Whereas we saw that the worsted cloth was practically finished when it left the loom, this is not the case with woolens. Oftentimes it would tax an expert to identify the finished goods with the loose and altogether different material produced by the weaver. Some fine woolens, it is true, are scarcely altered more than worsteds, but in most cases the finishing operations are in this industry a major rather than a subsidiary stage of manufacture. The reader may have been puzzled at the divergent lines along which woolen and worsted yarns are manufactured, and at a loss to account for the reasons. The cause is precisely this, that the worsted manufacturer aims to produce a cloth that is completed when woven, while the woolen maker wants his loom to turn out a material that will readily adopt a great variety of finishes. [Sidenote: _Burling_] The first finishing operation, which applies also to worsteds, is the examination of the piece for imperfections and the removing of them by hand. The piece is then scoured to get rid of dirt, and, where the finish is complicated, this may be repeated several times. [Illustration: _Fulling_] [Sidenote: _Fulling_] Fulling, the next and very important process, consists in passing the material through closed or partially enclosed boxes, in which the cloth is run through soap solutions and then forced through rollers. The result of fulling is to shrink the material and give more body to it. It is chiefly in order to be able to do this that the maker of woolens wants the fibres in his yarn to lie criss-cross, so that in the fulling mill their serrated edges will felt and interlock with each other. The amount of fulling done depends upon the shrinkage desired. It is possible to reduce the size of the cloth by half in this process. Some worsteds are slightly fulled, but in their case it simply serves to add a little body to the cloth, without in any way sacrificing the design of the weaving. Long before the invention of even the earliest automatic textile machinery there were great numbers of water-driven fulling mills, in which the woolen cloth was pounded in fuller’s earth by wooden hammers. In those days the cloth was felted into a stiff thick mass which would resist wear almost indefinitely, but which would hardly adapt itself to the requirements of modern tailoring. [Illustration: _Steaming_] [Sidenote: _Raising_] [Sidenote: _Cropping_] [Sidenote: _Pressing_]