135 
HOW PAPER COLLARS ARE MADE. 
At the end of the first room are piles of pure white paper, awaiting 
their turn to be guillotined in a machine furnished with twenty-two 
shear blades, which cut the paper into the requisite strips for the collar, 
on precisely the same principle as a gigantic pair of scissors, thus leaving 
no rough edge. The product of two paper mills is consumed in this 
factory, at the rate of a ton to a ton and a half per day — the average 
production being about one hundred thousand collars per day, which 
find a ready sale, despite the numerous imitations with which the 
market is flooded. From the hands of the attendant who turns out the 
pure, even strips of paper, they pass into the hands of another fair 
executioner, who brings the incipient collar nearer its birth by passing 
it through another pair of knives, by which it acquires shape in an 
instant. Still, another machine marches relentlessly up and down, and 
as the collar leaves its iron embrace, the three button-holes are visible 
— large, clean cut, firm holding, and easily handled. 
The collar is now placed between two dies or clamps, passed under a 
quick heavy pressure, and emerges again stamped with that close imita- 
tion of stitching, which renders it so perfect in imitation of its linen 
brother that the difference can hardly be distinguished : it is stamped 
also with the size and corporate mark. Next conies the crimping 
machine, which draws the curved line on which the shape of the 
collar turns, and which, by allowing space for the cravat, insures a 
smooth fit. They then pass through the nimble hands of a damsel, 
who with deft fingers flying with lightning-like rapidity, turns the 
collar over as no machine has yet been able to do. From these hands 
it passes to the moulding machine, where it is bent round into perfect 
shape and finished as a perfect collar. 
This process is an important one, requires skill in the operator, and 
strength in the paper, which must be of the best, to resist the immense 
strain required to mould the collar into perfect shape. 
The collar is now, as it were, born shapely, trim, and elegant, and 
ready to adorn the neck of the most fastidious, having passed through 
seven distinct processes in its manufacture. It is once more taken in 
hand by women and packed into boxes by the hundred, or in the well- 
known little round boxes of ten each, which are so convenient to toss 
into a valise when off for a week in the country or elsewhere. For the 
item of the boxes, the company expend over 60,000 dols. per annum. 
The first machine turned out the collar entire, performing the whole 
work at once, but slowly and imperfectly ; but the genius of the 
inventor, quickened by the rapidly increasing demand for the article, 
added improvement after improvement, by one machine after another, 
until the manufactory is now capable of turning out five millions of 
collars per month. 
vol. vi. N 
