Reading Times Newspaper,   Friday Morning, September 9, 1870

Jackson’s Rope Walk, situated on First Hockley Lane in between Eighth and Ninth Streets, is one of three establishments of the kind in the State, there being twenty-three rope manufacturers in the Union. It has a front of 305 feet on Hockley Lane, and covers an area of about 3 acres. The proprietor carries on an extensive coal yard in connection with the works. Every species of rope is manufactured, from a fishing line to a cable 12 inches in circumference. In addition to the necessary buildings for the manufacture, there is a machine shop for repairs and a commodious storehouse.

Steam power is furnished by a twenty horse power engine. This establishment has a capacity for turning out $150,000 worth of rope per annum. The market for its production is mainly in the Schuylkilll anthracite coal region, and in the central and western part of the state. It employs 45 hands, who make from $2-$11 a week. The rope manufacturers of the country all belong to an Association formed eight years ago, which regulates prices, the headquarters being in the city of New York.

The rope making process possesses some interest as a mechanical operation and a slender idea of the way it is done may be imparted to those who have never seen it, by a brief description of it observed at this establishment.

The principal standard material for the manufacture of rope is the hemp, of which there are a great many varieties. The leading kinds all the Manilla, obtained from the Philippine Islands, and the Sisal, from Central America. This substances is the interior fiber of the plant, stripped and prepared by a mechanical process similar to that employed for flax. There is also Italian and Jute hemp, which is used chiefly in the making of packaging and cordage. There is an American hemp grown on the Western states, naturalized from foreign soil, and indeed its production appears to be a practicable in any climate. The manilla hemp is imported is imported in bales containing about 300 pounds each. In some countries many other fibres, nd even cotton is employed in ropemaking.

The hemp, having been picked up apart from the bales by boys and girls, his first put through three “lapping” machines, the operation of which is very much resembles that of a thresher. These machines are circular from 6 to 8 feet in diameter and contain a revolving drum, the face of which is covered with innumerable long, sharp spikes. The hemp is fed in at one side of the wheel. and is unwound at the other after the machine has been stopped. This thrice repeated operation straightens out the fiber, and transforms the bundles of short hemp into a connected lap, from 18 to 24 feet long.

Leaving the lapping machines, it is then passed through three horizontal “drawing frames”, which also full of finer and closer sharp teeth and which continues the operation of straightening. From these machines the hemp emerges as a “sliver” which is simply the untwisted rope. By this time it is made so uniform that you can with difficulty find the ends of the fibers. The sliver is then passed into the room below, which is the spinning room. This apartment is full of jennies, noisily and rapidly at work twisting the sliver and winding it on the rapidly revolving bobbins, which transforms it into the rope yarn. These
machines are operated by girls and closely resemble in their movement some portions of the cotton machinery. The bobbins are then wound by another machine into larger bobbins, which give the yarn a greater length, the pieces being knotted together where they end. These bobbins are hung on a frame at the end of the rope walk, to be spun into rope.

The rope walk is 1400 feet long, or little over a quarter of a mile, and 16 feet in width completely covered in by a shed. A railway track extends the entire length, which is traversed by the “forming jack” or the twisting machine. The yarns are passed through a gauge plate, at the head of the walk, and iron plate perforated by large number of small holes arranged in a circular shape, which are made to communicate with as many iron tubes, from one-eight of an inch to an inch and a half in diameter in the interior opening, according to the size of the rope to be made. The yarns being been then attached to a series of hooks, are made into a strand by the machine, which twists both ways as it goes, this double twisting being required to counteract the tendency to unwind. As many of these strands as are required are then twisted by a similar process into the rope, the outer strands being laid with greater regularity and firmness around the central one. Length is lost in the twist, it requiring in the ordinary rope of 150 yards of yarn to make 100 yards of rope. The jack is drawn along the track by an endless rope on one side passing over pulleys and operated by the engine. This rope impels the twsting machinery of the jack, and also turns a drum on the other side, around which a ground rope, stretched tight, is wound twice. When the drum is set in motion, it winds the jack forward. The journey is accomplished in about 20 minutes. There are other machines for winding they heavy rope rope into coil. Tarred ropes are manufactured by tarring the yarn. There is another walk, 300 feet in length running underneath a portion of the main walk. Here the twine, packing and smaller cords are spun by hand, the old way of making ropes,a system by which is the proprietor observed, “A rope maker could not now earn his salt in competition with machinery.” A boy or girl is now able to do as much work in the day as would formerly have kept twelve hands busy.

In this walk the spinner has a large bundle of the fibre loosely gathered around his waist, from which he pulls out a few and attaches them to a hook in the turning wheel or “whirl”” which is stationary and is worked by an assistant.

He then walks slowly backwards down the rope ground, gradually drawing out the fibers so as to make a uniform yarn. The strands are afterwards attached to whirls at the end of the walk, and twisted in a contrary direction. Skill in this sort of work is a matter of experience. The modern machinery for rope making produces ropes with such mathematical precision that the strength of the rope may be calculated with great exactness.

Thomas Jackson, the proprietor of the establishment, is a self made man, whose history is one of the many instances which demonstrate what may be accomplished by steady industry and perseverance. He is a native of Derbyshire in the north of England, and was brought up to the rope making trade, in which business his line was engaged for several generations. He emigrated to this country, in company with his brother Edward – also a rope maker by trade – in 1829, at the age of 22. The two landed in Philadelphia, where at that day there were four large rope walks, in none of which, however, could they succeed in getting employment. The design of Mr. Jackson was to work as a journeyman until he could accumulate sufficient capital to start in business for himself. All his stock in trade consisted at that time of a small chest of carpenter’s tools, his personal effects and a few dollars in money.

While out one day, uncertain as to what course to take, the two wandered out to Fairmount. Here they observed the Schuylkill canal, and inquired whither it lead. Foreseeing a market for tow lines, they set out to explore, and after two days travel on foot and by the boats, they arrived at Reading. Here they saw the Union canal, and “here” says Mr. Jackson, “I said we must stop,” the junction of two canals being too important a location for their business to be overlooked. They cast about for a place to pitch a rope, walk, and fixed upon the site of the present city gas works, at Fifth and Canal streets, near what was then the outlet lock, on ground owned by the Navigation Company. Mr. Jackson then paid a visit to Mr. Samuel Griscom, the Superintendent at that time of the Schuylkill canal, made himself known, and said he wanted to rent the ground he had already looked at. Mr. Griscom, who was a Quaker, scrutinizing him, said “Thee won’t do any good here; there are three rope makers here now, and they are all poor.” Jackson replied that he was poor too, and must get at his business or he would soon be out of the little means he had. Mr. Griscom then said he should go and mark off what he wanted, and he would come and see it. Riding down to the place on horseback, when the rude survey had been completed, the Superintendent said, “Thee has pitched upon a rough spot.” Mr. Griscom gave him permission to occupy the ground at a rent of half a dollar a month, adding “Thee may give it up any time thee pleases, for I know thee will do no good,” evidently having no very strong faith in the new enterprise. With the small means which they had in hand, the brothers went to work, cut from the woods their scantling and timber, and built a shed 16 feet long and 8 feet wide to contain their contrivances and materials. For a whole year they worked at their toil, exposed alike to the heat of the summer and the snows of winter. They sold their rope to the boatmen, and the first year’s sales reached $1500. They were enabled with the proceeds to build a walk one hundred feet in length, which they continued to occupy at Mr. Griscom’s liberal rent of half a dollar a month, for seven years, during which they worked hard, saved, and accumulated. In 1836 they were compelled to remove by the opening of the streets. 

About this time the brothers dissolved partnership, Edward going into the store business at the locks, while Thomas continued the rope making, locating a new walk, 600 feet long and 12 feet wide, on the lower part of the island below the Lancaster bridge. He also obtained charge of the locks which bear his name, at the foot of Sixth street, which he  carried on in connection with the rope making business for some eighteen years. He soon found to his cost that the Island was a precarious situation for manufacturing business. A freshet on the 20th of January 1839 did him about $2000 damage, and on the 7th of January, 1841, the walk was carried away. He then located at the upper end of the island, where the ground was about six feet higher, and introduced horse power machinery. From this new location his walk was again swept away, root and branch, by the great freshet of September 2, 1850, which also carried off his house and other buildings at the locks. He then built the present rope walk in the winter of 1850-51, and introduced steam machinery in 1855, greatly increasing its capacity. By the exercise of the industry and perseverance which characterized him from the beginning, he has secured a fair share of business prosperity.