The manufacture of hats, tights, vests, slips, slippers and other items in wool or in wool and silk, called castor fur and vicuna wool: see Wool, Silk, Beaver, and Vicuña.

Hosiers buy wool and give it to the workers who put it through operations which allow it to be used for their goods. These preparations are more or less the same as for drapery: see the article Drapery.

Three of these preparations — sorting, scouring, and blending — which are also mentioned in the article Drapery, are done by the hosiers, only the carding and spinning are done elsewhere.

The first job for the Hosier is to be careful of the roguery of the carder and spinner; he can be fooled about the thread, as to how fine it is; he can be tricked as to the quantity of wool that is returned to him as thread, in that the quantity can be reduced by increasing the weight by an addition of oil. Example : in the blending of twelve pounds of wool which is done by the Hosier, he adds three pounds of oil; this makes fifteen pounds of weight: however the pound of wool can go for as much as four francs and the pound of oil only goes for twelve sols; [1] the carder and the spinner can therefore be tempted to substitute oil for wool.

The hosier will estimate the quality of the spinning using a machine similar to that of the cloth maker. See the article Drapery. It is a warping wheel that indicates the number of warps or twists around it and therefore the length of the thread, which one can always compare with the weight. It is clear that the quality of the weave is calculated in direct relation to the number of warps and in inverse relation to the weight, and that the weave is finer with a greater number of warps, and a lighter final weight.

When it comes to the quantity of the wool, if he wants to be assured of the loyalty of the worker, he need only weigh it upon receiving it, and after having perfectly sorted it, fifteen pounds of sorted wool will have originally contained the three pounds of oil which they will have received in the blending and the weight of the remaining wool should be twelve pounds, provided there hasn’t been any waste in the carding and spinning: however there is waste, and this waste is estimated at two ounces in a pound of 16 ounces.

The Hosier receives spun wool, and distributes it to the makers of stockings and to knitters, for their use: these people return to him wool used in the products that we have discussed above. But do not think that these products can then be sold; they must pass through a great number of operations as we will explain, and which are properly the work of the Hosier manufacturer; these operations are also done normally by him.

The first of these operations is called the press . The press requires the construction of a machine such as the one we see in the plate [II] for the Hosier, straight ahead in figure 1 and from the side in figure 3 . This machine is called the press . The press has been constructed until now in oak, but due to not lasting and not being solid, Mr. Pichard, Merchant hosier manufacturing on rue Mouffetard has decided to make it from stone.

The form of the stone press is the same as that of the wooden press, which we will describe because it is much more common. Abcd in figure 1 is an indented board of oak. The indents a e e d have been made to facilitate the action of the arms of the worker. The bottom of the press f in figure 3 is made of a strong board of oak pressed onto the structure of sloped wood h i k l . Between the beaters m n o p and under this structure, is placed a large wicker basket. On the back f of the press is nailed up an oblong board, about one-foot high and a bit longer in width, this board is pierced with rows of holes, around 120 in number. We take cows’ teeth which are wound with threads and pushed into these holes. This board f mounted with cow’s teeth is called the rack . We see in the same Plate on the Hosier, figure 7 , the separated rack. It is better that the rack, instead of being nailed to the back of the press, is freed, such that only the teeth are not flush, and this is what Mr. Pichard has done in his. The taps, g g give at your discretion into the press, hot water which comes from a boiler B figure 2 , sitting on a furnace C , under which you notice a little pyre D and above it a reservoir of cold water which supplies the boiler B .

To press the wool, you open the taps g, g , figure 3 , hot water falls into the press: the worker has soap in a linen cloth bag; he takes the bag and swishes it around in the hot water. The use of the bag is a good precaution: this way he only puts into the water the finest soap particles; bigger ones would stain the product. This soapy water is called new water . When the new water is ready, the worker takes from the board 1,2,3,4,5, from position 1, a quantity of the product called a handful . If these are men’s socks, you only need a pair to make a handful. This handful has already undergone many preparations in the press, before passing into the new water, as we will see in the following operation that we describe. The worker presses this handful: his work consists of turning, returning and pressing his handful many times on the teeth of the rack; making sure, at every moment, to make it touch the water that rises in the press, up to the second row of teeth nearest to the bottom. He continues his operation for at least a good hour, taking care not to press it dry, as the product would become breakable. That done, he wrings the water out of his work well, folds it and puts it in the basket that is under the press.

His work squeezed into the basket, he opens the taps g, g ; water falls into the press; this is called heating up . This water heated up a first time is called pressed water . The pressed water being prepared, the worker takes a handful of work from position 2; he puts this handful in the pressed water, stirs it, and begins to press it a bit. This manoeuvre lasts one quarter of an hour, at the end of this time, instead of throwing the work into the basket, he returns it to the board at position 1, after having wrung it out.

Having done this, he reheats the water: this water is called the scouring water : he takes another handful at position 3; there is black soap in a barrel, he rubs into his handful about ½ pound of it, then he stirs it into the water and presses it strongly on the rack to bring out the grease. This manoeuvre takes ¼ of an hour: at the end of this time he takes his handful and puts it on the board at position 2.

He reheats the water and this reheated water is called greasy water. He takes another handful from position 4; he puts it in the greasy water without rubbing it with soap, he just stirs it and presses it firmly against the rack. He does this for ¼ hour; at the end of which he wrings his handful and puts it on the board at position 3.

This time, he does not reheat, he simply takes a new handful from position 5, this handful is such as has come directly from the hands of the maker with no preparation at all. He throws this handful into the water, stirs it and squeezes it against the teeth. He does this for a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time he wrings it and puts it on the board at position 4.

Having done this, he empties the press by a plug which is at the bottom and he washes it carefully. When the press is well washed, he again puts new water to begin again the suite of operations that we have just described and of which the pressing consists.

We see from this that we have presumed the pressing was ongoing, but if it hadn’t been, we would have made some new water with some black soap and the work would have continued in the order that we have prescribed: but the beginning would have been costly and would not have given as perfect a product. The goal of the pressing is to degrease and to render the product stronger and tighter.

The worker is paid three sous per handful: but all of the products are not equally difficult. Men’s stockings from Segovia are the most difficult; women’s stockings come in at two pairs per handful. The work of pressing that is the least difficult is the skullcaps made of castor, [2] since they come in at eight per handful.

If you want a nice product, you must not press with beaters nor with a mill, these two methods render the stockings tough and unequally pressed.

The second operation is to form the garment . Coming out of the press, in the same day, you must form the products: if they are allowed to dry, they can no longer be formed without dampening, which would ruin them. The form is nothing but a flat piece of beech wood, the shape of which is, properly speaking, the profile of the garment to be formed. It is put inside the pressed products, which are stretched tightly over it, with little nails [3] which are tacked either onto the product or onto a border on which is laid out what we have attached: normally you put borders on women’s petticoats. The work is left on the form until it is dry, which requires at least twelve hours, without either fire or sun. If one is in a hurry, one brings the products into a hot room or cabinet heated by a wood burning stove: the products will only need one hour to dry but it is better to leave them to dry in the air.

The third operation is to mend . This is nothing more than to repair the faults in the garments, either from the stocking loom or from the press. This repair is done with a needle and with the same material. It must be as solid and as clean as possible.

The fourth operation is the draping . To drape you use a double pin ; this double pin is a type of iron fork, such as we see in figure 5 . On each prong a thistle has been mounted which we call the hosier’s thistle or a draper’s , or a tanner’s ; these thistles can move themselves or turn on the two prongs and are stopped there by a little board which goes across it and a lock which crosses them. The worker takes the back of this fork between the index and middle finger in his right hand; places his work on his left knee, which a little step keeps elevated and passes over the two thistles until he sees that enough fuzz has formed. As they roll over the product, the thistles fill up with the fluff. When they have too much there is a card such as that in figure 6 on which we roll them, and that is called the defluffer .

The fifth operation is called clipping . This operation is very delicate and you need skill to go fast and not to clip in steps [ en échelle ] or unevenly: to achieve this the clipper straps himself into a belt such as we see in figure 8 ; it has an ordinary buckle at its end, and it passes through a piece of wood in the shape of a heart, with the point cut and in the middle of which we have made a square opening. He puts this piece of wood, called the bearing , on his right side. He takes in his left hand a roller or round piece of wood, covered in twill, as we see in figure 10 . This roller or piece of wood is a foot long and four inches in diameter. He places his work on this roller, across it if it is a stocking; he presses the long blade of his scissors into the opening of the bearing; he grasps both of them, and opening and closing his scissors rapidly he removes the large hairs from the top of the work, making sure to turn the roller bit by bit, so that the surface of the work to be clipped follows the surface already clipped and presents itself continually to the scissors.

We call fluff , both the wool brushed up by the thistle, and that which comes from the scissors; this product of the draper and of the clipping is used to fill the teeth of new cards, when it is feared that being too long, they will tear the wool. We also sell it to workers who have found the secret to make of it a kind of carpet called clippings . The fluff is worth four sous for one-pound weight.

It is surprising that a use has been found for the fluff from the wool and that one has not yet been found for the gauze , although the one seems much easier than the other. By the collected gauze we mean, that portion of string and of silk which is removed with the scissors from the top of the products, when they are made, to finish them. See Gauze: one burns this material or this mass of little white threads whiter than the snow. However, it has not occurred to anyone that good use could very well be made of them in papermaking: perhaps that paper made entirely from this material would be brittle; but if mixed with chiffon I don’t doubt that it would contribute to the whiteness and the fineness: I invite the paper manufacturers to give it a try. If this attempt were successful, there would be a considerable gain to be made by the first people to undertake it because these remnants of string and silk amount, at end of one year, in the workshop of a gauze maker who is somewhat dedicated, add up to a very considerable mass and they are available for nothing or for very little.

The sixth operation is the dyeing . After the clipping the products made of white wool are dyed or sent to the dyer; because for the products made from pre-dyed wool, some carded and coloured wool remains. See , for the mixing of dyed wools so as to produce the desired colour the article Drapery. See also Dyeing.

Seventh operation. The products that have been dyed must be reviewed. By review we mean to pass over them with the thistle, which we call clarifying , and to clip them again.

Eighth operation . When the products have passed through all these previous operations, they are pressed or they are panned . The Hosier’s press is nothing special; it is like that of the bookbinder and some other workers. The action of the press is to make them look finer. To pan is to moderately heat over the fire in a pan, called a panner .  [4] The panner expands the wool and makes the merchandise seem softer and warmer, but also thicker, which not everybody likes.

All that remains for the Hosier to do after that, is to store his merchandise inside wardrobes and make sure that it isn’t attacked by worms.

The Hosiers of Paris are without doubt some of the finest in Europe and the best in the kingdom. Out of fear that they would lose their reputation due to inferior products being distributed under their name, the king decided three times (in 1713, 1716 and 1721), to order that hosiery products presented at the gates of Paris would be inspected by customs and to this effect it was declared: 1. to the keeper of gates and barriers of Paris, under threat of one month imprisonment, and of revocation in the case of recidivism, to send to the customs office all travelling merchants, transporters and coach drivers and messengers who are found in possession of hosiery , made either on the loom or with the needle, to deliver packages to them, to take a security deposit proportionate to the quantity of the merchandise and even to drive them; 2. in cases where people were found to disobey, to seize [the goods] and to write up an account and report of the seizures within 24 hours; 3. to the lieutenant of police, to order in these cases what will belong to him; 4. that one third of the products seized fraudulently be awarded to the clerk.

The Hosiers are the fifth of six merchant guilds of Paris. They are authorised to sell cloth caps, wool caps, stockings, gloves, socks, vests, shorts and other similar products made on the loom, by knitting, by needlework, in wool, in thread, in linen, fur, castor, cotton and other weavable materials.

Hosiers mean, by castor stockings , or other products bearing this name, those which are made with spun wool and twisted then with some silk. These products are treated, when leaving the hands of the manufacturer, exactly as if they were all wool.

In the statutes of the Hosiery trade granted by Henry IV in 1608, the Hosiery merchants are called Almucemakers-Mittenmakers because in the old days it was they who made bonnets fit for the head when travelling [almuces], and who sold mittens. See Almuce. [5] Following these statutes one cannot be received into the guild before one has turned 25 and without having worked for five years as an apprentice and five more years as a journeyman and without having produced a masterpiece.

The Hosiers have their Coat of Arms; it is blue with a silver fleece surrounded by five sailboats, also in silver, three above and two at the sides; and a confraternity established in the Church of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie, under the protection of Saint Fiacre.

At the head of the guild are six Masters or six Guards. Three are called elders . The oldest of the three is called the First or the Chief Guard , the three others are called new guards . One cannot be elected as first guard if one has not been a new guard.

The election of two guards is held every year after the Saint Michel, in the Hosiery [guild] offices; specifically, of one elder for the second time and one new [guard] for the first time; such that two emerge, the chief guard and the first of the three new guards. The election is by majority vote in the presence of the crown attorney [ procureur du Roi ] of the Châtelet [court] and a court clerk.

The ceremonial garb of the six guards is a consular robe, that is, a robe of black fabric, with a collar, with hanging sleeves edged in black velvet.

In the accounts that the guards must render, they are heard by six elders no longer in office, nominated by a majority.

When an elder guard dies, the last four guards in office are required to attend his funeral procession in robes, each one to hold a corner of the coffin, which is provided by the office; with six candles of white wax, to which is attached the coat of arms of the guild.

This fifth guild was created in 1716 from the community of master hosiers and that of workers in knitwear from the faubourgs . [6]

This merger gave rise to contestations; these contestations would increase further when the community was expanded to include the makers of stockings on the loom. In order to end these squabbles, brought about by the different regulations each body had before the merger, which each wished to retain after it, an arrêt de conseil was issued in 1716 and came into effect in 1718, which ordered:

1. That the community of hosiers from the faubourgs will be dissolved and will continue to be merged into the guild of the Hosiers.
2. That those received as masters in the faubourgs before the merger, will be considered masters in the city and may open a boutique there.
3. That they, their widows and their children, will enjoy the rights of the Hosiers of Paris

The rest of these regulations can be found in the dictionary of Commerce, [7] with the eight articles which it was necessary to add when the manufacturers of stockings on the loom joined the Hosiers of the city and the faubourgs . See also the article Stockings made on the loom.

I will finish this article with a fact that may be useful to another merchant hosier as to Mr. Pichard. It is a constant that there is no well-maintained press which doesn’t consume at least sixpence of water per day and a merchant hosier can have up to 6, 8, 10 presses; which means that water alone is a considerable expense. Mr. Pichard spoke one day of this expense before a man born blind (who figures in the Lettre sur les aveugles  [8] and in the article Blind) and this blind man gave him advice which hadn’t yet been given as long as hosiery was practiced: to use his well-water; this wasn’t difficult to find, will say those who don’t know that well water is very hard and won’t take on soap easily, which means that it is not possible to use it in hosiery. But our blind man knew very well, by his own experience of distillation, that this same well-water distilled became very absorbent, it took on soap very easily, and even used much less of it that the river water, to produce the same effect.

He knew also that the work of hosiery required that fire be kept constantly under the water heater that supplies water to the presses. He therefore advised Mr. Pichard to place a bit still between two heaters, which would receive the water as it was distilled and would put it back in the presses. The still of the press of Mr. Pichard is a unique shape, it is concave at the bottom and presents a large surface to the fire; a considerable mass of steam rises from it constantly; it is placed in such a way that it is heated by the same fire that maintains the heat of the water heaters and it supplies to the presses water which costs nothing, which saves on soap and which presses better than the river water.

1. An older name for sous, pence or penny.

2. Wool mixed with silk, described by the author further on in the article.

3. Also referred to as tenterhooks, in English.

4. The panner is shown in figure 11 of plate II of the Hosiery plates. It is also described in the article, “Catissoire,” as a ‘a pot used by the Hosier with nothing special about it but its name’.

5. Wikipedia describes an Almuce as a “hood-like shoulder cape worn as a choir vestment in the Middle Ages.” See the article for a full description.

6. In the eighteenth century, the faubourgs were neighborhoods outside the city gates and those within them that were under the jurisdiction of privileged entities such as religious communities or members of the royal family.

7. The reference is to Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce, of which there were many editions in the eighteenth century.

8. Here Diderot is referring to his own 1749 work, translated as Letter on the Blind in a 1916 edition of Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works by Margaret Jourdain.