Evening star., 1918-07-14

Copyright. 1918, by Frank G. Carpenter.)
MANCHESTER, N. H.
us is so.se story Of 1.-The. the shirt ii, Of
clothes our boys wear in the
trenches. They have eaten up
cotton by the millions Of bales and
are now coming out Of the looms by
the tens Of millions of yards. The
hrst chapters of the story have al
ready been published. have de-
scribed the cotton fields Of the south
and shown how the little black seeds
dropped in the burrows come forth
and produce the white lint have
oescrloed its path through the gin,
wnere 1t Is torn by saws from the
seeds and packed up in great bales of
eoo pounds each. and I have shown
you these bales on their way to the
market. In this letter I want you to
follow the bales to New England and
see how they are transformed into the
cotton cloth from which the shirt
OF the soldier is made. There is
no better place to see this than
right here at the Amoskeag falls
OF the Merrimac river. These falls
are in the heart Of the city of Man
chester. and about them has grown
up the greatest cotton mill of the
United States. if not Of the world.
Just now the most Of its work is
confined to the Army.
can you imagine a factory SO big
and SO efficient that it takes the raw
cotton In at one end and runs it out
In cloth at the other at the rate of
SIXTY miles every hour. and keeps up
that speed all the year through? The
n1ghest-powered automobiles fly over
the road. You might hitch the cloth
as 1t comes from the looms to a light
nlng express train and start the loco
motive off at full speed and there
would be no slack or break in the
cloth. 1t would keep up with the
train, even though the cars were kept
running for nine hours q day all the
year through. If started here in New
hampshire the first days output
by the end of the second cay the train
pulling the cloth would be at the
edge Of Chicago. Within four days
1t would be far beyond Denver, and
reached San Francisco. and II you
could get ship that would go sixty
miles an hour 1t might be carried
unbroken across the Pacific ocean to
Shanghai in ten days thereafter. The
output of the mill is about 500 miles
daily. and the output per year equals
q strip Of cloth almost 10000 miles
long. That strip would CARPET me-
tor car road eighteen feet wide
around the world. or; II you should
reach around the earth and still have
enough to cover a three-foot path
half way to the moon.
The cotton Is coming forth now at
the rate Of about a mile-a-minute,
and a large part of each mile is for
The shirtings of that kind already
produced number more than 10000
yards, enough to reach almost all the
way from New Orleans to Chicago.
It was enough to supply shirt apiece
for 1000. 600 soldiers.
The same factory is making vast
quantities of worsteds for the Army.
1t turns out something like sixty
miles of them every week. 1t makes
the barracks bag which every soldier
carries to France. This Is woven in
q cylinder of strong cotton cloth, and
the buttons are sewed in on machines
run by girls. The bag looks much
like the laundry bag we use in travel
ing. The room in which it Is made
covers more than an acre, and
the foreman thereof tells me that he
fs weaving such bags at the rate OF
10000 per hour.
The factories where all this Is going
on are right here at Manchester.
They belong to one company and tney
have produced a cotton mill center
which is farger than that Of any
single company in Great Britain. 1t
In. I venture, one OF the oldest fac
tories OF the world. 1t began to spin
and weave cotton within generation
or SO after the spinning-jenny was
invented by Hargreaves. and shortly
after the British barber and hair
DYER named Arkwright had put up
his factories in England for his new
inventions of spinning and carding
machines; and it has been making
more or less cotton cloth from tnae
time until now.
The first mill was established when
THOMAS Jefferson was President OF
the United States, and the present
company had its origin when Andrew
Jackson held the Office which Wood
row Wilson holds now. There Is
tradition here that Andrew Jackson
rode through Manchester in a beau
tiful barouche drawn by four milk
white horses and that he visited the
cotton factory and rode for mile
hetWeen two rows of mill girls. who
rreeted him with songs and flowers
As he looked at the mills Mr.. slater
one Of the officials of the company.
was among his entertainers. He cal-
ed Slater the father OF American
manufacturers and said:
AT understand that you showed us
how to spin as well as they 90 IN