Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1898-04-14
CARPETS OF SAKAI,
IustratiOn of Cheap Hand Labor
Competing with Machinery.

A Japanese industry which employs
q large number of hands, chiefly chill
dren, is carpet-making. In Japan the
carpet is a modern luxury. Before the
days of foreign trade cotton carpets
with long pile, an inch in length, in
imitation of the Chinese article, were
made in small quantities, and when,
after the signing of the foreign treaties,
European goods began to be intro
duced, carpets greatly took the Jap
anese fancy. i. Brennan, in recent re-
port to the foreign office, says that the
carpet-makers of Sallai, the chief seat
of the industry, situated about SIX
miles from Osake, took hints from the
foreign articles and in course OF time
improved so much on their earlier
processes that already in 1878 cotton
and jute carpets began to be exported
to Europe and America. The trade has
now grown to large proportions, and 1t
affords one instance of the japanese be-
ing able to beat those from whom they
learned.
Carpet-making affords a striking ex-
ample of the successful competition be-
tween cheap labor and machinery. AT
Sakai there is no large factory, the
kandlooms being distributed all over the
town and the carpet dealers supply the
material and pay the workers by the
piece. In each house there may be
three or four looms, ranging from three
to 24 feet wide. To each loom there arc
from two to four children, with
grown-up person experimenting the
work.
With incredible speed the children,
some of them as young as seven, pass
the warn in and out of the warp and
snip off the right length with pair of
spring clippers. They are all kneeling
at their work on plank laid at the foot
Of a loom, and they slide backward and
forward along their allotted share of
the design. AS their little fingers pass
the yarn in and out of the cotton
threads, these small children sing sort
of nursery rhyme which helps them to
remember the pattern, and at intervals
the woman in charge leads off new
verse, which the children at once take
up. and simultaneously effect the
change suggested by the new music and
the words.
nSN WORK, OF at lodSt lue.N are 1T
their work, for IL hours a day, and their
wages come to about one penny day.
The price of a rug made of cotton or
hemp depends upon the number of
threads in warp and welt; about $50
threads to yard is the average quality.
Wooden carpets are being manufac-
tured, but in price they seem far to eN-
coed similar carpets made in North
China, without Il corresponding i'm
provement in quality. Austrian WOOL
is used, which, of course, is much dear
er than the MongOlian wool. Small silk
carpets are also being made, but the
demand for these is limited; they cost
az much as five dollars per square foot;
for carpet of any given dimensions 90
times the labor is required as in the
case of hempen carpet. Three hands
will make an ordinary hemp or wool
rug, three by six feet, in one day, and it
would take the same workers three
months to make the silk carpet.
The number of carpet-weaving estab-
lfshments in the district of Osaka is
nearly 1000 producing 100000 square
yards of carpets in the year, and in
them are employed 5000 male and 49,
900 female wOrkers.-Textile Mercury