i88 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



from diminishing the field for the exercise of the human mind 

 in the woolen manufacture, have greatly increased it. 



The evolution of the wool manufacture has not succeeded in 

 reducing the number of the processes through which the wool 

 must pass in its long journey from the back of the sheep to the 

 back of man. It has only expedited and simplified them. When 

 Dr. Ure exploited the philosophy of manufactures in 1835 he gave 



a list of the operatives 

 whose separate manipu- 

 lations were necessary 

 to the woolen manu- 

 facture twenty-four in 

 all. The list is remark- 

 able alike for its length 

 and for its nomenclat- 

 ure it being plain how 

 words were coined, out 

 of the nature of the oc- 

 cupation, to meet each 

 case. In tracing the 

 evolution of the manu- 

 facture, it is well to 

 have this list before us : 

 " Wool-sorters, pick- 

 ers, willyers (winnow- 

 ers), carders, scribblers, 

 pieceners, slubbers, 



(f^Vw '"+' 



&M 



*?*> 



y^**r**&u- 



Fig. 6. Ladies Cakding and Spinning Wool. (From a 

 fourteenth -century MS. in the British Museum.) 



spinners, warpers, siz- 

 ers, weavers, scourers, 

 dyers, burlers, fullers, boilers, giggers, driers, croppers, singers, 

 glossers, pressers, brushers, and steamers." 



Each of these names stood for a distinct process in the manu- 

 facture through which the fiber must pass before it was con- 

 verted into cloth. Many of them are now known by different 

 names, but all of them represented successive steps in the manu- 

 facture, some of which are now combined, but all of which are 

 still necessary, and all of which, except the first, are now per- 

 formed automatically, by a great variety of machines, bewilder- 

 ing in their number, complicated in their movement, and repre- 

 senting a body of inventions, as applied to all the textile industries 

 with the necessary variations, which finds no parallel in any 

 other of the human arts. Each of these processes was by hand 

 up to about the middle of the last century. 



It will be necessary to confine our attention in this paper to 

 the historical development of the main processes of the manu- 

 facture the carding, the combing, the spinning, the weaving, and 



