but for present purposes we must confine ourselves to a SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 37 survey of those animals which produce wool that can be most easily used for manufacturing pur- poses. The rougher of these wools, which often contain much hair, are chiefly used for carpet- making, and the purer wools are made into cloth- ing. Carpets are an Eastern institution, and the sheep which provide them are, speaking generally, Oriental in origin; but the clothing wools are essentially European, or were in the beginning. Greece and Rome made good use of their flocks, and England can boast of having raised sheep from a very early age. English wool was for long sought after by Continental manufacturers, and down to this day she has maintained her great flocks; but if she cannot herself now boast a su- periority in numbers, she is aware that within the British Empire are more sheep than in all the other parts of the world put together. Some account is given in other chapters in this volume of the circumstances which led to the development of the sheep industry in Australia and other countries from an original stock of Spanish sheep of merino breed, and at the same time a brief survey is taken of the numbers and breeds to be found in various parts of the globe. Outside the all-conquering merino strain, how- ever, it will be found that Britain has directly oj* indirectly supplied the foundations of most of the 38 WOOL world's flocks. The British Isles, indeed, may be said to epitomise the whole sheep populations of the two hemispheres, for there are few varieties of domestic sheep outside the merino which have not had their origin in Great Britain. The question as to which was the original type in Great Britain is a little difficult to answer, but perhaps the black-faced variety to be found in the North of England and in Scotland is as near to the original as any breed now existing. They are a hardy, horned breed with good mutton qualities, but the wool, although valuable, is not of the best class that England can produce. The Welsh and the Cheviot breeds are the next higher in scale, the fleece of the latter, which are found in many parts of England as well as in the Cheviot district, being very highly esteemed. The Welsh sheep are prized more particularly for their mutton qualities. The Leicester is one of the most valu- able of the native breeds. Formerly, the sheep of that name was big, but coarse; but about the middle of the eighteenth century its development was taken in hand, and the New Leicester, as it was afterwards called, became known as an ani- mal of excellent shape and capable of producing the best of wool. It also had the quality of being easily fattened. Of late years it has been largely used for crossing with other breeds, and some SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 39 fine long-woolled sheep have been the result. The most notable successes have been crosses with Lincolns, Romney Marsh, and others. The Leicester, indeed, may be said to have done more for the improvement of British stock than any other breed. The Lincoln, a cross between the improved Leicester and the native sheep of the county, is another excellent long-woolled sheep one of the best that England produces. The wool, besides being long, is lustrous, and the fleece is often of remarkable weight. The Cots- wolds are also famous long-woolled sheep, and were highly prized as long ago as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At one time their wool commanded higher prices than any other. The Southdown has of late years been improved with the utmost care, with the result that it now pro- duces splendid short, curled wool. There are a host of other fine sheep the Shropshire, with a good thick wool something like the Southdown, the long-woolled Devon, the popular Romney Marsh, the Suffolk, the Wensleydale, and many valuable Scottish breeds. The Ros- common is the principal breed in Ireland, being a native variety improved by crossing with the Leicester. Turning from sheep to the wool fibre, it may be said tjiat hair and wool, so closely allied, are of 40 WOOL Nature's own choosing for the protection of the brute beasts; and man, so far, has found nothing comparable with them as shields against the cold and stormy elements. In the more northerly climates wool is indispensable, and pure wool is of inestimable benefit in climates which are con- sidered much more genial than our own. Even in tropical and sub-tropical countries there are, at certain times of the year, great extremes in tem- perature in the space of twenty-four hours, and the value of good woollen, with its slow heat- conducting properties, is incalculable. England still consumes a full two-thirds of the output of her mills, and America is so sensible of her personal comfort that while she hampers Yorkshire worsted cloths in every possible way with her tariffs, she is only too pleased to make special terms in the case of English flannels and blankets. "Our Lady of the Snows," too, may resent the name when applied to her in her char- acter of universal wheat provider, but she knows the value of good English-manufactured wool, nevertheless, and spends more money on the commodity every year than all the other parts of the Empire put together. There is a division of opinion among experts as to what wool really is, one contending that it is a modified form of hair, and another that wool SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 41 and hair have no affinity whatever. The former opinion is held by Professor Barker, the well- known Yorkshire authority, and it must be said that he makes out a very strong case for his contention. There is no doubt that the cover- ing of many animals of the family to which the sheep belongs is hair, and the wilder the animal the coarser and rougher the hair. When wild sheep are brought into captivity, the hair on their bodies diminishes in quantity and the growth of wool increases; and when domesticated sheep are left to return to a wild state, they display a de- cided tendency to the formation of hair among the wool. Just at what point an animal fibre ceases to be hair and becomes wool it is impossible to determine. Professor Barker, who wrote the excellent article on the subject which appears in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," states that one gradually merges into the other, until a continuous chain can be formed from the finest and softest merino wool to the rigid bristles of the wild boar. Thus, he says, the fine soft wool of the Australian merino merges into the cross-bred of New Zealand; the cross-bred of New Zealand merges into the long English and lustre wool; which in turn merges into alpaca and mohair materials with clearly marked but undeveloped scale structure. Again, such animals as the camel and the Cashmere 42 WOOL goat yield fibres which it would be difficult to class rigidly as either wool or hair. The writer on the subject in "Chambers's Encyclopaedia" differs on this point. Wool, he says, is frequently defined as a species of hair, but it differs from this filament in possessing a more fully developed serrated circumference, and an increased degree of flexibility, waviness and elas- ticity. Youatt, an older but very influential authority, thus describes the differences: "The fibre of wool is crisped or curled, the curls in- creasing with the fineness and felting property of the wool, and in addition to this its surface is decidedly serrated. On the contrary, hair, though sometimes curled, has its surface only scaly or rugose, and never truly serrated; and hence it is that hair, though it will entangle and harle, will not felt into a compact mass. As respects chemical composition, hair and wool are alike." Mr. Walter S. B. McLaren, M.P., who speaks with full practical knowledge, thus amplified Youatt's description of hair and wool: "A hair has a smooth surface, comparatively free from jagged edges or serratures of any size, and lies straight; while the fibre of wool is more or less waved, and is covered with serratures. A fibre of wool may, in fact, be likened to a serpent's skin or to a fir cone covered with scales. The serra- SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 43 tures, or saw-like teeth, representing these scales, overlap each other and present innumerable little points, which act as hooks. They are extremely small, and in the fibre they are said to run from 1,200 to 3,000 per inch. When wool is spun these serratures to some extent fit into or catch each other, and help to bind the fibre together; conse- quently, other things such as length, quality, &c. being equal, wool which has many serratures will spin better than wool which has few." Under the microscope it can be seen that in the fibre of the fine merino there are about 2,400 serrations in the space of an inch, while in the finest quality of all the wool from Saxony no fewer than 2,720 serrations to the inch have been counted. Wools of coarser quality have fewer serrations and lower felting properties; that is to say, they are smoother and do not so easily cling together. On examining the wool fibre more minutely, says one authority, it is found to consist of three principal parts (1) the outer scales; (2) the inner bark or cortical substance; and (3) the medullary or central portion. The external scales may be defined as flattened horny cells. They form the sheath or bark of the fibre. Their dimen- sions, uniformity, soundness, and compactness determine the lustre, firmness, and strength of the 44 WOOL wool. The felting or fulling power is also primarily due to their presence in the fibre, being high or low in proportion to their multiplicity and strength. These marginal scales are the most numerous in fine wools, and, as indicated in relation to wool, mohair and cashmere, differ so largely in forma- tion and arrangement in different kinds of wool as to make it feasible in some instances to dis- tinguish the variety of fibre examined by its ser- rated surface. The interior of the filament is composed of spindle-shaped cells. Upon the density of these cells which form the largest proportion of the fibre the elasticity and true- ness of the wool depend. Moreover, this part of the fibre is said to possess greater affinity for colouring agents than the external scales. The third or medullary part of the wool filament consists of several layers of oval cells which form the pith or core of the fibre. Occasionally these run the entire length of the hair, but they may only occur at intervals. Their functions in the structure of the fibre have not been fully de- termined. There are not only very great differences be- tween one breed of sheep and another with respect to the quality of wool they yield, but there are also great differences in the quality of wool ob- tained from any individual sheep, and the buyer SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 45 of wool for the manufacturer, therefore, must of necessity be a man of great experience and keen observation. He has to examine it not only for length of "staple" which is the technical name for a lock or strand of fibres but for fineness, for strength, for its lustrousness, its felting properties, and for many other special and peculiar qualities. Appearances to any but an expert might be very deceptive. Take, for instance, the strengths of the best-known long and short wools. Lincoln wool, in point of strength, is far superior to the wool of the Australian merino sheep, its breaking strain, according to Bowman, being 502 grains, while the Australian is 50 grains; but for all that, it is said to be possible to obtain from the short merino wool a cloth capable of sustaining greater strain and friction than can be produced from Lincoln. The reason given is two-fold. In the first place, the merino is ranker in growth and the staple more compact; and, secondly, it has superior felting power to the English wool, a quality which gives greatly increased wearing strength to woollen fabrics. Burnley, the well-known author of "Wool and Wool-Combing," minutely classifies the various grades of wool to be found on the fleece of each sheep. The best part of the fleece of course that is to say, the closest, longest, softest, and most 46 WOOL even grows on the shoulders and sides of the animal; the yield of the neck is a trifle inferior, and on the loin and back there is a perceptible falling off in fineness and length. On the upper part of the legs the staple begins to hang considerably, and the wool of the upper part of the neck is of worse quality and is inclined to be faulty. At the root of the tail the fibre is coarser and more glossy; and at the lower part of the leg the grease in the wool imparts a darker shade, and the staple shows a disposition to twist. On the throat the fineness, softness, and curliness reach the vanishing point, and patches of false hair occur; the wool on the head is short, coarse, harsh, and extremely glossy; that on the lower part of the throat and chest is of the same quality as that on the throat itself, though shorter through the friction against bars and fences, while the portion of fleece growing on the shin is short, glossy, coarse, and dirty. Broadly speaking, wool is used for the produc- tion of two grades of articles "woollens," which comprise flannels, blankets, tweeds and various heavy milled cloths, and "worsteds," the lighter, finer "stuffs," and the fancy cloths and serges used by the dressmaker and the tailor. The first- named are produced in all parts of the British Isles, but chiefly in the Dewsbury and Batley district of Yorkshire, in that district of Lancashire SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 47 which has Rochdale for its centre, in Hawick, Galashiels, and other towns beyond the Scottish border, and in the West of England; while worsteds are made almost entirely to the east of the Pen- nines in Yorkshire, the principal district outside Yorkshire being that of Hawick, in Scotland. As regards the relative importance of the two sections, it may be stated that out of some 260,000 persons employed in these industries in the United Kingdom in normal times about 190,000 are en- gaged in the worsted trade of Yorkshire. Bradford is the centre of this great worsted industry, and four-fifths of all the wool imported into England as well as a huge proportion of the home supply, goes to that city to be combed into "tops" and spun into yarn. The quoted figures respecting the number of workpeople engaged in the woollen and worsted trades do not, of course, include the many thousands employed in the hosiery trades of the Midlands, where vast quantities of woollen yarn are consumed. The main differences between woollen and worsted are to be found in the processes of manu- facture, the one being "carded," and made chiefly from the merino and shorter-stapled colonial wools, and the other "combed" from the longer Lincoln, Leicester, and other British wools. At least, this was formerly the broad distinction, 48 WOOL but, as Burnley says, the mechanical contrivances of modern days have greatly extended the scope both of the woollen and the worsted manufacturer, giving the former command of wools that in times past would have been too long for his use, and extending to the latter an equal power over shorter wools which under the old system could not have been handled in the worsted processes. Perhaps it would be better to say, therefore, that the buyer nowadays is swayed more by the question as to whether wools have the felting or non-felting qualities, for in woollens, felting, or matting to- gether the fibres of wool into a compact sub- stance by means of rolling, beating or pressing, is an important part of manufacture; whereas worsteds are not matted at all in most cases, but spun, woven, and finished in such a way as to keep the threads parallel and the texture clearly outlined. The short and curly wools are in con- sequence more adapted to the felting process such as is brought into operation after weaving flannels, blankets, and the fabrics which are in- tended to produce the more densely-milled cloths, while the longer wools are more fitted for the worsted manufacturer. The manufacturer of woollens has an advantage in that he can at the present day employ almost all kinds of woolly fibres short or long, thick or thin, SHEEP AND THE WOOL FIBRE 49 curly or straight; while in worsted the short and refractory fibres have to be eliminated, and the curly threads straightened and smoothed out as much as possible. For woollens, which are many times heavier and bulkier than worsteds, the fibres are placed in all directions, overlapping and cross- ing each other in every conceivable fashion; while for worsteds they are kept straight and parallel. As regards the results from the different processes of manufacture, the average woollens, after being beaten and shrunk, will be four times heavier than worsteds, although worsteds, made from more tightly twisted yarns, may actually be the stronger in the piece. CHAPTER V THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY WHEN an estimate has to be made of the sheep upon a thousand hills, and those hills in far and remote corners of the world, it will be seen that the task is no easy one, and the difficulty is not decreased when one attempts to form an idea of the world's wool supply. The statistics relating to wool are notoriously at variance. One diffi- culty lies in obtaining definite figures relating to "scoured" and "greasy" wool, and the yield of the clips must of necessity greatly vary from year to year in every country. The estimates of such high authorities as "Dalgety's Annual" and the Association of Wool Manufacturers are often a long way out; indeed, there is many a time a discrepancy between the big wool experts of many millions both in the number of sheep and the number of pounds of wool the sheep yield. Calculations, again, have recently been alto- gether upset by the great European War, with its abnormal demands for military purposes, and the upheaval it has caused in the markets of the 50 THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 51 world. The British manufacturers of wool have known no such activity since the Franco-German War, and, when war broke out all kinds of diffi- culties arose owing to the unprecedented demand for raw material. Not only was there a call for every available pound of wool sheared since the war began, but old stocks were drawn upon to their utmost limit. Transport difficulties, too, added burdens previously unknown. Owing to the heavy demands upon shipping by the military authorities, the number of vessels available for carrying wool from Australia and South America proved totally inadequate. Matters were not improved during the time German warships were at large in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and pri- vate buying of tens of thousands of bales of wool in London just before the outbreak of war, pre- sumably for shipment to Germany, complicated things still further. Those trades which were concerned with the supply of munitions of war and with the victuall- ing and equipment of the fighting forces were thrown into a state of tremendous activity. To clothe in a few months an army of two or three million men was a big enough task in itself, but on the top of that the wool industry of England was called upon to provide a large part of the clothing needed by the armies of the Allies. Hence 52 WOOL a rise in the price of wool altogether unparalleled, and hence an embargo on exports, "reviving a restriction which was thought to have been swept away for ever with the repeal, a century ago, of the then already long obsolete statute of Charles II. the same statute that required every Eng- lishman to be buried in a woollen shroud." The war, indeed, brought about a curious state of things, for while a languishing trade in the woollen districts was suddenly revived and swollen to an extent which put an almost unbearable strain upon both workers and machinery, the worsted section was for a time brought almost face to face with utter ruin. This was due to the disorganisation of the whole export trade. More than half the trade of Bradford, the great centre of the worsted trade, is with Germany and Aus- tria, and what little trade might have been main- tained with allied and neutral countries was cut off by the embargo. Consequently, the financial position, in Bradford especially, at once became most acute. It was estimated there were due to that city from Germany and Austria accounts amounting to 1,750,000, the liquidation of which was impossible while the war lasted; whilst the total indebtedness to Bradford merchants from all countries when the war broke out was put at about 7,000,000. Some relief was eventually THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 53 given to the financial situation by the Govern- ment arranging for banks to advance 50 per cent, of approved foreign debts, but though this improved the relations between merchants and spinners, the former, in face of the prohibition of certain classes of exports, were for the most part left in a very awkward situation. It will thus be seen that not only is there the initial difficulty of estimating the world's stocks of both sheep and wool, but that the most recent export and other figures would be totally mis- leading as a guide to what obtains in ordinary peace times. For our purposes it would perhaps be well to take the year 1913 as the period for computation and comparison. Going back, there- fore, to the state of things which existed before the war, we find that the number of sheep in the world at the close of 1913, as estimated by the National Association of Wool Manufacturers and set forth in that excellent publication, the "Wool Year Book," was: 54 WOOL United Kingdom . . . 31,082,461 Other European countries . 148,433,976 Total (Europe) . . 179,516,437 Australia and New Zealand . . 117,011,654 Asia 110,058,874 Africa 51,429,279 North America . . . 59,047,680 South America 109,693,142 Total (world) . 626,757,066 There is a concurrence of English, American, French, and Australian estimates giving a total of 3,000,000,000 Ibs., or thereabouts, as the proba- ble weight of the supply of wool in the raw state. After washing, however, it would not weigh more than half this figure. Captain C. E. W. Bean, the well-known Aus- tralian writer, presented an interesting analysis of the world's wool figures in a paper read before the Colonial Section of the Royal Society of Arts some time ago. Taking Dalgety's figures as his basis, he pointed out that of the 615,000,000 sheep of all classes, which that authority gives as the world's estimate, nearly 93,000,000 were in Aus- tralia, 24,000,000 in New Zealand, and 22,000,000 woolled sheep were in South Africa. That is to say, that in these three British States in the THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 55 Southern Ocean, which possessed scarcely any flocks at all a hundred years ago, there have grown up flocks of sheep which in the aggregate amount to nearly 139,000,000 head by far the most important section of the world's sheep population at the present time. If to these are added the 4,000,000 valuable angoras of the Cape, the flocks of Canada and the Falkland Islands, and the 30,000,000 sheep of the British Isles- still among the most important sheep-producing countries in the world the total for the countries within the British Empire amount to nearly 180,000,000. Although this excludes the sheep of British India (some of which are woolled sheep of considerable value) and the unwoolled sheep of Africa, yet it amounts to nearly a third of the world's sheep in numbers, and very much more than that in value. When it is remembered, said Captain Bean, that the only land amongst all these which was of any importance a hundred years ago was Great Britain herself, the great change which has taken place during the last century may to some extent be realised. Nearly every country in Europe produces wool in greater or less amount not omitting the coarser varieties grown in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Russia, with its vast area of pasture country, takes first place in number of sheep, but 56 WOOL the quality is greatly varied. A fair amount of merino wool is grown in the Don district, but, speaking generally, the sheep, like the majority of those which form the Asiatic flocks, are best suited to provide wools for carpet-making. Asi- atic Turkey exports some good carpet wools, as do China, India, and neighbouring countries. Recently India has made an effort to improve the native breed by importing merino rams, and the reports so far are most satisfactory. The "Silesian merino," produced in Germany, is regarded as the finest wool in the world, but it is a fast-vanishing quantity. During the last quarter of a century the stock has fallen from about thirty millions to seven millions, and, although within recent years an effort has been made to revive the industry, it is generally found that it is cheaper to import the wool from Aus- tralia and other places than to grow it. The Silesian sheep are descendants of a flock presented by Spain to the Elector of Saxony in 1765, and were for a long time assiduously cultivated. At one time, for instance, the universities were charged with the work of improving the breed, and a professorship was established intimately to study the question. Saxony, where the merinos were first introduced from Spain, was, by the way, one of the chief THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 57 sources of the British supply until the rise of Australia to the position of a great wool-growing country. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the home growth of wool for manufactur- ing purposes was chiefly supplemented by imports from Spain and Germany, but since that time Australia has come rapidly to the front, with the result that even Germany herself finds it more advantageous to deal with the Antipodes. Saxony and Silesian wools, it is true, are still used in England, but only in small quantities, and chiefly for the making of the finer doeskins and kersey- meres in the West of England. In a similar way, the merino sheep were intro- duced into France from Spain, and the French Government quickly took advantage of the oppor- tunity to found the famous breed of Rambouillet, which is to-day known and valued all over the world. Austria also produces a good merino wool, but Spain itself, which formerly had a treasured monopoly of the merino, now produces a very inferior quality, which is not much better than rough carpet wool. Much of the wool of the sheep-growing countries in the Balkans and Near East is not of the best quality owing to the strong hairs to be found in it, but it is quite suitable for the production of the carpets for which that part of the world is famous. 58 WOOL Sheep are to be found in many districts on the African continent, but it is in Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, and Natal that the most ambitious attempts at wool-growing are to be found. There are now over 30,000,000 sheep and 12,000,000 goats in the South African Union, but half the sheep are of a "bastard" sort, and almost woolless. The merino is the breed which does best on the coarse vegetation of the veldt, and in the Transvaal, particularly, much money has been spent during the last few years with the object of improving that breed. All experts agree that there is a great future for sheep in South Africa, both from the point of view of mutton and wool. America, North and South, now produces a vast quantity of wool of good quality. Canada has not hitherto gone in extensively for sheep farming there are not 3,000,000 sheep in the whole Domin- ion although there are projects afoot for encourag- ing their settlement on the great prairie lands in the West but in the United States there are over 50,000,000 sheep and lambs, more than half of which are of pure or high-class merino breeds. South America has proved particularly suitable for sheep-raising, and buyers in England are en- thusiastic as to the present production and future possibilities of the more southerly parts of the THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 59 American continent. The Argentine Republic alone has nearly 70,000,000 sheep, but in the near future it is more than likely that the numbers will decrease, owing to it having proved more profitable for the country to grow wheat and breed cattle for the already enormous meat trade. The country, however, is well adapted to sheep, and the soil, which is very rich, is better suited for mutton pur- poses than for wool. It is a curious fact in connec- tion with sheep-raising that within certain limits the poorest land can be relied upon to produce the finest quality of wool. In the Argentine about three-quarters of the stock are strong cross and mutton breeds, the remainder being merinos and kindred fine-woolled sheep. Uruguay, on the contrary, is warmer and less suited to agriculture, with the result that fully 80 per cent, of the 26,000,000 sheep to be found there are of the fine merino breed. They are principally the French Rambouillets, and the re- mainder are good cross-breds produced from me- rino ewes and Lincoln or Romney Marsh rams. Another South American wool which is very popular with English manufacturers is grown on the island of Tierra del Fuego, which is regarded as one of the best sheep countries in the world. The wool, mostly cross-bred but of a good, strong quality, is known to the trade as "Puntas Arenas," 60 WOOL the name of the port from which it is shipped, and it is in great favour in the hosiery and other trades where a full, bulky wool is an advantage. Some of the best Cheviot wools come from the Falkland Islands, where Cheviot sheep were orig- inally introduced by the early Scottish settlers. The British wools are too various to set out in detail here. Cross-breeding has given nearly every part of the country a class of its own, so that it is possible to find in Great Britain almost every length and quality of staple from the Lincoln to the Southdown. The last-named is the shortest and finest of the native wools, and is eminently suited for flannels and other woollen goods, while the Lincoln and Leicester wools (the latter re- garded as the choicest long wool in England) are, on account of their lustrous qualities, greatly esteemed in the worsted trade for their suitability for making up into the finest dress cloths. Be- tween the wools named come a number of "demi- lustre" wools, such as the Romney Marsh, Cots- wold, Wensleydale, Devon, and others, while the list of Down wools include Shropshire, Oxford, Suffolk, and many of the South of England wools. There are also a number of special wools, the best known among them being the Shetland and Cheviot. Shetland wool, as is generally known, is used for hosiery and knitted goods, while the A NOTED PRIZE-WINNING LEICESTER RAM AN EXCELLFJNT LONG-WOOLLED BREED (By Permission of the Well-Known Breeder, Mr. E. F. Jordan, Driffield, East Yorks) A GOOD SPECIMEN OF THE ROMNEY MARSH SHEEP (By Courtesy of Mr. J. Egerton Quested, Cheriton, Folkestone) THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 61 Cheviot wool is retained in Scotland for the mak- ing of tweeds. So eager are the manufacturers of Scotch tweeds to secure the wool of the Cheviot sheep that they arrange with the local farmers beforehand to take all their wool, and as a special inducement often agree to pay a penny a pound above the market price. The result is that sheep raising is especially encouraged in the Lowlands of Scotland, and over a million, chiefly Cheviots, are to be found in the border counties alone. There are, indeed, said to be more sheep per acre in the counties of Roxburgh and Selkirk than anywhere else hi the world. It will be interesting to watch the future de- velopments of wool-growing. Already the air is full of great potentialities changes which may in the next decade have a profound effect upon the sources and quality of our supplies. Less of the finest quality merino wool is being produced in Australia, and the quantity is likely still further to decrease in future. The reason is two-fold. The growing demand for frozen mutton is en- couraging the squatter and farmer to cross their small fine-fleeced merinos with the bigger, long- woolled English breeds, and the result is a cross- bred wool eminently useful, but not nearly so fine and soft as that from the pure merino. It is, of course, a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence 62 WOOL with the farmer, and the growing popularity of cross-breeding seems to indicate that the heavier carcase and the slightly inferior fleece are likely to pay better than the higher-priced first-quality fleece minus the carcase. At present New Zealand is the country doing most in the way of cross-breeding, and, according to the experience of the farmers there, the most popular ram to cross with the merino is the Rom- ney Marsh. By this means the dominion is getting a big-bodied sheep and a quick-maturing lamb an animal, of course, far superior to the merino for the special purposes for which it is required. Australia is crossing with the Leicester, Romney Marsh, and others, the result being that already more than a quarter of the wool from Australasia is cross-bred, and the proportion is always increasing. New Zealand, indeed, will shortly cease to be a merino-producing country if her present rate of conversion is maintained. Exactly the same process is going on in the Argen- tine, where three-quarters of the flocks are now cross-bred. South Africa has not yet done much in the frozen-mutton trade, and consequently she still retains her flocks of fine-woolled sheep; but as she is much nearer the English markets than Australia, even she may be tempted to change THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 63 the breed and the size of her sheep before long. In Australia, says Captain Bean, the flocks on the coast are rapidly changing to cross-bred, and not only farmers, but hundreds of the big squatters in accessible districts have broken away from their old policy of breeding merinos purely for the excellence of their wool. This they are not doing without weighty protests being made, notable authorities like Dalgety's Review being by no means sure that in the long run the policy will prove the most beneficial. It is pointed out that while it takes only twelve months to produce a cross-bred flock out of the pure merinos, it will perhaps take twenty years to breed the wool fine again, and therefore it is highly important that some, at least, of the famous old merino flocks should be kept intact. Another thing which is said to be working detrimentally to the interests of fine wool is the decision of the Federal and State Governments in Australia to break up the big ranches into small farms for growing wheat and other cereals. Young countries, it is contended, are obliged to open up lands where perhaps there are now kept only one or two sheep to the acre, but in breaking up these great runs the wool produced is hardly likely to be so uniformly good. It is argued that breeding can never be so even in small flocks as in large 64 WOOL ones; that the farmer's few bales cannot be so rigidly classed as the big clips of the squatter, and that the farmer cannot possibly pay the money for rams to improve his flock that the bigger men can. On more than one occasion as much as 1,500 has been paid for a prize ram, and obvi- ously such prices as these are out of the reach of the small farmer. Still, although the day is going when one man can control 60,000 square miles of country and turn out his sheep and cattle upon a holding amounting to 40,000,000 acres, there will be for a long time to come plenty of elbow-room in the interior of Australia, South Africa, and other young countries, especially as irrigation has now made possible lands which formerly were regarded as hopeless for live stock of any kind. Sheep, it may be remarked incidentally, are excellent pioneers in virgin or only partly-settled countries. They always improve the land on which they graze. What was a barren waste with only a tuft of grass here and there, will soon become fit for cattle and mixed farming if sheep are turned upon it, and, this being the case, it is clear why the holdings of the squatters in Aus- tralia are coming into favour as places upon which to settle the small emigrant farmer. In a chapter in which an attempt is made to put THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 65 before the reader the enormous dimensions to which the industry of sheep-raising has grown throughout the world a few figures respecting the wool trade generally will no doubt be found of interest. The report of the first census of produc- tion of the United Kingdom in 1907 scarcely covered the ground, but at least it gave some idea of the magnitude of the industries with which it was concerned. It showed, for instance, that of the 7,000,000 workers returned as employed in all the groups of industries covered by the census, no fewer than 1,250,000 were employed in the textile group, and nearly 2,000,000 of those en- gaged in making textile machinery and apparel were included. Nearly one-half of the textile workers are occupied in the cotton trade. Next in importance comes the woollen group of trades, giving employment to more than 20 per cent, of the total. The persons employed in the manu- facture of wool, worsted, and shoddy in the United Kingdom are stated in the Factory Returns to number 261,192, and the gross output or selling value of the products of the woollen and worsted industries is returned at 70,331,000. Of this sum England and Wales are responsible for 63,652,000, Scotland 6,072,000, and Ireland 607,000. The Board of Trade estimates that there is probably over 10,000,000 paid in wages 66 WOOL in the British woollen, worsted, carpet, flock, and shoddy industries. It is well to remember also that the figures given above do not include the hosiery industry, which is largely concerned with wool, and has a gross output of 8,689,000. The flock and rag factories, which have an output of 852,200, are also not included in the estimate, and, again, no account is taken of the dyeing and finishing in- dustries, which on the wool side represent in value over 2,500,000 and employ over 100,000 people. Of the 261,192 persons given as employed in the wool trades, 102,030 are engaged in spinning and weaving woollen and 116,534 in spinning and weaving worsted, although there are actually more woollen than worsted factories and the spindles and looms show very little variation in number. In the worsted branch, it is worthy of note, there has been an enormous increase in spinning and doubling machinery, accompanied by a substantial decline in the number of power- looms. The speeding-up of looms may have done something towards swallowing up the increased output of the spindles, but the real explanation is no doubt to be found in the fact that, whereas formerly most of the yarn produced was woven into cloth in British factories, a large part of it has THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 67 in recent years been exported to Germany and other Continental countries. America is increasing its demands year by year, and there have actually been years when the consumption of wool in the United States was higher than that of any other country. This was the case in the year 1909-10, there being retained for consumption 587,983,508 Ibs. of wool, of which 263,928,000 Ibs. were imported, the balance being provided by an extraordinary home production. There was a marked falling off from this total in the following year, the quantity retained then being 450,804,692 Ibs. Against these figures the quantity used for manufacturing purposes in the United Kingdom was about 490,000,000 Ibs., in France 460,000,000 Ibs., and in Germany 380,000,000 Ibs. The following table gives a fairly accurate idea of the average quantity of wool used annually for manufacturing purposes in certain principal coun- tries: Lbs. United Kingdom . . . 515,000,000 United States . . . 505,000,000 France 480,000,000 Germany .... 400,000,000 Austria-Hungary . . . 140,000,000 Italy . . . 60,000,000 68 WOOL It is believed, however, that the United States is not nearly at the full extent of her production, for in addition to her own manufactures she is a very large importer of woollen fabrics. So far as Great Britain is concerned, we find that no less than 872,000,000 Ibs. of wool, mohair, shoddy, &c., were consumed in 1913, while the consumption of raw sheep's and lambs' wool alone was 590,000,000 Ibs. These figures have shown great expansion during the-past twenty years, the increase in the sheep's and lambs' wool consumed being over 30 per cent., and that in the total of all wool, mohair, shoddy, &c., over 40 per cent. The proportions of home and imported supplies of raw sheep's and lambs' wool will be seen from the following analysis of the figures for 1913: Lbs. Net imports into the United Kingdom .... 494,000,000 Estimated domestic clip, less exports of British produce . 96,000,000 Total consumption . 590,000,000 The chief sources of the supply of imported sheep's and lambs' wool are British, the Empire contain- ing about a third of the world's sheep, and these of the very highest value. The exports of the woollen trade are analysed THE WORLD'S WOOL SUPPLY 69 under three headings the exports of tops, the exports of yarns, and the exports of manufac- tures. The exports of tops amounted in 1912 to 3,500,000, of which over 1,000,000 went to Germany. The total exports of yarns amounted to 8,200,000 in 1912, and of manufactures to 26,100,000. CHAPTER VI AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE MARK TWAIN, in one of his travel books, tells a story purporting to show how Cecil Rhodes made his first hit in life. The future South African magnate, wandering aimlessly along the quayside at Sydney, New South Wales, was accosted by a fisherman, who wanted assistance in landing and dressing a shark. Young Rhodes was promised half of what was found inside the shark, but con- tented himself with a scrap of paper he discovered there. On the paper was the announcement of the outbreak of the Franco-German War, and the effect it was likely to have on various trades, and notably the woollen. The shark, it was surmised, had picked up the paper at the mouth of the Thames just as it was starting for southern seas, and had beaten by days the ordinary steamship service to Australia a circumstance which en- abled Cecil Rhodes to raise enough money to "corner" the whole of that season's clip of the Colony's wool. The story was told to illustrate the shark's 70 AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 71 natatory powers, but it might very well have stood to show how great were the difficulties under which the early industry of wool laboured at the Antipodes fifty or sixty years ago. Then the sheep farmer was hardly a being to be envied, for not only had he to contend, alone and unequipped, with drought and famine and pestilence, but being without cable, and dependent upon slow- going "ocean tramps" for the transport of his wool, he was at all times the sport of circum- stances unknown to him, and at the mercy of every whim of the home dealer. Now he is able to look with more complacency upon the world, knowing that, so far as wool is concerned, he holds the key to the whole industrial situation. What happened before the squatter became the chief factor in wool is set out in the earlier chapters of this volume, but, fascinating as the story is, it is not more so than the pastoral romance which is woven round the whole history of Australia's national and industrial life. The story is one of deep Imperial interest. Sheep of one kind or another have, as we know, been bred in England for long centuries, but it is not much more than a hundred years ago that Great Britain came into possession of the particu- lar strain which was eventually to make one of her dominions the greatest producer of wool in the n WOOL world. How it all happened is told in an old Australian journal the New South Wales Maga- zine. Spain, it is interesting to remember, was the original home of the merino sheep a hardy, frugal, white-woolled animal which could live on land where most sheep would starve, and which had been patiently developed from certain native sheep said to have been quite black. This merino breed, which produces the softest of all wool, and also the finest and whitest, seems to have been greatly coveted by the stockkeepers of every other country in the world, but for a long time the Spanish authorities closely protected their valuable asset, and would only consent to export the fleeces. How well they succeeded in main- taining their monopoly can be gathered from the fact that while they allowed none of these sheep to leave their shores, they were selling to England alone 6,000,000 Ibs. of the 8,000,000 Ibs. of wool this country imported from abroad in the opening years of the nineteenth century. Once or twice, as a rare concession, the rigid rule made by the Spanish was relaxed, and a foreign king or Govern- ment was presented with a flock of merinos in recognition of favours past or to come. In this way George III. came into possession of some of these sheep in 1787 and again in 1791, but other- wise a strict embargo was put upon their export, AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 73 and for a long time they were not allowed to fall into the hands of anyone who might possibly become a competitor. It was, however, a woman's ingenuity and resource which finally overcame all difficulties, and broke down the protective wall which sur- rounded these precious wool-bearing animals. According to the story in the old magazine men- tioned, the wife of a certain Spanish ambassador to the English Court was given a pair of much- admired creamy Hanoverian coach horses in order to put her under an obligation, and it was then suggested that some merino rams would be an acceptable present in return. The diplomacy having succeeded, the great lady cast about for some means of fulfilling her part of the bargain, knowing full well that it was little use approaching the Spanish Government on the subject. The easy manners of that day answered her purpose well. Smuggling was in its heyday, and to some of these "free trading" gentlemen of her own country she applied, with the intimation that she would like to have "selected" a few good rams from various well-known flocks. The "selec- tion" was duly made, and the sheep were eventu- ally brought to England. Whether this is what really happened we do not know, but it has to be remembered that the 74 WOOL monopoly had to some extent been broken down previously through the medium of presents made by the Spanish Government itself between the years 1768 and 1809. The Saxons, Austrians, Dutch, English, and Americans all benefited in this way. The Saxon flock, it is stated, was es- tablished at Lohmen, and was gradually developed until the wool produced was the finest ever known. The Austrians placed theirs at Hostitz, the French at Rambouillet, the Americans at Vermont, the Dutch sent some of theirs to the Cape of Good Hope, and George III. kept his on his farm at Kew, and all developed the sheep in different ways. It was from the Dutch and English con- tingents, the least important flocks originally, that Australia got the sheep from which she built up the greatest and most famous flocks in the world. It was a young officer Captain John Mac- arthur, of the 102nd Regiment, stationed at Sydney who had the credit of founding the Australasian flocks; but the Commonwealth, es- pecially, is indebted to Macarthur for his great foresight and enterprise. What the introduction of sheep has meant to the great lands "down under" can readily be gathered from the fact that Australia now sends to England alone any- where up to 320,000,000 Ibs. of wool each year, AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 75 and the big islands lying 1,200 miles from Aus- tralia, which are now the Dominion of New Zea- land, but which a little over a hundred years ago had not a white man nor a sheep upon them, sends an additional cargo of between 180,000,000 and 190,000,000 Ibs., valued at something over 8,000,000. Spain, where the merino came from, has long since ceased to send any at all. The Peninsular War started the downfall of the old Spanish trade, and a preferential tariff put on by England in favour of her own colonies finished it. Captain Macarthur went to Sydney two years after the Colony was founded, and seems to have been convinced from the start that the country offered great possibilities for sheep-raising. He started modestly enough. Despite the great diffi- culties of that day in obtaining transport, he managed to get shipped to him thirty Bengal sheep from Calcutta, but the undertaking took him a matter of three years. And when the animals arrived they could not be considered as very great prizes. They have been described as "skinny, long-legged, razor-backed animals, with not an ounce of anything approaching wool upon them," but the Captain found that when he crossed them with one or two Irish sheep he ob- tained, the progeny were covered with a fleece 76 WOOL which was "distinctly less like hair and increas- ingly like wool." This gave him the idea that if he could only obtain some good Spanish sheep he might eventu- ally cover his flock with a fleece of some value. By a lucky chance he heard that the widow of a certain Colonel Gordon, of the Dutch East India Company, had decided to sell a flock of Spanish merinos which had formerly been sent to the Cape by the Dutch Government, and he at once commissioned the captains of two vessels, sailing from Sydney to the Cape for stores, to buy all the fine-woolled sheep they could get in South Africa. The two captains are said to have bought twenty-six sheep at 4 each, and when they ar- rived back in Sydney, Macarthur endeavoured to buy them all, offering as much as 15 each. He is said, however, to have managed to buy only eight three rams and five ewes but with these and his razor-backed Bengals he laid the foundation of the whole of Australia's vast flocks. To-day the great source of Australia's wealth is her pastoral industry. The fine wool from her merino sheep fetches the highest prices in the world's markets, and goes away by millions of bales a year. Following the example of the founder, the Australian pastoralist of to-day is a scientific stock-breeder, and his accomplishments in raising STUD MERINO RAMS ON A NEW SOUTH WALES FARM (Australian Government Photo) "TO SEE THE MERINO IS TO BE CONVINCED OF ITS MARVELOUS WOOL-PRODUCING QUALITIES" (Australian Government Photo) AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 77 the standard of merino wool have astounded the world. The average fleece at the time Macarthur introduced the merinos weighed 3J^ Ibs. To-day the wool, hardly to be rivalled for its quality, shows an average yield from each sheep of over The merino as it appears to-day presents a remarkable picture. "Feathered to the foot," its body covered with folds and wrinkles of wool, and its head almost hidden in the depths of encircling fleece, the animal developed from the old Spanish breed may not be so attractive to look upon as a Leicester or a Suffolk, but to see it is to be convinced of its marvellous wool-producing qualities. The great proportion of Australian sheep probably 85 per cent. are of various types of the merino. These types range from the compara- tively small-framed, dense-woolled, fine quality sheep for which Tasmania is so famous to the big- framed, stronger-woolled merinos for which South Australia is equally well known. In each State, and in almost every important sheep-breeding section of each State, there are flocks noted for the production of some specially valuable class of wool which local conditions and skilful breed- ing have evolved. The remaining 15 per cent, of Australian sheep are cross-breeds. With the devel- 78 WOOL opment of the export trade in lamb and mutton more attention has been paid to sheep of all the British breeds. Probably the Lincoln sheep are the most nu- merous of those introduced for crossing, followed in numerical order by the Leicester, Shropshire, Southdown, Border Leicester, and Romney Marsh. In the majority of cases the long-woolled sheep are crossed with merinos, as it is found by such means that not only can a useful carcase for export be obtained, but also a class of wool which commands ready sale at remunerative prices. The Australian climate has, in some respects, changed the character of the Spanish fleece. The wool has become softer and more elastic, and while it has diminished in density it has increased in length, and the weight of the fleece has grown considerably. The quality of the wool may be said to have improved, on the whole, under the beneficial influence of the climate. The extent of Australian territory naturally adapted to the production of merino wool may be said to comprise nearly the whole of Queensland and New South Wales west of the great Dividing Range, with the exception of the country bordering the Gulf of Carpentaria; practically the whole of Victoria, with the exception of the heavily- timbered tracts of the south-eastern division, and AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 79 the rich volcanic soils of the south-western divi- sion; nearly two-thirds of South Australia; and probably the greater part of Western Australia, with the exception of the sub-tropical fringe of the north and north-west coast, and some of the country of the eastern section of the State. In the Northern Territory there are also extensive tracts of sheep country. From this vast expanse it is necessary to deduct in each State fairly ex- tensive areas which at present are impracticable for sheep for various reasons, but it is probably quite correct to state that there are about two millions of square miles of land in Australia capable of carrying sheep on natural pasturage in normal seasons. Some portions of the country are, of course, capable of carrying more sheep than others, and in many parts of it sheep-rearing is likely to re- main a precarious undertaking until large sums have been expended on improvements and water conservation. In many districts where, prior to the discovery of the existence of artesian water, millions of sheep perished in the midst of abun- dance of food, there are now, however, ample supplies of water flowing from artesian bores. The discovery of artesian water has, in fact, completely changed the outlook over thousands of square miles of country where surface water 80 WOOL was the only want, and has opened the way for the pastoral occupation of areas as yet barely touched. It has also enabled sheep to be travelled where formerly such a thing was difficult or impossible. As far back as 1860 Australia had already won a recognised place among the world's great wool producers. Since then, with great strides, she has made her way to the very front, and remains there, despite the vicissitudes to which an industry of such enormous scope is naturally liable. In 1860 the sheep on Australian pastures totalled 20,135,286; in 1870,41,593,612; in 1880,62,186,702; in 1890, 97,881,221. In 1902, the year of the great dry spell, the colossal total was reduced by nearly one-half, namely, to 53,668,347. Since then a great and practically continuous recovery has taken place, until, at the end of 1913, the number of sheep in the Commonwealth had again climbed up to 85,049,697. New South Wales remains the leading wool-growing State, not only of the Commonwealth, but of the world, with some- thing like 40,000,000 sheep. Queensland comes next, though at a long interval, with nearly 22,000,000. Put shortly, In one hundred and twenty-five years the flocks of Australia have grown from a few head to over 85,000,000, by far the greatest num- AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 81 her of sheep in any country; the weight of the fleece has been more than doubled, and the quality has been brought to such a pitch that it is difficult to say whether further improvement is possible. The annual value of Australian wool exported is now about 31,000,000. Formerly the bulk of the output was shipped to Great Britain for dis- posal, but now buyers from various countries visit Australia to purchase their supplies at the sales held locally. Still, the quantity of Australian wool, for all that, sent direct to British ports constitutes nearly 45 per cent, of the total im- portations of wool to Great Britain. France comes next as the most important purchaser of Australian wools, the amount exported from the Commonwealth to French ports reaching nearly 6,000,000 worth of scoured and greasy wool per annum, with very large quantities of sheep- skins. Germany ranks third in the scale of pur- chasers, with an annual importation of Australian wool of the value of over 5,000,000, while the value of the wool exported from Australia to Belgium exceeds two and a quarter millions sterling. New Zealand, which has grown up alongside Australia as a great sheep-producing country, has also a wonderful record of progress. The country is eminently suited for sheep-breeding, practically 82 WOOL every description of sheep finding a favourable local habitat. In the hilly and down country of the South Island the merino has been bred for many years, and was the original sheep depas- tured. In fact, the merino ewe furnished the foundation of the cross-bred stock which has made Canterbury mutton famous on British meat markets. In the early days of the Canterbury meat trade the English Leicester of the original type was the favourite ram for cross-breeding with the merino ewe, but of later years the Lincoln has been largely employed for that purpose. In the North Island the Romney sheep, which suits the rather moist climate of this portion of the dominion, has become the most popular sheep, and it is also increasing in number in the South Island. The Lincoln and Border Leicester, how- ever, are also greatly favoured in both islands, while the Southdown is displacing other breeds for fat-lamb production throughout the dominion. The Leicesters, mainly the English variety, are still the most popular British breed in the south. The total of sheep in the dominion in 1913 was 24,191,810, which showed an increase of 5,237,257 between 1903 and 1913, representing a rate of increase of 27.63 per cent, in the ten years. Of the provincial districts, Wellington had most sheep in 1913, Otago came next, and Canterbury oc- AUSTRALIA'S PASTORAL ROMANCE 83 cupied third place. The average size of the flocks in 1913 was 1,124, which is very little different from the average twenty years ago. Wool, although showing signs of decreasing quantity, is still the most important product of New Zealand. The annual value of the export is about a third of the value of the total exports of the dominion, the figures for 1913 being: Total exports of New Zealand produce, 22,577,890; wool, 8,057,620. The quantity of wool exported during the same year was 186,533,036 Ibs., a decrease of 1,828,754 Ibs. on the quantity exported in the previous year. Thus, it will be seen that, while there is an increase in the number of sheep raised, there is actually a falling off in the amount of wool mark- eted, which is, of course, due to the circumstance that the dominion is now breeding for mutton in preference to wool. This is shown by the fact that cross-breds and other long wools now comprise 93 per cent, of the New Zealand flocks, the merino being less suited for freezing. During the year ended March 31st, 1914, 4,019,831 sheep and 4,338,180 lambs were slaughtered for food pur- poses, 2,557,639 carcases of sheep and 3,854,348 carcases of lamb being exported. In addition, it is estimated that 4,500,000 sheep, representing a weight of 270,000,000 Ibs., and about 550,000 84 WOOL lambs, of a weight of 20,000,000 Ibs., were killed by farmers for local consumption, the average annual consumption per head of population, in- cluding Maoris, being over 100 Ibs. New Zea- land supplies larger quantities of frozen mutton and lamb to the United Kingdom than do either Australia or South America. The number of sheep in the several States of the Commonwealth of Australia and in New Zea- land for the year 1913 was as follows: Queens- land, 21,786,600; New South Wales, 39,842,518; Victoria, 12,113,682; South Australia, 5,140,166; Western Australia, 4,418,402; Tasmania, 1,745,356; New Zealand, 24,191,810; making a grand total for Australasia of 109,238,534. CHAPTER VII THE MARKETING OF WOOL THERE is about wool something of romance in every stage through which it passes, and this obtains even in the usually prosaic business of buying and selling. Perhaps in this instance it is the cosmopolitan character of the transaction which appeals to one, or it is the wonderful future of the great fleecy cargoes which are brought into the Thames from sub-equatorial lands that especially touches the imagination. It cannot fail, also, to be a matter of pride to the Englishman to reflect that for nearly a century buyers from all over the world have come to this country for their wool, and that the Metropolis has been the great clearing-house of the industry. Once it was Bruges that set the standard for the commodity of wool; later, York became the commercial centre for the woolstapler; but for the last three generations, at least, or ever since Australia began to be the great producer of wool, London has been the natural and accepted meeting-place for all who trafficked in the fibre. 85 86 WOOL From being quite small affairs held once in a way in a tradesman's shop, the London sales have become international in character, held regu- larly six times a year at the commodious Wool Exchange hi Coleman Street. Here wool is sold from nearly all the most important wool-producing countries of the world. Wool is sent, for instance, from New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, West and South Australia, and New Zealand, from the Cape of Good Hope, from the Falklands Islands, the Argentine, from Chili, and from far Peru. This wool is all packed and graded upon the same lines, and the largest buyers com- pete for its purchase, because on the London Wool Market they have the best opportunities of getting the kind of wool they want. The first auction of wool from the colonies was held on August 17th, 1821, when 329 bales of wool from New South Wales, consigned by Captain Macarthur, the pioneer of Australian sheep- breeding, were offered at Garraway's Coffee House in Change Alley, Cornhill. One lot actually real- ised the extraordinary price of 105. 4d. per lb., and was sold to a buyer named Hirst, of Leeds. With this wool was also sold wool which came from the Cape of Good Hope, from Spain, and from Italy. It is, therefore, nearly a century since the first ship, which had taken out its boat- THE MARKETING OF WOOL 87 load of exiles to Australia, returned laden with a pioneer cargo of wool. Since then a whole race of sheep farmers and wool merchants have sprung up, who have transformed the conditions of in- dustry by their determination and enterprise, creating a trade of world importance and world renown. The London wool sales, which were first re- moved to Moorgate Street Buildings, and have for the last forty years been held at the present saleroom in Coleman Street, have now grown to such an extent that there are six series of sales throughout the year, each lasting about fifteen or sixteen days, and on the average 12,000 bales of wool are sold each day. The wool for sale in London arrives on consignment to various mer- chant houses, mortgage companies and banks, and is distributed among the firms of selling brokers for realisation on behalf of the consignors. The buyers view the wools at the docks and ware- houses on the mornings of the sales, which take place at 4 o'clock every afternoon during the series, except Saturday, when the lots are put up for auction an hour earlier. The way the London sales are conducted would 'surprise the uninitiated, who may, perhaps, only know the wool salesman as a mild-mannered family man. The eagerness to secure some of the "lots" 88 WOOL on the Exchange leads to remarkable scenes, and the abiding wonder is that the auctioneer is able to give any satisfaction whatever. When the bid- ding commences these otherwise staid gentle- men become as excited as schoolboys at a football match. No sooner has the lot been put up than a wild assault is made upon the eye and ear of the auctioneer, whose rostrum is situated at the foot of the tiers of seats occupied by the salesmen, and in full view of everyone present. The saleroom somewhat resembles the lecture theatre of a scho- lastic or medical institution in the arrangement of seats, being totally different from the cotton and other exchanges where dealers meet on the floor of the house and transact their business standing. Each wool salesman has his own par- ticular seat, and members, to the number of sev- eral hundreds, sit round in crescent form with the auctioneer enthroned in the front centre. Captain Bean gives an amusing sketch of the scene in a wool saleroom in Australia, and it is typical of what may be seen in England. "The sales-room in the Sydney Exchange," he says, "is not quite so large, and the crowd does not amount to 300 or more, as in London. But the excitement from the moment the bidding starts is a spectacle really worth seeing. It is sometimes known locally as the dog-fight. Half-a-dozen THE MARKETING OF WOOL 89 foreigners start suddenly to their feet gesticulating like lunatics. An innocent onlooker would imagine that an outrage had just been committed in the French Chamber of Deputies, and that he was watching the arrest of the criminal. All the time a huge gaunt yankee in an upper row will be bawling some monosyllable interjection with the regulation of a foghorn. Sometimes buyers have actually climbed down over the shoulders of buyers in front until they were almost leaning against the auctioneer's desk, shouting their bids straight into his face. Then the auctioneer makes a nod, the whole din subsides, and you learn that the lot has been knocked down to a quiet, spec- tacled Japanese gentleman in the back row who said * three,' which means three farthings, and put an end to the pandemonium. In the matter of dog-fights," he adds, "there is little to choose between the Sydney and London wool sales." At one time the representatives of practically every country on the globe came to London for wool, but of recent years there has been a tendency to develop more and more the wool sales in Aus- tralasia, and for some time the Germans, French, and Americans have had their own ships running direct to the Antipodes, and have chosen to buy most of their wool either in Australia or New Zealand. Many of the big Australian squatters 90 WOOL still prefer to market their wool in London, but the farmers and smaller men obtain their money much more quickly by selling in Australia. Owing to the fact that the large runs are being yearly more cut up by the Government and the smaller men are increasing, the Australian sales are be- coming more and more popular; indeed, the markets held at Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide, Fremantle, Brisbane, and in Tasmania and New Zealand now deal with over three- quarters of the Australasian wool, Sydney alone having in recent years almost equalled London in the quantities of wool sold. London con- tinues to sell a considerable amount of Cape, Falkland Islands, and other wool, but many European firms are now regularly sending their own representatives to Australia direct, believing that they thus not only reap financial advantage, but thereby obtain the pick of the clips. The biggest buyers at the Australian sales of late have been the Germans, their purchases in 1912 being 420,788 bales against Britain's 392,519. The cream of the Australian wool nowadays, however, goes to America, although Japan has recently purchased some of the highest-priced wools from Sydney. There are also wool sales in South Africa at Port Elizabeth, East London, Mossel Bay, Durban, THE MARKETING OF WOOL 91 and at smaller inland centres, but the bulk of Cape wool is sold privately to large merchants in South Africa. There are sales at Antwerp con- sisting mainly of River Plate wools, and there is usually a sale in Bremen once a year for Australian wools bought in the Colony for re-sale in that city. Some raw wool is also sold at Havre, and there are also sales of partly manufactured wool at other places in France; but the London wool sales, despite some tendency to diminish in im- portance, still furnish the standard prices all over the world. It is curious to note that England, holding as it does a place so eminent in the world of manufac- ture, should, until recently at all events, have paid practically no attention to those details of wool production which have assuredly given Australia the lead in the world's markets. England, as we have shown, was famous as a wool-growing coun- try centuries before many of its competitors were heard of, but latterly there has been a tendency to fall away from the best traditions and allow younger countries to outstrip her in the race. In its excellent review of the wool trade at the close of 1914, the Bradford Observer said: "Our estimate of the English clip shows a reduction as compared with last year of 3,922,000 Ibs., equiva- lent to 16,300 packs, or (say) 11,900 colonial bales. 92 WOOL Since 1909 there has been a steady decline in the number of sheep kept in this country, and while it is too early yet to be alarmed about the English wool production, the downward trend of the figures for the past few years is something to be noted, and it would be interesting to inquire to what extent it is due to the growth of the trade in fat lambs. Exports of English wool this year have been more than half as large again as those of last year, and there can be little doubt that but for the war they would have exceeded the big total of 1912. The United States have taken nearly three times as much as last year; Russia, France, and Holland have all bought liberally, and Germany, whose account was closed at the end of July, was the only country whose takings at that time did not come up to last year's figures." It is perhaps something in the way of explana- tion of the growth in the trade in fat lambs that the home sheep-breeder has been much discouraged by the poor prices he has made for his wool; but be that as it may, he has largely overlooked the fact that he is himself to blame for the falling off in his profits on fleeces. Had he studied closely the history of the trade in Australia and some other of the younger sheep-rearing countries, he would have discovered that these far-distant places had won their positions in the markets of the world as THE MARKETING OF WOOL 93 much by scientific methods as by natural advan- tages; for, after all, it has to be remembered that against certain natural advantages which are pos- sessed by some of our colonies must be placed the difficulty and expense of transporting wool from far-away inland stations, and also of carrying the wool half-way round the world before the principal market can be reached. The English wool-grower has not only his market, but his manufacturer at his own door, and, with such excellent sheep country as he has at his disposal, there must be something radically wrong if he cannot "keep up his end" with the keenest com- petition from overseas. It is curious that although the United Kingdom in 1912 had 29,000,000 sheep, or a larger number than New Zealand, none of the British wool had up to the end of that year been sold on the London Wool Exchange. The clip, assuming an average of about 6 Ibs. of wool per sheep, amounts in round figures to about 180,000,000 Ibs. of wool, but the whole of this is disposed of either at local markets or by private treaty. The bulk of the English wool is of the long-stapled variety, and its sale is really an important branch of trade. Representatives of the West Riding trade, and country wool-dealers, either purchase the wool from the farmers or the wool comes to market 04 WOOL at fairs such as those held at Leicester and Lincoln. There are regular sales of Irish wool in Dublin, and of Scottish wools in Edinburgh, or Leith, or Glasgow. Complaint after complaint has been made as to the manner in which British wools are shorn, classed, and baled, the methods of carrying out these operations, it is stated, being of the most primitive description. It is surprising that whilst Australian wools are prepared for market and sold by auction in bulk either in Australia or in London by methods which give general satisfaction, British wools were until quite recently still marketed in a manner more suited to an earlier generation than to the present day. A comparison between the prices obtained for English wool, when marketed on the usual lines, and the prices obtained for colonial wool of a sim- ilar class on the London wool market, leads to the conclusion that the more highly organised methods adopted by the colonials in respect to classifying and packing insure a better monetary return to the growers. Enquiries made among wool-buyers in England and Wales confirm the opinion that if an improved system of classing and marketing were adopted by the home sheep farmers, it might reasonably be expected that better prices would also obtain for the home- grown product. THE MARKETING OF WOOL 95 Some years ago an organisation was established in England which seems likely before long to put the British sheep-rearer on the direct road to success. The Agricultural Organisation Society, amongst other things, is now promoting co- operative wool societies in various parts of the country, and these have for their aim the adop- tion of the main features of the colonial system, namely, the classification of the wool and its subsequent marketing in large lots under brands constituting guarantees of quality. It is the practice in the colonies at shearing to divide the inferior portions of the fleece from the main fleece by separating the belly wool and skirt- ing off the coarse woolled britch, and the resulting fleeces, pieces, bellies, ahd locks (the sweepings of the shearing board) have a marketable value, but care is taken to market them separately. The fleeces, in addition to the usual division of hogs and ewes, washed and unwashed, are still further classed according to quality, and each of the classes, four in number, is packed separately and offered for sale in large lots under a brand forming a guarantee of even quality and honest packing. Buyers claim that this system of classification enables them to offer the fullest price, as no allow- ance has to be made for unevenness of quality or faulty packing. The huge colonial sheep runs with 96 WOOL their thousands of sheep undoubtedly assist organ- ised schemes for the sale of wool in large quanti- ties of even quality, but the English farmers, by adopting co-operation and more systematic methods of classification, hope to be able to place themselves in at least an equal position to the colonial competitor who has had so far to send his wool to the London market. Mr. Digby B. Grist, in an excellent paper on wool classing read at the Nottingham Confer- ence of the National Sheep-Breeders' Association in 1915, to which I am indebted for many of the facts appertaining to this subject, stated that in 1913, as a result of the propagandist work of the Agricultural Organisation Society, sheep farmers in three districts, namely, in Carnarvonshire and in the Brandsby and Malton districts of York- shire, decided to deal with their clips on the lines advocated. In Yorkshire, the work was under- taken by the Brandsby Agricultural Trading As- sociation, which sold 7,000 fleeces at the London wool market. In Carnarvonshire, a special wool society was formed and forty-four members sold 10,000 fleeces through its instrumentality. In both cases the result of the experiment was suffi- ciently satisfactory to induce those who took part in it to undertake it on a larger scale with the 1914 clip. The first wool to be sold in this new THE MARKETING OF WOOL 97 way in 1914 was 93,071 Ibs., sent up from York- shire for sale in London by the Brandsby Agri- cultural Trading Association. The wool realised 4,521 7s. %d., a result which pleased the senders, who believe that the lower and medium grades realised quite as much, if not more, and the higher grades considerably more, than local prices. The London papers reported favourably on the get-up and sale of the wool. Some of it went to France, Germany, and America, and some of it was bought by Yorkshire manufacturers at a higher price per pound than that given by the dealers who, at the same date, were purchasing wool from the farmers in Yorkshire. The actual expenses of the Brandsby scheme in 1914 (exclu- sive of management) amounted to 187 Ss. lie?., or approximately a half -penny a pound. The farmers, however, charged themselves an eighth of a penny more per pound, and this left a balance sufficient to cover the expenses of management and to allow a small profit to the society. Thus it will be seen that, although the experi- ments in wool organisation have only been carried on over a comparatively brief period, they have been sufficient to establish the fact that the sheep- breeder may expect to market his wool upon the most favourable terms when he adopts the methods which have proved so advantageous in the case of 98 WOOL his competitors who send their produce to be sold in London, the world's great market for wool. There are, too, a number of other advantages which have been found to have resulted from this organisation among British sheep-breeders, and in future, through the encouraging results already attained, there will be a much larger quantity of English fleeces placed on the London market in saleable form. Three times as many fleeces were offered in 1915 as in 1914, which is in itself a proof of the benefit of the system to English flockmasters. CHAPTER VIII SHEARING AND SORTING IN a book of the present dimensions one cannot do more than barely outline the processes through which wool has to go from the sheep's back to the moment it is ready to be placed on the counter in manufactured form. These processes are bewilder- ing in number to the uninitiated, as will be seen from the fact that the finishing work alone which only begins after the cloth comes from the hands of the weaver involves between twenty and twenty-five different handlings, according to the kind of finish that is required. A piece of fine cloth such as is used for a lady's dress requires, after spinning and weaving, such operations as perching, mending, soaping, milling, scouring, hydro-extracting, crabbing, tentering, brush-dew- ing, double-brushing, steaming, raising, cutting, double-brushing, second mending, dry-steaming, blowing and exhausting, cuttling and measuring, pressing, steaming-off and cold-pressing. And just as there are a large number of processes at the one end there are a large number at the other, 99 100 WOOL the preparatory stages being very many and complicated. Nowadays, owing to its vastness and the neces- sity of obtaining the speediest and most satisfac- tory result, the trade, and the worsted trade par- ticularly, has become highly specialised, this fact no doubt accounting in no small degree for the supremacy which has been attained by the British industry. It is possible, of course, for one concern to undertake the twenty-fold processes required to turn out a piece of fine cloth, but in practice it is evidently much more profitable for a firm to con- centrate on combing or spinning or weaving, or dyeing or finishing; or, at all events, on a few of the processes rather than on the whole. On the woollen side, it is quite common for large firms to be self-contained. Many concerns not only card, spin, and weave then* own materials, but also dye and finish them as well. The wool, either "washed" or "in the grease," has to go through several preparatory stages be- fore it is ready for the actual combing or carding, and then after receiving it in the shape of a coil of fleecy ropes, called tops, the spinner has to put it through two or three processes before handing it forward "on the bobbin" in the shape of thread to the warper and weaver. Even then it is not more than half dealt with, for, owing to the SHEARING AND SORTING 101 skill and ingenuity now exercised in dyeing and finishing many of the methods employed being strictly guarded trade secrets the more exacting and important work in woollen and worsted cloth manufacture often comes in subsequent to the weaving stage. One has to go far afield to see the first act in this interesting industrial drama. In England, it may be that the preliminary work is taking place in a shed attached to a lonely moorland farm, where the perspiring farmer-shepherd is to be seen wrestling with a lusty sheep, while he endeavours with a pair of antiquated shears to divest the animal of its valuable shaggy coat. Indeed, in some parts of the world the start may be on even more primitive lines than these, for in many out- landish places they do not even take the trouble to use shears at all, but simply pull the wool from the sheep's back sans ceremony. Sheep naturally divest themselves of their wool when the fleece becomes a burden in hot weather and the new wool begins to grow, but there would obviously be much waste in waiting for this to happen, as the wool would be rubbed off the back here and there in the pastures and much would not be re- covered. It is recorded that the custom of pulling the wool from sheep's backs survived in the north of Scotland until a comparatively recent date, 102 WOOL but owing to the fact that sheep were not always ready to shed their coats at the same time, much cruelty was done to some of the animals, the tearing process often leaving their skins blood raw. As the manufacturing industry became better organised, it began to be seen that the proper shearing of flocks would be much more advan- tageous than the haphazard system of pulling the wool. Consequently the barbarous methods of early days were discarded, and the wool was gathered regularly and systematically for the market. Later, when sheep began to be raised by the million instead of the score, and great tracts of territory were set apart for wool growing on scientific and business lines, it became necessary to devise such means of harvesting the yield as were more in keeping with the insistent demands of the times. On the great ranches of Australia, and elsewhere, it was manifestly impossible to cope with the enormous numbers of sheep on the old hand-shearing lines, and now the work, instead of being done, as formerly, by any odd lad about the farm, has become highly specialised and is a well-regulated trade run by experts. These professional shearers in Australia are said to number something like 30,000; they are men who perambulate a great part of the conti- SHEARING AND SORTING 103 nent in the course of the season, and often at least many of their number make journeys to Tasmania and New Zealand as well to give a hand at the shearing. While an English farm hand, using hand shears, will have done a good day's work in clipping thirty sheep, these men, with the aid of steam or electricity, will easily do a hun- dred. One man, indeed, has been known to shear 327 animals in the course of a nine hours' day. The mechanical shearer, it may be explained, generally consists of a cutting wheel geared to the shaft of a small steam turbine. A comb moves in front of the cutter, effectually protecting the animal from harm. The shearing apparatus, made of brass and in shape similar to a small trowel, is held in the hand and guided over the body of the sheep just as is the ordinary wool shears. The shearing machine not only works with great expedition, but with perfect safety to the sheep. Australia has brought the business of shearing, like that of breeding and growing wool generally, to a great state of perfection. There are single depots in Queensland and New South Wales where an many as 4,000 sheep are sheared in a day, machinery having now taken the place of hand work, and the shearers being remarkably expert. A man's daily output can be judged from the fact 104 WOOL that the officially-fixed shearing rate is 24s. per 100, and that men who know their business can earn from 80s. to 2 a day. The shearers, who move on from one shearing shed to another, only work for a few months in every year. Many possess farms of their own, which they are enabled to develop by the substantial cheques earned during the short but busy season. The scene at shearing time on a great Australian ranch is a remarkable one. The "station" is worked with machine-like regularity, and although the pace is a fast one, there is no confusion, as every man knows his own special work and the whole business is organised to the last detail. What one sees outside the shearing sheds is only an index of what is going on inside,, and the whole makes up one of the busiest hives of industry imaginable. Musterers, as they are called, are constantly arriving with sheep for the shears, or driving those already shorn to their paddocks. In the woolshed the heavy thrum of the machines driving the shears goes on from daylight to dark, with short intervals for dinner and refreshments. Long lines of men stoop busily over their work, each man pausing only to let a shorn sheep go into the pen in front, and for another kicking animal to be carried from the pen behind him. As the fleeces fall from the sheep they are SHEARING AND SORTING 105 quickly picked up, carried away, and thrown out on tables. The wool-rollers then skirt and roll up each fleece, placing it on the sorter's table near at hand. This expert immediately classifies them and has them consigned to their respective places, each description of wool being stocked in its own particular bin. The pressers next remove and press each sort into separate bales, and on each bale is placed a brand denoting class of sheep and quality of wool. While all this is going on, tar- boys dart hither and thither as the cry of "Tar!" arises, where a sheep has been accidentally cut by the shears. The shearing at one of the big stations may take a month to six weeks, but by the end of that time the wool of perhaps 200,000 sheep will be made up into bales and most of it on its way to port. The transportation of the wool, like everything else, has been vastly improved since the days of slow-moving bullock teams and tramp steamers. Now the squatter, in addition to abundant horse- flesh, has the latest modes of traction at his dis- posal, besides being adequately catered for by railway and steamship companies. The wool takes nothing like the time to market that it formerly did; indeed, it is often transported, sold, manufactured, and being worn by the people in England hi far less time than it took in the old 106 WOOL days to convey the raw wool from the Antipodes to the London market. In another chapter the methods of marketing the wool are specially dealt with, and therefore it is only necessary here to follow the wool after it has been received in bale at the manufacturer's premises. It might be thought that all wool coming from the same place and from the same breed of sheep would be ready, after some little cleansing, to go at once to the spinners and weavers. But this is not so by any means. Wool calls for a good deal of preparation before it can start on its way to the actual cloth-maker. First of all, it must be "sorted," and this in itself is a process calling for great skill. How to be able to tell at a glance the length and quality of the "staple," and judge just the sort of wool suitable for a particular pur- pose, requires long experience and much train- ing; for, obviously, great economy or great waste may depend upon the sorter, as well as trouble or ease in the subsequent manufacturing processes. The work of the wool-sorter is nowadays, how- ever, much simplified by the system obtaining in Australia and elsewhere of "classing" the wool before it is baled. The shearer himself makes a rough classification as he does his work, and after- SHEARING AND SORTING 107 wards a highly-paid expert goes over the fleeces and makes the "clip" additionally saleable by division and sub-division of the wool. Each fleece contains twelve or fifteen qualities within itself, but these are often classified again into two or three times as many. The squatter finds it to his advantage to engage the most able men available for the purpose, and during shearing time often pays the expert classer at the rate of 500 or 600 a year. By classification he makes infinitely better prices in the wool market than he otherwise would, and finds his outlay in this department particularly remunerative. There is a very pronounced difference between wool-classing and wool-sorting. The first may be defined as merely keeping the coarse from the fine, the long from the short, the heavy from the light, and the dirty from the clean; whereas wool-sort- ing is the breaking up of the fleece into many sorts to suit the exact requirements of the manu- facturer. A sheep produces many sorts of wool in the same fleece, and, were the wool to be used just as it is shorn, the yarn obtained from it would be faulty and very difficult to work, especially in the later stages of manufacture. At the present time, when a good deal of wool is "classed," the buyer probably sorts with a particular material in view, and is not concerned with the question as to 108 WOOL how few or how many descriptions can be made out of the bale before him. The sorter, a familiar figure in his long blue smock, has his quarters close to where the bales of wool are stored, and does his work with the aid of a wired screen, or "hurdle," which is generally placed in the position of an inclined desk in front of a window where the light is good. Underneath the screen an arrangement is to be found for carrying off the dust and impurities which are shaken out when the bale is first opened, and which are often a source of great danger to the sorter. Dirty wool in its raw state is frequently a great carrier of anthrax germs, and deaths are recorded yearly from this terrible disease in the wool dis- tricts of the North of England. It is stated that there is little danger in handling British or Aus- tralian wools, but in Turkey, Russia, and Far Eastern parts of the world the disease is fairly common, and the infection is sometimes carried abroad in the exported fleeces. Although to most outsiders one part of a fleece might appear to be pretty well as good as another, it is a vastly varied thing in the eyes of the expert wool-sorter. He is able to separate the wool of each sheep into many different qualities, as we haye shown, with wonderful accuracy, but often his greatest trouble is not to arrange the wool SHEARING AND SORTING 109 into various lengths of staple, but how to find a means of eliminating the various "faults" and foreign substances which may be present. One of the difficulties he has to contend with is to be found in the black and grey hairs which appear, often quite unaccountably, in white fleeces, and which are not removable by the ordinary processes of sorting. So great a nuisance did these dark hairs become some time ago that the Bradford Chamber of Commerce were obliged to take steps to try to get the contamination eradicated at its source. The Chamber, consequently, issued rec- ommendations to farmers at home and abroad not to breed from black or grey sheep, to take the greatest care to select rams from flocks as free from grey hairs as possible, and to slaughter all black and grey lambs. Another bugbear of the manufacturer of wool, and especially the manufacturer of the finest "stuffs" used in the dressmaking trade, has arisen from the impurities which have in the past been inseparable from the baling of the fibre. Wool comes into the country from abroad in jute bags, or "packs," as they are called, and when the packs have been opened it has been invariably found that some of the loose fibre from the packing material has become mixed in the wool. If this jute by any mischance is not discovered and gets 110 WOOL into the manufactured piece the result may be absolutely disastrous. Being of vegetable fibre, the pullings of the packs will not take the dyes like the animal fibre. If a shred of twine or jute becomes mixed with the wool, it will often bleach white when scoured and get through any combing process and into the yarn, and finally into the cloth itself; and when a serge or self-coloured cloth comes to be dyed, these vegetable fibres refuse to take the same dye as the wool fibres, and small discoloured flecks or streaks appear in the piece. Manufacturers have to keep special girls regularly at work overlooking the cloth to pick out the burrs or jute fibres. In America and some other countries where fleeces are commonly shorn in half-swept barns, tied up with binder twine, and rammed into coarse jute sacks, such contamination can hardly fail to happen. Even in Australia and New Zea- land, where the tying of fleeces is scrupulously avoided, and sheds are carefully swept, clippings of packing thread are apt to get in occasionally. They are, indeed, found sometimes in scoured wool, and there is evidence that more care might be taken in some of the scouring establishments. The case with bales packed on the stations is different. There the vegetable fibre can only get in from the bale. When a bale arrives in England, SHEARING AND SORTING 111 at the end of its long journey it is frequently found that, if one side of it is stripped, the edge of the wool which was next it is covered with scarcely visible fibres which have come from the bale, probably during dumping. Very great care is used on many stations to buy the best jute bales, and trouble is even taken to singe the inside of the bale, and fasten it with steel clips. But, notwithstanding every precaution, the re- sult remains unsatisfactory, and suggestions have repeatedly been made that wool should be packed in paper-lined bales. This, of course, means an added expense to the wool-grower, seeing that the manufacturer is not inclined to pay more for the raw material on the score of the extra cost for baling, and the reform has not been taken up very enthusiastically. In view of this trouble to the manufacturer, the writer was particu- larly interested recently in the efforts that are being put forth by a London firm to produce a wool pack of very strong woven paper cloth, and already the pack has been tried and found to answer admirably. It is claimed for it that it will stand the strain of package and that no dele- terious fibre can be rubbed off and mixed among the wool. And even if any of the paper did get among the wool, it would have no ill effects, seeing that it would take the dyes quite as well as any 112 WOOL wool. The Textilite Engineering Company, which makes the machinery to weave these paper packs, has also been able to evolve a process by which the paper is waterproofed while being spun on the spinning frame. This procedure not only makes the yarn water-resisting, but furthermore increases its strength, and gives to the yarn a flexibility, or rather elasticity, which has never been attained before in paper yarn. Experiments carried out by the Bradford Wool Dyers' Association three or four years ago proved that these paper packs gave very good results, but since that time vast improvements have been made in their manufacture, and they were brought to a high pitch of perfection at Calcutta two years ago by Mr. George Seaton Milde, the managing director of the Textilite Company. The users are well satisfied with the paper pack, but argue very strongly that it is hardly possible to make much progress among the growers unless the buyer will share in the extra cost it entails. They take the view that the matter would be settled once and for all if the trade would submit to a charge for the wool packs, especially as the buyer has the option of regulating the price of the raw material. CHAPTER IX PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE WOOL, in its natural condition, is coated with a greasy, fatty substance called the "yolk," which is more or less washed out in the course of cleans- ing the fibre of the impurities the fleece has gath- ered while on the sheep's back. A warm and slightly alkaline bath is used for the removal of the dirt, but this bath not only removes the foreign matter, but the natural grease as well, which would be most valuable if it could be re- tained. Indeed, as a well-known manufacturer remarked to me, a fortune awaits the person who can thoroughly cleanse the wool without removing all this fatty substance, for a certain amount of grease is necessary for the subsequent manufac- turing processes. At present, the deficiency has to be made up by sprinkling oil on the washed wool. The process of washing is interesting in itself. The wool, blended in accordance with the cus- tomer's liking, arrives first at the washing or scouring machine. It is conveyed by a travelling 113 114 WOOL apron into the first "wash-bowl," or trough, and is carried forward by the periodical advance and recession of iron forks, one step at a time, until it is led ultimately into squeezing rollers, from which it emerges perceptibly cleaner and almost dry. The process is repeated, and the material arrives with a minimum of disturbance and dishevelment at the last bowl. Although remarkably cleaner, the wool has not inevitably lost all its sand and vegetable adher- ents, but these are lessened upon the machines known as "cards," which are fitted with large cylinders. These cylinders are themselves fur- nished with bent wire teeth, and the minor cylin- ders working upon their circumference are fitted with the same in different degrees of fineness, sharpness, and strength. After teasing out the wool into a filmy veil, thus freeing it from all the sand and many of the vegetable burrs, the carding engine eventually brings the filaments together, and these, passing quickly through a funnel, form a rope or "sliver" sufficiently coherent to undergo subsequent treatment in this continuous form. The wool passes to the backwashing machine to be washed free of any impurities which may still sully its colour and to be dried continuously in a compact hot-air chamber. The material is oiled by measured drops of the best olive oil as it passes CARDING MACHINE, SHOWING AUTOMATIC FEEDER (Copyright by American Woolen Company) CARDING MACHINE, SHOWING THE CARDED WOOL (Copyright by American Woolen Company) PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 115 through a "gilling" machine designed to straighten the fibres of the sliver preparatory to their passage into the comb. Only after this sequence of preliminary processes does the wool intended for worsted manufacture enter the machine which combs out the short and weak fibres and the remnant of vegetable impu- rities and divides the wool into two parts, "top" and "noil." The former is the long wool with all its fibres parallel, which constitutes the raw material of the worsted spinner. The noil, or short wool, is invaluable for making blankets, flannels, tweeds, and other woollen cloths. The separation of long from short is effected normally upon a Noble comb, fed with carded sliver supplied from balls set around the circumference near to the ground. The carded wool is led upwards through conductors, and thus to the pins or teeth of an annular comb rotating in the horizontal plane. This is the comb called the large circle, inside of which revolve two smaller circles fur- nished also with pin teeth. At the points of contact of the outer with the inner circles dabbing brushes work vigorously up and down to press the uncombed wool into the teeth. The wool overhangs the edges of the circles and is engaged and combed by the passing teeth. The long fibres are drawn off, leaving the short or noil 116 WOOL fibres within the pins. The top is carried off up- wards and is coiled away and the coil cleared out of the pins is passed downward. The operation is not over until the combed top has been passed through a "finisher" box, in which the sliver is made equal and uniform in all respects and has restored to it the moisture lost in the preceding operations. The business of wool-combing is almost exclu- sively a Yorkshire one, and the last Home Office return showed that of the 2,924 machine combs in the kingdom 2,642 were in Yorkshire. The Yorkshire combs are all in Bradford or a short distance from that city. To a large extent, the general success of the wool-using industries of this kingdom are dependent upon the wool-comber's work. The operation of combing is a fundamental one upon which all subsequent results are built, and there is everything to be said for having wool combed in the most economical and accomplished manner. It is claimed that nothing is wasted by the wool-comber. The suds from the washing machines after they are spent are run into tanks, where the wool grease is separated from the water by vitriol. The fat thus recovered is pressed under heat in modern machinery built for the purpose. The fluid oil is run off and casked to be sold to America or elsewhere for axle-grease. The press PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 117 cake remaining behind makes a valuable manure much used in Continental countries. The burr- dust and sand picked from the teeth of the cards is saved and sold for shipment to France. The process for woollens is different in the preparatory stages, the aim being to turn short wool into relatively thick yarns and cloth, and not long wools into fine fabrics of thin texture, as is generally the case with worsteds. As I have already pointed out, the essential difference be- tween the two is that the wool for worsteds is combed, and that for woolens is carded. The latter is washed in much the same way as the former, and after being thoroughly blended is taken to the carding machines which are made up of rollers or cylinders, all densely covered with fine bent wire, and having much the appearance of a rough hairbrush. The function of these cylinders is to separate the fibre so minutely that before the wool reaches the final roller of the first machine it is spread in an even film over the whole surface. It is then combed off the wires in an unbroken sheet, so thin as to be transparent. These carding machines, with their automatic feeders and arrangements for weighing and even distributing the wool, are marvels of ingenuity, and quite uncanny in their modes of operation. First of all, they will take the wool, lock by lock, 118 WOOL from a bin, and drop it into a pan which extends across the machine. When the pan has received a stated weight, the apparatus will halt and wait until the pan tips over and spreads a uniform load of correct weight right across the feed-sheet of the machine. After timing the operation to a nicety, it will with unerring precision start again and repeat the process, doing the work much more evenly than is possible by means of human agency. With the object of obtaining a still greater uniformity the film of separated fibres is taken to a second carding machine, and the wool comes off the wire-covered rollers in -this case with surpris- ing evenness. In the card, called a "condenser," the wool is delivered in a series of rings, and these soft ropes are then sent forward to the spinner. Spinning is the art of twisting fibrous sub- stances into rounded strands of yarn fitted for weaving. To form such strands two operations are essential the drawing out of uniform quanti- ties of fibre in a continuous manner, and twisting the material so drawn out to give it coherency and strain-resisting power. Both weft and warp have to be supplied by the spinner, but a word of ex- planation is necessary as to what constitutes the one and what makes the other. The yarn first spun on to spools is soft and fragile, and is only suitable for weft that is, to be put as a cop in the ENGLISH COMBING MACHINE (Copyright by American Woolen Company) SPINNING FRAMES AT WORK (Copyright by American Woolen Company) PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 119 shuttle and thrown lightly across the piece in weaving. Warp threads must be of a different quality altogether, and able to bear much greater strain. This is got by giving more twist to the yarn, and worsted warps are often composed of two single strands twisted together. For this operation a special frame called a "twister" is required. The yarn thus twisted has naturally a much better weaving value, and is frequently used for weft as well as for warp in some of the best serges and other worsted productions. There are four types of spinning-machine flyer, cap, ring, and mule. The flyer, according to the "Wool Year Book" classification, is used for hair, lustre, and low cross-bred wool yarns; the cap for the finer cross-breds and merinos; the ring for the softer and smoother yarns of the finest merino qualities; and the mule for those yarns of the shorter material, such as fine dry- spun dress and hosiery yarns, in which special features of softness and fulness are required. The continuous, or "throstle," frame has been adapted to woollen spinning, but its use is de- cidedly limited, and the mule is still by far the most popular spinning-machine for every class of woollen thread, whether it be made of pure wool or shoddy. The series of inventions which overthrew hand- 120 WOOL spinning were begun by Lewis Paul in 1738, when he patented the important principle of drawing out and attenuating a "sliver" or loose coil of fibre by passing it between successive pairs of rollers revolving at increasing rates of velocity. The principle of drawing out fibres by accelerated motion was in the spinning frame or "throstle" invented by Arkwright in 1767, and it forms a fundamental feature of all modern spinning machinery. The wool after combing or carding is in long fleecy ropes, and it is, of course, necessary that this "sliver," as it is called, should be greatly reduced in size before it can be used for either warp or weft. In order to accomplish this, the "sliver" is passed through a series of machines, or "boxes," the function of which is to extend the wool by drawing it out by means of groups of rollers. It is afterwards twisted slightly until it resembles loosely-twisted rope and then wound upon large bobbins. The reducing process is continued on other machines, and by the same means, until what was at the beginning a thick uneven coil becomes a series of thin, smooth threads. The drawing, briefly, is accomplished by rollers, and the twisting and winding-on by means of spindles. The spinning and winding of the threads on the PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 121 bobbins in the later stages is exceedingly interest- ing. The working of the "mule" is especially so, with its moving carriage to draw or extend the threads, and the curious action of the stationary stand of rollers paying out the condensed thread just so fast as it can be dealt with by the moving carriage and the spindles. The filling of the spindles and bobbins, too, is fascinating. By an exceptionally complicated series of wheels, cones, and belts the speed of the bobbin alters continu- ally as it fills, and it winds on the wool at uniform tension throughout the whole process. Although it is now possible automatically to "doff" the full bobbins of spun thread from the spinning frames and slip empty ones on in their places, the work is still done by half-time children in a great many of the mills in the North. These youngsters, as lively a lot as can be found in the length and breadth of the land, are wonderfully adept at their work. Ten children, for instance, will change a frame of 200 bobbins within half a minute. The work, notwithstanding, is not very arduous, and the youngsters get long spells of leisure while the bobbins are filling up again. No sooner have they finished emptying a frame than they are out at play in the factory yard to be recalled by the shrill whistle of the overlooker when wanted. The "doffer," generally regarded 122 WOOL as the most mischievous young imp alive, is described by Edwin Waugh, the Lancashire poet, " .... a lively cowt, Keen as a cross-cut saw; Short yure, sharp teeth, a twinklin' e'e, An' a little hungry maw!'* After spinning, a number of interesting pre- liminary operations are required before the actual weaving can be started upon, including warping, sizing, beaming, healding, and sleying the yarn. Warping consists in bringing together and arrang- ing in parallel order and in uniform length the number of threads which are required for the breadth of web to be formed. Sizing, or dressing, is an operation in which the warp yarn so assem- bled is treated with a glutinous or pasty compound to give the threads increased compactness and tenacity. Beaming consists in spreading the warp uniformly over the warp-beam, and in rolling it around the beam in a regular manner, keeping the threads parallel and in straight order. Heald- ing, or "drawing "-in, is the most important of all operations in loom-mounting, or indeed in weaving, for on it the whole nature of the weave depends. After being drafted through the healds, the warp is passed between the splits or dents of the reed, and it then only remains to carry the PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 123 warp over the breast-beam, attach the ends to the piece-beam, and the operation of weaving may be begun. Weaving is the process of making cloth by means of interlacing warp and weft threads. In the simplest operation of weaving it is necessary to pass one set of threads transversely through another set, divided into two series, working alternately up and down, so as to receive the transverse threads in passing and interlock them, forming thereby a united surface. The hand- loom was made to assist the early weaver in this operation, and the power-loom, with manifold devices for operating the warp and weft, later on enormously increased its efficiency. Indeed, the loom has now attained that swiftness and cer- tainty of action, and that power of producing variety and quality of work, that it may be said to be one of the most marvellous of all mechanical combinations. Three very important movements have to be observed in weaving what are known as shed- ding, picking, and beating up. First of all, after the warp threads have been made to be absolutely parallel, there must be a method of lifting every end, or group of ends, under which it is desired to thread the weft; there must be some means of threading the weft through this open "shed" of 124 WOOL the warp; and after the operation of the shuttle every strand of weft must be closed up to the one preceding it in order that the cloth may have a firm, close texture. The first essential of arrang- ing the warp is accomplished by means of winding the warp round a beam, a method which makes it possible to have a warp of practically any length and width. It is common to find nowadays warps hundreds of yards long, many yards in width, and composed of thousands of ends. Most "heavy woollen" looms, indeed, have very great width, making those one finds in cotton mills seem toys by comparison. The looms on the worsted side, however, are smaller and lighter, those employed for the weaving of stuff or dress goods being little different from the machines in use in the Lancashire cotton industry. To accomplish the second movement the dividing of the warp into two portions by means of lifting the threads, in order to insert the weft the ends of the warp are passed through a deep comb of long straight reeds, which allow the threads to be lifted up easily and still kept well apart. In order that the warp threads may be lifted with precision, they are passed through tiny loops of string, known technically as healds, and these healds are controlled by means of tappets in the case of small patterns and by harness cords PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 125 controlled by what is known as the jacquard machine in the case of larger and more fancy patterns. When the healds are properly adjusted and the alternate attachments made, the warp threads can be opened and closed at will in order to accommodate the sharp-nosed shuttle in its passage backwards and forwards across the cloth. By alternating in various ways the lift of these healds, it will be seen that many kinds of weave many varied arrangements and interfacings of warp and weft are possible. The whole process of making a compact web, however, is not finished until the long line of reeds has been pulled forward and the weft thread beaten up tightly against the thread immediately preceding it, in order to form a close and even texture. Formerly this beating up was a manual operation in the old hand-loom days, but now the reed and the frame to which it is attached is made to work backwards and forwards from the cloth automatically after the passage of the shuttle with the weft. In the old days to which we refer, the hand- loom weaver had his hands very full. To keep the loom going he was required to throw the shuttle across with one hand, pull the reed towards him with the other, and with both feet he had to work treadles which alternately opened and closed 126 WOOL the warp threads. Before Kay's invention in 1733, it even required more than one hand to manipulate the shuttle on a broad loom, and the process must have been at that time a particularly tedious one. The object of the inventor of the power-loom was to co-ordinate and make auto- matic all these processes, but the task, simple though it may appear nowadays, was not accom- plished without endless worry and trouble on the part of inventors, and even then success was not attained until well into the nineteenth century. The weaving of woollens, does not call for very complicated mechanism, being chiefly plain, sub- stantial cloths, but in worsted cloth-weaving, in which variety is most desirable, ingenuity is taxed to its utmost. With two shafts of healds in the loom only a plain web can be produced, with three shafts it is possible to weave a simple twill, and from this point upwards the possibility of combination and variation increases enormously. Coloured patterns may be produced by employing warps of different colours, and these patterns may be still further diversified by employing a number of shuttles each carrying a differently coloured weft. With every additional shaft, as already pointed out, the designer gets more elbow-room, but, as the possibilities of the ordinary heald shaft were PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 127 distinctly limited in number, other means had to be found of operating warp threads in the interest of "fancy" weaving. By means of an attachment known as a witch or dobbie frame, it became possible to manipulate about forty-eight sets of healds, but this arrangement was in turn alto- gether eclipsed by the wonderful jacquard appara- tus, invented in 1801 by Joseph Marie Jacquard, a native of Lyons. The famous Frenchman was spurred to action by the offer in an English paper of a premium for a machine for weaving nets, and when the invention appeared it effected a com- plete revolution in the art of weaving, especially in figured fabrics. It was an apparatus which could be adjusted to almost every kind of loom, its office being merely to direct those movements of the warp-threads which are required to produce the pattern, and which previously were effected by the weaver's fingers. In the common weaving process the warp threads are each passed through a small loop in the lifting thread, so as to be raised by means of the treadles, which act directly upon the lifting bars. These lifting threads in the jacquard appa- ratus are attached to certain wires, ending in hooks, which are caught and raised by each up- ward motion of the lifting-bar. The arrangement for controlling the threads consists of needles acted 128 WOOL on by holes in a card cylinder, the idea being practically that of the perforated card in a musical box. There are, however, many kinds of jacquard machines, and some are highly technical and extremely complicated. Suffice it to say that the great invention not only obviated the tedious task known as "tying the harness," but made it possible for the most varied and intricate patterns to be woven with almost as much ease and rapid- ity as a piece of plain cloth. It is interesting to note that the great genius who gave to the world the jacquard machine had to meet just the same kind of persecution at the hands of his fellow-workmen as the Englishmen who completely revolutionised spinning and weav- ing, and, like them, the Frenchman had the morti- fication of seeing his handiwork smashed to pieces by enraged mobs who fancied that their means of livelihood were jeopardised by the new invention. > Jacquard's countrymen made amends later on, however, for on the exact spot in Lyons where his first completed machine was wrecked, they long years afterwards erected a splendid monu- ment to his honour. It should be added that of recent years the Bradford manufacturers have shown an increas- ing disposition to adopt the automatic loom for the plainer kind of goods, the well-known North- PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 129 rop invention having been installed in many places. This loom, which is the product of a Keighley man resident in America, feeds itself with weft automatically, and has a warp stop mechanism whereby the loom stops simultane- ously with the breakage of a thread. It is marvel- lously constructed, and as it is likely to come more and more into vogue, especially as the latest models are being adapted for dobby and jacquard work, a few details will no doubt be of interest. Northrop loom improvements come under two heads, those of weft-changing mechanisms and warp-stopping devices. The weft-changer in- creases production per weaver. The warp-stop- ping device does so to a small extent, and the combination of the two results in utilising labour to double the advantage which would be obtained by the sum of the two used separately. The facts, therefore, present this curious anomaly: A good weaver on small plain looms has a capacity of two to four looms; on the same looms with warp stop-motion, a capacity of possibly five or six looms; on looms with the Northrop weft- changer alone, a capacity of from eight to ten looms; on looms with the Northrop weft-changer and warp stop-motion, a capacity of twelve and i upwards, according to the class of cloth woven. 130 WOOL With the ordinary loom, when the weft in the shuttle is exhausted, the loom is automatically stopped, and a certain amount of product is thereby lost. The weaver then goes through the following operations: Releases the brake, pushes the sley back, withdraws the shuttle from the box or shed, puts in the reserve shuttle, operates the spring handle to start the loom, takes up the empty shuttle again, pulls the shuttle spindle out at an angle, removes the exhausted bobbin or, in the case of cops, the cop bottom replaces with a new supply of weft, pulls off a sufficient length of weft from the weft-carrier, snaps the shuttle-spindle back into place, holds the end over the eye entrance with the finger, sucks the weft through the hole, and inserts the shuttle in its receptacle, where it remains until needed. In comparison with this series of operations, the weaver on a Northrop loom does not have to come to the loom every time a new supply of weft is necessary, but at infrequent intervals can take bobbins or cops from a convenient box, pull off a sufficient length of weft, apply the bobbin to the hopper notches, or skewer the cop and apply the skewer to the aforesaid notches, and wind the thread on the hopper-stud with a simultaneous movement. When a warp thread breaks on an ordinary PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 131 loom the machine continues running. The broken thread not being operated by its heddle is not raised for the shuttle to pass under, and it thereby falls below the cloth, leaving an open space which is more or less visible to the eye, according to the character of the cloth woven. Before dropping, however, this broken end, extending from the cloth in the direction of the warp, can very easily get tangled around adjacent warp threads, making a "net," and spoil several inches of cloth. The weaver must then stop the loom, loosen up the cloth from the cloth-roll, pull the temples back and "pull back." In many mills it is made ob- ligatory for the weaver to stop her other looms during this operation. After the pulling back process the warp-beam must be turned back, the tension of the cloth adjusted, and the loom set in motion again. It does not seem to be mechanically feasible to insert a supply of weft in a flying shuttle, which expels an empty carrier at the same time and guides the new thread past several detaining pro- jections into an angled passage-way. Were this feat accomplished with the shuttle and sley at rest, it would be sufficiently surprising; but when we consider that the new weft-carrier is inserted instantaneously with the shuttle barely across the sley, and with the sley itself moving in a direction 132 WOOL at right angles to that of the shuttle, the difficulty of the problem may be realised. In the Northrop loom the weft-carrier takes the form of either the usual bobbin or cop-skewer, with the difference that each has large metallic rings applied at the head end which serve to en- gage notches in a forked spring which is secured to the shuttle body. The bobbin or skewer is held in a circular hopper by suitable pockets, which have a rotary movement to bring them successively into proper operating position. The end of the weft is extended from the carrier and wound around a stud. When the ordinary weft- fork detects absence of weft at the opposite end of the loom, a rod is turned, which puts a trans- ferring device into operative engagement with the advancing sley; at the same time a detector finger reaches forward to ascertain whether the shuttle is in proper position to receive a fresh supply. If everything is all right, the transferrer shaped something like a hammer presses a fresh supply into the open top of the shuttle, pushing the spent carrier out through the open bottom of the shuttle, down into a receptacle. If the shuttle does not reach home, or should it rebound too much, the shuttle-position detector will not allow the operation. As the sley turns back, the shuttle is thrown across the loom and PREPARATION AND MANUFACTURE 133 the thread unwinds from the carrier, entering a slotted passage-way in the shuttle-eye. The sley then beats the weft up and operates a cutter attached to the temple, which severs the end of weft which extends from the cloth to the stud before mentioned. When the shuttle is thrown back, the weft is led into the side-eye from its new position in the cloth, and the ordinary operation of weaving continues. Should the shuttle fail to thread or "misthread," or should there be no weft supply transferred for any reason, the loom will stop through a device actuated by repeated failure of the weft-fork. On an ordinary loom the operative is for the most part engaged in the detection and repair of broken warp threads, which, together with the constant shuttling of weft on three or four looms, occupies the weaver's time and energy to its utmost limit. But when a loom is fitted with the Northrop automatic device for the replenishing of weft, then the operative's work is appreciably reduced by its being simply necessary to attend to the broken ends alone. The warp stop-motion, however, is an essential adjunct to a loom having mechanical means of replenishing the weft, be- cause it is required that the operative shall man- age the maximum number of looms, and to attain this, provision must be made whereby a broken 134 WOOL end is at once detected and the loom automatic- ally stopped. Briefly described, the warp-stop motion on a Northrop loom consists of a thin steel drop wire some 3% inches in length, suspended by a warp thread passing through a round eye in its centre, and having a slot above, through which is passed a flat bar keeping the drop wire in position in the warp stop-box. At the bottom of this box is a serrated vibrator moving with a reciprocating motion from a simple eccentric on the tappet shaft. The breaking of the warp thread allow- ing the detector to fall in the path of this vi- brator at once puts in action a knock-off finger in contact with the starting-handle. Immedi- ately an end breaks the loom stops; therefore the weaving down of several ends and consequent floats areO1^W5( I N.QOM< s lOCOCX SOO^^tO lOlOT-ii-i < 1-1 O CO CO 1C N O> O *ilt9r+ > CO M '. ili'H a t-ta o a J o II o-S Ig & 113 ge-3 7 si ^' i-S ^ 00 00 t> co o co co OQ l^- O^ CO ^ * I i # i yp O . 05 t- 00 O> * S 8" I?" S3 S o i-i o co * o S O S OS OS 05 SOME SALIENT FACTS AND FIGURES 215 A few concluding remarks on the influence of the war on woollen and worsted would perhaps not be out of place seeing how profoundly the trade has been affected by hostilities undertaken on such a gigantic scale, and how altered the conditions are likely to be in the future. There is little doubt that on the whole the war will be found to have brought something more than a temporary revival in manufacturing always sup- posing, of course, that the supply of wool can be kept up to a point which allows of the raw material being purchased at a reasonable figure. TABLE VII. SUMMARY OF WOOLLEN AND WORSTED FACTORIES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM (Viz., Woollen, Worsted, and Shoddy) 1885 1889 1904 i 2,751 2517 2 382 Rag Grinding Machines 900 Woollen Carding Sets 6 700 Worsted Combing Machines 2924 2780565 Spinning Spindles j Q^^; ' * O,o7o,lUJ 5,604,535 2 844 912 Doubling Spindles 769,492 969 812 1 059 049 Power ( ^P ^ ^ * n * r 6 ^ space 9,456 ooxus I Over 40 and under 60 in 22843 1 60 in. reed space and over Total 139,902 131,506 72,215 104 514 Children working Half -time: Males 11 667 11 102 1907 4001 Females 12969 11 838 4 115 Persons working Full-time: Males 112935 120441 104,837 104837 145 684 158 175 148 239 Persons employed: Males . . . 124 602 131 543 108838 Females 157,653 170,013 152,354 Total Number of Persons Employed 282,255 301,556 261,192 1 The latest year to hand. 216 WOOL The war, indeed, has altered the whole com- plexion of things. Up to the end of the summer of 1914, when the peace of the world was so rudely broken, the trade, if not in a languishing, was certainly not in a satisfactory state a remark which applies more particularly, perhaps, to the woollen section, which, speaking broadly, has to do with the provision of undergarments rather than the cloths and stuffs which are worn for outward adornment. Cotton had made great inroads into the woollen trade, especially in the make-up of the cheaper kinds of knitted hosiery, which had so largely ousted good honest flannel, and many old-established firms had begun to close their doors. The figures giving the number of factories in the country are illuminating. While worsted mills during the past thirty or forty years had shown a small but steady increase in number the number in the United Kingdom had advanced from 703 in 1867 to 841 in 1904, the latest date at which a census was taken the woollen factories, which numbered 1,658 in 1867, had fallen in 1904 to 1,377, having reached their highest point (1,918) in 1885. It is significant, also, to note that woollen shoddy factories in the same period increased from 108 to 161, and that cotton mills, although rather fewer in number, had become SOME SALIENT FACTS AND FIGURES 217 much larger, and could show an increase of mil- lions of spindles and double the number of power- looms. The war, it should be said, brought a slight increase in the number of woollen factories, for manufacturers of khaki cloth, Navy flannel, and general service blankets were so hard pressed to fulfil Government orders that old mills were re- started in some districts and everything possible done to increase the output. These old mills, being in many instances both inconveniently situated and badly equipped, will no doubt be given up again later on, but the call on the re- mainder may be expected to be permanent. One thing is quite clear, and that is that England can never revert again to such a state of military unpreparedness as existed before the European War broke out, and a larger Army will of course mean more clothing and more work for the woollen factories. The worsted manufacturer will no doubt be little affected, for when the world gets back to the normal again, the tailor and the dressmaker will probably be as largely patronised as ever. Both sections of the trade may be expected to be ex- ceedingly busy for some years to come, for while the mills have been kept fully engaged on Govern- ment work during the war, the stocks of the 218 WOOL draper and merchant have, perforce, had to run down to zero. There will be good trade for a long time to come if, as we have already stated, the raw material is abundant and the price is "right/' It has already been pointed out that the great wool-producing countries are at the moment showing a tendency to produce mutton at the expense of wool, and it largely depends on how far this tendency is real- ised whether the woollen and worsted trades of the future are developed or retarded. INDEX AGRICULTURAL Organisation So- ciety, 95, 97 Alpaca, 181 Anthrax infection, 108 Apprenticeships, Flemings and, 16 Arkwright, Richard, 30 Australasian wool sales, 88, 89 Australia, founding of wool flocks, 74; Captain Macar- thur's modest start, 74; de- velopment of the merino, 76; cross-breeding, 78; climatic advantages, 78; sheep loca- tions, 78, 79; water difficulties overcome, 79; numbers and value of sheep and wool, 80- 84; shearing, 101-104; trans- portation, 105; classing, 107; manufacturing possibilities, 190; bounties and tariffs, 191 BALING, 109, 110 Beaming, 122 Bean, Captain, and British Empire wool, 54 Big ranches versus small farms, 63 Blanket and his invention, 7, 167 Bradford and its trade, 170 British classification at fault, 94 British supremacy challenged, 189 Burying in woollen, 4 CARDING, 117 Carpet making, 179 Carpet wools, 56, 179 Cartwright, Edmund, 30 Cheviots, 60, 164, 165 Classing wool, 106 Clothing trade, 157, 158 Coalfields and the wool trade, 25 "Coatings," 18 Combing, 30, 116 Crofters' industry, 148 Crompton, Samuel, 30 Cross-breeding for mutton, 61, 62 DESIGNING cloth, 142 Dewsbury and Batley trade, 152, 153 "Doffers," 12X Domestic weaving methods, 28 Down wools, 60 Dyeing, 139 EDWARD III. and wool industry, 8 England's manufacturing ad- vantages, 194 English weol growers and home market, 93, 94 219 220 INDEX FACTORY riots, 32 Fashion's effects on trade, 185 "Faults" in wool, 109 Felt hats, 181 Felting, Pliny on, 3 Finishing processes, 137 Flemings in the North and West, 18; general settlement, 19; and horticulture, 20 Flemish harried by free-booters, 25 Fuller on the Flemings, 8 Fulling mills, 7 Future of wool trade, 184 GREASE in wool. 113 Guilds, 7 HAND-LOOM weavers, 27, 125 Hargreaves, James, 29 Healding, 122 Home-spun goods, 147 Hosiery trade, 164, 175 Huddersfield, 143, 171 Huguenot invasion, 13 IRISH peasant industry, 165 JACQUARD invention, 127 KAY, John, 28 "Kendal Green," 8 Kentish "Grey-coats," 14 Khaki, its origin, 166 LANCASHIRE and Yorkshire inter- dependence, 169 Lee's stocking frame, 175 Leicester, 177 Lister's wool-comber, 31, 32 London Wool Exchange, 85, 86, 87 Loom-houses, 27 Lustre wools, 60 MACHINE making, 143 Merino, 57, 72, 73. 77 Mohair, 181 Mungo, 155 NETHERLANDERS and England, 13 New Zealand's mutton breeds, 61 New Zealand's record, 81-84 Noble comb, 113 North of England, climatic ad- vantages of, 23 Northrop loom, 130 Norwich and the Flemings, 17 Nottingham, 177 PAPER packs, 111, 112 Pulling wook, 101 QUEEN PHILIPPA'S enterprise, 15 RAGS and waste, 154 "Renascence cloth," 159 Rhodes, Cecil, corner hi wool, 70 Rochdale flannel, 168 SABOT and clog, 21, 22 Saleroom scenes, 87, 88 Sandwich, Queen Elizabeth's visit to, 17 Scotch hosiery, 178 Scotch tweeds, 61, 164 Seamless hose, 176 INDEX 221 Shearing, hand and mechanical, 101-105 Sheep, origin lost in antiquity, 34; Biblical and pagan allu- sions, 3; first known in Britain, 5; sold for a penny, 7; its many uses, 35; feeding peculiarities, 35; its intelligence, 36; world- wide habitat, 36; British Em- pire predominance, 37; Brit- ain's original types, 38, 39 "Shoddy," 152 Shuttle "picker" invented, 29 Sizing, 120 Sleying, 122 Somersetshire cloths, 166 Spain and the merino, 72 Spuming, 120 Spinning jenny invented, 29 "WALK-MILLS," 18 War and the wool trade, 50, 51, 52, 197, 216 Warping, 122 Washing and scouring, 113 114 Weavers, the coming of, 10; the second Flemish invasion, 11; relics of the early settlement, 14; Flemish immigrants perse- cuted, 17, 18 Weaving, 30, 123, 126 West of England broadcloths, 163 Witney blankets, 163 Wool, world's oldest industry, 1; manufacture introduced into Britain, 4; the romance of steam, 22; Yorkshire and Lan- cashire's advantages, 23, 24, 25; hair and wool, 40, 41; Pro- fessor Barker's opinion, 41; Youatt and others differ, 42; fibre under the microscope, 43, 44; the wool staple, 45; com- parative strengths of merino and Lincoln, 45; Burnley's classification, 45; carding and combing, 47; felting and non- felting qualities, 48; statistical difficulties, 50, 196; world's production, 53; wool-produc- ing countries, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59; British wools, 60, 61; the world's requirements, 67, 68; trade statistics, 65, 66, 192 Woollen flocks, 160 Woollens and worsteds defined, 46 Woolsack in the House of Lords, 5, 15 Wool-sorting, 106, 107, 108 YORKSHIRE farmer-weavers, 26, 27 Admirably clear." 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