As this is being written, great efforts are being made in Paris to introduce a new lace-machine, which is said to imitate the work of the pillow-lace maker much more perfectly than any previous machine has done. Having scarcely got beyond the experimental stage, it cannot receive further notice here.
The subsequent processes through which lace fabrics usually pass are geeing, bleaching, and finishing. By the first, all the loose, fibrous portion of the threads is singed off in passing over or through gas-jets, so arranged as not to injure the fabric. Bleaching restores the colour, which has suffered from contact with the parts of the machine in the process of working. Dressing is the final operation to which lace is subjected. In this, it is sought to extend the meshes to their proper shape, and by the application of a mixture of gum, starch, or other sizing compounds, to stiffen it so as to prevent its collapse, and enable it to exhibit the form and design intended.
This section, the mechanical branch of the lace manufacture, owes its origin, to and still flourishes principally, in this country. English-made machinery has, however, been exported to a considerable extent, and still continues to go abroad, so that it is not improbable that new centres of the industry may be in course of formation which will at some future day, to a larger extent than at present, share with us the task of supplying the demand for mechanically produced lace.
The following statistics relating to this branch of the lace trade are taken from the most recent government Returns. They refer strictly to those portions which come under the regulations of the Factory Acts, and are subject to inspection. In this respect, they are an inadequate return. As many of the subordinate processes can be carried on either at home, or in buildings which do not come under factory regulations, these are omitted. If included, they would bring the number of employes here given to an aggregate fully 4-41 times as great.
From these figures, it will be seen that, during the five years which elapsed between the returns, there had been a small decline in the number of factories, and of the persons employed in the industry ; hut probably this was only a temporary falling off, owing to the severe depression of trade from which the country was suffering at the time the latest return was made. Of closed establish ments, the enumerators took no account. Unfortunately there is also another important omission in the faot that no enumeration was made of the machinery, as in 1874. R. M.