First installment of a series by a Bradford Technical College chemistry and dyeing professor on how faults in textile cloth originate, with emphasis on those affecting the dyer. It argues for cooperation among spinner, manufacturer, dyer and finisher, and sets out a twelve-heading classification of defect causes. It then begins the first heading, defective raw material, covering wool (kemps, mixed wool qualities, skin wool, diseased-fleece stains, colored fibres, sulphide stains), silk, artificial silk and the start of cotton (dead cotton).

Part I of Walter M. Gardner's 1896 technical treatise on wool dyeing, reprinted from the Textile Recorder. It covers the structure and chemistry of the wool fibre, wool scouring (yolk, scouring agents, machinery, solvent processes), wool bleaching (sulphur, peroxide and permanganate methods), and water supply and purification for the dyehouse. It is illustrated with diagrams of skin sections, fibres and machinery, plus tables for hardness testing and peroxide strength, and ends with an index and list of illustrations. Dyeing proper (mordants and dyes) is left to Parts II and III.