SHODDY MANUFACTURE. This has recently become a large and important branch of industry in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Shoddy and mango are the strange names given to two varieties of rag wool; the one being obtained from old blankets, carpets, flannel, and worsted stockings ; and the other from tailors' cuttings and worn-out woollen garments. In both cases, the pieces are torn up fibre from fibre, constituting a kind of dirty short-stapled wool. There is a third variety called extract, obtained from " union " or " mixed " goods, in which cotton is woven up with wool ; rags of this kind are exposed to the action of strong chemical agents, which completely dissolve away the cotton, and leave the wool behind.
So far back as half a century ago, cloth manufacturers began to mix a little mg-wool with new wool in the making of cheap cloth ; but it is only in recent years that a largo and distinct branch of industry has resulted therefrom. At the present day, Batley and Dewsbury are the centres of the trade, giving employment to many thousand persons in several mills—in producing shoddy and muno from rags, in sorting and preparing rag-wool imported from abroad, or in spinning the old with the new wool into yarn for weaving into cloth. Besides the two towns here named, the manufacture is distributed throughout the whole of the surrounding district—in Ossett, Mirfield, Morley, Earlsheaton, Heckmondwike, Gomersal, Elland, Staioland, and other places scarcely known even by name out of Yorkshire, but gradually rising from mere villages to the dignity of towns. The trade is a very dirty one. The rags have gone through a long 'period of service, and are unavoidably soiled and stained in various ways. There are sorters, whose business it is to classify the rags into as many kinds and colours as possible, in order that manu facturers may be able to select the varieties which beat suit their purposes. There are also cutters, whose employment consists in cut ting off knots and seams, which would otherwise interfere with the operations. The disentanglement of the rags into rag-wool is effected chiefly by a machine called a swift. This consists of a revolving cylinder, set with iron-toothed plates ; the rags are fed in at one point, and are torn into fibres by the action of the teeth. Some of these machines contain 14,000 teeth, perform 700 revolutions per minute, and are employed in grinding up good woollen rags into mungo; others, with fewer teeth and a slower motion, tear up old worsted rags into shoddy. Each machine produces on an average about,1000 lbs. of rag
wool per day. In the township of Batley alone, it is estimated that there are now from 12 to 14 million pounds produced annually; about an equal amount in various places within four miles of that town ; and again an equal amount in places beyond that limit—iu round numbers, 50 million pounds of woollen and worsted rags are disentangled into 40 million pounds of mungo and shoddy. Of the whole quantity, about one-third is mungo, of an average worth of 6d. per pound ; and two-thirds shoddy, worth 4d. This amounts to the large sum of nearly 800,0001.—a value wholly superadded to that which relates to new wool. A great portion of this is absolute saving to the community : for woollen rags possess only a very small percentage of this value, when applied to other manufacturing uses.
31ungo and shoddy are not used alone in making woollen goods. New wool is added to them, to give them the felting property and strength of fibre. The very commonest goods may have eight or ten times as much rag-wool as new wool ; in medium goods the ratio may be nearly equal; in, a higher olass of goods there may be eight or ten times as much new wool as mg-wool. It is all a matter of price. One cause for the (apparent) cheapness of woollen goods within the last few years is the large admixture of mungo and shoddy. None but a skilled person can detect this admixture ; and in some cloths, indeed, Lounge is combined so judiciously with new wool as to produce a really strong material. Mungo made from the best woollen cuttings is, in fact, better than new wool of low quality ' • and cheapness is here something more than a name. The kinds of cloth chiefly produced, having mungo or shoddy as part of their substance, are numerous, and receive designations conveying very little information except to those engaged in the trade ; such as tweeds, fleshings, paddings, duffels, friezes, vritneys, mohairs, pilots, petershams, strouds, savelists, rever sibles, linings, sealskins, doeskins, cheviots, &c. The most extensive branch of the manufacture is that of pilots, a cloth employed in making the heavy substantial "pilot coats" used by sea-faring men. These, like the rest, may have much or little shoddy in them, according to the price to be charged.
The processes need not be described here. They partake of the same general character as those treated under WOOLLEN AND WORSTED MANUFACTURE. (Jubb, History of the Shoddy Trade,' 1860.)