H Hand spinning, as practiced in the early days of the Plymouth Cordage Company, yielded a remarkably good rope yarn, but large production was very expensive and laborious. The length of the spinning grounds, which with the buildings protecting them were known as the ropewalk, determined the length yarn that could be spun. Hand and water power had to suffice, and even the best spinner could make but two yarns at a time.
Steam-driven spinning machines were introduced, however, as early as 1838, for our records show that near the close of that year Bourne Spooner, founder of our company, wrote to one of the directors as follows:
“Our new spinning concern has consumed more time in the work of preparation than was expected, but we are now ready—this being the second day of steam spinning. It affords me much gratification to say that everything connected with this enterprise has gone comfortably on, and my faith in the utility and expediency of the measure is unabated.”
Through the courtesy of the Watson Machine Co. of Paterson, N. J., we are able to show an excellent picture of one of these earlier-type machines which, it will be noted, is tended by a woman. Those familiar only with the present factory practice of putting none but men on the spinning machines may be surprised to know that during this first period in the modern development of the process women spinners were regularly employed by the Plymouth Cordage Company and other concerns.
Our founder’s belief in the new method was speedily justified. A way was found to adapt the machines to the spinning of Russian and American hemps which could not at first be handled as successfully as Manila because of their somewhat softer texture. About 1848 the self-feeding device came into use. As the years passed, still other improvements were invented and utilized, giving us the highly perfected machine of today.
Under favorable working conditions the only interruption in the spinning process, as now carried on, is the removal of the full bobbin and the substitution of an empty one. A bobbin will hold as much as half a mile of yarn which will weigh in the neighborhood of ten pounds—the length and weight of the load varying with different sizes of yarn.
The feed portion of the machine, as can be seen in the picture below, consists of a revolving endless chain fitted with fine steel pins, and by these the fiber—now in the sliver form given it in the preparation room—is drawn from its bundle and carried toward a tube which can be adjusted to regulate the size of the yarn as desired. Into this tube the fiber disappears in a fashion only to be described by the single word “whisked.”
In the preceding chapter we spoke of the importance of an even sliver in the securing of a good yarn and pointed out the care with which our sliver is prepared. We have still further lessened the possibility of bunches or thin spots in our yarns by perfecting and installing on all spinning machines a device which insures a uniform amount of feed to the tube at all times.
The two capstans which pull the fiber from the pins and through the tube show in our picture directly at the left of the bobbin. Their revolution also imparts the twist to the yarn. The amount of this twist—the number of turns per foot—depends on the capstan’s speed and is fixed in a way best explained by describing the flyer—the first part of the machine to be perfected.
The closed flyer, as the present-day type is called, is composed of two discs joined by stay rods and carrying through their centers a spindle which holds the wooden bobbin. The capstans are set into the disc at the left and revolve with the flyer, at the same time receiving a lesser reverse power from an independent gearing. Their speed is, therefore, equivalent to the difference in speeds of these two drivers.
To insure an even twist these speeds, once they are set, should not be allowed to vary, and to obtain this steady running, the Plymouth Cordage Company uses, almost entirely, machines of a special type, so constructed as to guarantee the best possible results.
Binder twine is always given what is known as a right-hand twist, but rope yarns must, for certain kinds of rope, be given a left-hand twist. This is accomplished by reversing the direction of the capstans. The flyer carries four grooved wheels—two for the right, the others for the left-hand yarn—and by these the yarn is guided from the capstans to the revolving bobbin.
The spinning room, with its hundreds of flyers, each running in the neighborhood of 1,500 revolutions a minute, speaks eloquently of the years’ changes. Gone is the “drowsy dreamy sound” of the wheel in Longfellow’s “Ropewalk,” and in its place we hear the high singing noise of the gears—the voice of modern industry. And with the changes have come more rapid and economical production, better hours and pay for the workman, better rope for the consumer.