The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1885-07-21
HOW ROPE is MADE.
The Wonderful improvements OF
the Past Half Century.
From the Hanks to the Cable-One Girl
Now Doing the Work of Eight Men
Making a Monster Cable.

Rope-making is not what it used to
be. Nowadays a girl at spinning
machine can do more work than eight
men could do in the old-fashioned way,
and where one man could comb one
]. bale of hemp one machine can now
] comb seventy-five bales. The product
4 of the largest ropewalk in the United
States is one hundred and fifty tons OF
rope and Irvine a week, as compared
with sixteen tons when it was built,
fifty-six years ago. This ropewalk is
in Bushwick, apd in the half century it
has made the fortunes of five men.
Bushwick was fifty years ago a small
Long Island hamlet. To-day its
boundaries are merged into the East
ern District of Brooklyn. Not many
ye1Cs ago grove surrounded the rope
walk. To-day it is surrounded by
- dwelling houses. Fifty-five years ago
four horses furnished the motive pow
er. To-day a five hundred and fifty
horse power engine is taxed to do the
work. The long, weather-beaten
Atructure, one thousand seven hundred
,Eeet in length, has had the same ap-
pearance for forty years or more. OF
all the men who have worked in the
ropewalk. one man has lived to see
fathers and sons pass away and TO
teach grandsons how to make rope
He is John Stewart, the superintendent,
q genial and active old gentleman,
now eighty years of age. For fifty-five
wears he has worked there He SAYS
1 he is like the boy who could carry a
calf and by carrying it daily was able
in time to carry an OK. He sorrow
fully shakes his head sometimes when
his mind runs back over the changes.
Twelve kinds of hemp are used in
rope making, Russian hemp being the
best. The hanks are bound into bales
that can be readily handled. Separat-
ing the hanks is the first process in
'pe making. Men do it. The hanks
lie unbound and tossed one side where
shen stand ready to pick them up and
FOIL them. The oiling machines are
large revolving drums of wood that
absorb and hold the oil kept in the
troughs below. They are enclosed in
as large as half an ordinary window.
Taking hank, an oiler spreads it out
and dashes it through a hole and
against the oily surface of the drum.
1t clings and is drawn upward, but be-
fore the end is reached the man draws
it back and repeats the motion until
the fiber has been oiled. From the OIL
ing machines the hemp goes to the
combing machines of different sizes
and capacities. Five combings are
necessary. The combing machines are
~ ingenious, and room aver room
filled with them. Endless bands with
Gross rows of long fine teeth seize the
fbers and carry them along until other
xeeth on a band moving faster comb
fhrough them and straighten and draw
them. After the combing the fibers
become roping, and endless yellow
streams of it flow from upper stories
ito stories below for the spinning ma
chimes. Women and girls operate the
spinning machines.
ID day happened to be Saturday,
andwevery young girl in the building
had her front hair twisted in papers
for Sunday. The noisy rattle of the
machines is hardly bearable by new
eomer, but the girls talk and laugh,
knd, as rule, they are healthy and
strong. The spinning machines are as
interesting as the combing machines,
sad the work is much cleaner. The
beams of roping come down through
he spouts, and are guided by girls into
heet-iron barrels that can be wheeled
% the spinning machines. Each stream
lows faster than several machines can
pin it when everything is in good
working order, and piles of roping stand
'eady for Use. Roping after going
through the spinning machines be-
homes spun yarn. The combing,
trafghtening, and spinning used to be
lone by hand. Il have spun by hand
nany ton of it," said the superin-
endent.
One room is called the waste room,
nd to it goes the waste from all the
ooms. The waste is combed and
Town until the good fibers are Saved
I'd spun into yarn for Irvine. The
ust in the room is as thick as fog in
be dog-days, and how any one can
ork and live there for anv length of