A 557269
THE
STORY
BOOK
OF
SCIENCE
JEAN
HENRI
FABRE
1817 SCIENTIA
ARTES
VERITAS LIBRARY OF IGAN CHTHE MI TY I S R E V OF UNI
PLURICUS UMUM
TUEBOR
SI-QUERIS PENINS
ULAM AMENAM
CIRCUM
SPICE
From the Library of A. W. Diack
74
THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE
what long voyages , all for a simple piece of print costing a few centimes !
A handful of cotton is
gathered, we will suppose, two or three thousand leagues from here.
This cotton crosses the ocean,
goes a quarter round the globe, and comes to France or England to be manufactured.
Then it is spun,
woven, ornamented with colored designs , and , converted into print, crosses the seas again, to go perhaps to the other end of the world to serve as headdress for some woolly-haired negro.
What a multi-
plicity of interests are brought into play !
It was
necessary to sow the plant ; then, for a good half of the year, to cultivate it.
Out of a handful of flock,
then, provision must be made for the remuneration of those who have cultivated and harvested.
Next
come the dealer who buys and the mariner who transports it . To each of them is due a part of the handful of flock. Then follow the spinner, weaver , dyer, all of whom the cotton must indemnify for their work.
It is far from being finished .
Now come
other dealers who buy the fabrics, other mariners who carry them to all parts of the world, and finally merchants who sell them at retail. How can the handful of flock pay all these interested ones without itself acquiring an exorbitant price ?
" To accomplish this wonder two industrial powers intervene
work on a large scale and the aid of ma-
chinery.
You have seen how Ambroisine spins wool
on the wheel. long locks .
The carded wool is first divided into
One of these locks is applied to a hook
which turns rapidly.
The hook seizes the wool and
in its rotation twists the fibers into one thread, which
COTTON
75
lengthens little by little at the expense of the lock held and regulated by the fingers .
When the thread
attains a certain length, Mother Ambroisine rolls it on the spindle by a suitable movement of the wheel ; then she continues twisting the wool again. " Strictly speaking, cotton could be spun in the same way ; but, however clever Mother Ambroisine may be, the fabrics made from the thread of her wheel would cost an enormous price on account of the time spent.
What, then, is to be done ?
chine is made to spin the cotton.
A ma-
In rooms larger
than the biggest church are placed, by hundreds of thousands, the nicely adjusted machines proper for spinning, with hooks , spindles , and bobbins.
And all
turn at the same time with a precision and rapidity that defy watching. enough to deafen you.
The work goes on with noise The flock of cotton is seized
by thousands and thousands of hooks ; the endless threads come and go from one bobbin to another, and roll themselves on the spindles .
In a few hours
a mountain of cotton is converted into thread, the length of which would go several times around the whole earth. What have they spent for work which would have exhausted the strength of an army of spinners as clever as Mother Ambroisine ?
Some
shovelfuls of coal to heat the water, the steam of which starts the machine that sets everything going. Weaving, the printing of the colored designs ,—in short, the various operations that the flock undergoes to become cloth are executed by means quite as expeditious, quite as economical.
And it is thus
that the planter, broker, mariner, spinner, weaver ,
76
THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE
dyer, and merchant can all have their share in the handful of cotton flock which has become a piece of calico and is sold for four sous . '