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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



most complicated and beautiful processes in the whole manufact- 

 ure, performed upon a machine which the operatives in some parts 

 of Europe call " the iron man," in allusion to its deft action. 



The mule is the machine now universally used in the manu- 

 facture of woolen yarn. But an entirely different method of 



Fig. 12. A Woolen Mule. 



spinning is also applied in the woolen manufacture, or in that 

 branch of it known as the worsted manufacture, quite distinct in 

 several of its preliminary details, and quite as important in the 

 modern development of the industry. 



These two distinct processes of manufacture which have grown 

 up in the treatment of wool, have practically made two industries 

 out of one. They are alike, in that they utilize the same raw 

 material, and do not essentially differ until the process of carding 

 is completed. This diversion of the industry is traced to the im- 

 migration of the Flemings, which occurred during the reign of 

 Henry I, although historians have attempted to antedate the 

 worsted manufacture even to the Saxon period. The worsted 

 manufacture originated at Worsted, a town in Norfolk, where one 

 of the early Flemish colonies existed whose people employed a 

 method of their own in treating the wool, which produced a 

 woolen stuff of a peculiar quality, to which the name of worsted 

 was given.* There is no earlier record of its existence than the 

 time of Edward II (1315), when a complaint was made to Parlia- 

 ment that the clothiers of Norwich who manufactured worsted 



* It is curious to observe how names have been inherited in the wool manufacture. 

 Worsted is so called from the town where this particular method of manufacture originated. 

 " Hank " is derived from the name Hankemus de Brabant, a Flemish spinner who settled 

 in York ; and " blanket " from the name of three brothers Blanket, also Flemish, who set- 

 tled, at Bristol, among the immigrants tempted to England by the liberal inducements of 

 Edward III. 



