| TEXT | In connection with the "Washington Mills" there is at Gloucester a very large Print-Works, combining facilities for calico printing, fancy dyeing, bleaching, and finishing. Their production is mainly madder prints, which are attaining an enviable reputation in the market for choice styles and fast colors. At the present time, these works are producing of Prints seven thousand pieces per week, and about three thousand pieces per week of fancy dyed goods - being about two thirds of the capabilities of the establishment in printing and dyeing; though if the bleaching and finishing of white goods, for which it has ample machinery of the best description, were added, it would be capable of turning out twenty thousand pieces of finished goods weekly. Perhaps no establishment in the country has better facilities for these combined operations than the Gloucester works. The heavy machinery in this department is propelled by an engine of three hundred horse-power, and there are on the premises, arid in daily use, thirteen other engines, varying from ten to sixty horse-power. There are, in all, about twenty boilers, of considerable capacity, the main boiler house containing fourteen tubular boilers that generate steam very rapidly. One engine and boiler is used exclusively for pumping water from the Delaware river, which was found to be superior for both dyeing and bleaching, and of which a large quantity is used. The annual consumption of coal, of the best quality of anthracite, varies from five to six thousand tons annually. This is delivered from canal boats, on the wharf, by the side of the main boiler house, and thus very little handling is required. Among the interesting machinery employed in the printing of calicoes, is that which produces the figure, in the copper rollers, with matchless accuracy and delicacy. The pantograph machine, which is elsewhere described in detail, is extensively used, and such is the facility it affords, that females are employed, and found in many respects to be the best adapted in skill for executing some of the processes. The greater portion of the hands employed in the printing department, however, are males, and include some of the most skilful workmen that can be obtained for the highest remuneration. They vary in number from one hundred and fifty to two hundred. The apparatus employed for singing the goods, at the same time that they pass through the shearing machine, is most complete, there being but few establishments in the country provided with equal facilities. The singing is performed both by gas and copper-plate - the gas being manufactured on the premises, in works of sufficient magnitude to supply all that is required for this purpose, and also for lighting the buildings. The proprietors of these works are nearly all residents of Philadelphia, the President of the company being David S. Brown, of Philadelphia, whose brothers, Jeremiah and Moses Brown, were among the earliest established dry goods commission merchants in the country, and the agents of Samuel Slater, of Providence. For nearly a half century Mr. Brown has been actively engaged in the distribution of American goods, and aiding to advance the interests of American manufactures. The establishments over which he now presides, extensive as they are, have capabilities for far greater development, if the policy of the government should be firmly established in favor of the protection of its skill and industry. They constitute one of the great art schools of the country, for the education of designers and chemists, whose genius we may reasonably anticipate will ere long elevate the art products of America to a level with those of France and Great Britain. |
