Page images
PDF
EPUB

REMARKS OF MR. J. G. GARLAND.

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN,- Before I explain my apparatus, I should like to bring to your notice a few facts with respect to our climate; for it is a very changeable climate, as you know. We have great changes in humidity, as well as in temperature. I suppose you have noticed the great change in temperature within a few days; and the change has been as great, also, in the humidity of the atmosphere. The Signal Service report that on the fifteenth day of this month we had only eight per cent relative humidity in the middle of the day, and on the twenty-sixth day only thirteen per cent.

Scientific physiologists say that we require an atmosphere containing sixty to sixty-five per cent relative humidity in order to be healthy, and our practice and experience seem to substantiate that idea; for dry air sucks out, as it were, the moisture of the system, tending to excessive insensible perspiration. Dry air does not check radiation, and moist air does. The old-fashioned plan of keeping heated rooms moist was to keep a dish of water on the top of the stove. You or I would not buy a furnace to heat our house with unless it had a water-pan connected with it so that the heated air might have means of absorbing water to moisten the air. Dry air is injurious, but moist air is not only healthy, but we can heat our rooms cheaper and easier with moist than with dry air. We need more knowledge and care on this subject for the good health of ourselves and families, as well as for all who work in the heated rooms of our mills.

Now, there is another thing, so far as your mills are concerned. It is very often that your work runs bad; the quality of your cloth is not what you desire it to be: so you go into the weave-room, and say to the weaver, "What is the trouble about the cloth?" He will say, "My harnesses and reeds are old and poor, and the work runs bad. The yarn is poor." You call the spinner, and he will say, "You don't give me repairs necessary for doing my work. My travellers are worn out. My spindles do not run true, and the rings are not true, and the roving is bad." You call your carder, and what does he say? He says he needs lots of repairs, and that you have not done any for a long time; besides, the cotton is poor and short stapled; and so it goes on with all that sort of talk. That is

the experience you have had more than a hundred times, every one of you. Such times and experiences as these come very often, especially in windy weather the same as to-day, when there is a great deal of frictional electricity in the rooms, and very dry.

If we do not know about these changes in humidity, the Signal Service reports will tell us accurately about them. I noticed their report in this morning's paper stated that the relative humidity yesterday noon was 100, last night 58 per cent.

In Boston the Signal Service report, for the year ending Aug. 31, that the relative humidity for the year was as follows, to wit: nine days between 10 and 20 per cent; eleven days between 20 and 30 per cent; fifty-six days between 30 and 40 per cent; seventy-seven days between 40 and 50 per cent; sixtyfour days between 50 and 60 per cent; fifty-eight days between 60 and 70 per cent; eighteen days between 70 and 80 per cent; sixteen days between 80 and 90 per cent; and twenty-six days at 100 per cent, showing that the relative humidity was three quarters of the time below 70 per cent. Please remember that 100 per cent denotes that the air is saturated with water, or has as much moisture as it can hold, as, in a rainy or foggy day, 50 or 60 or 70 means that the air has that per cent of saturation. Away from the seashore, you will remember that it is much dryer than here, or by large bodies of water.

[ocr errors]

You will remember that the capacity of air to hold moisture increases as the temperature increases; for, with the thermometer at zero, the air can hold but half a grain of water to the cubic foot. At 40° it can hold but 2.9 grains to the cubic foot; at 50°, 4.29 grains; at 70°, 8 grains; at 90°, 14.8 grains. From this you will see that air at 70° temperature holds twice as much moisture as at 48°, and half as much as at 92° temperature. Now, if we suppose that the air out of doors is at 50° temperature, and has 60 per cent moisture, and you let it into your rooms, there heat it to 70° temperature, then you will have a relative humidity of only 32 per cent. We will suppose the same temperature of 50° in the out-of-doors air, but that it is saturated or has 100 per cent relative humidity; and let that into your rooms, and heat it to 70°, then you would only have a relative humidity in your rooms of 53 per cent. Thus you will see that it is not always a good plan to let even out-doors damp air into your rooms, expecting thereby to make them

damper for you ought to and may have a better condition of moisture inside than the out-door air let in would give.

If 70° is about the right temperature to keep your rooms, at what humidity will you keep them? Can you tell? There is a right condition of humidity, one better than any other; who knows what it is? I have asked a great many manufacturers what humidity they keep in their rooms, and I have never got a definite answer.

To keep a regular humidity in your rooms, it must be done artificially, not depending on natural condition of the atmosphere.

From a large number of experiments extending through many years, I think I am warranted in saying that 70 per cent relative humidity is the proper and right condition of moisture for all processes of the cotton manufacture, to produce best results.

Another thing with regard to the air I meant to have spoken of before. If you keep your rooms at 70°, and have 70 per cent relative humidity, there will be 5.6 grains of water in each cubic foot of air. Now, if you increase the temperature to 80°, you must have 7.6 grains of water to the cubic foot, to maintain the required 70 per cent relative humidity. So you see it is not well to heat your rooms hotter than 70°, for you dry up the moisture; or, in other words, 70 per cent humidity at 70° temperature becomes only 51 per cent humidity when heated to 80° temperature.

All bearings and journals run with less friction and power in a moistened atmosphere. Spindles run with less power, and produce better work, if the bands are kept at a regular tension, consequent on regular humidity. The most of you have tried to moisten the air in your mills with steam, with indifferent success, and considerable damage and trouble, and sometimes perhaps at loss from fire by spontaneous combustion from hot steam-pipes. I advise all of you to see an example in Mr. Atkinson's office, where fire evidently took from a hot steampipe.

I doubt very much as to the benefit received in moistening air in your mills by blowing off steam; for while you were trying to moisten you heated the air more and more, and, the more heat you have, the more moisture is required.

The elder Mr. Johnston of Cohoes said, with regard to moist

ening mills by blowing off steam, that he believed that steam let into a room, or steam in contact with cotton before it was got into cloth, was always injurious. He also said that no boy or girl of his should ever work in your Eastern mills, where they were kept so hot by blowing off steam in them.

Mr. J. F. Slater, into whose mill I put my apparatus, said that it was worth all it cost, in the comfort it gave to the help in relief from the extreme heat of the mills. Another says (and you will have to take what he says with considerable allowance) that his weaving-room, where my apparatus was in use, was the coolest place in the city. Actual record, however, shows that, in a mill having my apparatus, where they kept the record three or four times a day, the temperature was ten to fifteen degrees less during the heat of summer, and when lighted up, than in similarly situated rooms without the apparatus.

Spray from an atomizing tube is a great absorbent of electricity, water being a conductor next to metal in effectiveness, and especially water in globular form. In order to test its value in this respect, I put it in one of the best bleacheries in New England, where they were much troubled with electricity: as the cloth came from the drying cylinders, and passed down through the floor into the cloth-room, it would stick and cling to the trough, and pile up unless some one stood ready at such times to pull it down; and even when down it would puff up and full up so that one had to stand and press it down. After my apparatus was put in, the electricity was absorbed, and they had no further trouble in that respect; the manager writes me that it was working satisfactorily. Therefore I think my mode of moistening will be of great benefit in every department of your mills in this respect. I have here but a portable apparatus gotten up for a special purpose, and not for exhibition here. I will, however, try to illustrate the operation of my apparatus

with it.

I run two lines of pipe, one five inches above the other, along by the posts in the centre of the room, if not over fifty feet wide, — attaching the pipes to the posts about eight feet from the floor. The upper pipe conveys compressed air, the lower water. The water-pipe is supplied with water from a small tank set generally over the sink. Water is kept automatically at a regular height in the tank, and flows out through pipes to the cup-pipe located at the same height as the tank; water stands in

damper; for you ought to and may have a better condition of moisture inside than the out-door air let in would give.

If 70° is about the right temperature to keep your rooms, at what humidity will you keep them? Can you tell? There is a right condition of humidity, one better than any other; who knows what it is? I have asked a great many manufacturers what humidity they keep in their rooms, and I have never got a definite answer.

To keep a regular humidity in your rooms, it must be done artificially, not depending on natural condition of the atmosphere.

From a large number of experiments extending through many years, I think I am warranted in saying that 70 per cent relative humidity is the proper and right condition of moisture for all processes of the cotton manufacture, to produce best results.

Another thing with regard to the air I meant to have spoken of before. If you keep your rooms at 70°, and have 70 per cent relative humidity, there will be 5.6 grains of water in each cubic foot of air. Now, if you increase the temperature to 80°, you must have 7.6 grains of water to the cubic foot, to maintain the required 70 per cent relative humidity. So you see it is not well to heat your rooms hotter than 70°, for you dry up the moisture; or, in other words, 70 per cent humidity at 70° temperature becomes only 51 per cent humidity when heated to 80° temperature.

All bearings and journals run with less friction and power in a moistened atmosphere. Spindles run with less power, and produce better work, if the bands are kept at a regular tension, consequent on regular humidity. The most of you have tried to moisten the air in your mills with steam, with indifferent success, and considerable damage and trouble, and sometimes perhaps at loss from fire by spontaneous combustion from hot steam-pipes. I advise all of you to see an example in Mr. Atkinson's office, where fire evidently took from a hot steampipe.

I doubt very much as to the benefit received in moistening air in your mills by blowing off steam; for while you were tryto moisten you heated the air more and more, and, the more you have, the more moisture is required.

he elder Mr. Johnston of Cohoes said, with regard to moist

« PreviousContinue »