Types and Market Classes of Live Stock 301 



foreign material that they cannot be scoured clean, but must be clipped 

 off. Other off sorts are often made from wools of various sections. 

 Some of these are tags, paint locks, and seedy. Tags are large dung 

 locks which are badly stained and have a very high shrinkage. Paint 

 locks require clipping off the painted ends of the locks. Seedy wool 

 contains weed seeds, soft burs, etc. It must often be carbonized before 

 using, as explained in a later paragraph. 



Wool pulling. — Wool pulleries may be divided into two groups — 

 those owned by packers and forming a part of the by-products division 

 of packing plants, and those owned and operated independent of pack- 

 ing establishments. The wool pullery of a packing plant receives pelts 

 daily, direct from the killing floor. They are at once placed in vats of 

 cold water, which takes out all of the animal heat and removes some 

 of the dirt and blood. The soaking continues from 12 to 24 hours. 

 Packing plants not equipped with pulleries salt their pelts, and when 

 a quantity has accumulated send them to a pullery. Salted pelts are 

 soaked 36 hours, as it requires considerable time to dissolve the salt 

 out of the hide. When removed from the vats, the pelts are given 

 mechanical treatment in a scrubbing machine which washes them in a 

 spray of water, completing the removal of dirt, and leaving the fleece 

 in an attractive, white condition. The wet pelts are then put in a 

 centrifugal wringer which throws out the water to such an extent that 

 the fleece is made very nearly dry. The pelts are next taken to a room 

 where they are spread, fleece downward, upon wire screens and painted 

 on the inner surface with a thick liquid bearing the trade name of 

 "Depilatory," consisting of a mixture of sodium sulphide and slaked 

 lime. Within 2 to 4 hours after this treatment the wool fibers become 

 loosened and easily part from the hide, coming out by the roots when 

 pulled. 



Before pulling, however, the pelts are taken to large rooms where 

 they are spread out on the floor, fleece upwards, being grouped or 

 classified according to the nature of the fleece. The pelts are then 

 taken up and the wool pulled by hand. Coincident with the pulling 

 the operator sorts the wool. Furthermore, the pullery keeps each 

 month's product by itself, thus multiplying the assortments by twelve, 

 and resulting flnally in over two hundred kinds of pulled wool, each 

 having a distinct trade name. 



Wool pulleries report a strong demand from wool manufacturers 

 for black wool which is used to produce various shades of natural gray 

 by mixing it with white wool. Black wool thus sells at a premium, for 

 the supply is small. Pelts that vary in color through various shades 

 of gray and brown are not in the class of black pelts because the varying 

 color makes them an unknown quantity in color mixing where definite 



