In these exceptional mills everything is neat and
perfectly clean, all the stock used being new and fresh from the cotton
or linen mills, or from factories producing cloth goods, like shirt and
corset factories, and others of the same sort. The sorting and shredding
room is always large and light, with windows on all sides, and well
ventilated, offering a decided contrast in many respects to the less
cleanly mills first referred to where the women must wear bonnets or
hoods for the protection of the hair. In either case the process is
certainly an improvement over the old plan of leaving the rags to decay
in a cellar to expedite the removal of the glutinous matter from them.
From the "sorting" and "shredding" room the rags are conveyed to the
"cutter," where they are cut and chopped by revolving knives, leaving
them in small pieces and much freer from dust and grit. Various
ingenious devices are employed for removing metal and other hard and
injurious matter, magnetic brushes serving this purpose in some mills.
When the "cutter" has finished its work, the still very dirty rags go
for a further cleansing to the "devil," or "whipper," a hollow cone with
spikes projecting within, against which work the spikes of a drum,
dashing the rags about at great speed.
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