Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

132 BRITAIN AT WORK. part of the frame upon which the roving bobbins are placed for a distance of six or seven feet. When the machine is started the carriage is run out, each spindle drawing after it a length of the roving. Then, when the carriage has reached the limit of its traverse, the spindles, revolving with great rapidity for a few seconds, impart the twist or spin to the whole length of thread which has been run out, and at the instant when the required spin has been obtained they stop, the carriage runs back to its former place, the bobbins on the spindle winding up the spun yarn as the carriage returns. Then, of course, the cycle of operations is repeated. It will thus be gathered that in worsted spinning the operation is a continuous one, whereas in mule spinning it is intermittent. The one produces a smooth, round, regular yarn of great strength, all the fibres of which are carefully twisted parallel to one another ; the other a yarn which has the fibres mixed up in an irregular fashion, with their ends sticking out like the hairs of a caterpillar, but, for this very reason, giving a yarn of much softer “ handle.” It is this vital difference in the method of spinning and in the result attained which constitutes the main distinc- tion between a worsted cloth, such as a serge or corkscrew, and a woollen cloth, such as a Melton or Amazon. It was the introduction of the power-loom, scarcely more than a century ago, that led to the riotous assemblies and mill burnings so vividly depicted by Charlotte Bronte in “ Shirley,'’ and more prosaically recorded by many less-known local historians. In principle, however, even the most elaborate loom of to-clay differs but little from the simplest form of the loom used by Egyptians 4,000 years ago. It is only, after all, an apparatus for crossing threads under and over one another alternately, and so binding them that they shall not come loose again. Those threads which run through the whole length of the piece constitute the warp, those that cross it the weft. The warp threads are maintained in a state of tension, and when one half of them are lifted clear of the rest by an automatic arrangement, the bobbin of weft contained in the shuttle is thrown across and between them. Then the position of the warp threads is reversed, the shuttle with the weft is thrown back again, and so the process goes on until the piece is finished. Pattern, or design, is obtained by varying the number of warp threads which are lifted at each “ pick ” of the shuttle, by changing the character or colour of the weft, and by a multitude of other devices which are too technical for description here. Fabrics in which the pattern is obtained by the use of coloured threads or by the admixture of silk threads are known as “ fancies,” those which