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laboratory. From the point of view of commerce this is all to the good. From the artistic standpoint it is' not so. It led, indeed, to a condition of things which went far to justify the contention that all this “improvement ” amounted in effect to the degradation of handicraft to the level of trade. When it was boasted by the manufacturer that a machine printed with more precision than a hand block, the artist pointed out that the result was mechanical ; when it was claimed that the “steaming” process was cheap, it was answered that it was proportionately nasty; when it was urged that aniline gave brighter colours than vegetable dyes, it was complained that they were crude. And there was truth in these retorts : the precision of machine printing is not altogether an artistic gain; the rough and ready process of mixing dye and mordant into one printing paste, and allowing them, as it were, to fight it out between them in the steambox, does not result in the purest of prints; and the possibility of getting out of coal-tar unmitigated shades of colour led to the shocking abuse of garish greens, purples, &c. Moreover, the method (at first adopted) of attaching the pigments to the cloth by means of albumen did not make them fast; and, in fading, they did not simply mellow or sadden like the fugitive tints of old tapestry, but grew sickly, and passed through various unwholesome shades of difference to decay. All this naturally aroused artistic animosity, and there was something like a crusade against artificial dyestuffs. William Morris, who was at the head of this movement, went further than mere protest against the new methods, and himself set to work at printing according to the old, and more or less obsolete, practice; and his cottons found ready acceptance at the hands of artists and others better qualified to admire the beauty and originality of his design than to form any just opinion as to the relative value of the method of dyeing it pleased him to adopt. They took it too readily for granted that all pleasant colour was produced from vegetable dyes, and that all artificial dyes, therefore, were ugly. The truth is that the ancient art of dyeing with vegetable stains had in the course of ages been perfected. The more fugitive and otherwise untrustworthy substances had been found out, the really serviceable had been tested, and a dyer knew what he had to depend upon, and for what he could depend upon it. On the other hand, when new dyestuffs came everyday to be produced in the laboratory, all use of them was experimental; and it is only after many failures that satisfactory results begin to be achieved. The failures in aniline dyeing were obvious. Arsenite of alumina proved a more efficient fixative than albumen, but was open to the objection of the poisonous nature of arsenic—an objection not applicable to tannic acid, which is now mixed with the colour, and when treated (after steaming) with tartrate of antimony forms a quite insoluble dye. With the introduction of alizarine and of what is known as the “direct” series of colours (which have such affinity with cotton as to require no mordant), printing in artificial dyestuffs entered upon a stage of success already marked enough to show that the falling back upon old-world methods was a counsel of despair, not warranted by the actual condition of things. An artist’s sympathy with his material leads him, rightly, to work on the lines determined by it; and the palette offered by vegetable dyes is in a sense sufficient for him; but dye printing is not simply an art: it is an industry, supported by folks who neither know nor care about the limitations of vegetable tinctures; and, now that chemistry comes with its promise of so much wider scope in colour, it would show little enterprise on the part of the printer were he content to accept limitations no
BLUFFS
longer binding on him. As a matter of fact, the ideal of a range of colours, practically unlimited, all from one base, all to be printed at one operation, all to be developed and fixed by one process, seems on the way to no very distant realization. The last word of science is to the effect that alizarine colours are more permanent than vegetable dyes. At the very end of the 19th century these have produced artificially an indigo practically indistinguishable from the natural product. It does not, however, appear that modern methods can ever do quite what wTas done by the old. By the leisurely process of block-printing, in vegetable dyes, the printer gets a purity of delicate tint not as yet approached by rapid roller-printing in artificial dyestuffs —and there are obvious reasons, mechanical and chemical, why this should be so. To get the old effects it is necessary (and perhaps always will be) to adopt the old methods. But these effects are not the only ones that are beautiful. And, though they are proper to the old way of printing, there are other effects, beautiful also, quite as proper to the new. It is these which the astute printer seeks, knowing that so long as he aims at what has been done, and better done than his means allow, he puts himself at a disadvantage. The artistic development of cotton printing on the scale of a great industry must depend upon a full appreciation of what new and scientific methods can and cannot do, and upon the production of designs not only conceived in the spirit of art but schemed with the practical purpose of making much of the capacities of the industry under the conditions, commercial and other, which it is bound to obey. Probably the most considerable development of dye-printing in recent years has been in the extended use of “discharge”—dyeing rich grounds, discharging the pattern, and printing it in colours—all but impossible to the printer except in collaboration with the designer. Considerable improvement in the design of cotton prints has followed upon the revived interest in applied art characteristic of the latter part of the 19th century; even up - to - date extravagance may pass for evidence of vitality; but the aim is more often mere novelty than beauty. Moreover, too great a readiness on the part of the printer to meet demands made in ignorance of the conditions governing good work has led of late years to a departure from the ways of technique, which are indeed also the ways of art in so far as art is possible in cotton printing. (l. f. d.) Cotton, and Cotton-seed. {United States).
See Agriculture
Couillet, a town of Belgium, in the province of Hainaut, 24 miles south-south-east of Mons, with a station on the railway between Charleroi and Namur. It has forges and furnaces and important ironworks. Population (1880), 7142; (1897), 9339.. Council Bluffs, capital of Pottawattamie county, Iowa, U.S.A., situated in 41° 16' N. lat. and 95° 51' W. long., in the western part of the state, in the bottom land at the foot of the bluffs, on the east side of Missouri river, at an altitude of nearly 1000 feet. It is the second largest and most important city of western Iowa, and a railway centre of the first importance, being the convergingpoint of five great systems from the east. These are the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific, the Illinois Central, and the Chicago and North-Western ; while the Union Pacific comes from the west. The point of junction of these lines is at Transfer Station, just outside the city, on the bank of the Missouri. It is connected with Omaha, on the opposite bank of the river, by two iron bridges and by steam and electric cars. It is a railway,
