Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — Human Hair Supplies. [ARTICLE]

Human Hair Supplies.

For some years the London human hair trade has derived its chief and most highly-esteemed supplies from the open gutters of the smaller Italian towns,: specially and those of the rural districts generally; and there is a scheme at pres* ent under consideration in the Italian Chambers for raising money to defray the cost of extensive drainage works to be carried to the smaller towns after the larger cities have been drained in accordance with our own most approved modern systems. Here, then, we have at once an answer to the inquiry where our hair comes from, and the indication of an impending crisis by which the very existence of the Italiano-British human hair trade is threatened; for as soon as rural Italy is subjected to the control of local boards of health there will be an end *o all further supplies from that quarter. To make this intelligible we will briefly explain the initiatory steps of the process by which Italian hair is converted into English “ capillaments.” The Italian women, like their sisters in other parts of the world, have the practice of twisting into a coil all the hairs which become detached from their heads in the operation of combing orbrushing. These coils, in the total absence of house-drains, are thrown with other refuse into the open gutters, which seldom fail to supply an Italian household with a near and ready means of disposing of the oftcastings of their habitations. This ts the first step in the proceeding. The next is effected when the scavenger appears on the scene with his springless cart, and like another Neptune, trident in hand, wades through the gutter and hooks up every floating tangle of hairs. These he carefqlly consigns to a separate receptacle and keeps by him—for he well knows their value—till the hair peddler, technically known in the trade as “the cutter,” makes his next round and gathers in the season’s harvest, which is forthwith conveyed to Genoa and other seaport towns, where the coils are disentangled and separated by children, who are employed in the business, into “heads” and “ tails,” the former being composed of short but even lengths, arranged according to color, and the latter of the longer lengths of hair. It is said that of late years many hundred-weights of these heads and tails, grimly characterized as “ dead hair," annually cross the Alps, or round the Rock at Gibralter, on their way to our more northern centers of civilization, where existing systems of drainage present insuperable obstacles to the retention and utilization . of refuse hair. It is obvious, therefore, that when rural Italy is drained London society will find that one of its most conspicuous and apparently most highly-prized means of adornment has become scarce and costly of an extent utterly incompatible with the continuance of the present lavish use the air. The fate of the “ capillaments” is evidently trembling in the balance. It may be said that there are other sources of hair supply than Italian gutters—and that is true —but these sources are not certain or profuse in more than one or two directions. German peasant heads have, indeed, long yielded good supplies of “ yellow flaxens;” but the peasant women of the Empire are beginning to discard their hereditary costume and to vie with the classes above them in displaying redundant heads of hair, and so they no longer part as readily as of yore with their tawny locks. Great hopes were entertained that Japan would be found willing to include hair in her exports; but, even if she were, the tresses of the daughters of the Flowery Land have a wire-like rigidity in their texture which unfits them for juxtaposition with English heads of hair. It is much (the same with other sources of human hair supply; when put to the test of practical applicability they are found wanting, and if science had not come to the aid of nature —with signal success in the case of those apricot-hued golden reds and ruddy yellows which have long been the delight of painters and poets of the preRaphael order—we could scarcely predict anything short of annihilation for the trade. These special shades of yel-low-red hair are, however, manufactured • with a perfection which shows what may be done by a skillful adaptation of ordi nary means in producing very charming results; and we are indebted to the newspaper reports of a case heard before Sir R. Malins about five years ago for a clear exposition of the methods employed. It came out on the trial referred to that the Slaintiffs, who were at the head of a lanchester frizette and hair firm, sued a rival manufacturer for infringing a patent obtained by them in 1867 for converting coarse Russian wool, known as “ tops,” into soft, lustrous, golden hair. They declared that they had, under the advice of eminent chemists, adopted a successful method of removing all oily matters from these tops by steeping them in sulphate of copper, and that at the cost of much time, money and thought they had learned how to give to these tops the requisite color by means of catechu, logwood, sulphate of iron and other ingredients—gelatine being used to impart a curled or crisped appearance to the hair. It was made apparent in the course of the trial that by the plaintiff’s process hair of any length could be manufactured—in fact, any number of Lady Godivas might have been provided by the Manchester patentees with, the requisite profusion of hair, not to mention the wholesale manner in which they were able to supply, among many other curious hair products, luxuriant dishev tied manes intended as sortiss de bain for ladies at watering-places. The Vice Chancellor remained obdurate to the plea of the plaintiffs for a monopoly in the use of “ Russian Tops," and dismissed the bill with costa, stigmatizing the plaintiffs’ conduct as “ unjustifiable, since, if their patent was sustained, it would be impossible for anyone to use wool without their consent for the various purposes it had been used long before our grandfathers werebOrn.” —London Examiner. ' *».■ At Monte Vista, Cal., the apple trees are now “fragrant with their white and pink bloom.” &