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 remarkable
 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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