Cotton is a fiber that grows in a seed pod. When the pod pops open, the cotton is ready for picking. Cotton is picked by machines and then transported by trucks to cotton gins for removal of seeds. Once it is cleaned, it is then packed in bales and delivered to the opening room of the textile mill.
Opening Rooms are large rooms where bale openers break the metal straps and cut the burlap cloth that contains the cotton. The bale openers use a machine to break the straps and loosen the tightly packed cotton. The machines remove most of the dirt found in the cotton so it is important for the machines to be well oiled and clean. Workers tending these machines must be careful because the machines move very fast and can be dangerous.
Once the cotton is loosened, it moves on to a machine called a picker. The picker breaks the cotton apart into small pieces. Workers feed cotton into the picker by manually throwing armfuls of cotton into it. The picker produces a product consisting of a long continuous sheet of fiber called a lap. The lap is then rolled into large round packages that weigh forty pounds. Workers in the opening and picker rooms must be strong because they are required to lift these heavy round packages onto power lifts that move them into the Carding Room.
The Carding Room produces long, untwisted strands of cotton called slivers. Slivers are made by feeding cotton into the rollers of the card machine. The rollers are covered with fine wires and metal teeth that pull the cotton into sheets. The sheets are then fed into a narrow opening shaped like a funnel to give the sliver a round like shape that is similar to rope. Slivers are automatically collected in empty cans, and cans are replaced by employees when they become full. Machine operators in the carding room supervise sixty to eighty machines. They walk back and forth looking for machines that have stopped because of broken slivers so they could repair the sliver and get the machine restarted as quickly as possible. Work in the carding room is tedious because there are more machines then people. The rooms are noisy, dusty, hot, and humid. At times, workers have a hard time staying awake.
Combing is the next step in the cloth making process. In the combing process, cotton is cleaned and blended. Cotton carded slivers are put into machines running at high speeds. These machines stretch the sliver and combine it with other slivers to give it a uniform texture. These slivers are then sent to machines called roving frames which make the slivers thin so they could be spun into yarn. Once the sliver is thinned, it gets twisted, and wound on a bobbin. Slivers that have been thinned, twisted, and wound are then called roving.
In the spinning process, roving becomes even thinner and receives more twists. In the spinning department, workers wind roving on bobbins and mend broken roving ends. If broken roving is not connected, the roving will get tangled and cause machines to stop running. Workers use rows of bobbins to wind roving which takes hours to fill. Bobbins contain either warp yarn which is the thread that runs lengthwise through woven cloth or filling yarn which is the thread that runs at right angles to the warp yarn. Once the bobbins are filled, workers called doffers remove the filled bobbins and replace them with new ones. These filled bobbins are brought by workers to the slashing department for starching.
The slashing department applies a protective starch solution to warp yarn to make the yarn stiff and strong. Workers use machines to apply the starch solution and also combine threads from several beams onto one loom beam. The loom beam is usually made from wood or metal and is a cylinder shape that can hold large amounts of yarn. Once the yarn is on the loom beam, workers then take it to the weaving department to be woven into cloth.
In the weaving department, workers known as weavers use a weaving machine called a loom to turn yarn into cloth. The looms are high-speed running machines that lock two or more sets of thread together. One set called the warp runs lengthwise while the other set runs across the width of the fabric. Weavers set-up the machines by guiding warp threads through a set of pointed wires so that the weaving can begin. In addition, weavers carefully watch for breaks in the warp thread. If a break occurs, the looms stop automatically and weavers repair breaks and fix any mistakes that are woven into cloth. Weavers operate one hundred or more looming machines running at the same time which makes the weaving room noisy and hot. Many weavers that have no skills or training, work in this department and get paid according to the amount of fabric they produce. Since weaving is done on piece work, it becomes necessary for weavers to quickly locate and mend broken threads, and restart the machines. The longer a machine stands idle, the less money a weaver makes. Once the weavers finish weaving, the woven cloth goes to the cloth room.
In the Cloth Room, workers grade the quality of woven cloth and prepare the cloth for shipment to clothing or sheet manufacturers. Sometimes the woven cloth is sent to other plants for design printing. To prepare cloth for shipment, some workers sew rolls of materials together, remove stains from the cloth, or use machines to cut knots and loose ends from thread in the material. Those workers using machines must be careful because the machines have large knives which can cause injury. Cloth is inspected prior to shipment by inspectors who pass cloth over large tilted tables and expose the cloth to good lighting to check for defects. If inspectors find that the cloth is free of defects, it is then graded for quality, measured and folded into regular size lengths. The folded cloth is sent to workers who cover the cloth with paper or burlap and compress it into a bale of cloth fastened with metal straps. At this point the work of the cotton mill is finished, however because the woven cloth is naturally gray-like in color the cloth may be sent to other companies to be bleached, finished or dyed.
Bleaching is the process of removing all natural gray-like color from the woven cloth and making it look white. Before the cloth can be bleached, it must be singed so that the cloth gets a smooth surface. Singeing is the process in which woven cloth passes over a gas flame or heated metal plate to remove fuzz or lint from the cloth. In addition, the singeing process creates a lot of heat and makes the working environment extremely hot. After singeing, workers wash and boil cloth in large tubs for several hours or they wash the cloth in a hot chemical solution made from salt called caustic soda. In either bleaching method, the process is repeated several times until the cloth turns white and becomes ready for finishing or dyeing.
Finishing is processing cloth to make it suitable for different uses. Companies called “converters” finish cloth by either chemical or mechanical finishing. In chemical finishing, workers treat cloth with chemicals to make it waterproof, or wrinkle-free while mechanical finishing workers treat cloth with starch solutions to make it feel and look better. Cloth can be preshrunk so it will not shrink anymore, or it can be made shiny and strong through the process of mercerizing. In the finishing process workers are exposed to chemicals and heat from washing and drying.
Dyeing is the process of adding color to woven cloth. In the past, dyeing of cloth was done using natural color from roots, flowers and berries. Today, dyeing is done using synthetic or man-made dyes because it is cheaper and the color lasts longer than natural dyes. Synthetic dyes were invented by chemists as early as 1856. Since then, many new dyes have been created. Workers in the dyeing department dip woven cloth into large vats of dye which is called piece dyeing. Cloth is rolled on large perforated beams that are set on perforated spindles. Dye is pumped into the spindles to dye the cloth from inside while at the same time, dye is added around the beams to dye cloth on the outside. When the cloth has finished dyeing, workers feed the cloth into rollers that squeeze out the dye and remove excess liquid. In the dyeing process, workers must constantly make sure that dyeing solutions are at proper strengths and temperatures. When necessary, workers must supply hot steam to increase temperatures in the dyeing solution. By doing this, the steam creates a hot and sticky working environment. In addition, the synthetic chemicals emit strong odors, but because the workers are too busy tending to their work, they do not realize that they are breathing in those chemicals which may at a later time create health problems for them.