once for the finishing. The woolen fabric comes from the loom loose, open, rough, and must be thoroughly milled or fulled before it is finished.
The woolen cloth—spun on the mule, and milled—was, until a few years back, the only wool fabric made for men's wear. There are innumerable varieties of it, including broadcloths, doeskins, twills, flannels, tricots, beavers, cassimeres, cheviots, meltons—trade-names which stand for certain standard fabrics, with little regard for their etymological significance. Until the year 1840 the wool manufacture of the United States was exclusively confined to the woolen form. In that year the first delaines made in this country were manufactured at a mill in Ballardvale, Mass. All the wool was combed by hand, and the printing of the goods was at first also by hand. The success of this experiment started others in the field, and by 1855 several of the largest establishments in the country were engaged in the manufacture of ladies' worsted dress goods.
The use of the worsted process in garments for men's wear is as recent as the year 1866. It appears to have originated in England, where Josiah Lodge, of Huddlesfield, claims to have been the first to utilize the process in the manufacture of men's trouserings and suitings. The innovation was quickly adopted in France, in Germany, and in the United States, and these worsted suitings are so popular and so serviceable that the manufacture of wool goods may almost be said to have been revolutionized in the interval. There are to-day as many persons and looms employed in the worsted manufacture in England as in the woolen manufacture, and the substitution of worsted for woolen machinery has been going on at a rapid rate. The largest wool manufacturing establishment in the world, that of Isaac H olden & Sons, at Bradford, England, contains three hundred sets of cards and three hundred combing machines, and is exclusively employed in the manufacture of "tops" for the worsted spinners. In this country our largest mills are engaged in spinning worsted yarns and weaving worsted cloths. In their equipment they run from two or three combs up to fifty or sixty, and from ten thousand to fifty thousand spindles. It is impossible to state a relationship between combs and spindles, owing to the great variety of the yarns and fabrics made from worsted. Although no radical improvements have recently been made in the comb, the efficiency has been increased about thirty per cent in the last twenty years. In 1870 the product of a comb was from four hundred to four hundred and fifty pounds a day. The same labor will now produce from seven hundred to eight hundred pounds, yielding a better quality of product.
