THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK 
called “ Hollanders,” and put on the drying 
machine—an endless belt of wire gauze. 
After being dried, they are cut into sheets. 
The mixture is now complete as pulp and 
is shipped to the Artificial Silk mills to be 
made into filaments. 
When these pulp sheets reach the mill, 
they are soaked in dilute caustic soda for 
several hours and broken up into little bits 
called “crumbs.” Caustic soda has a re- 
markable solvent effect upon many organic 
substances, both animal and vegetable. It 
makes many things transparent. ‘‘ Caustic ”’ 
means the power of corroding or eating away 
tissues—breaking them up. 
These “crumbs” are then mixed with 
cotton fibres and by means of chemicals they 
are made into a brown gelatinous mass. 
They are softened and blended into a thick 
syrup, which looks very much like brown 
heather honey. 
This mass of syrup is then forced through 
the multiple jets of a nozzle, which is like 
the rose of a fountain. Fine filaments are 
squeezed out into a hardening liquid. They 
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