280 THE WORLD'S LUMBER ROOM. 



is said, be grown without them. But good rags are so 

 valuable for other purposes besides these, that it is chiefly 

 the seams and other unusable parts which are put away 

 to rot and then sent to the Kentish hop-fields. 



But for the fact that old wool can be used again, all our 

 woollen goods would be double the present price, for one- 

 third of the manufactures of this country are supplied by 

 " shoddy "and " mungo," that is, wool and worsted, no matter 

 how old, which are reduced to their former state, and then 

 re-woven. 



In 1882 we imported 37,511 tons of woollen rags, at a 

 cost of ,820,616. Most of them are bought up by Dews- 

 bury and two or three neighbouring towns, where they are 

 torn to pieces by sharp spikes, and worked up into cheap 

 cloth for the slaves of South America, or re-spun, with the 

 addition of new wool, and manufactured into all kinds of 

 woollen goods. 



The "devil's" dust, as it is called, after the machine 

 employed for this purpose, which is produced by the tearing 

 up of the rags, befouls the whole town of Dewsbury, and is 

 so injurious to the workpeople engaged in the factories, that 

 they are obliged to keep their mouths muffled. 



Some of the rags are ground to powder, variously 

 coloured, and used for the making of flock-papers and 

 artificial flowers; some are taken by the paper-mills and 

 made into blotting and other papers of an absorbent 

 character, and some again, after being boiled with pearl- 

 ash, horns, hoofs, hoof- and hide-clippings, blood, old iron, 

 waste leather, &c., reappear in the form of yellow crystals 

 of prussiate of potash used in dyeing, and from this again 



