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IF YOU HAD lived in Reading 125 years ago, you could have walked down to the foot of S. 6th street any day and watched the canal barges moving slowly to the port of Philadelphia with their loads of coal.

Such a sight was almost an everyday occurrence along the river in 1829 when Thomas Jackson, a ropemaker from England, and his brother started to make the tow lines that

hauled the barges.

The business they founded-In tow rope- is. still going strong today. But now the company makes hard and soft fiber twines, ropes for industrial uses, and jute packing for plumbers. The Thomas Jackson & Son Co. is the oldest continuing manufacturer in Reading. This year it is celebrating its 125th anniversary.

Yet it’s a mere youngster as cordage making goes.

The origin of rope predates recorded history. The Swiss lake dwellers used it to make nets during the Stone Age, and the huge stones of the pyramids of Egypt were moved by manpower, with rope used to drag the heavy blocks over the sands

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This is hard fiber for the making of rope , which includes the type of twine used to tie weightier bundles.  A combing machine shown un the background of the section where Ralph Becker is at work.  The machine combs and separates the fibers.

Because the industry in so old, the process of rope making had to be preserved through the centuries by passing on the manufactur-

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The jute yarn spinning process also known as rove spinning goes on under the attention of Robert Dentrich. About 100.000 turns a minute are made by all parts of the machine.

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Reading’s Oldest Industry

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ing methọd through each generation of craftsmen. One of the earliest attempts at writing “how-to-make” directions is a treatise prepared in 1747 by an officer of King Louis XV’s navy. This unusual book, stamped on the cover with the King’s crest, is now In the library of Edward H. Jackson,  great·grandson of the founder of Reading’s twine and rope-making industry. It shows that, although machinery had been developed to speed the process, the basic steps in making rope and twine hadn’t changed much over the centuries.

Even today, rope-making is pretty much the same as it was hundreds of years ago. There are four basic steps. First, workmen pre- pare the sliver. Then they spin the, yarn. Next they form the strand. And finally, they lay the rope.

If you were ta take a trip through the Jackson plant, you’d see a workman prepare the sliver by dividing the bales of raw fiber into “hands,” pulling from the bales enough fibers about six to 10 feet long to make a “hand” weighing approximately three pounds. The “hands” are combed out or “carded” by machines having large. iron·toothed moving combs.  These machines blend the fibers into a web. The web runs through a reducing die, and comes out as an endless band of fiber called a sliver. Slivers are recombed to separate tho fibers and even the alivers- -sometimes a many as six or eight times. When the slivers are light, long and fluffy, they’re ready or spinning into yarn.

The spinning frames give the required number of turns per foot to the fiber and automatically wind the yarn on huge spools or bobbins. Great care is taken to make the yarn smooth, uniform. and of the correct size. Numerous tests are made for weight, strength, and proper twist.

Next the yarn is run through a machine called a former, which twists it into strands and winds the strands on a large reel.

As a final step the reel is placed on the rope-laying machine, which draws several strands through a block or die, interlocks or twists. them together, and coils them off at the finishing end.

Not all yarn is twisted into strands. Jackson has several automatic high- speed twisters which work directly with the yarns to form plied twines. Much of the yarn is packaged directly as twine for many industrial and agricultural users

It takes a lot of twine lo reach to the moon and back. About 476,000 miles of it, in fact. Yet with modern machinery, run by electricity, the Jackson mill produces enough twine for a round trip to the moon every year. Looking at it another way, that would be enough to circle the earth, about 20 times.

Modern machinery, with Improvements. designed by Edward Jackson, does this. But since the mill was started before the days of power machinery, Thomas Jackson and his brother had to make their rope by hand. They tied bundles of fibers around thelr waists, then walked slowly backwards down a long ropewalk, playing out the fiber as it was carefully twisted Into yarn. The ropewalk was a long, narrow building which stretched out a quarter of a mile or more from the main building.

When steam driven cordage machinery was developed, about 1828, it was possible to make many thousands of feet of rope in only a few square feet of space, and ropewalks were gradually abandoned. As steam came into general use for transportation, the mules. houseboats, canal barges, and tow rope vanished from the river scene. Instead, more and more rope and twine were made for agriculture, manufacturing, mining, lumbering. oil production, construction, transportation and communication.

The discovery of new fibers also contributed to the growth in rope production.. Lt. John White, of the U.S. Navy, brought samples of abaca, or Manila hemp, from the Philippines to Salem, Mass., in 1820. Henequen from Yucatan reached the United States at about the same time. In 1835, jute arrived from that part of India which is now East Pakistan. It all added up to greater growth tor the Jackson mill. Finally, in 1850, 11 years before the Civil War, the Schuylkill overflowed and put the mill under three feet of water. That was enough. More room was

needed away from the floods of the unpredictable river. and Tom Jackson moved from the foot of S. 6th street to a larger building, on drier ground, at 9th and Oley streets. That’s where the plant is today.

As production of tow rope decreased, new products were addeđ to the line to meet the growing needs of the national economy. First, there were bed cords, to support the rough straw mattresses our. ancestors used. Then came flat rope for. power transmission. With the discovery of jute, twisted jute packings for plumbers became an important product, and so did oakum for caulking ships’ seams. The Jackson mill also makes agricultural twine for farming use throughout the country, and especially for the farms surrounding Reading.

In its 125 years of ropemaking, the firm has seen many changes. It has survived three great wars, five major depressions, and several financial panics. It has maintained life through intense competition. It has passed through two great fires- -one in 1876 and one in 1923 – and numerous floods.

Perhaps the secret of the vitality of the firm is that it has always been family-owned, family-managed, and service-minded. Edward Jackson, the president, personally spends much time in basic fiber research and in inventing special improvements for machinery, -in addition to his administrative duties.

The company holds two patents on special machine equipment which he invented to Increase production. And he is responsible for conducting research on variations of yarn, in a statistical work which has been continuing for many years. One of the latest problems to confront the firm at the time this article was written was the proposed opening of Oley street, between 8th and 9th streets. A land damage question between the City of Reading and the Company apparently was near settlement, if an agreement had not already been reached.

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George Palmer is how here at work amid a series of spinning machines in he had fibers. These machines are making twine at the rate of 34 miles an hour

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Spinning of oakum, which is used, for one example, in packing the joints of cast-iron soil pipe, is demonstrated in this photo. Peter Bender operates the machine which is spinning the yarn. Prepared fiber is shown in the pile in the right fore-ground.