Transcriber’s Notes: 1. Footnotes have been moved to immediately after the associated paragraph. 2. Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. 3. Spelling and hyphenation has been made consistent with the most common usage. Quoted text from other works and authors was left unchanged. 4. Characters between underscores “_ _” are italicized. NOTES UPON INDIGO. BY JOHN L. HAYES, SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WOOL MANUFACTURERS, FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. From “The Bulletin of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers.” BOSTON: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1873. PART I. NOTES UPON INDIGO. PART I. A publication devoted to the interests of the woollen manufacture, while giving due prominence to its first raw material, wool, cannot neglect the secondary materials which enter into finished fabrics. The attractiveness and utility of the largest class of these fabrics are due to the hue given them by the dyer; and of all the coloring materials one of the most precious is indigo. In former times, as it still does at the East, it occupied with madder the place of one of the two most important of all dyeing materials. Forced of late years to give way to the marvellous products of modern chemistry, it will doubtless resume its place under the influence of a more enlightened economy and a more subdued taste. To contribute to the hastening of this return is one object of this essay. The most usual reproach against American fabrics is the want of stability in our dyes,—a reproach without justice, if applied to American fabrics alone; for the cheapening of dyestuffs is practised in all the so-called manufacturing nations, and is contemned alone in the East, from which we have derived our arts, and by the people whom we despise as barbarous. To remove this reproach from American fabrics would be worthy of no little temporary sacrifice on the part of our manufacturers.