122 



LINEN 



picking shaft /; gg, shuttle-boxes at each end of the going part ; h h, arrangement 

 of levers to conduct equally each end of the gears i i. This loom has also, in addi- 



1391 



tion to the ordinary stopping arrangement connected with the shuttle, one also for 

 relaxing the reed in case the shuttle should be arrested in its course across the warp, 

 whereby the danger, ordinarily incurred by that accident, of breaking many threads 

 in the warp is avoided ; it will also be seen that the bands called picking bands are 

 superseded by the ends of the picking levers striking the shuttle direct ; thus, by these 

 improvements, drills are currently woven in this loom at the rate of 120 to 130 picks 

 per minute. 



About a dozen years since extensive trials were made to adapt the power-loom to 

 the weaving of light linen fabrics. Previously it had been found that while coarse 

 and strong flax fabrics, such as those made at Dundee, Arbroath, &c., in Scotland, 

 and the drills made at Barnsley, could be produced by power as well and more cheaply 

 than by hand, yet that the lighter fabrics, such as shirtings, cambrics, lawns, &c., 

 would not bear the strain of the power-loom, or, at all events, that to make them of as 

 good appearance as by the hand-loom the manufacturer required to employ a dearer 

 article of yarn, and so found that he could not compete with his neighbours who had 

 hand-loom weavers. 



Irish manufacturers were for a long time very hard to convince that, except for the 

 production of sets, say from 8 to 1 2, the steam-driven loom was not likely to be 

 worked successfully. But at length the increasing demand for linen, and the difficulty 

 of procuring hands to work on the ordinary loom, forced capitalists to adopt the new 

 mode of production, and rapidly did the system extend when it was found not only to 

 equal, but far exceed that which had been expected from it. Hand-loom weaving, in 

 coarse, heavy linens, was a labour that required more than average strength, and yet, 

 when it was maintained for fourteen hours a day, the operator did not earn as much 

 as a factory worker can now realise by his ten hours' labour. Many linen weavers, 

 as demand for hands increased in other sections of industry, forsook the loom, and the 

 only alternative manufacturers had was the substitution of the iron machine and the 

 steam-engine for the old wooden loom and the hand-weaver. 



In 1857 there were only 30 power-looms at work on linen weaving in Ireland, in 

 1860 there were 4,000, in 1866, 10,000, and in 1872, about 15,500 power-looms were 

 engaged in the trade. Some of these machines work up to 16. In one factory an 

 18 linen has been produced by the steam loom, but such high sets can hardly be 

 made with profit. Damasks, diapers, and cambric handkerchiefs, are brought out in 

 the best style, of course, up to certain sets on the same principle, but the upper class of 

 work can only be rightly done by hand. In fact, the practical limit to steam produc- 





