MAY 1925
THE UNITED AMERICAN
Twine Production the Source of Supply
Chicago Twine Factories Alone Can Yearly Produce Enough Binder Twine
to Harvest Seventy-Three Million Acres of Grain
(The Christian Science Monitor)
BALL of twine, hidden away on the while the manila fiber makes a beautiful
inside of a great harvesting twine, the expense was too great a
machine, is certainly an inconspicuous handicap, so far as cheap twine for
thing, and few would realize, who are use in the wheat field was ocncerned. So
not themselves makers or users of agri it became necessary to look about for
cultural machinery, that on the uniform a more economical fiber.
* * *
size and tensile strength of the twine
depends the smooth operation of the
Yucatan solved the last step of the
harvester, and hence, ultimately, in a problem. A plant of the agave tribe,
great degree, the bread supply of the known to us only as a foliage plant, can
world. The binding attachment, added be grown in great abundance in a small
to the reaper, transformed it into a section just above sea-level — almost
“harvester” in the fullest sense, and the a solid ledge of limestone rock. It yields
humble twine, which superseded wire in a fiber known as sisal, and today sisal
the binding of grain may be said to be produces from 85 to 90 per cent of the
the crowning adjunct of that greatest of binder twine used throughout the world.
labor-saving inventions, the harvester, as The plant is known in Yucatan as
it is 'known today. If no harvesting henequen.
machines were manufactured for a whole
The henequen plant looks something
year, the farming community would, un like a century plant, whith a low core,
doubtedly, be put to some inconvenience, and stiff pulp leaves standing up around
but would manage to get along with no it, considerably higher than a man’s head
serious loss. On the other hand, if the when it reaches maturity, which takes
supply of twine for one harvest were about seven years. A plant yields from
suddenly to be cut off, it would mean not 12 to 20 leaves which the natives cut with
simply a national, but an international, sickle-shaped knives from the mature
calamity, as it would be impossible to plants, and such is the climate that they
obtain help enough to gather the crops. can continue cutting all the year around.
The hunt for the ball of twine that The leaves average a little less than two
would work in the harvester was a long pounds in weight. Uusually from 3 to
one. One manufacturer tried ro make 3% .per cent of marketable fiber, or
twine out of grass. It cost him $15,000 about one ounce, is obtained from an
to find out that it would not work. Then average leaf, making an average perhaps
he tried to make a paper twine, and of one pound from each plant, or 1000
spent $35,000 before he gave it up. Next pounds an acre. This is the result of
he tried straw as a raw material—and a year’s operations.
the attempt cost him an additional
Each leaf is handled individually, being
$43,000.
first cut from the plant, then the spines
* * *
removed from the edge of the leaf, then
Eventually the problem was solved the leaves packed in bundles of about
by two foreign fibers — manila and sisal 50 and carried to the nearest tramway.
— but another company still thought From there they are conveyed to the
plant, which is centrally located
they could find a home product. Home cleaning
on each plantation, and run through a
grown flax seemed to fill all require decorticating
machine. This machine, as
ments, and the company spent $1,000,000
its
name
implies,
takes off the hard
in perfecting the process of turning it
of the leaves, and reveals inside
into twine. Then, when it was carried a cortex
substance through which runs
into the field and tied around the bundles the pulpy
all-important fiber from which twine
of grain, it was discovered that crickets
and grasshoppers like nothing quite so is made.
The fiber which comes from the de-
well. These two insects promptly ate
the twine and the bundles fell to pieces corticator is carried into the drying yards
out in the fields. An industry that has and is spread on. galvanized wire, where
grown to the grand total of $50,000,000 it dries and bleaches in the sun, after
which it is gathered and taken into the
in the last 40 years was at stake.
warehouse,
where it is pressed into bales
One of the men kept awake at night in the same
form in which it finally
by these problems was William Deering, reaches
mills. From Yucatan the
whose harvester was interested in twine. bales are the conveyed
by boat across the
By chance one day he untwisted a manila Gulf of Mexico to New
Orleans, Mobile
rope, and the thought flashed upon him
that manila would make good twine if or some .port in Texas. From these
■the strands could be spun small enough. points it is trans-shipped up the Miss:s-
'The problem was laid before one of the sippi River to Cairo, at the southern tip
■biggest rope manufacturers in the of Illinois, but comes into Chicago aboard
¡country, and promptly turned down. railway trains. ♦ ♦ ♦
Another manufacturer of ropes thought
he could do it, only his machines made
Chicago, the world’s center for agri
¡but 300 feet to the pound, whereas it cultural machinery, has very naturally
was necessary to have it 700 feet to the become the world’s greatest producer of
pound. The machines were rebuilt, binder twine. Here are the two largest
however, and the desired twine produced. binder twine factories in the world,
It was soon discovered, however, that having a capacity of 110,000 tons a year.
A
Page Fifteen
A few additional figures will serve to
visualize this capacity. It takes approxi
mately two feet of binder- twine to bind
the average-sized bundle of grain, and
the harvester averages 750 pound bundles
to the acre. There are 500 feet of binder
twine to a pound. Reducing Chicago’s
potential 110,000 tons to pounds, we' get
220,000,000 pounds, which- would bind
55,000,000,000 bundles, help to harvest
more than 73,000,000 acres of grain, or
girdle the globe 833 times.
The trains which bear the sisal fiber
bales to Chicago unload directly in the
factory, at the rate of 800 or 900 bales
a day, or more, and we see great walls
of these fiber plants .piled up in the
storage room. They are taken, as needed,
to the opening department where men
split them- up and release the closely
packed fiber, mixing together- various
grades of hemp which is put through a
“spreading machine” to further prepare
it. After inspection, sorting and spread
ing the fiber is put into big box trucks
and trundied away to be prepared for
spinning into twine.
As good twine is made of a mingling
of coarse with thin fiber, each' man
has four bales to work from, graded to
give the desired thickness and texture.
On the first machine employed, a comb
ing machine, there is a scale, and as the
fiber passes through, it, at intervals a
bell rings indicating a certain weight a
foot for that particular lot of fiber. The
appropriateness of the name “combing
machine” in connection with the fiber
is apparent to the eye of the most un
initiated, for the long ribbons of fiber
as they pass into the machine look like
nothing so. much as hair; long, luxuriant,
if decidedly coarse hair, with a slight
wave in it, due to the compression of the
bales. The difference between combing
fiber for twine and combing one’s head
is that in addition to separating it into
paralied lines and straighten'ng out
tangles, the fiber-combing machine pulls
it out to a greater length.
This pulling or drawing out of the
. fiber is accomplished not by stretching
it but by combing it with revolving cylin
ders, armed with teeth, some of which
cylinders revolve faster than others, so
that the layers which they pull will
necessarily be pulled out farther than
the first ones, and the whole mass of
fiber will be thinner and longer than
when it went into the machine.
The action of the next two machines
through which the fiber passes is still
further to break up the fiber into smaller
and smaller ribbons until at last each
ribbon begins to look quite slender as
it runs out of the machine into revolving
cans at the ends, and these slender
ribbons are called “sliver” by the work
men. When at last the “finishing
machine” spouts out its contents, one can
tell by taking up one of the ribbons of
“sliver” that it has diminished in thick
ness to almost the feeling of a piece of
thick string, and this is the point at
which it is ready for spinning into twine.
Thé spinning room is a wonderful
sight, with its long rows of spindles, two
to a machine, working horizontally, but
controlled by bolts from above. As the