ROBBED BY THE SHINGLE

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 2

ROBBED BY THE SHINGLE

While hairdressers are thriving and prospering as a ra?t>,lt of the short-hair fashions which reign supreme on the Continent and in America as well as in Britain, the 'women of Northern China, who of late years have produced practically the whole of the world's supply of hair-nets, now find their occupation gone. In Chefoo alone, according to recent statistics, more than 16,000 out of 18,500 girls and women employed in this industry are workless and dependent for food on the beneficence of a missionary society. The growth and spread of this industry was very remarkable. It was introduced into China by the Germans only about eighteen years ago. Before the war, Alsace-Lorraine, Galicia and Bohemia were 'the centres of manufacture, though China produced , a good deal of the hair used. During the war, however, China captured the market and has continued to hold it since. The reasons for this were that Chinese hair is the most suitable for hairnets, as it is coarser and stronger than the Western woman's hair, and is better able to withstand the bleaching, dyeing and fumigating processes to which it has to be submitted. The raw material is not expensive, and the labour 'employed is, according to our standards, incredibly cheap.

In the early da'ys the hair was shipped, to Europe or Am'erica for the preliminary processes, but latterly ninetenths of the hair used has been prepared in China. Young girls are the main sufferersfrom the slump in hair-nets which has come in wi'th (Messrs Shingle, Bingle, and Bob, writes Josephine Vincent in a Home paper. The industry is on& which is carried on mainly in the village homes of the workers. They are paid a halfpenny a net and each net entails the. tying of a thousand knots.

The work is dtoue with a brass shuttle and a bamboo splint. A nail is driven into a table and to 'this the first loop is attached. The hair is wound round the shuttle like thread on a hobbin, and as each loop is tiled it is slipped on the bamboo splint, just as in knitting one casts a stitch on a knitting needle. 'Clever workers can make as many as twenty nets a day, and 'the lOd they get for it amply suffices for their maintenance, sometimes even leaves a little over for the family. ■ The hair is supplied to the workers mostly by the native firms, who afterwards collec't the finished articles by the gross and sell to wholesale firms in 'Chefoo. .Many of these companiesengaged trained 'teachers from Chefoo to instruct the girls (it takes about a month to achieve proficiency) free of charge, merely stipulating that their future output should be sold exclusively to 'the company that provided the training.

There is hardly a modern girl to-day who has ever worn a hair-net, yet in 1920 no fewer than 140 million were exported to America from one port in China, and the total annual export amounted to a couple of million pounds sterling. 'So fashion is killing yet another thriving industry, and just as the ostrich feather has departed, with the picture hat. so the hair-mst has gone out with the arrival of 'the shingled head.