Woollen Report

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 98, 19 January 1935, Page 20

Woollen Report

The world is full of shortages of one sort or another, but there is a report abroad that one of the most persistent and troublesome is about to be remedied. It is said that in the laboratories of the Wool Industries Research Association there has been devised a method which will prevent that hitherto intractable shortage which is liable to occur in woollens that have been sent too often to the wash. Science, it is claimed, has found a way to make woollen materials unshrinkable. let the laundry and washerwoman do their worst.

Similar claims have been heard before, but when we descend from claims to cloth in common experience another shrinking process becomes evident ; the proud hope contracts as fast as the fickle fabric. One would say that the woollen fibre had an incurable objection to getting irto hot water. It curls itself up tightly as though it would withdraw from the contaminating touch of soap and water, and, having once wriggled itself into an attitude of protest, it never relaxes.

That is why the garment of which it forms part becomes thicker but shorter as the washdays wear on, and once the fibres have begun to cling together for protection It has hitherto been true that nothing could disturb their infinite capacity for cohesion. But science is full of wonders nowadays, and it may be that this new claim will justify itself and not lead in once more to another example of much cry but little wool—“ Manchester Guardian.”