Shoddy

Shoddy: Can used wool be reused?

The process of recovering wool fibre from rags and the cloth trimmings left over from garment making was developed in Yorkshire, England, around 1813, and was in full swing within a decade. This recycled wool fibre, known in the textile industry as “shoddy,”was used in cheap goods, such as the blankets sold to slaveowners in the U.S. and South America. Machines called pickers and grinders reduced the rags and trimmings to fibre again. Shoddy fibre was shorter than new wool and had to be blended with new wool for spinning into yarn.

ADD IMAGES:

Caption:   Views of rag sorting and rag 'grinding' rooms at the Slack Shoddy Mill, Springfield, Vermont, U.S.A. ca. 1912. (http://www.slackshoddymill.com/inside_the_mill.htm. Gift of Patricia Johnson Welch.)  

 In these photographs, women sort rags by color and fibre content in the rag room; while men push the sorted rags into the grinding machines.

ADD IMAGE: Caption: Types of Wool Rags (top row) and the shoddy made from it (bottom row)

1. Old black serge and shoddy made from it.  2. Fine dark merinos and the resulting shoddy. 3. Old sweaters and shoddy obtained. 4. New tailor clippings retaining some cotton and wool extract made therefrom.  (Figure 80. Hart, Wool. p.171.).

During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the U.S. (Union) Army ballooned in size from about 19,000 in December 1860 to more than 500,000 in June 1861. The Quartermaster Corps and the individual state militias struggled to outfit them all. Manufacturers who took army contracts for cloth, uniforms, and blankets found that there was simply not enough wool in the country to meet demand. Many manufacturers resorted to using a larger proportion of shoddy to new wool than they had previously done, hoping the resulting yarn would make cloth strong enough to satisfy the contracts. It didn’t.

The resulting scandals and government inquiries changed the definition of the term “shoddy.” A textile term in 1860, in the summer of 1861 it became a synonym for “miserable pretence of patriotism.” We know the word nowadays as a synonym for poor quality, cheapness, and inferiority, with an overtone of deception – in actions and ideas as well as workmanship.

ADD IMAGE: Page from New York Daily Tribune, 27 February 1862 "Legislative Investigations"

But shoddy had its place in the woollen industries. And although it was tainted by association with cast-off rags, and war profiteers, many nations at war after the 1860s happily kept down the cost of overcoats and blankets by accepting 35% or more of shoddy in the fibre blend. Except in cases of extreme need, morale issues kept shoddy from being used in garments worn next the skin or close to the body, such as underwear, shirts, and field or dress uniforms. No one wanted to deal with the PR nightmare of soldiers and their loved ones thinking that blood-soaked rags taken from their dead and wounded comrades were being shredded and remade into uniforms for their replacements. Still, shoddy was commonly used in military overcoats and blankets at a moderate level, while in civilian textiles the fibre blend might be as high as 85% shoddy, thanks to refinements in the “grinding”or shredding machinery.