MOUSE-POWER MILLS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 16.

MOUSE-POWER MILLS.

DAVID HATTON, a Scotchman, who lived early in the last century, says in an old pamphlet that recently came to light: "In the summer of the year 1812 I had occasion to be in Perth, and, when inspecting the toys and trinkets that were manufactured by the French prisoners in the depot there, my attention was involuntarily attracted by a little toy house with a wheel in the gable of it, which was running rapidly round, impelled by the insignificant gravity of a common house mouse. For a shilling I purchased house, mouse, and wheel. Inclosing it in a handkerchief, on my journey homeward I was compelled to contemplate its favorite amusement. But how to apply half-ounce power, which is the weight of a mouse, to a useful purpose, was a difficulty. At length the manufacturing of sewing thread seemed the most practicable." So he began the production of thread by mouse power.

Hatton had one mouse that ran eighteen miles a day. He proved that an ordinary mouse could run ten and a half miles on an average. A half-penny's worth of oatmeal was sufficient for its support for thirty-five days, during which it ran 736 miles. He had two mice constantly employed in the making of sewing thread for more than a year. The mouse thread-mill was so constructed that the common mouse was enabled to make atonement to society for past offenses by twisting, twining, and reeling from 100 to 120 threads a day, Sundays not excepted. A half-penny's worth of oatmeal served one of these thread-mill workers for the long period of five weeks. In that time it made 3,350 threads of twenty-five inches.

As 2 cents was paid to women for every hank of thread made in the ordinary way, the mouse, at that rate, earned $1.80 a year. Take 12 cents off for board, and, allowing 24 cents for machinery, there was a clear yearly profit from each mouse of $1.44. Hatton firmly intended to apply for the loan of the old, empty cathedral in Dunfermline, which would have held, he calculated, 10,000 mouse mills, sufficient room being left for keepers and some hundreds of spectators. Death, however, overtook the inventor before his project could be carried out.—Chicago News.