CHAPTER ITHE RAW MATERIAL

Early History

The raising of sheep goes so far back into primitive times that historians have been compelled to draw a veil over its origin. Whether sheep antedate man, or man existed before sheep, is a question that has never been authoritatively answered. For our purposes very little history will suffice. We know that sheep were raised in Biblical times, but we do not know much about them. We do know, however, that the old Romans practised sheep-breeding with great care and even went so far as to cover their animals with cloth in order to preserve the clean quality of the fleece. During the reign of the Roman Emperor, Claudius (A. D., 50), an Italian named Columella, took several Italian sheep to Spain and crossed them with the native Spanish Merino breed. It is said that the resulting type is the progenitor of all the Merino breeds which now form the basis of sheep-breeding. Under the rule of the Saracens, Spain became not only a great sheep-raising country, but a woolen manufacturing country as well. In the thirteenth century there were no less than sixteen thousand looms in the town of Seville alone.

Spain

When the Saracens were driven out by Philip III. the textile industry disappeared from Spain, but sheep husbandry, which did not require skilled labor, remained, and Spanish wool continued to be the finest in the world.

Europe

Spread of Merino

During the eighteenth century various European countries began to import merinos and cross them with their native breeds. This, because of the sturdy quality of some of the native types, frequently produced excellent results. In France we thus have the origin of the Rambouillet merino, in Germany and Austria of the Saxony and Silesian breeds. In 1810 merinos were first introduced into Australia with astonishing results both as to grade of wool and increase of flocks. About the same time South America, South Africa, and the United States imported Spanish sheep. Of all the highly civilized countries, England is the only one where merino breeding was not successful. This was due in part to the climate, but the chief cause was the fact that British sheep-raising was primarily for mutton purposes, and only secondarily for wool. The merino types are smaller, and hence do not yield as good mutton carcasses as some of the native “Down” and “Mountain” breeds. In many cases, however, the native English breeds, notably the Lincolns, have been imported to other countries and there crossed with merinos with very good success.

Native Breeds

It would not be possible to give in detail the various breeds of sheep existing in different countries. Merino sheep are now bred in many partsof the world, and, together with the high crossbreds, are the source of all the fine wools known as merino, half-blood, and three-eighths wools. Long wools are derived from various native breeds, chiefly English, and from the lower crossbreds of merinos, such as quarter and low quarter bloods. Chinese, Siberian, and Turkish wools, as well as many other uncivilized types, are usually very long and coarse, and are known as carpet and braid wools.

Sources

Most of the best merino wools come from Australia, the next best from South Africa, and from South America. The latter have one fault in that they contain many spiral burrs which are difficult to remove, and which frequently get through the machines and show up as imperfections in the cloth. Europe grows some very fine short wools, but these hardly ever leave the countries they are grown in.

U. S. Domestic

United States wools are known as “domestic” and “territory.” Domestic wools are those grown in the eastern and middle western states, notably in the Ohio valley. These contain the highest grades of merino wools grown in this country. It must be remembered that sheep raising began in the East, and as civilization expanded, was gradually crowded further and further westward. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made available the fertile pasture lands of the Ohio valley. The Ohio Canal eight years later opened up still more territory, and in 1849 during the famous gold rush, sheep were first taken to California.

Territory

The territory wools are those grown in the Rocky Mountain Plateau states. Recently, with improved methods and greater care in breeding, some very fine wools have been derived from Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, and Montana, and from a few other states. The Texas and California wools are usually classed separately, because they are in most cases clipped twice a year. A little later we shall discuss the various grades and sorts of wool obtained from the different breeds, but as the wool is shorn or pulled before it is graded, we shall take up these processes first.

Wool is obtained from the sheep in two ways; it is either shorn from the live animal, or pulled from the skin of the slaughtered carcass.

Shearing

Australian System

Shearing was formerly done by hand. An expert was able to clip as many as one hundred head per day, but the average was less than half of that amount. The introduction of machine shearing has made it possible for one man to shear from 175 to 200 sheep in a day, and the fleece is very much more evenly clipped than formerly. Some merino breeds, known as type A, have so many folds of loose skin that machine shearing is not feasible, but except for these animals, and some of the type B or Rambouillet Merinos, almost all sheep are now shorn by machine, that is, where they are raised in numbers. Sheep raising in this country is not pursued with nearly so much care as, for instance, in Australia. There they have huge shearing sheds where the animals are first sweated and then carefully shorn. Whereas here the entire fleece is left in one piece, in Australia the belly is shorn separately and each fleece is carefully skirted, that is, the inferior parts such as the britch are torn off. Then each fleece is folded and tied up and the fleeces are put up in bales. Moreover, a bale usually contains fleeces of the same grade, so that practically nothing but sorting remains to be done by the purchaser. Here, on the other hand, fleeces are shorn in one piece and are folded up carelessly, without skirting. The tying up is frequently done in a slovenly manner, and a bag will very often contain all grades of wool from the finest to the coarsest. Of late years some attempt has been made to install the Australian system, but without much success.

Seasons

The shearing season in the northern hemisphere is in the spring, in countries below the equator, except Australia, it is, of course, in our fall. In Texas and California, as well as in some other localities, shearing is frequently done twice a year.

Marketing

Roughly speaking, there are seven ways in which the wool grower may dispose of his fleece wool:

Merchant Buyers

1. He may sell it to buyers representing merchants. The merchant, while he is a middle man and therefore incurs the usual anathema, performs a variety of very essential services. At the time of the clip he sends his buyers to the wool producing centers and buys the clip for cash, then he ships it to his warehouse, grades it, and sells to the mills on credit. Obviously he finances a very important part of the production, and is furthermore essential, because he knows the demand, which the wool-grower does not, and the supply—of which the mill is usually ignorant.

Mill Buyers

2. The wool grower may also sell to buyers representing mills. He likes to do this because he eliminates the merchant’s profit, but, as a matter of fact, there are only very few mills large enough to stand thebuying expense, and even fewer that can afford to buy their whole season’s supply of raw material at one time and for cash. Also, mills can usually employ only certain grades of wool, and cannot therefore as a rule buy a whole clip.

Consignment

3. If the grower thinks that he is not receiving fair offers from the visiting buyers, he will frequently consign his wool to a merchant to be sold on commission for his account. In this case he may or may not get a better price, but it costs him his carrying charges plus commission. There are some wool houses that make it a specialty to execute commission sales of this nature.

Local Mills

4. Some wool is sold direct to nearby mills. This is done particularly in Ohio, where many of the smaller mills obtain their entire requirements in this manner.

Local Dealers

5. Wool growers sometimes sell to local dealers. This is particularly prevalent in regions where the individual grower’s production is small. In most eastern states there are a great number of small farmers who grow a certain amount of wool. The local dealers are in many cases also the general store-keepers, and, since they are the farmer’s creditor on other merchandise, and since the average farmer knows very little about the grades of wool, these individuals very frequently turn a handsome profit when they in turn sell to the visiting buyers.

Coop. Sales

6. Some wool is sold through farmers’ co-operative sales agencies, but these organizations have in the past been so poorly administered, that, as a general rule they have not been successful. The movement is, however, gaining ground and has shown great progress during recent years.

Auctions

7. Finally, there remains the method whereby almost all the British and colonial wools are sold, namely, by auction. Auction sales have been established for almost a century in London, Liverpool, Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Marseilles, and recently in Australia. This method of disposing of their raw product does not, however, appeal to the American growers, because of the inherent American trading instinct. It is also not very feasible in this country, because the wool is not graded in the shearing sheds and because sheep-raising in not standardized.

Markets

The chief markets for wool in this country are Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and St. Louis.

We have above discussed the shearing and marketing of wool obtained from the living animal. There remains a large quantity of wool which is taken from the pelts of slaughtered sheep. In 1919 there wereproduced 48,300,000 pounds of pulled wool in the U. S. as against 265,939,000 pounds of sheared wool.

Use

Skin wool, or tanner’s wool, as it is sometimes known, is used extensively for soft twist yarns, bed blankets, flannels, felts, etc. It is also used as an admixture in blends for top-making, as we shall see later.

There are three methods whereby pulled wool is obtained.

Sweating

The oldest and simplest process is known as sweating, and consists simply in sweating the hides until the wool is loosened and can easily be pulled out. The disadvantage of this method is that it injures the hides.

Lime

The lime process consists in loosening the wool by painting the flesh side of the hide with lime. This also injures the hides somewhat and has a bad effect on the dyeing qualities of the wool.

Depilatory

The depilatory process is the best, and varies from the lime process only in that a solution is used instead of lime. This mixture consists of sodium sulphate, sulphuric acid, and oyster shells.

By far the greatest pullery in the world is situated at Mazamet, France, where the industry has assumed gigantic proportions. The large packers in this country all operate their own pulleries, and the pulled wool is marketed largely by them. Most mills buy their pulled wool direct from the pulleries, but some is handled by merchants.

We have now traced the wool from the sheep’s back as far as the bag, and may assume that the bag has travelled from the shearing shed to the merchant’s or mill’s warehouse. Some foreign wools, notably Australian and South American, are, as we have seen, skirted and roughly graded in the shearing shed, so that, when the bag is opened, there remains only the sorting to do. Grading is the separation of fleeces into classified groups. Skirting is the removal from each fleece of the worst parts, namely, the britch wool, manure locks (known as tags), and matted or kempy portions. Sorting is the dividing of the individual fleece into various classifications.

Wool as Against Hair

Before we take up the grades and sorts in detail, it will be well for us to inquire briefly into the nature of the wool fibre. In the first place, wool differs from hair in that its fibre consists of a core (medulla), a pulp (cortex), and an epidermis. A hair follicle consists of a medulla and an epidermis. Moreover, the epidermis of a hair is closely and evenly scaled, which makes it smooth and lustrous. The surface of a wool fibre is not evenly serrated, which accounts for the felting, or interlocking, quality. Wool in which there is insufficient moisture and natural grease (yolk) frequently becomes felted at the ends. Such wool is variouslyreferred to as cotted, cotty, or brashy. The tensile strength of a wool fibre is low, its elasticity high. The length of the fibre varies from one to over ten inches, and the diameter from .0018 to .004 inches. The better a wool the less like it is to a hair. Generally speaking, the finer the wool, the shorter the fibre, but length alone would not indicate the grade. Pure merino and high cross-bred wools have a close wave, known as crimp, which increases the elasticity and is therefore desirable from a spinning standpoint.

The chemical composition of wool is: carbon 50%, hydrogen 7%, nitrogen 18%, oxygen 22%, and sulphur 3%. It is soluble in alkalies, and at a temperature of 130° C. will reduce to powder.

Shrinkage

Wool before it is scoured contains a large quantity of yolk, or natural grease, and also, besides dust and vegetable matter, a considerable amount of dried perspiration, or suint. The amount of weight lost through the removal of these substances when the wool is scoured is termed shrinkage. It will be readily appreciated that this is a very important factor in connection with the purchase of grease wool. The percentage of shrinkage varies from 20% to 80%. Nevertheless a good buyer will often be able to estimate within one or two per cent. The factors to be considered in this connection are the breed, the soil, the climate, and the care with which the sheep are raised, as well as the diligence with which the fleeces are put up. Fine wools always shrink more heavily than coarse; and pulled wools, since they are washed and brushed during the process, show a very much lower shrinkage than fleece wools. The average shrinkage of United States wools is about 55%. Fine domestics shrink about 60%. Lower grades about 45%. Fine territory wools about 65%; lower grades about 55%. Pulled wool averages about 27%. Fine Australian wools average 49%, for, although they are the finest, the fleeces contain less dirt. Cape wools about 62%, and South American about 51%.

Qualities Desired

The qualities looked for in wool are roughly six, and they vary according to the purpose for which the wool is to be used.

1. It must be fine enough to spin the required number of counts.

2. It must be strong enough to withstand strain of manufacture.

3. It must have the proper staple (length).

4. It must be of a certain softness or hardness.

5. It must have the proper felting qualities if the material is to be fulled.

6. It must either scour white, or else have sufficient lustre to take dyes.

Clothing and Combing

As we take up the manufacture of worsted and woolen yarns we shall see how these qualifications play a different part in the two processes.At the outset the only important difference we are concerned with is staple length. Generally speaking, wools under two inches are too short to be combed and are classed as clothing wools.Clothing wools are used for woolens, combing wools for worsteds.This applies only to wools of fine fibre. The mere fact that a wool has long staple length does not make it a combing wool. As a rule, the coarser the wool the longer its staple, and the longest wools are the exceedingly coarse “common” or “braid” wools, which can only be used for carpet manufacture.

Sorting Wool

In grading and sorting, practically the only guide is the fineness of the individual fibre. The other qualifications just enumerated have a very important bearing on what the wool can be used for, but they have very little to do with its classification by grades.

Classifications

Fleece wools are graded by two systems, one by bloods, the other by counts spun. (This means the number of hanks of 560 yards each to a pound of yarn.) Domestic and foreign wools are usually graded by bloods. U. S. Territory wools are graded a little differently, as per second column below, and pulled wool is only roughly graded into fourclasses (third column). The blood classifications originated from the breeding of the sheep, but, as a matter of fact they have become arbitrary terms denoting a certain degree of fineness. The same fleece may, and frequently does, contain ½, ⅜, and ¼ blood wool.

Grading

Skirting

Sorting

When a bag of domestic wool is opened the fleeces are taken out one by one and put into baskets according to the grades in the first column. The grader simply decides what the majority of the fleece is and puts it into that class. When he has filled a basket with, let us say, half-blood fleeces, this basket is given to a sorter. He takes each fleece, shakes it out, and, first of all, skirts it. Then he separates it into the various sorts it contains. Fleeces graded as half-blood will probably sort into mostly half, some fine (full-blood), and a considerable quantity of three-eighths blood. The best wool comes off the shoulders, then the sides, then the back, then the thighs, and finally the britch and belly. Usually a fleece will not contain more than three sorts.

If this were a bag of Australian, South American, or Cape wool, the fleeces would in all probability have been bagged according to grades, so that only the sorting operation would have to be performed by the merchant or the mill.

When the wool has been sorted it is put into bins, and may now be said to be ready for the first of the manufacturing processes for which it is destined. Sorting is sometimes done by the merchants, but more frequently by the manufacturers.

Off-sorts

Kempy or cotted pieces, tags, stained or painty wool, etc., are called off-sorts, and these are put through a number of processes for the purpose of reclaiming as much of the wool as possible.

Scouring Machine

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