The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-11-11

cutting of these twenty thicknesses is
| done, not, of course, by means of the
tailors' shears but the material is taken
to broad tables up in the galleries and
cut by a special machine. This consists
essentially of a thin, endless band OF
| steel, which runs at a great speed per-
| pendicularly through the table. One
edge of this flexible steel band is sharp
| ened to razorlike keenness, and against
| this edge the material is deftly pushed.
| The glittering blade slices it's way
through the twenty thicknesses of soft
material in the neatest and cleanest
| way, the operator guiding the material
so as to bring the pipe clay lines up the
edge. In this way coatsleeVes and col
lars, and all other parts of the gar
ments are cut en- bloc, and are then
passed on to girls whose business 1t is
to put together the different pieces that
go to make up single garment. 1t is
quite possible, therefore, for scarlet
tunic to have one sleeve from one piece
Of material and the other sleeve from
another piece, and the collar from a
third, and so on.
1t is an important matter that all the
pieces of material should not only be OF
the same shade of color at the outset,
but that they should not be liable to
change color under the influence of rain
and sunshine. Every piece of material
coming into Pimlico has to undergo the
most rigid chemical examination bsfore
it is passed into stock. The regiment
of British warriors who should turn out
before the enemy in uniforms having
one arm brilliant scarlet and the other
a washed out pink, or the two sides of
their tunics made up of half dozen
shades of dingy red, would run some
risk Of evoking the contemptuous mirth
of the foe. Every piece of material
brought in is rigidly tested chemically,
and a sample of it is, as final test,
exposed, for a time, to the weather.
This wholesale procedure is ell right
for the majority of the men in a regi-
ment, and out of the twenty sizes most
Of them can find something to fit them,
but a certain proportion Of them cannot
be fitted decently this way, and alter
ations, more or less extensive, have tc
be undertaken, and in some cases gar
ments have to be specially made. Boots
they do not make at Pinllico, but get
them from contractors, and it need
hardly be said they, too, are subject to
rigid inspection. They get IN every year
over five hundred thousand pairs Of
boots, for Pimlico supplies not only the
army, but some other departments of
the public services such as the police,
the Irish Constabulary and the London
park keepers, and so on. There are al
ways huge stacks of boots piled up,
eight thousand pairs or so in stack,
and care is always taken that they shall
not be dealt out till they have been
warehoused in that way for about
year.
The rhyming adage about new boots
from the last making a man poor, work
he ever so fast, seems to be Endorsed
at Pimlico, where they store them till
they are got well seasoned; but it seems
to be the opinion there that after keep
ing about one year they deteriorate
rather than improve. The scrutiny of
the boots brought in here is done by
men who employ their time in picking
out sample pairs and just ripping them
to pieces If they are found varying in
the slightest degree from the sealed
the whole batch may, OF
course, be rejected,
1T seems a very wasteful process, but
this whole establishment originated in
the shocking scandal that reused the
in dignaton of the whole kingdom at
the time Of the Crimean War, when,
under the whole system, by which the
colonel of each regiment received so
much money for clothing his men and !
entered into his own contracts with
our men were found to
have been sent out into the trenches be-
fore Sebastopol in boots that We're little |
better than brown paper frauds, and
clothes that went into rags and tatters
almost as soon as they were put on
The Pimlico factory was set up and
charged with responsibility for making |
large quantities of clothes for British |
infantry and with the in pection of what |
It did not make, and ever SINCE the I
of our soldiers has been |
splendidly carried out-London News.
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