I forgot I had this posted on my website. I purchased this picture, a Keystone stereoscope card of Montreal Women Weaving, a few years ago. That’s why it is double.
It does not look Sweat Shopish, does it?
No doubt, the photo was factory sanctioned.
They also provided a description of the work.
Linen is a cloth made from the fiber of flax. When flax is used for its fiber, it is cut before it is ripe. The flax is pulled and the seeds are pulled off. The bundles are laid on piles and rotted until the woody portion has decayed. The freed fibers are then shipped to spinning or weaving mills like in the picture.
The first step is to heckle the fiber, combing the long fibers from the short. Then the fibres are sorted and coiled into bundles known as slivers. After the fibers are drawn to proper length they are placed in the roving machine here. You see the hanks of roves hanging on the right. The woman on the left is placing one of the hanks in the mill on a spindle. From the spindle the thread is wound on the bobbins. You see thousands of bobbins on top of the machine. The white ones are full of thread, the black are empty.
