WHAT EUROPE IS DOING AS TO CONDITIONING.

While there are on the Continent of Europe about twenty condition houses mostly handling silks, there are others where wool and other staples form the bulk of the quantity treated.

According to recent statistics, the principal wool conditioning houses in France were handling an aggregate of about ten million pounds a month, of wool in its various forms.

INCREASED AMERICAN IMPORTS AND PRODUCTION OF FINE

YARNS.

Statistical returns show that our imports of cotton yarns for the last three calendar years were:

1905, 5 million pounds, foreign value 24 millions of dollars.

All of this yarn should be conditioned.

We are paying abroad about 55 cents a pound for yarn, which we are importing to double the value of two years ago, when we were paying 40 cents a pound.

While our total production of yarns for 1905 was less than 5 per cent. in quantity above that for 1900, the increase in yarns above No. 40 was 60 per cent. This gain, it is of interest to note, included the development of fine spinning in the South, from less than a million pounds above No. 40 in 1900 to eighteen million in 1905. Fine yarns, on account of their price, naturally call for the process of conditioning more than lower counts. Everything, therefore, points to an increased use of the system by manufacturers.

NEW YORK AS A CONDITIONING CENTRE.

Much more could be said to emphasize the vital importance of the movement I am here to support, for the establishment of conditioned weight as the standard of our transactions in yarns, whether or not it is found adaptable to our purchases of raw

cotton or other textile materials. It is particularly a question for this part of the country. Out of the $34,000,000 worth of cotton yarn annually purchased by our manufacturers, $29,000,000 worth is consumed in New England and the middle East, comprising New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The largest buyers of yarn are, therefore, within such a short distance of New York City as to render that point an ideal location for a Testing House, giving American manufacturers all the advantages enjoyed by their European competitors. The same arguments I have adduced regarding cotton piece goods, are likewise applicable to knit goods and woolen manufactures, as to which we are equally at the disposal of those interested in our work. I may add that we undertake tests of count, twist, elasticity and strength of all textile materials and fabrics.

NO HOSTILITY TO SPINNERS.

The cordial relations our Conditioning Works have maintained during twenty-seven years with both spinners and buyers of silk yarns, form the best proof of the impartiality of our tests. Without being officious, I may perhaps suggest that the establishment of such a standard as I am advocating might facilitate purchases of yarn under certain circumstances by those larger concerns who, to be quite certain as to the correctness of their calculations, or for other reasons, now spin for the whole of their own requirements.

Spinners need not, therefore, fear any open or veiled hostility in this movement. This is the age of investigation and exact analysis with but one object in view, the discovery of the truth. The sale of yarn on the basis of 81⁄2 per cent. regain, is after all only a matter of calculation. The manufacturer is as little desirous of getting a certain quantity of yarn for nothing, as he is of paying the price of cotton for moisture in excess of the normal percentage.

One of the warmest advocates of conditioning, Mr. H. W. MACALISTER, of Manchester, is himself a prominent spinner. Here are his words at the recent Vienna Congress:

"We settle in this way disputes of many kinds between spinners and their customers. . . . I had a case not long ago in which a man said my yarn was not right. It was taken to the testing house and the testing house said it was right. I have had no complaint from him since. We ought to do the same thing with our raw cotton. They do it in the silk trade and in the wool trade they deal with the matter of moisture in a testing house."

TESTS OF FINISHED FABRICS.

Our department handling that branch has, as well as our other departments, the most approved modern machinery, as well as the co-operation of an experienced chemist. There is thus no point where we cannot render the American manufacturer as good service as his European competitors are getting. Moreover, through our knowledge of European happenings of interest to manufacturers, we can often render special assistance of a valuable nature.

Gentlemen, it only remains for me to invite you, one and all to come and see us at work in our laboratory and to submit your problems and tests for us to solve, as we have been doing for a quarter of a century for our friends in the silk industry. If we can promote the interests of the great cotton industry and of its affiliated branches, we shall feel amply rewarded for any trouble we may take to elevate the position and further the development of this greatest of our national textile manufactures.

Mr. ROBERT J. HOGUET. (After reading paper.) Gentlemen, it only remains for me to invite anybody who happens to be in the little city of New York to go to our little works and we will give them a practical example of how it can be done; or if they will send us samples we are perfectly willing to do it free of cost. I thank you very much for your attention. (Applause.)

The PRESIDENT. Has anyone something to say on this

subject? It is a matter of very great interest, of course, to manufacturers, to find some uniform method of determining conditions.

The PRESIDENT. If there is no further comment we will pass to the next paper, which will be read by the Secretary. Its author, Mr. WILLIAM MYERS, is one of the leading textile educators of the world and is connected with the Municipal School of Technology at Manchester, England.