American Cotton Industry (1902); Uttley, Cotton Spinning and
Manufacturing in the United States of North America (1905; a report
of a tour as Gartside scholar of the university of Manchester);
and the Gartside reports on the cotton industries of France and
Germany by Forrester and Dehn respectively. Information will
also be found in Diplomatic and Consular Reports, and fragments
may be gathered from other books such as G. Drage’s Russian Affairs,
Dyer’s Dai Nippon, and Huber’s Deutschland als Industriestaat.
Japan has published since 1901 a very full financial and economical
annual, and the British government issues annually a good statistical
abstract for India. The American census contains much detailed
information, and there are, in addition to the statistics issued by the
Federal government, those of Massachusetts, the Bureau of Statistics
of which has also reported the results of an investigation into the
industry in the Southern states. Among official matter the semi-official
Bombay and Lancashire cotton spinning inquiry of the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce may be included. The census of production
of the United Kingdom must be mentioned, and the reports of
the International Congresses of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers.
As to labour, see the reports of the International Textile Congresses.
The periodical literature is of good quality and much of it is filed in the Patent Office library. We may notice particularly the Cotton Factory Times; Textile Journal; Textile Manufacturer; Textile Mercury; Textile Recorder; Textile World Record (American); Der Leipzige Monatsschrift für Textilindustrie; and the French Textile Journal. Shepperson’s Cotton Facts is an annual which relates chiefly, though not entirely, to raw cotton, as does also Cotton, the periodical of the Manchester Cotton Association. For technical works we may refer here to the well-known treatises of Brooks, Guest, Marsden, Nasmith and Walmsley, and to Johannsen’s ponderous two-volumed Handbuch der Baumwollspinnerei, Rohweissweberei und Fabrikanlagen. (S. J. C.)
COTTON-SPINNING MACHINERY. The earliest inventors of
spinning machinery (see Spinning) directed their energies chiefly
to the improvement of the final stage of the operation, but no
sooner were these machines put to practical use than it became
apparent that success depended upon mechanically conducting
the operations preliminary to spinning. Later inventors were,
therefore, called upon not only to improve the inventions of their
predecessors, but to devise machinery for preparing the fibres to
be spun. Arkwright quickly perceived the importance of this
aspect of the problem, and he devoted even more energy to it than
to the invention with which his name is more intimately associated.
But, given a complete series of machines for preparing and
spinning, the cotton industry (see Cotton Manufacture) must
have remained unprogressive without the co-operation of cotton
growers, for by the then existing methods of separating cotton lint
from seed it would have been impossible to provide an adequate
supply of raw material. By inventing the saw gin, Eli Whitney,
an American, in the year 1792, did for cotton planters what Paul,
Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, Watt and others did for
textile manufacturers, for he provided them with the means for
increasing their output almost indefinitely.
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| Fig. 1. |
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| Fig. 2. |
Cotton-ginning is the process by which cotton seeds are separated from the adhering fibres. The most primitive machine employed in India and China for this purpose is the churka, which consists of two wooden rollers fixed in a frame and revolving in contact. Seed cotton is fed into these rollers and the fibres pass forward but the seeds remain behind. It is a device which does not injure the fibres, but no improvement has been found by which the churka can be converted into a sufficiently productive machine for modern requirements. In a modified form Whitney’s saw gin is still used to clean a large portion of the annual crop of short and medium stapled cottons. It consists of from 60 to 70 saws (A, fig. 1), which are mounted upon a shaft and revolve between the interstices of an iron grid (B); against this grid the seed cotton is held whilst the fibres are drawn through, the seeds being left behind. The operation is as follows:—seed cotton is fed into the hopper (C), and conveyed by a lattice (D) to a spiked roller (E), which regulates the supply to the hopper (F). Whilst in (F) the cotton is engaged by the teeth of the saws (A), and drawn through the grid (B), but the bars are too close to permit the seeds to pass. A brush (G) strips the cotton lint from the saws, after which it is drawn through a flue (H) to the surface of a perforated roller (I) by pneumatic action; it then passes between (I) and (J) out of the machine. The Macarthy gin is the only other type in extensive use; it is employed to clean both long and short stapled cottons. In this gin the fibres are drawn by a leather-covered roller (A, fig. 2) over the edge of a stationary blade (B) called a doctor, which is fixed tangential to the roller. Two cranks (E) move two other blades (C, D) up and down immediately behind, and parallel to, the fixed blade (B). The cotton is thrown into the hopper (F) and the fibres are drawn by the roller (A) until the seeds are against the edge of the doctor (B), when the beaters (C, D) strike them off, but permit the fibres to go forward with the roller. Attempts continue to be made so to improve both machines, that production may be increased,
