Clipping:Harwood & Sons baseball manufacture
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| Date | Sunday, June 2, 1889 |
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| Text | The base-ball of today, as produced at Natick... is made by hand. The laborers employed in the work are nearly all girls. The spherical core, of best rubber, is first carefully wrapped with a given amount of the most costly yarn. When the ball has thus grown to about two-thirds of the size it is to be a leather cover is stitched on with a needle and waxed thread. This cover has the effect of keeping the ball compact and in shape and of regulating its elasticity. Then more yarn is wound upon it, until it is found to turn the scales at precisely the right point. Finally the outer cover of horsehide is sewn on, and the ball, after being stamped and again weighed to make sure that it is just five ounces, is wrapped in tin foil, put into a box with five more like it, and declared ready for sale. The cover, as an examination of a base-ball will show you, is stamped out of the leather in but two curiously shaped pieces, which, sewn on the ball, together exactly cover it. This device was not invented until 1865. The cheaper grades of base-balls are made of poorer yarn and rubber scraps, the latter pressed into a pulp by powerful machinery. T he less expensive the ball the less yarn and more scraps will be sued in its manufacture until, when you get to the “Small Boy's Own,” price five cents, there is nothing to be found inside the flimsy cover but melted remnants of rubber shoes. |
| Source | Chicago Tribune |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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