THE MANUFACTURE OF BROOMS 57 
is taken and treated precisely the same way, and 
then finally another handful. Each handful consists 
of six or eight stalks, and they should be placed 
smoothly and close together under the wire. The 
wire is bound evenly around the stalks until there 
is sufficient to hold the broom firmly together, when 
it is fastened with a tack as at the commencement. 
The pounder is constantly used to pack the brush. 
The broom is now round in form, and must 
be placed between a pair of clamps and securely 
stitched. When the stitch- 
ing has been completed 
the broom is removed 
from the clamps and 
trimmed by means of a 
clipping machine, shown 
in Figure 23. 
In the large factories 
the broom-corn is taken 
directly from the bale and 
fed into a sizer similar to 
the one shown in Figure 
20. This machine cuts 
off the extra lengths of stalks and distributes each 
size of corn into separate compartments, sorting it 
into seven lengths, from eleven inches upward. One- 
eighth horsepower is required to operate a machine 
which will size from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of brush 
a day. A broom-winding machine such as used in 
large factories is shown in Figure 21. A good 
broom maker, with the aid of a boy, can wind five 
hundred brooms per day with this equipment. 
