Today, we think abour worsted wool. The University
of Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
A fine old Irish tune has
been on my mind lately. It's a song that has, for a
long time, surfaced from time to time within the
workers' movement. The chorus goes like this:
If it was not for the weavers, what would you
do?
You wouldn'a hae the clothes that's made of
wool
You wouldn'a hae a coat of the black or the
blue
If it was not for the work of the weavers
Now here's an 1877 book on British industries with
an article on wool in it. The Luddites had, by then, long since
lost their battle. Wool was generally factory-spun
and factory-woven.
The author identifies himself as Worsted
Spinner. Then he rather peevishly complains
about a recent letter from Her Majesty's Inspectors
of Factories. They've written to ask several
questions, including whether his factory made
worsted or wool.
The author reacts as you might to someone asking if
a computer is digital or a PC. Worsted, he says, is
always a form of wool. The catch is, he's
talking about yarn, not cloth.
What he doesn't say is that many English weavers
were already mixing other yarns with worsted yarn
when they wove so-called worsted fabrics.
To understand the word worsted, we need to
remember that sheep might have short or long hair.
To prepare short-fiber wool for spinning,
you first card it, then spin it into a softer yarn.
Woolen flannel is a product of such yarn. Irish and
American sheep are typically shorthaired, and Irish
wool is known for its softness.
But the wool of English longhaired
sheep is combed out until the strands lie parallel.
Worsted is spun from that wool. It yields a more
orderly yarn. The physical appearance of worsted
cloth (mixed or pure) is not what we normally think
of when we say wool. It's harder and smoother.
Under a microscope, worsted yarn (or thread) looks
more like rope than soft wool yarns. The soft yarns
have loose ends that fly about and give them fuzzy
edges.
All this was a big concern a century ago. The
modern Encyclopaedia Britannica dismisses
wool with a couple of short columns. The 1911
edition offered a fifteen-page, double-column
article that explains everything. It even includes
glossy microphotographs of wool fibers that show
their scaly pineapple-like surface.
That rough
surface causes fibers to grasp one another. Wool
made from non-worsted yarn can be felted
-- washed in hot water until the fibers cling to
one another, regardless of the weave. The reason
wool shrinks so badly in hot water is that its
fibers ratchet up along one another. They clump and
then won't let go.
So the weavers in the song were thinking about
British wool. Here in hot Houston we gravitate
toward cotton instead. But all the clothes on our
various backs have to've been woven. Another line
from the song says
Wi' our glasses in our hands and our work upon
our back,
For, mechanized or manual -- wool or cotton -- our
clothing does, indeed, all come back to the
weavers.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
The article I refer to was: W. S. B. McLaren, Wool
and Worsted. -- IV. Great Industries of Great
Britain, Vol. I, (London: Cassell Peter &
Galpin, 1877-1880), pp. 138-142
Yarns, Cloth Rooms, Mill Engineering, Reeling
and Baling, Winding. International Library of
Technology: A Series of Textbooks for Persons
Engaged in ... (Scranton: International
Textbook Co., 1906). (No authors are named. The
five articles are all dated either 1902 or 1905.)
I am grateful to Karl Ittmann, UH History
Department, for additional counsel on this episode.
The Work of the
Weavers
We're all met together here to sit and to
crack
Wi' our glasses in our hands and our work upon
our back
There's nae a trade among 'em that can mend or
can mak
If it wasn't for the work of the weavers
If it was not for the weavers, what would you
do?
You wouldn'a hae the clothes that's made of
wool
You wouldn'a hae a coat of the black or the
blue
If it was not for the work of the weavers
There's soldiers and there's sailors and glaziers
and all
There's doctors and there's ministers and them
that live by law
And our friends in Sooth America, though them we
never saw
But we can they wear the work of the weavers
If it was not for the weavers, what would you
do?
You wouldn'a hae the clothes that's made of
wool
You wouldn'a hae a coat of the black or the
blue
If it was not for the work of the weavers
Though weavin' is a trade that never can fail
As long as we need clothes for to keep another
hale
So let us all be merry o'er a bicker of good
ale
And we'll drink to the health of the weavers
If it was not for the weavers, what would you
do?
You wouldn'a hae the clothes that's made of
wool
You wouldn'a hae a coat of the black or the
blue
If it was not for the of the weavers
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-2002 by John H.
Lienhard.
