Chapter 51 of 64 · 3971 words · ~20 min read

Part 51

Before going to the baling presses every yard of cotton cloth passes under the vigilant eyes of the cloth inspectors, who mark as seconds and lay aside all pieces containing imperfections. This inspection is not a mere formality, but is conducted most carefully, and this department is specially located to get the best and most perfect light.]

[Illustration: BALING PRESSES.

The bolts of finished cloth are now placed in presses and made into bales of finished cloth and are ready for the market.]

[Illustration: Shipping platform of the White Oak Mills, Greensboro, N. C., showing how the bales of finished cloth are handled in shipping.]

Pictures herewith by courtesy of White Oak Mills.

Who Discovered Cotton?

Just who discovered cotton is not known. The early records are so incomplete that no individual can be credited with the discovery of the value of this wonderful plant. Long before Cæsar’s time, among the Hindoos they had a law that if you stole a piece of cotton you were fined three times its value. Most of the early nations were familiar with cotton--the early Egyptians, Chinese and other ancient people used it and valued it.

What Nation Produces the Most Cotton?

The United States is the leader in the production of cotton, as in many other important world products. We produce more than seventy-five per cent of all the cotton grown in the world. The remainder is practically all grown by East India, Egypt and Brazil.

What is Cotton Used For?

The cotton plant is one of the wonder plants of the world, when you stop to think how well we could get along without wool or silk or other fabrics if we had to.

Little would be lost to the world so far as actual comfort is concerned if all of the other fabric-making materials were lost. We would sleep, as we often do now, in beds the coverings of which were pure cotton, in a room in which the rugs were woven from cotton, the sun kept out of the room by cotton window shades. We could still have plenty of good soap to wash our bodies and clothing, for much of our soap to-day is made from cotton-seed oil; then we could use a cotton towel to dry ourselves; and put on a complete outfit of clothing made entirely of cotton. White cotton table cloths and napkins are not so fine as linen; they are good enough for anyone. Your breakfast rolls will taste quite as well if baked with cottolene instead of lard; the meat for your dinner would be fed and fattened on cotton-seed meal and hulls as they are now; you would have butter made from cotton-seed that compares favorably with the butter you now have on the table; the tobacco in your cigar would continue to be grown under cotton cloth and packed in cotton bags; armies would still sleep under cotton tents and could use gun-cotton to destroy the enemy.

What Are the Principal Cotton Cloths?

There are a great many different names given to cotton cloths, but they may in general be divided into five classes--plain goods, twills, sateen, fancy cloth and jacquard fabrics. The cotton cloth in each of these classes varies and goes by different names. For instance, in Plain Goods, the different kinds are lawn, nainsook, sheeting, mull, print cloth, madras. The difference lies in the number of threads in one inch of width, the fineness and the weave. The Twills have lines running diagonally and are used for linings mostly. The difference is in the weaving. Denim, largely used for overalls, belongs to the class of Twills. Sateen is used for dress linings, dresses and waists. Then there is the class of Fancy Cloths which is another kind of weave used largely in children’s clothes, shirt waists, etc., and under the name Scrim is fine for draperies and towelling. The other class, Jacquard Fabrics, represents the most complicated form of weaving and used largely under special individual names or brands for dress goods, novelties, etc.

How Much Cotton Cloth Will a Pound of Cotton Make?

When the cotton is spun into yarn it is no longer sold by the bale, but by the pound. It is impossible to make an exact statement of the amount of cotton cloth one pound of cotton yarn will make, because of the difference in weaving. It has, however, been figured out that a pound of cotton yarn should make

3¹⁄₂ yards of sheeting, or 3³⁄₄ yards of muslin, or 9¹⁄₂ yards of lawn, or 7¹⁄₂ yards of calico, or 5¹⁄₂ yards of gingham, or 57 spools of thread.

[Illustration:

Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

CHRISTOFORI PIANO FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK CITY.]

The Story in a Piano

What is Music?

Music is one kind of sound. All sounds, whether musical or not, are the result of sound waves in the air. They travel almost exactly like the waves of the water. They go in circles in all directions at the same speed and will go on forever unless they meet something that has the ability to stop them. If you drop a pebble into the exact center of a basin of water, you will see the ring of waves produced start from the point where the pebble entered the water and travel to the sides of the vessel, which stop them. Also the pebble as it falls into the water will make ring after ring of waves.

When you shout or ring or strike one of the keys of the piano you start a sound wave or a series of them, which you can hear as soon as the sound wave strikes your ear. When the series of waves is regular the sound produced is a musical sound, and when the sound waves are not regular in length we call it some other kind of a sound.

## Acting on the knowledge so learned, man has devised numerous

instruments with which he can produce musical sounds, such as the piano, phonograph, and many others.

Who Made the First Piano?

The first real piano was made by Bartolomeo Christofori, an Italian. He invented the little hammers by the aid of which the strings are struck, giving a clear tone instead of the scratching sound which all the previous instruments produced. It took two thousand years to discover the value of the little hammers in making clearer notes. His first piano was made in 1709. The word by which we call the instrument pianoforte has, however, been traced back as far as 1598, when it is said to have been originated by an Italian named Paliarino. The first piano made in America was produced by John Behnud, in Philadelphia, in 1775.

How Was the Piano Discovered?

~THE DISCOVERY OF STRINGED MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS~

The piano is a stringed musical instrument. The name pianoforte comes from two Italian words meaning _soft_ and _loud_, and is accurately descriptive of the piano because the notes can at will be made soft or loud. The piano is a development of the simplest form of making regular sound vibrations by snapping or hammering a string of some kind which is stretched tight and fastened at both ends. We must go far back into history to find the earliest traces of stringed instruments, and even then we do not know where and when they originated, for there seem to be no records which help us to trace their origin. We know that the Egyptians as far back as 525 B.C. had stringed instruments, but we only know they had them--not where they got them or who made them. There is a legend that the Roman god Mercury, while walking along the Nile after the river had overflowed its banks and the land had again become dry, stubbed his toe on the shell of a dead tortoise. He picked it up to cast it aside and accidentally touched some strings of sinew with his finger. These strings were only what remained of the once live tortoise. At the same time Mercury heard a musical note and, after vainly trying to find a cause for the musical sound, twanged the string again and discovered the music in tightly-stretched strings. He set about making an instrument, using the tortoise shell for the sound box and stretching a number of strings of sinew across it. This is only a legend, of course, but if we examine the early musical instruments of the Greeks, which was the lyre, we always find the representation of a tortoise upon it.

Other nations, such as the early Chinese, the Persians, the Hindus and the Hebrews, had stringed instruments much resembling the lyre. In the tombs of the great rulers of Egypt are found representations of harps, and one harp which had been buried in one of the tombs for more than 3000 years was actually found to be in good condition.

[Illustration: Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

DULCIMER.]

Wherever we search among the records of early nations we find evidence that they were familiar with the music obtainable from playing upon stringed instruments, but we have never been able to discover what people or what persons first learned that music could be produced with such instruments.

~THE FIRST STRINGED MUSICAL INSTRUMENT~

The harp was probably the first practical stringed instrument. Its music was produced by picking the strings with the fingers or with a piece of bone or metal.

The next step was the psaltery, which was produced in the Middle Ages. It was a box with strings stretched across it and represented the first crude attempt at using a sounding board. A larger instrument which came about the same time and was very like the psaltery, was the dulcimer. Both were played by picking the strings with the finger or a small piece of bone or other substance.

Then came the keyboard, first used on stringed instruments in what is called the _clavicytherium_. This consisted of a box with cat-gut strings ranged in a semitriangle. On the end of each key was a quill, which picked the string when the key was operated.

After this came the clavichord. It was built like a small square piano without legs. The strings were made of brass and on the end of each key was a wedge-shaped piece of brass which picked the strings. The elder Bach composed his music on the clavichord, his favorite instrument, and that is why the music written by Bach is full of soft and melancholy notes. The clavichord produced only such notes.

The next steps brought the virginal, spinet and harpsichord. The strings on all three were of brass with quills at the key ends for picking the strings. The virginal and spinet were very much alike. The harpsichord was larger and sometimes was made with two keyboards. These instruments had notes covering four octaves only.

[Illustration: Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

CLAVICHORD.]

The arrangement of the strings in the harpsichord provided one step nearer to our piano. It had five octaves of notes and there were at least two strings to each note instead of only one, as in previous instruments.

[Illustration: Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

SPINET.]

Why Do We Have Only Seven Octaves On a Piano? Why Not Twelve or More Octaves?

Ordinarily the longest key-board of the piano has seven octaves and three notes in addition, or 52 notes, not counting the sharps and flats. An octave you, of course, know consists of the seven notes C D E F G A B. Every eighth note is a repetition of the one seven notes below or above. The reason that there are no more notes or octaves on the piano is that if we extended the key-board either way one or two octaves more, we should not be able to hear the notes struck on the keys. There would be sound produced, or course, but the vibrations would be too fine for the human ear to hear. It is said that the range of the human ear does not go beyond somewhere between eleven and twelve octaves.

[Illustration: Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

UPRIGHT HARPSICHORD.

(From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.)]

[Illustration:

Picture by courtesy Browne & Howell Co.

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S VIRGINAL.]

[Illustration: HOW THE MUSIC GETS INTO THE PIANO