The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1880-01-21
A GREAT INVENTION.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CLEMENT ATTACH
MENT.

We invite the attention of our readers
to the subjoined description of the "Cle-
ment Attachment" taken from letter
to the Louisville Evening Post and
News. 1t cannot be doubted that it is
destined to work a revolution which,
will inure greatly to the advantage of
all cotton producing countries. The
machine is the invention of Lewis L.
Clement, of Smyrna, Tenn, who died
several years ago. During the last two
or three years it has been much i'm
proved, and is now for all practical
purposes, complete. When we come to
consider that it dispenses with the gin,
press and compress, as we'll as one-half
of the building, machinery, motive
power and operatives necessary to con-
vert seed cotton, by the processes now
i'll use, into yarns, its merits may be, in
measure, appreciated. The machine
has been in use for sometime in mills
in Tennessee, North and South Carroll
ma, where its merits have been tested,
and pronounced satisfactory in all res
poets. In the letter referred to we
find the following description of its
CoR1NrH, Mss,
Dec. l6, 1921
Some five years since Bishop Paine,
of Aberdeen, Miss, called at my office
in this place, and casually remarked
that he had recently seen in Cincinna-
ii, some yarns of superior strength and
sheen, which had been made directly
from seed cotton, by some Middle Ten
nessean, whose name he could not re-
collect. became Immediately inter-
ested, for l had attempted such thing
during the war, and failed for lack of
skillful machinists, who were nearly
all in the army or in Government ma
chine shops. On the Bishops return
home he sent me the address of Lewis
Tresband Clements, of Smyrna, Tenn,
as the man who had invented new
process Of converting seed cotton di-
rectly into yarn.
l Immediately wrote to him and re-
ceived prompt answer from DR.. Jas.
A. Ridley, stating that Clements had
accidentally lost his life some two years
previous; that his machine was at Pu-
laski, Tenn, where it was made, and
had remained since Clements decease.
I found the machine as he had left it.
I became third owner and general
agent for the other seventeen owners of
the patent which Clements had taken
out. I removed 1t to this place, and on
receipt of yarns from various factories,
both North and South, where had
sent slivers made by the attachment to
be spun into yarns GALL of said Northern
factories believed from the strength and
sheen of the silver rove and thread that
it was some new kind of silk cotton of
long, fine staple lately introduced in
the South, when in reality tt was made
of dirty, short staple cotton grown in
the mountains around Pulaski.) The
yarns and machine created great in
terest. / became Harmed lest the ma
chine should be improved OH and pat
ented by some one to the detriment of
its owners, and had the card and at
tachments removed to small factory
and machine shop in the mountains of
North Alabama, where l kept 1t twelve
months, experimenting and securing
other patents, SO as to cover the whole
thing, at the expiration of which time
the first mill was started at this place,
which was soon followed by mills in
Tennessee, South and North Carolina.
The Clements patent was for no new
invention, but tor the combination of
the principles of two machines that
have been in use for three ourths of a
century-namely, the "gin and card"
for converting seed cotton, by one oper-
alton, into slivers.
This machine consists of a tlirty-six
inch top-fiat, self-stripping card; the
attachment (which is diminutive gin
lSxlSx56 inches) is substituted for the
licker-in and feed rollers OF the card !:
its SAWS are seven inches in diameter,