White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1917-01-12
Cotton in the Makinu.

The story Of the cotton mill is sim
liar to that Of the wooden mill, the
machinery being separated into two
main divisions: First, we have the
machines that gradually draw down
the raw cotton from strips about the
size of ones wrist to small but
strong thread. Second, we have the
machines that weave this thread into
cloth, says Saturday Evening Post.
Not long ago the writer went over
one of these great mills, and truly
it was an inspiring sight to see the
bales of cotton being dumped into
the machines at one end Of the build
ings and fine white cotton lawns and
muslins coming out at the other end.
The mill l visited was manufacture
ing piques, a high grade of cotton
goods for high-priced white dresses.
The more l visit these mills from
year to year, the more l am i'm
pressed with the fact that the north.
ern mills are continually manufactur-
ing better and higher-grade goods.
Whether they are being forced to do
this to hold their own against the
cotton mills of the south, or whether
the American people are requiring a
better quality Of goods, do not know.
Mill men, however, tell me that at
the present time the profits come
from the manufacture of the finer
grades of goods.
When men and women Of today
were children, calico was commonly
used for house wear and to consid-
cradle extent for street wear. In
those days the many printed novel
ties in cotton fabrics and the extern
sive lines of fine and fancy woven
cottons were limited. The price made
them rather exclusive and available
only for the rich, as our mothers and
grandmothers were brought up to live
within their means. AS business ex-
banded and ideas of dress and living
went along with expansion, prices for
the finer goods were reduced, women
became more careless In their expen-
-ditures, and the use of these better
grade goods became more general.
Then the remarkable development
of the printed cloth began, and the
same period marked the beginning of
the end for calicoes for domestic pur-
poses.
While the richer people wore in
creasing quantities Of fine and fancy
fabrics, the poorer women initiated
their Weather sisters by appearing
in printed cloth dresses exactly like
the woven goods, and the cost of the
printed goods was frequently less
than half that of the woven goods
Calicoes have become thing of the
past, and in the average American
home they are now but memory.
The finer grades Of printed cloth are
still good sellers in the cotton-goods
market, and the quality is being bet
tered all the time; but at the present
time even the printed goods, except
in especially fine lines, are below the
modern standard, and to greater or
less extent medium grades Of woven
pattern goods are supplanting the
printed fabrics for womens wear.
Under such circumstances the large
printers of cotton goods searched for
other lines to keep their machinery
in operation, and percales and shirt
ings were at first tried out with con-
siderable success. Lately the ten
dency has been toward piques, dra-
peries, Hamburgs, as we'll as cotton
blankets.
The fact that our domestic cotton
manufacturing properties are espe-
cially adapted to lines that are In
best demand, and will abandon any
thing that is not good seller, has
kept American cotton goods at the
front In the great markets. To be
sure, our domestic goods up to the
time of the war were not yet in great
demand in foreign countries, particu-
larry in comparison with the cotton
fabrics of English manufacture; but