Cotton, Its Progress from the Field to the Needle: Being a brief sketch of the culture of the plant, its picking, cleaning, packing, shipment, and manufactureAnonymous
History
Cotton, Its Progress from the Field to the Needle: Being a brief sketch of the culture of the plant, its picking, cleaning, packing, shipment, and manufacture
Anonymous
Cotton growing; Cotton manufacture
In 1794 the export rose from 187,000 lbs., the sum total for the
previous year, to 1,601,760 lbs. The next year it was over 6,000,000
lbs. In 1800 it had advanced to about 18,000,000 lbs., and in 1810 to
upwards of 93,000,000 lbs. The last returns before us are for 1852, when
the export of the short staple variety alone exceeded one thousand one
hundred millions of pounds! To this aggregate we suppose about one
hundred millions of pounds may be added for the sea-island and other
long-fibred cottons.
It may well be doubted whether among all the fabrics into which this
enormous amount of raw material is converted there is one more valuable
than sewing-cotton. We think if the question were put to the ladies
to-morrow, whether the textile fabrics produced from cotton, or cotton
sewing-thread, were the most indispensable to their comfort and
convenience, every thimbled hand would be held up in favor of the
latter. Sewing-silk is too expensive for ordinary exigencies, and linen
thread cannot be spun of the same smooth and even fibre as cotton
thread; and besides, being liable to knot and twist, is apt to cut the
lighter and more fragile products of the loom. Abolish sewing-cotton,
and you abolish muslin embroidery and innumerable delicate and
fairy-like embellishments of female loveliness, which taste and fashion
have endorsed.
Every lady is by habit a connoisseur in the article. She examines the
spools with a critical eye; she tries the strength of the thread; she
passes it through her fingers to test its evenness and compactness, and
when seated at her work, detects in a moment any defects which may have
been overlooked by the manufacturer.
To this ordeal the six-cord cotton-thread of DICK & SONS is cheerfully
submitted. It challenges inspection and comparison. There is little
necessity, however, for an appeal to the ladies in relation to its good
qualities, for they have them already at their fingers' ends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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