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NOTES UPON INDIGO.

BY

JOHN L. HAYES,
SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WOOL MANUFACTURERS, FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA.
From “The Bulletin of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers.”

BOSTON:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
1873.

PART I.

3

NOTES UPON INDIGO.

PART I.

A publication devoted to the interests of the woollen manufacture,while giving due prominence to its first raw material, wool, cannotneglect the secondary materials which enter into finished fabrics. Theattractiveness and utility of the largest class of these fabrics aredue to the hue given them by the dyer; and of all the coloringmaterials one of the most precious is indigo. In former times, as itstill does at the East, it occupied with madder the place of one ofthe two most important of all dyeing materials. Forced of late yearsto give way to the marvellous products of modern chemistry, it willdoubtless resume its place under the influence of a more enlightenedeconomy and a more subdued taste. To contribute to the hastening ofthis return is one object of this essay. The most usual reproachagainst American fabrics is the want of stability in our dyes,—areproach without justice, if applied to American fabrics alone; forthe cheapening of dyestuffs is practised in all the so-calledmanufacturing nations, and is contemned alone in the East, from whichwe have derived our arts, and by the people whom we despise asbarbarous. To remove this reproach from American fabrics would beworthy of no little temporary sacrifice on the part of ourmanufacturers.

The value of indigo as a dyeing material is due to the great stabilityof the blue color, and the derivatives from blue, which it gives tofabrics, especially of wool and cotton. It is not sufficient that adyed fabric should preserve its color when4 submitted to violent tests,as when acted upon by vegetable or mineral acids or alkaline or soapybaths: the only stable dyes are those which resist air and light, thetwo destructive agents of vegetable colors. Indigo, from theremarkable manner in which its color becomes fixed upon a fabric, tobe hereafter explained, possesses properties of resistance andstability in a higher degree than any blue dye. And when we considerthat this blue has not only its own hue, but is the best foundationfor blacks, greens, purples, and even browns, the importance of theseproperties cannot be over-estimated. Says M. de Kæppelin, a chemistand manufacturer of Mulhouse, in one of a series of articles furnishedto the Annales du gênie Civil, 1864: “So high are the properties ofresistance and stability which indigo possesses, that it is perhaps tobe regretted for the art of the dyer and manufacturer of printedcalicoes, that the use of indigo becomes more and more rare, and thatthe recent discoveries which modern science has placed at the serviceof industry are daily eliminating it from our factories. I haveobserved that whenever we have to dye stuffs of a high price, it isin

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