PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 419 



the races distinct, seem to mingle in almost perfect disorder, while the 

 white, black and copper-colored join hands in brotherly love. Workmea 

 are engaged in sorting and registering the bonnets and placing them ia 

 racks. Order having thus been brought out of confusion, a part, of the 

 bonnets are sent to the dye-house, while yet another portion is forwarded 

 by fiirnilies and detachments over the miniature railway which connects 

 this part of the factory with the rear, and are disembarked at the bleach 



Tiic passage way to the smoke house has its unpainted wooden walls 

 strangely discolored, and the further we proceed the more intensely comes 

 the smell of brimstone to our nostrils, but on entering the precincts we find 

 merely several long alley-ways, with their sides made up to a great extent 

 of doors opening into large smoke closets. Bleaching having been tempo- 

 rarily suspended, some of these closets are open: let us look into them. On 

 the floor are shallow pots oC brimstone; above these, and on both sides of 

 the apartment, are six tiers of rope-bottomed, berth-like fixtures, which 

 serve to give to these closets the appearance of double stafe-rooms on a 

 steamer. The bleachers are quite likely fellows in white aprons, and quite 

 obliging as thej' show us around and describe the modus ojjerandi of their 

 department. And yet, after they have full}" described the process which 

 the bonnet here goes througn, a certain air of mystery still surrounds it. 

 That the bonnets are smoked for several hours once at least, and often 

 twice, is quite evident, but when we come to inquire what is done to them 

 in a room near by where we notice certain dipping operations going on, we 

 are put off with some talk about whitening the bonnets, ' acids,' ' alkalies,' 

 etc., which leaves us as much in the dark on the subject as ever. Ques- 

 tioning still further as to the operations here performed, and the materials 

 used, we are frankly told by the mystic mixture-man that he^and his brother 

 workmen alone understand the process; that the Union Straw Works can- 

 not just yet afford to part with one of the secrets which renders their work 

 famous; and that, furthermore, he has been placed under heavy bonds not 

 to reveal it. 



Having taken a hasty glance at the drying yard, where thousands of 

 bonnets sun and air themselves on long rows of upright pegs, we will pro- 

 ceed " by rail," if we like, to the sizing room. We- will not delay long at 

 this point, for it will take us but a moment to comprehend the operation 

 performed here, to notice the stiffening of the bonnets with a thin solution 

 of glue. While one workman, the " dipper," baptizes bonnet after bonnet 

 in the galvanized iron " f'.>nt" before him, his official assistants wipe lightly 

 off the glue drops which have collected, and the bonnets are passed through 

 a receiving room to the blocking room above. 



Up to this time, save perhaps when first coming from the hands of the 

 sewers, the bonnets have been characterized by a shapelessness far removed 

 from their final beauty. The mysterious dipping, the day's rest in the 

 berths of the brimstone closet, and the gluey baptism have combinedly left 

 them in sudi a condition that no one but a " straw man" would ever sup- 

 pose it possible to transform such affairs into any sort of an article of dress, 

 much less into a head covering for a lady. 



