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Show - A Substitute tor Felt. Many of the cheap derby hats that will be worn this spring will be made of a new material of which the hatters have just got hold. Tho stuff is called linters. It is the short cotton left on the seed sifter the cotton has been ginned by the cotton raiser. He sells his cotton to the merchant and the seed to a mill that make cotton seed oil. The miller puts the Seed through another gin, specially made to clean short cotton from the seed. In an oil mill of small capacity several bales of cotton are ginned from the seed in this way. The fiber is broken and very short, and up to a few months ago the mills sold it to stuff bedding with. Its price was about half that of average cotton. The negroes in the south were 'the buyers generally, but occasionally tho mills would get a good big order from concerns that made pillows and mattresses. Suddenly somebody found out that it could be made to imitate felt for cheap hats. The experiment then of making bats of liuters was tried on a large scale this winter by a New York hat fao-tory, fao-tory, and the hats were sold to retailers for introduction very cheaply. The test showed that the hats stood wear, and the oil mills were at once called on by the manufacturers to make contracts for ' all the linters they could get off the cotton cot-ton seed. Now linters has gone away up in price, and is only a few cents a pound cheaper than cotton. The discovery is likely to have a lowering effect upon the kind of. derbies which have sold for $3, and in fact some merchants are already using the linters derbies as "leaders" for . their other goods, selling them at half - the cost of the felt hat. St. Lj01obe- i Democrat. - |