While kid gloves must be regarded as an art whose secrets are best known to the French, fabric, and particularly silk, gloves are manufactured with enviable success in our own country. Doubtless one of the most interesting glove mills to visit is a well-known factory located in the Alleghany industrial district of Pennsylvania, which, though occupying a comparatively small area, is wonderfully complete and efficient, and turns out by the latest approved methods a large output of high class Milanaise gloves. The president of this company, who is hands, feet and brains to his mill—also a practical inventor and a lover of machines—has made it possible, by courteous attention to every requirement of the trade, to place upon the market a superior product, and to win and hold the confidence of his business associates. A visit to this particular mill is doubly affording to the student of glove-making because here they weave and dye their own silk fabric. We are able to follow the process from a skein of raw silk to the finished glove in all its accuracy and beauty. Every step in its evolution is attended with admirable carefulness and despatch—the glove emerging almost miraculously from the crude material as it is passed swiftly from one operator to another, each worker contributing one factor more to its final perfection. The silk strand arrives “in the raw” from Japan, packed in straw bales, and might easily be mistaken for a shipment of tea. In this state the silk resembles fine white hair or, even more closely, spun sugar. It is sent in quantities, as needed, to the spinners, and on its return is put through a boiling process to remove a gummy substance inherent in the crude product. The strand is now ready to make the acquaintance of the machines. First of all, it must be wound by machinery upon spools. This process is known, simply, as the winding process. The neatly, evenly wound silk is then conveniently fed from the spools onto other machines which transform it into the warp or foundation for the silk fabric. These warps vary greatly in width—some being like ribbons, measuring about six inches across, others measuring 144 and even 168 inches. They are delicate webs of shining silk with the threads running in a single direction—vertically, to be exact. Weaving machines next receive the warped silk. Each of these machines is equipped with four thousand needles, or twenty-eight needles to every inch, which knit up the silken web into cloth. As fast as woven, it is dropped and rolled upon a long cylinder; it is very soft and satiny and astonishingly resembles a mass of molasses candy which has been “pulled” until it is snowy white and of glistening smoothness. It is now ready to be dyed. The dyeing is one of the few primitive steps retained in the entire process. This operation is performed by hand, and the material is lifted and worked on long sticks to ensure evenness of color. No machine is capable of giving such satisfactory results.