MOHAIR. Mohair is the commercial and technical name of the fleece of the Angora goat. The word comes to the English through the Old French mohere, from the Arabic mukhayyar, meaning mohair cloth. In color mohair is pure white. except in rare cases, and grows in ringlets. The hairs composing a fleece are of varying lengths, but the average annual growth of the long hairs, which largely pre dominate, is about 10 inches. The hairs are not composed of epithelia, as is the case with wool, and therefore the felting property char acteristic of wool is wanting. In fineness mohair is variable with the individual animals, and is placed between the fine and coarse wools; in lustre, durability and strength it has no equal among fibres.
The only vitiating feature of mohair as it comes from the animal is the intermixture of an undercoat of lustreless, chalky-white hairs which vary in length from one to three inches, and vary in total amount according to the breeding of the animal. This undercoat is known technically as "kemp," and the principal objection to it is that it does not take the fast dyes. It becomes necessary, therefore, to re move the kemp from the mohair used in the finest fabrics, and this work is done by a comb which, in removing the kemp, also takes out every mohair fibre of equal length or shorter than the kemp. This entails a loss ranging from 10 to 30 per cent, but the average is be coming smaller as better goats are developed.
The lustre of mohair is very pronounced, and no amount of washing, dyeing or other manipulation will dull it. Its durability is re
markable, and because of this fact it enters largely into goods of fine quality but whith are subjected to hard usage, such as railway plush. Fast dyes have such an affinity for it that sunshine and storms have no effect on its brilliancy.
The uses of mohair are multifarious, and are capable of wider expansion as the supply of mohair becomes larger. Its largest use is in the manufacture of plush. Practically all of the railway plush of the world is made of mo hair, and also large quantities of furniture plushes of varying qualities and numerous de signs. It enters into brilliantine, zibeline and crepen dress goods, coat linings, so-called al paca goods, imitation Astrakhan for capes, coats and muffs, and many other fabrics under trade names which do not show what the goods are.
There are about three countries producing mohair in appreciable quantities as yet: Turkey in Asia, with 10,000,000 pounds annually; South Africa, with 15,000,000 pounds annually; and the United States, with 2,000,000 pounds annu ally. (These figures are approximated). The prices ruling in the United States in ordinary times are from 25 to 45 cents per pound. In New England and New York there are mills which consume all of the American product. besides importing large quantities of Turkish and South African hair from Bradford, Eng land.