3<D2 Cellulose 



world oxygen and water. Both fibres have been used from 

 the remotest antiquity, though the manufacture of cotton tex- 

 tiles in Europe is of quite modern growth. At the time of its 

 introduction it was used for padding and filling purposes and 

 for manufacture into paper. The spinning of the short staple 

 fibre into yarn is an art borrowed from the East, where it has 

 been practised from the remotest antiquity. 



Of both cotton and flax, however, we have sufficient record 

 in the substantial form of manufactured products to be able 

 to pronounce them for practical purposes indestructible save by 

 the mechanical agencies of wear and tear. In ordinary use, 

 however, they require periodical cleansing ; and the severe 

 treatments of the laundry, chemical and mechanical, lead to 

 more or less rapid disintegration. Very little attention is paid 

 to this industry from the chemical point of view, of which the 

 chief regulating principles are those of economic and rapid 

 handling. Occupying as it does a somewhat ' inferior ' posi- 

 tion in human affairs, it appears to be beneath the notice of 

 technologists. The result is unfortunate, as the very common 

 experience of the household will testify. 



The cleansing of vegetable textiles by alkaline solutions, 

 wherever and however practised, is a chemical process ; and it 

 is high time that laundry work, conducted as it now is upon 

 the scale of an enormous special industry, should be more 

 consistently organised as a chemical industry. Great progress 

 in this direction would be made by modelling the procedure 

 of the laundry upon the general principles of treatment of these 

 textiles in the manufacturing industries ; i.e. in the case of 

 cotton and linen goods the lines of treatment should be gene- 

 rally similar to those of bleaching and finishing though, of 

 course, differing considerably in degree. As a matter of experi- 

 ence, the chemical disintegration of thece textiles in the course 

 of laundrying is considerable, chiefly through ignorance or 



