MASSACHUSETTS— BEEHIVE OE BUSINESS 



225 



Then follows the 

 ironing process. To 

 iron four or five mil- 

 lion yards of cloth a 

 week would be too 

 much of a task for 

 even a regiment of 

 laundresses ; so great 

 presses having pol- 

 ished steel rollers are 

 employed. They put 

 a tremendous amount 

 of mechanical "elbow 

 grease" on the fab- 

 ric, and as it comes 

 through this final 

 stage it is ready to 

 make its bow as "fin- 

 ished" calico. 



Finally, it is me- 

 chanically measured 

 and cut into forty- 

 yard lengths, after 

 which it is folded into 

 the shape one sees it 

 in the dry-goods 

 stores. 



A long story, this 

 converting cotton into 

 calico ! Forty differ- 

 ent machines to pass 

 through, for a kind of 

 cloth that before the 

 war became so cheap 

 as to lose caste as 

 dress goods. 



The processes of 

 spinning yarn and 

 weaving goods in the 

 wool industry are not 

 dissimilar to those 

 employed in the cot- 

 ton mills, though the 

 preparation of the wool is different in 

 that before it can be used it must first be 

 scoured to get the grease out of it. 



The total output of the looms of Mas- 

 sachusetts, in pure woolens, amounts to 

 about 115,000,000 square yards a year — 

 enough to make a blanket a mile wide and 

 thirty-seven miles long. This is more 

 than a third of all the woolens made in 

 the United States. In addition, the State 

 produces almost as much more goods that 

 are either a mixture of cotton and wool 

 or have cotton warp and wool filling. 



DYEING CLOTH IN A LAWRENCE MILE 



Goods are' given their color in three ways : Some goods are dyed 

 in the yarn, so that fancy patterns can be made by the weaving- 

 process. Others are dyed in the piece; these are solid color goods. 

 Still others are printed by processes explained elsewhere in this 

 article (see text, page 223). 



Silk differs from cotton and wool in its 

 preparation, in that it is a long thread and 

 not a short fiber. In the article entitled 

 "The Industrial Titan of America," in 

 the May, 1919, number of The Geo- 

 graphic, the story of silk up to the weav- 

 ing stage was told. 



MASSACHUSETTS SILKS 



Holyoke, Massachusetts, is the home 

 of what is perhaps the purest silk goods 

 made in America. Though the prices of 

 raw silk have risen from $4 to $12 a 



