Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1900-03-30
MERCERIZED COTTON.
WHAT 1T is, HOW 1T is MADE.
WHAT 1T DOES.
An En,ylishman Discovered the Process
but Didn't Develop the Wrinkle
That Made 1t Usoful-Slk Produced
Out of Cotton. v

A boy sat before the fire and watch
ed his mothers kettle boil The lid
quivered, rose little, and the boy gave
steam motor to the world. John Mer
GER, an English dyer, filtered caustic
soda through a square Of cotton cloth.
Thence a new verb-to mercerlze-in
the language, a new fabric on the mar
ket, and new business, engaging mil
lions of capital, to cheer the unem-
ployed.
The story of the boy, John watt, is
old, but MERGERS story is new and in
teresting. Mercerized cotton, either
cotton yarn or cotton cloth, resembles
silk absolutely. 1t has the luster of
silk; it will take on, like silk, the rich
est and most brilliant dyes, and it has
the unmistakable, soft-harsh, nesting
feel which nothing but silk ever had.
Also cotton under this process, does
not weaken, as might have been fear
ed, but it acquires strength. A skein
of cotton yarn in the natural state
tnat will carry thirteen ounces without
breaking, will carry, after mercerizing,
nineteen ounces. And if you take three
coats, and line the first with plain
cotton lining, the second with mercer
lied cotton and the third with silk, the
cotton and the silk will wear out about
together, but the mercerized lining
will outlast them two or three times
to ~, lin,
ings, in underwear, in spindle banding,
in stockings, in dress goods, in neg
ligee shirts. There is profit in mer-
cerizing of from 100 to 200 per cent.
dyers have added mercerizing ma
chimes to their plants, and a good num-
Der Of mercerizing mills have been es-
tablished.
Mercerizing began as far back as
1916 in the English town of Accrington,
where John Mercer, manager for the
firm of Hargreaves, filtered caustic
soda through cotton cloth. Mercer, by
accident, kept this cloth by him, hap
pened to test Its strength, happened to
splash it with dye. He found that
it was about twice as strong and about
twice as susceptible to dye liquor as
1t had been before. He refu.ed for his
secret an offer of 100000 from
French firm. He had the idea of an
immense syndicate, with himself at the
head, rolling up millions of profits per
annum.
Then it was found that cotton
shrunk in the mercerizing. A yard of
cloth would save in dyestuffs and in
raw stock, say five cents to its manu-
facturers, but it would come out of the
mercerizing bath only three-quarters
of yard of cloth. Against the profit
of five cents loss through shrinkage
of about ten cents would have to be
set. That is why Mercer never formed
his syndicate, why mercerizing was of
no commercial importance until lat
terly.
For the remaining twenty years of
his life the man toiled Intellectually on,
and he died disheartened. But his name
lives. That is because somewhere
around 1890, Horace Lowe, in England,
and Thomas and Provost, in Germany,
began to try to see if it might not be
possible to mercerize cotton thread
and to prevent the thread from shrink
ing in the process. They more than
succeeded. They tied the ends Of their
cotton thread to sticks and then mer-
cerized them. The sticks did not
break, the threads did not even show
signs of shrinkage. So easy was It to
do what Mercer had been failing at for
years and years,
But, more than this, they found that
cotton mercerized under tension came
out glossy, soft and rustling. To their
amazement they found that they had
transformed cotton into silk. The ex-
PLANTATION of the luster that cotton,
being mercerized, takes on, is simple.
The soda and the tension together
change the nature of the cotton fibre.
The natural fibre is fiat, shriveled; the
mercerized fibre fills out, becomes
round and smooth. And just as a
fat, dried raisin has no luster where
as the full, ripe grape catches and
throws back the light, so there is no
luster to the fat fibre of the natural
cotton, but on the mercerized sort the
light shines and is reflected just as on
the grape.