TEXTILE EDUCATION 
 AMONG THE PURITANS. 
 
 BY 
 
 C. J. H. WOODBURY, Sc. D. 
 
 Read before 
 
 The Bostonian Society, 
 
 COUNCIL CHAMBER, OLD STATE HOUSE. 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 April 18th, 1911. 
 
^^^// 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924094767898 
 
TEXTILE EDUCATION 
 AMONG THE PURITANS. 
 
 BY 
 
 C. J. H. WOODBURY, Sc. D. 
 
 Read before 
 
 The Bostonian Society, 
 
 COUNCIL CHAMBER, OLD STATE HOUSE, 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 April 18th, 1911 
 
TEXTILE EDUCATION AMONG THE PURITANS. 
 
 The more spectacular religious and governmental oppressions 
 of that day often overshadow the economic conditions which 
 were fundamental elements in the settlement of New England 
 by the English. 
 
 England had been growing poorer in common with conti- 
 nental Europe. Population had gradually grown, and the 
 primitive conditions of husbandry failed to increase crops com- 
 mensurate with the greater consumption, and handiwork had 
 not received the aid of machinery to develop the larger pro- 
 duction of cloth. 
 
 None are too poor to fight and the burden of wars, both civil 
 and foreign, throughout Europe perhaps developed irritation 
 and discontent of poverty which made taxation by the state and 
 rates of the church especially onerous burdens. The whole 
 story of daily existence in Europe was told by the Pilgrim author 
 in three words, " Life was hard." 
 
 The details of war, rather that the greater victories of peace, 
 usurp the pages of history, and in like manner the printed books 
 of colonial days are largely devoted to polemics among the clergy, 
 relations with the Indians, and a great amount of petty legislation 
 inevitable with the conditions of a new country, while the events 
 of daily life which led to substantial results in the founding of a 
 nation were rarely printed, and such as exist were, for the most 
 part, found in old letters, inventories and accounts. 
 
 Outside of the daily press, a comparable condition as to the 
 record of commercial affairs, exists with us today. 
 
 Of the many in England discontented with their lot, there 
 
were some who had available resources sufficient to come to 
 Massachusetts Bay, which had been visited for many years and 
 mapped for over twenty years. 
 
 PROSPERITY OF THE PURITAN COLONISTS. 
 
 Whatever may have been the desires of many to emigrate, 
 travelling to colonize was an expensive matter, available only to 
 the prosperous. 
 
 The selective character of the New England colonists was 
 as well understood as it is today, and in a sermon WiLLIAM 
 StougHTON said, " God sifted a whole nation that he might 
 send choice Grain over into this Wilderness." 
 
 The Puritan pioneers were not poverty stricken refugees, and 
 their sufferings were largely due to ignorance of more severe 
 climatic conditions than those of the old country, which they 
 were not prepared to meet, and it was merely a lack of available 
 resources at the first. 
 
 It is strictly in line with what is to be presented in this paper 
 on their fertile expedients to provide themselves with cloth that 
 a reference should be made to their domestic ingenuity such as 
 their origin of banking around houses, placing clay between the 
 studding and keeping it in place with clay-boards, now known 
 as clap-boards, anticipating building-paper, by birch bark under 
 shingles which has been known to last over a century, and packing 
 houses with seaweed to keep out all land vermin, — later the sub- 
 ject material of a patent not yet expired. In their meeting 
 houses was originated the closed pew, in place of open benches 
 of the old country with their inevitable drafts. The origin of 
 foot-stoves has eluded all my searches for an answer, but I cannot 
 learn that they were ever known in England, although the 
 later introduction of large stoves into meeting houses divided 
 at least one parish at the time of the Arminian schism. 
 
 Whenever a glimpse of their daily life can be obtained, there 
 is found most fertile resourcefulness of method. 
 
 It has been estimated that the fifteen hundred who came to 
 Salem in 1628-30 brought with them property to the amount of 
 
fully a million dollars. Silks, furs, and plate abounded in the 
 colony and yet in a few years there was such a shortage of cloth 
 that sheep skin garments became a necessity. 
 
 The dress of the period for both men and women in circum- 
 stances to have their portraits painted, which appears to be the 
 best measure of prosperity and social standing in early days, 
 was elaborate in cut, color, and decoration, and the right to the 
 dress of the gentleman or the gentlewoman was fixed by statute 
 in Massachusetts Bay, as it was in England, limiting the privi- 
 leges of wearing gold and silver lace and other ornaments to 
 those of estates above certain amounts. 
 
 Inventories and also correspondence with the old country, 
 ordering outfits, contain a vast amount of dandified detail. 
 
 Wherever there were instances of unusual prosperity, condi- 
 tions akin to an aristocracy prevailed. The prosperous class 
 were Tories almost to a man as they or their wives did not wish 
 the supply of luxuries of dress from abroad stopped. The 
 Revolution by the impoverishment or the expatriation of these 
 Tories brought these aristocratic assumptions to an end. 
 
 Later simplicity leading to fashions of the present day in 
 men's garb, at least, may have been forced by the scarcity of 
 varied fabrics and more especially the material for ornamentation. 
 
 Although I shall run from the Colony to the Province, as the 
 facts may lead, the purpose of this paper is to call attention to 
 the fertility of mental resources exercised by this seashore colony 
 in providing themselves with cloth when a sufficient supply 
 could not be obtained'from the mother country, and vexatious 
 as her commercial prohibitions may have appeared, it is evident 
 that the earlier laws of this nature were defensive, because 
 England had not the wool to spare. The Pilgrim writer claimed 
 that " warrs had kept down the sheepe." 
 
 Two irrelevent conditions proved to be of vital benefit to the 
 Colony, first : the efforts of Elizabeth to reform the methods of 
 taxation, by equalization as people had means to pay without 
 undue distress and not to rest directly upon agriculture, had 
 not been fully developed under Charles the first, and indeed 
 
contains open questions to this day; but she performed one 
 act ultimately of untold value to the colonists of Massachusetts 
 Bay, who came from the eastern counties of England in the 
 very territory where she had colonized spinners and weavers 
 from the Netherlands and these people had taught others of 
 their skill, so that these Puritan emigrants were the best equipped 
 of all England to spin and weave. 
 
 The general exercise of such skill undoubtedly became a 
 necessity rather than an early intention among the Colonists. 
 
 Another condition helpful to the Colony was the fact that the 
 increasing scarcity of meat had impelled those living in the 
 shore countries of England and Europe to go after fish, and 
 finding the great supply of cod in the north Atlantic they sailed 
 the high seas and developed a race of skilled navigators from 
 Scandanavia to the Mediterranean, who traversed the ocean to 
 great distances in small boats whose return to port was evidence 
 of bold seamanship. 
 
 While Endicott's Colony did not contain many fishermen, 
 those of the Dorchester Colony which came from Devonshire, 
 which reaches from the English Channel to the Bristol Channel, 
 who earlier came to Cape Ann and thence to Salem, and the 
 Manxmen who later came to Marblehead, — and brought their 
 dialect with them, — were fishermen, who added to the strength 
 of the little Colony whose fortunes they shared. 
 
 .THE PURITAN PURPOSE. 
 
 While the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony recites 
 its purpose to be the conversion of the Indians to the Christian 
 religion, yet it is an historical fact that the Puritans came over 
 for business rather than for sentiment, and when a Marble- 
 header interrupted the minister with " we came here to fish, 
 and not to worship God," he undoutedly vied with the sermon 
 in an irreverent declaration of truth, with out any disparagement 
 to the " soundness " of the longer discourse from the pulpit. 
 
 They intended to catch fish for the English market, but in 
 fact, were forced to send them to the West Indies and Spain in 
 
order to obtain cotton and wool. They expected to buy beaver 
 skins from the Indians on their own terms, but the savages were 
 such keen traders that the struggle for self-preservation 
 developed the proverbial Yankee shrewdness. 
 
 They expected to depend upon the old country for supplies, 
 even to their drink, for there was such a general belief in England 
 that the water in America was unfit for drink, owing doubtless 
 to the brackishness of tide-washed springs at the shore where 
 early travelers filled their water butts, that Endicott's fleet was 
 ballasted with casks of ale. 
 
 Even angle worms were brought over for bait in fresh water 
 fishing and the English angle worm, a different species from 
 those indigenous to this country, still exists in some localities. 
 
 It may be difficult to state their economic intentions other 
 than to remain a loyal, subservient colony, but the neglect of 
 the Mother Country followed by repressive commercial legisla- 
 tion developed their mental resources into an independent 
 condition, a century before it was one of record. 
 
 No one with facts at hand can pretend that this was a land 
 of liberty, for there was greater personal freedom in England 
 as the very fact of the thousands of non-conformists who 
 remained there, either in relative peace or to fight out their 
 differences, attests. 
 
 This colony was no democracy, Governor JOHN WiNTHROP, 
 the broadest mind among them, inveigled most bitterly against 
 general representation. The first freemen were qualified May 
 1 8, 1 63 1, and a count of those so elevated above their fellow- 
 men up to 1641 when the population was first known, showed 
 that out of a colony of 21,000, there had been 1,293 qualified 
 as freemen although on account of death and returns to Eng- 
 land, the maximum number at any one time was probably less 
 than 1,000 freemen, 
 
 In a country fringing the seacoast, although their charter 
 conferred jurisdiction westerly to the " South Sea," yet theyv 
 were content with the judgment of an exploring party sent out 
 from Salem who reported that the country was not worth the 
 
while of more than one plantation running back a league from 
 the sea, save at some places where two leagues might be worth 
 the while. 
 
 These pioneers were of that middle English stock still feeling 
 the pride of strength from the advancement which they had 
 received at the expense of the prestige of the aristocracy as 
 some of the results of the wars of the Roses which rehabilitated 
 England, except as to the condition of the peasant farm laborers 
 which continued as before. 
 
 The extent to which this httle band fringed between the 
 savages and the deep sea developed their own self reliance is 
 shown by the manner in which they applied the principles of law, 
 developed under generations of monarchies, to the solution of 
 problems of local self government, and beyond that they initiated 
 new functions of government, notably the written ballot, trade 
 schools, industrial statistics, free public education, the town 
 government, the separation of church and state, citizen militia, 
 printed paper money and the record of deeds and mortgages. 
 Well did Carlyle characterize the people who showed such an 
 initiative as " the last of the heroisms." 
 
 COTTON AT THE TIME OF THE COLONY. 
 
 The relation of England and the North American colonies to 
 cotton contain some unexpected anomalies. 
 
 Cotton appears to have been the oldest known fabric in the 
 Orient, where its use for cloth is prehistoric and uninterrupted 
 to this day. It was mentioned in the Old Testament, in Greek 
 and Roman writers ; it was related with strange exaggerations 
 by early travelers to the East as Marco Polo and Sir JOHN 
 Mandeville, and was used for clothing as far to the West as 
 the army of JULIUS C^SAR. 
 
 All of the early explorers to the portions of the western 
 hemisphere where cotton was indigenous mention this plant and 
 its use for cloth. 
 
 It must have been well known to the Crusaders who brought 
 most of the luxuries to England and northern Europe. It must 
 
have been within the academic knowledge of the clergy and 
 scholars of the laity in England, yet there did not appear to be 
 any general use or even knowledge of cotton cloth in England 
 until long after continental Europe and New England. 
 
 The earliest reference to cotton in an English book as far as 
 I have been able to learn, is in " Nova Britannica ; Offering 
 Most Excellent Fruits of Planting in Virginia," London, 1609, 
 in which the statement is made that cotton would grow as well 
 in that province as in Italy. 
 
 "A Declaration of the State of Virginia," London, 1620, 
 mentions cotton among the " naturall commodities dispersed up 
 and downe the divers parts of the world all of which may be had 
 in abundance in Virginia." 
 
 It should be noted that these citations refer to prospective 
 cultivation of cotton, rather than to it as a commercial com- 
 modity, and passing by certain references in letters, the earliest 
 mention in an English book of cotton as merchandise to 
 be received in England is said to be " Treasure of Traffic," by 
 Lewis Roberts, 1641, in which it is related that cotton woole 
 had been received in London from islands in the Mediterranean 
 and thence sent to Manchester. Later records show that it 
 was used for beds, and I have been unable to find any refer- 
 ence precisely indicating when cotton spinning and weaving 
 was begun in England. 
 
 Barbadoes and other of the West Indies were settled by the 
 English at about the same time as Massachusetts Bay, and cotton 
 from these islands was sent to England as well as to American 
 colonists. Obstructive navigation laws were a hindrance to its 
 importation, and the spinning of this fibre in the old country 
 must have been conducted from the first on a very limited scale, 
 and evidently without that commercial importance, which was 
 the case in New England. 
 
 The Poor Law of ELIZABETH, 1601, cites the raw materials 
 used in manufacture, and yet makes no reference to cotton, as 
 would have been the case if it was spun at that day. 
 
 Samuel Pepys records in his diary, February 27, 1663-64, 
 
10 
 
 " Great good company at dinner, among others Sir Martin 
 NOELL, who told us the dispute between him as farmer of the 
 Additional Duty, and the East India Company, whether callicos 
 be linnen or no, which he says it is, having ever been esteemed 
 so; they say it is madeof cotton woole which grows upon trees 
 and not like flax or hemp. But it was carried against the 
 company, though they stand out against the verdict." 
 
 Would that we knew the results of the appeal against the 
 intrepidity of ignorance in this departmental ruling, but the 
 gossipy diarist does not make any later, record on the subject, 
 and as he would have gloated over the discomfiture of the 
 reversal of the ruling, it is assumed that the Calicut cloth was 
 legally adjudged to be " some sort of linnen." 
 
 Yet the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was legislating upon 
 " cotton woole " as a well-known commercial raw material twenty- 
 four years before this time. 
 
 Two notes of record on the early use of cotton in this country 
 may be revelant in this connection. 
 
 Christopher Columbus, who was the son of a weaver, dis- 
 covered in this hemisphere, corn, cotton and tobacco, but does 
 not appear to have regarded them as anything out of the ordinary 
 of expected curiosities, so great was his eagerness for gold and 
 gems. In his diary he relates that after he had left the Island 
 of San Salvador on the occasion of his first landing, the natives 
 swam out to the boats, bearing balls of cotton thread as presents, 
 and later in the evening came out to the ships in their canoes, 
 with more balls of cotton, some weighing over twenty-five 
 pounds. 
 
 A few days later, he refers to cotton cloth used by the natives 
 of another island, and similar references are repeated in the 
 accounts of visiting numerous islands. 
 
 What is evidently the earhest record of cotton in this vicinity 
 is contained in the account of Champlain of his battle on the 
 west shore of Lake Champlain, July 2, 1609, where he refers to 
 arrow-proof armor worn by the chiefs, consisting of strips of 
 hard wood bound together by cotton yarn. 
 
11 
 
 This cotton could not have been raised in that vicinity, but the 
 commerce among the Indians was exclusively barter and 
 extended over long distances. 
 
 The Indians in the natural cotton belt in Georgia and the 
 Carolinas are known to have spun cotton, and although any 
 known samples of that product in the North have long gone out 
 of existence, yet if any exclusive product of the Indians at the 
 North has been found in the South, it is fair to assume that 
 cotton yarn was among the articles exchanged in the barter. 
 
 The arrow heads made of the peculiar rock of Mount Kineo, 
 at Moosehead Lake, Me., and not existing elsewhere in this 
 country, have been found in Alabama, Ohio, and Indiana, thus 
 showing the extent of their distribution. 
 
 The only original fabric of the Indians in Massachusetts which 
 has been found is the plaited rather than woven cloth made of 
 the wild hemp. 
 
 NEW ENGLAND TRADERS BEFORE THE SETTLEMENT. 
 
 When the first settlers came to Massachusetts, the Indians had 
 to a slight extent, a red cloth made of a mixture of wool and 
 flax, known as Shag, and probably as irritating as the shirt of 
 Nessus, which they had obtained from the early explorers and 
 fishermen who had sailed along the coast for nearly twenty 
 years, and they were eager to barter skins for cloth, which 
 formed the basis of the trade in beaver skins and forming an 
 important commerce for more than a generation. 
 
 The extent of these antecolonial visitations of fishermen and 
 adventurers, along the New England coast — all of them 
 traders, — is indicated by the " Welcome Englishmen ! " of 
 Samoset to the Plymouth Colonists, and the evident ease of com- 
 munication with the Indians at all the later settlements, shows 
 that it had been sufficient for the savages to learn considerable 
 of the English language. 
 
 As an instance of the measure of communication and its 
 inevitable errors at earlier dates, it will be noted that the 
 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony vested to it from 
 
12 
 
 three miles north of the Merrimack to three miles south of the 
 Charles, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the " South Sea" 
 which was supposed at the time to be a branch of the ocean 
 reaching from the west to the vicinity of the present site of 
 Albany, N. Y. 
 
 The source of this authority was from the information received 
 from the Indians by the earlier travellers, and probably resulted 
 from an attempt of the Indians to communicate some informa- 
 tion in regard to Lake Champlain, the largest body of fresh 
 water lying within the United States. 
 
 ENGLISH RESTRICTIONS UPON COMMERCE IN CLOTH. 
 
 Commerce with the Mother Country would have been beset 
 with difficulties even under the most adventitious conditions. 
 Vessels were small, rarely over lOO tons even after the Revolu- 
 tion, and generally less than half that tonnage, and could make 
 but two round voyages to England in a year. Freights were 
 ;^3 to £4 a ton, an enormous amount in those days, which 
 has been estimated as the equivalent of eight times that amount 
 at the present day. Thus without considering the obstructing 
 legislation of the Navigation Acts of England, there were legiti- 
 mate commercial difficulties in the way of obtaining a supply of 
 clothing from England, and the serious condition of affairs and 
 the remedies which were initiated were fully set forth in the acts 
 of that very paternal government, constituting the court of the 
 governor and deputies which legislated upon every conceivable 
 detail of person and property. 
 
 The English Navigation Acts, 1662- 1685, intended to secure 
 to English shipping all available commerce, among them being 
 cotton, wool, and indigo. These acts were so contrary to the 
 natural courses of trade that they were evaded and scarcely 
 enforced. 
 
 The export of sheep, wool, and woolen yarns from England to 
 the Colony was prohibited in 1665, and an export duty levied 
 on woofen cloth, and commerce between the American colonies 
 had been forbidden at an earlier day. These unwarrantable 
 
13 
 
 interferences virtually made smuggling very general among the 
 Colonists, if such a term be fairly applicable to illegal commerce 
 under such conditions. 
 
 The extent to which this repressive legislation failed of its 
 purpose is shown by the fact that the Complete Tradesman 
 issued in England in 1663 makes no mention of commerce with 
 New England as a field of export for English woolens. 
 
 It is only fair to call attention to the skill of the Florentine 
 merchants who bought the rough woolen cloth woven in Eng- 
 land and dyed and finished it in a superior manner by the skill 
 of their guilds, and not merely interfered with the English 
 market on the continent, but also sold large quantities of it at 
 a greatly augmented price in England. 
 
 The relations of CROMWELL with the Colony of Massachusetts 
 Bay were fickle, although posing as a friend, restrictive legisla- 
 tion was enacted during the protectorate. At one time he con- 
 templated joining the colony as its ruler, at another moving it to 
 Jamaica, and later to transfer it to Ireland, but the roots had 
 grown too deep. 
 
 The relations of the colony with the Mother County were 
 summed up years later by David Hartley,' who was the sole 
 commissioner on the part of Great Britain to sign the Treaty of 
 Utrecht which closed the Revolution, when he declared in the 
 House of Commons that for 150 years England had given no 
 aid or encouragement to those who sought to establish the 
 English race on these shores, but left them to battle with 
 the Indians and to defend their , own frontier, and forced the 
 Colonists to buy in her market and to pay the prices which were 
 demanded. 
 
 The Colonists realized this, and their first seal bore the Mace- 
 donian cry, " Come over and help us ! " 
 
 All parties in England appeared to be a unit in seeking to 
 keep the Colony in an absolutely dependent commercial condi- 
 tion, and to permit only agriculture, lumbering, fishing and 
 peltry. 
 
 Lord Chatham, the proverbial friend of the Colonies, stated 
 
14 
 
 that if he had his way they would not be permitted to make a 
 horseshoe nail. 
 
 Years later when Franklin as the agent of the Colonies was 
 asked by the Council in London, " Suppose the external duties 
 were to be laid on the necessaries of life? " gave the amazing 
 answer, " I do not know a single article imported into the 
 Northern Colonies but what they can either do without or make 
 themselves. The people will spin and work for themselves in 
 their own houses." 
 
 Severe as this legislation may appear, it was not vindictive, 
 but merely a correspondence course in stupidity. England was 
 poor and needed money, therefore she taxed everything avail- 
 able ; the people were poor and it was assumed that it would 
 help matters if such taxation was so framed as to drive colonial 
 customers to merchants in the Mother Country. 
 
 History repeated itself when GEORGE III. wanted the town 
 residence of the Duke of BUCKINGHAM, and the Council stated 
 that the Exchequer had no money. " Tax the American 
 Colonies !" said the King. Buckingham Palace was secured, 
 the tax levied, the minority in the Colonies ruled and the cord 
 snapped. 
 
 INSTRUCTION IN SPINNING. 
 
 Spinning and weaving were entirely domestic occupations, 
 until about the time of the Revolution, and there must have 
 been considerable manufacture of cloth during the earlier days 
 of the Colony among those who came across the Atlantic, but 
 the younger generation were not under the instructing influence 
 derived from the spinners from the Netherlands, and with the 
 distracting conditions of the new country they were not continu- 
 ing with the same skill, and heroic measures by the Colonists 
 were necessary in self-defense to make provision for clothing. 
 
 Let the acts in their sequence tell the story which abounds in 
 detail if not perspective. On November 8, 1633, the scarcity of 
 cloth had evidently begun to conform to the commercial condi- 
 tions of higher prices, as the court on that day regulated the 
 prices of many articles adding with covert threat. 
 
15 
 
 "And for lynnen & other comodities wch in regard of their close 
 stouage & small hazard may be aflforded att a cheap rate wee do 
 advise all men to be a rule to themselues in keepeing a good con- 
 science assureing them that if any man shall exceede the bounds of 
 moderacon wee shall'punish them seuerely." 
 
 Without citing more than typical acts of legislation, the first 
 measure which attempted to provide a physical remedy other 
 than attempts at commercial regulation of prices which were 
 probably as unfeasible in the face of commercial conditions then 
 as they have been ever since that time, was the act of May 13, 
 1640, which introduces provisions for industrial statistics and 
 industrial education, and indicates that somebody had been 
 thinking wisely and concluded that the time for action had 
 arrived. 
 
 "This Court takeing into serios consideration the absolute necessity 
 for the raising of the manufacture of linnen cloth, &c., doth declare 
 that it is the'intent of this Court that there shalbee an order setled 
 about it, & therefore doth require the magistrals & deputies of the 
 severall townes to acquaint the townesmen therewth, & to make inquiry 
 what seede is in every towne, what men & weomen are skilfuU in the 
 braking, spining, weaving, what meanes for the pviding of wheeles & 
 to consider wth those skilfull in that manifacture what course may bee 
 taken to raise the materials & pduce the manifacture & what course may 
 bee taken for teaching the boyes & girles in all townes the spining of 
 the yarne & to returne to the next Court their severall & ioynt advise 
 about this thing. The like consideration would bee had for the spining 
 & weaveing of cotton woole." 
 
 This was followed by the act of October 7, 1640, giving a 
 bounty of 25 per cent, for textile manufactures. 
 
 " For incuragment of the manifacture of linnen, woollen and cotton 
 clothe, it is ordered that whosoever shall make any sort of the said 
 cloathes fit for use and shall shewe the same to the next magistral or 
 to 2 of the deputies of this Court, upon certificate thereof to this Court 
 or the Court of Assistants, the party shall have alowance of 3d in the 
 shilling of the worth of such cloth according to the valewation wch shal 
 
16 
 
 bee certified wth it. And the said magistrate or deputies shall set such 
 marke upon the same cloth as it may bee found to have bene alowed for ; 
 pvided this order shall extend onely to such cloth as shalbee made 
 wthin this iurisdiction, & the yarne heare spun also, & of such materials 
 as shalbee raised also wthin the same, or else of cotton. This order to 
 continue for 3 yeares next followinge." 
 
 This was evidently not entirely satisfactory, as it was repealed 
 June 2, 1641, eight months later, and on the same date, legisla- 
 tion was passed indicating twice that the supply of cotton was 
 insufficient for the existing demand, and also refering to the wild 
 hemp which was evidently derived from the practices of the 
 Indians with this as their only indigenous source of textiles to 
 which reference has already been made. 
 
 " This Cort takeing into consideration the want of cloathing wch is 
 like to come upon us the next winter & not finding any way to supply 
 us so well as by cotton wch wee find not like to bee pvided in dew time 
 for the present want & venderstanding withall from the certain knowl- 
 edge of divrse of the court that there is a kind of wild hempe growe- 
 ing plentifully all over the countrey wch if it were gathered and 
 improved, might serve for psent supply until cotton may bee had, it is 
 therefore ordered : " 
 
 And here follows proyisions for the gathering and use of wild 
 hemp, and its spinning mornings and evenings through the 
 seasons "that the honest and profitable custom of England may 
 be continued." The latter appears to be the earliest reference 
 to spinning in the old country. 
 
 The same line of constructive legislation continues, for on 
 June 14, 1642, the following act was passed: — 
 
 "This Cort taking into consideration the great neglect of many 
 parents and masters in training up the children in learning & labor 
 & other imployments wch may bee profitable to the common wealth do 
 hereupon order & decree that in every towne the chosen men for man- 
 aging the prudenciall affaires of the same shall hencefourth stand charged 
 wth the care of the redresse of this evill. They are to take care that 
 
17 
 
 such as are set to keep cattle bee set to some other impliment withall 
 as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weveing tape, & for their better 
 pformance of this trust committed to them they may divide the towne 
 amongst them, appointing to every of the said townsmen a certeine 
 number of famiUes to have speciall oersight of, they are also to pvide that 
 a sufficient quantity of materialls as hempe, flaxe, &c., may bee raised in 
 their severall townes & tooles and implements pvided for working out the 
 same & for their assistance in this so needfuU & beneficiall impli- 
 ment, if they meete with any difficulty or opposition wch they cannot 
 well master by their owne power, they may have recorse to some of 
 the magistrates." 
 
 This "spinning upon the rock" is a unique reference not 
 known to occur contemporaneously elsewhere, relative to a 
 method of spinfiing obtained from the Indians. The rock was 
 a whorl of stone or dried clay in the form of a torus, or a round 
 doughnut in which the hole was small enough to prevent from 
 passing through the large end of the wood spindle forming the 
 distaff and in this manner acts as a small fly-wheel on the 
 spindle and also keeps it in a vertical position. The clay and 
 pottery whorls found among the Indian relics in the south-west 
 are generally covered with elaborate decorations. 
 
 On May 14, 1656, the Court enacted further legislation whose 
 preamble indicated an alarming state of affairs on the scarcity 
 of cloth, which urgently called for immediate action as set forth 
 in the act, which was in part : — 
 
 "This Cort taking into serjous consideration the present streights & 
 necessitjes that lye vppon the countrje in respect of cloathing, which is 
 not liked to be so plentifully suppljed from forraigne parts as intjmes past, 
 & not knowing any better way & meanes conduceable to our subsistence 
 then improoving as many hands as may be in spinning woole, cotton, 
 flaxe &c, — 
 
 " Itt is therefore ordered by this Court and the authoritje thereof, that 
 all hands not necessarily implojde on other occasions as woemen, girles 
 &boyes, shall and heereby are enjoyned to spinn according to theire skills 
 &abillitje ; & that the selectmen in euery toune doe consider the condi- 
 con & capacitje of euery family and, accordingly assess them at one 
 or more spinners ; & since severall familyes are necessarily imployd 
 
18 
 
 the greatest part of theire tjme in other buisness, yet if opportunitjes were 
 attended, sometjme tnight be spared at advantage by some of them for 
 this worke. Tlie sajd select men shall therefore assess such familyes at 
 half or a quarter of a spinner, according to their capacitjes ; secondly, 
 that euery one thus assessed for a whole spiner doe, after this present 
 yeare, 1656, spinn, for 30 weekes euery yeare, three pounds p weeke of 
 lining, cotton, or woolen, & the select men shall take special care for the 
 execution of this order and shall haue power to make such orders in 
 theire respective tounes for the clearing of coraons for keeping of sheepe. 
 And the deputies of the severall tounes are hereby required to impart the 
 mind of the Cort, for the saving of ye seede both of hemp & flaxe." 
 
 The dffferences in the provisions for the enforcement of the 
 acts of 1642 and 1656 reveals a change of conditions between 
 the old country and the new. 
 
 In the first instance, it was entrusted to the masters, being 
 master workmen of the EngHsh guilds who had come over pre- 
 sumably with the Salem colony fourteen years before, as there 
 had been but little other immigration, and at the time of the 
 second act, it was as much later, and these twenty-eight years 
 added to the age of a master workman of mature age at the time 
 of the settlement would bring him beyond active labor, and in 
 the sere and yellow age, if indeed living. 
 
 As the guilds were not perpetuated in this country, it became 
 necessary at the time of later legislation to use the authority of 
 officers of Colony and towns which had been established by the 
 Court in developing the government of the Colony. 
 
 This legislation indicates the wonderful scope of initiative 
 in the minds, as we find here provisions for the first public 
 education, which was vocational and textile education, and also 
 industrial statistics. 
 
 The oft quoted apt establishing free public schools sustained 
 by general taxation where our ancestors learned their letters 
 from the horn book, and in the scarcity of paper learned to write 
 and to cypher on birch bark, was not passed until 1647. 
 
 Would that we knew the man who framed the legislation 
 which met the issue so decisively, in order that later generations 
 
19 
 
 might keep him in grateful remembrance for the action which 
 undoubtedly preserved the Colony, and also served as a nucleus 
 which in due time developed the textile manufacture of New 
 England. 
 
 Such individual instruction was not accompanied by records 
 to reveal the various steps and details of the work, but the 
 more important matter of the result is known and that is, the 
 people were adequately furnished with homespun cloth or there 
 would have been further legislation, and some outcries in ser- 
 mons, account books or inventories would have furnished a 
 record. 
 
 There is however, one record which sums up the whole result 
 of this stimulus both of textile education and the provisions for 
 raw material and that is in the contemporaneous Johnson's 
 Wonder Working Providence in New England in 1652, stating 
 that the people made more than enough clothing for their own use. 
 
 Some clothing at a price did come from England as account 
 books show, but it was evidently far less than required for 
 supplying th,e needs of the people. 
 
 As woolen goods require to be fulled, the establishment of 
 fulling mills were matters of record in the sale of land, develop- 
 ment of water .power, and permits to build, in settlements 
 throughout the colony where there was a water supply for the 
 purpose, and this gives records showing the weaving of wool, 
 while the spinning and weaving of cotton being a domestic 
 handicraft, made no comparable record. 
 
 Rowley appears to have been a textile headquarters which 
 failed to develop into leading conditions for the textile manufac- 
 ture in years later, probably from lack of water power and deep 
 water transportation, as flax, hemp and cotton were woven there 
 in large quantities before 1639 and this centering of the 
 industry attracted twenty families of Yorkshire weavers to settle 
 there in 1643. 
 
 THE SUPPLY OF COTTON FOR NEW ENGLAND. 
 The acts of the General Court show that " cotton woole " was 
 
20 
 
 well known in the Colony in 1636 and various records show 
 that the earlier importation of cotton and indigo from Barba- 
 does, which appears to have been in many instances 'a generic 
 name for the West Indies, was extensive ; and this importation 
 continued until the war of 18 12. 
 
 The Desire of Salem, the largest ship of her day, returned to 
 that port in 1638 with a large supply of cotton. 
 
 The Trial, 160 tons, was the first ship built in Boston and her 
 first voyage was to St. Christophers in the West Indies for a 
 cargo of cotton. 
 
 Salt fish, staves and Indian captives were sent to that fertile 
 island in exchange for cotton, molasses, and " ye inspiring Bar- 
 badoes drynk " and negro slaves. I have been told by an 
 observant traveller that Indians sent there and intermarrying 
 with the negroes were sufficient to hybridize the kink in the 
 wool to a wave, remaining to this day nearly three centuries in 
 anticipation of the skill of Marcel, the coffieur. 
 
 The state of Connecticut in 1640 imported cotton from the 
 West Indies and sold it to their towns, and private enterprise 
 undoubtedly obtained it at an earlier day, as in the Colony of 
 Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 The packing of cotton gave trouble then and remains a live 
 issue to this day, as an organization was formed in Boston last 
 February to mitigate this difficulty. 
 
 John Hull, the most enterprising Boston merchant of his 
 day and the treasurer of the Commonwealth for many years, 
 writes that he had received from the West Indies two bags of 
 " vile cotton woole," which he sends to a customer who evi- 
 dently comes to the same opinion when he finds in the middle 
 of a bag " much fowle cotton " and makes reclamation upon 
 Hull who is obliged to make amends. Evidently the " dogtail " 
 grade has no claim as modern slang. 
 
 The supply of cotton was provided for by an active export 
 trade in what was practically a foreign product, until long after the 
 invention of the American cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 
 which provided for the raw material the entirely different com- 
 mercial conditions of cotton manufacturing. 
 
21 
 
 THE SUPPLY OF WOOL. 
 
 The shortage of wool received due attention of the Court by 
 the act of August 22, 1654, in which the growth of sheep was 
 encouraged by an act whose preamble stated that: — 
 
 " Whereas this countrje is at this tjme in great streights in respect 
 of cloathing, and the most likeljest way tending to our supply in that 
 respect is the rajsing and keeping of sheepe wthin our jurisdiccon," 
 
 and in detail the exporting of ewes is forbidden as well as the 
 injunction that none shall be killed until they are two years old. 
 
 The effect of these and earlier provisions for increase of sheep 
 for the sake of their wool was little short of marvellous. 
 
 There were 1,000 sheep in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642, 
 and in 1660 the English Council made a report that the Colony 
 had 100,000 sheep and was also buying wool from the Dutch. At 
 the earlier date at least they were sending staves and salt fish 
 to Spain which were traded for wool. 
 
 CORDAGE. 
 
 Vessels of that day were equipped with revolving hooks for 
 laying cordage which was the first textile manufacturing of the 
 Colony. These rope-making heads turned by hand, contined 
 without serious modifications until recent time, about 200 years 
 after the landing, were also set up on shore and rope making 
 carried on at first in the open, but there was so much available 
 space for this purpose that information on the subject comes by way 
 of incident rather than designed record. In this way, it is known 
 that John and PHILIP Varen made rope in Salem in 1635, and 
 John Harrison, on Purchase street, at Boston in 164 1, and there 
 were others wherever rope was wanted and hemp available, and it 
 was not until there was a larger population after the next century 
 came in that there appears any legislation on the subject other 
 than the early acts of the court relative to the cultivation and 
 treatment of hemp already cited, and these pertained to its 
 ultimate use for weaving. 
 
22 
 
 In the later days, we learn that the selectmen of Boston on 
 April 12, 1702, allowed EDWARD Gray to make use of the 
 highway near Lieutenant HOLMES to make ropes at a rent of 
 twenty shillings a year in the future and seven shillings a year 
 in the past, and later, on May 17, 1708, the town of Boston 
 gave " Edward Sheaf leaf to set up some posts in the training 
 field to make ropes on." After the rope walks between Pearl 
 and Atkinson (now Congress) streets had been destroyed by 
 fire and considered to be a hazard to the buildings in that 
 vicinity, the town granted in 1 794 lands west of Charles street 
 and the Common which were called " rope walk lands." The 
 ropes were first made in the open, but as this was too much of 
 a pleasant weather business like the making of hay, four covered 
 rope walks were built and these later proved to be such a fire 
 hazard to buildings which had extended in that direction, at the 
 fire which destroyed them in 1806, that after several years' 
 negotiations the city bought the lands in 1828 for $35,000, and 
 the tract forms the present Public Garden. 
 
 The problem in regard to cordage was that of the raw material 
 and not its method of manufacture, as every sailor knew how to 
 lay hemp, and there was no need of legislation upon its 
 manufacture. 
 
 THE SPINNING SCHOOLS OF BOSTON. 
 
 About 1720 the question of instruction in spinning took a 
 distinctively different position from that of the Colony seventy 
 years before. 
 
 In place of a system organized on the basis of individual 
 instruction to small groups, in the fields or elsewhere working 
 with distaff or in a dwelling at a spinning wheel, there was a 
 general movement for vocational schools, although they left that 
 word and not much else as to methods for modern instructors. 
 
 The suddenness of the achievement and its grasp upon the 
 community was remarkable, and while there must have been 
 some cause for a sentiment which enlisted the intense affiliation 
 of all classes of the community, yet the economic principle which 
 
23 
 
 must have existed does not appear in any marked change of 
 commercial or sociological conditions. 
 
 Although there are no citations to confirm the opinion, yet it 
 appears as if this movement must have had some connection 
 with the organized opposition of the English spinners and 
 weavers of cotton, which found voice in the English law of 1721 
 forbidding the wearing of dyed or printed cotton goods " except 
 blue calicoes, muslins or fustians." The first two of which at 
 that time were imported from Calcutta, and indicated the hand 
 of the powerful East India Company in amending legislation. 
 
 The people of New England had grown to appreciate cotton, 
 which was then as it is now the cheapest of fibres, and naturally 
 desired to provide for its continuance before any similar pro- 
 hibitions should be attempted for New England by the mother 
 country. 
 
 While allusion is made to the poor in some of the records, 
 they were " always with us," and as the spinning schools were 
 begun seventy years after the establishment of public schools, 
 there is nothing in any such references to warrant an opinion 
 that they were tributary to a mendicant class, but it is evident 
 that they were framed for the general welfare of the community. 
 
 It is unfair for some writers to apply the term " spinning 
 craze" to this movement, as instead of being ephemeral, it 
 endured for over fifty years, when it was stopped by the stirring 
 events of the Revolution. 
 
 The endorsement of these schools by those of social position 
 was indicated by the establishment of organizations of ladies 
 who would meet and spin, while the clergyman would discourse 
 to them, and the easy running Saxony wheel did not disturb 
 the spinning of yarns while that of yarn went on. 
 
 Shortly before the Revolution, these spinning societies took 
 an important part in stirring up local zeal, as serving a similar 
 purpose to what has been done by other organizations equally 
 far afield from their original object in movements preceding 
 political overturns in many countries. 
 
 The reiteration of considering, referring to committees, 
 
24 
 
 resolving, and appropriating for spinning schpols, drags its 
 weary way through fifty and more years of town records. 
 
 The records for the most part fail to indicate what was 
 actually accomplished, but the fact of the renewal of the resolu- 
 tions on the subject indicates that the former measures had not 
 been permanent, but that the purpose of the people was 
 unchanged. 
 
 In the perspective of nearly two centuries, the years appear 
 close together, and the brief records omit the obvious of that 
 day, but the very pertinacy with which the subject was attacked 
 by so many different people with their varied points of view 
 during two generations, indicate these measures appealed to 
 public sentiment as a living need. 
 
 Without assuming to cite in detail, a general review of this 
 industrial movement will illustrate the definite purpose of a 
 community for over half a century. 
 
 Long preliminary to the establishment of these schools, the 
 selectmen of Boston on April 13, 1702, voted to buy some 
 spinning wheels to provide work for the poor, evidently an 
 instance of that wisest form of charity which places the needy 
 in a self-supporting condition. 
 
 It should be noted that in 1718, a number of Irish spinners 
 arrived and were assigned land on the west side of the Merrimac 
 rivei- below Manchester, N. H. The site was unsatisfactory and 
 many of them moved to different parts of the Province, espec- 
 ially to Boston, where they excited the enthusiasm of the people 
 for spinning, and a spinning school was formed by them which 
 met on the Common before the establishment of spinning 
 schools by the town. It may be worth the while to note that 
 these people introduced the cultivation of the first potatoes into 
 New England, although they had been brought in small quanti- 
 ties from Bermuda as early as 1636, and were served as a 
 rarity at Harvard College commencement dinner in 1708. 
 
 The town of Boston voted on March 14, 1720, to establish a 
 spinning school in which the pupils had not merely free instruc- 
 tion but board for the first three months and after that time the 
 
25 
 
 yarn should be bought from them, and also premiums for good 
 work. Three hundred pounds were loaned to the school for 
 seven years, and twenty spinning wheels ordered. 
 
 Daniel Oliver, a Boston merchant, one of the Royal 
 Council, and also chairman of the town committee appointed to 
 establish a spinning school in 1720, built at an expense of 
 £600 a spinning school next to Barton's Ropewalk near to 
 the Craigie Bridge, for the use of the' town, to which he 
 bequeathed the building. He died July 23, 1731. This appears 
 to be the site of the spinning school, although the report of the 
 committee at the meeting December 27, 1720, recommended as 
 the site of the spinning school, the " cellar most made " in front 
 of Captain Southacks, which is the site of the ScoUay building 
 formerly in Scollay's square but I do not find any record of the 
 acquisition of the site or the construction of the building, although 
 several histories refer to Scollay's Square as the site of the 
 school. 
 
 This subject was further taken up by a town meeting Sep- 
 tember 28, 1720, which according to some authorities, resulted in 
 the erection of a large building known as the Manufactory House 
 on Long Acre (nowTremont) Street, where Hamilton Place now 
 enters. A large figure of a woman with a distaff was painted 
 on the westerly wall. 
 
 Although both the records and local histories contain many 
 references to this building which was an important feature in 
 industrial development, but little is known about it. It is quite 
 probable that the name was applied to' two buildings, or to 
 extensive enlargements of the first one, as there is evidence of 
 purchase of land and expenditures on the building by the 
 Province on the Manufactory House up to the summer of 1754. 
 
 The reference to the provision of board for the pupils was. so 
 inconsistent with a town school, as to raise a query which was 
 answered in part by the action of the Provincial Legislature 
 purchasing the Manufactory House in 1748, and granted to the 
 town of Boston four townships for its support and the use of 
 the Provincial Frigate for the transportation of the scholars. ' 
 
26 
 
 In 1735 the Province levied a tax on carriages to support 
 the spinning school and this statute was repealed in 1753, in 
 which year the town of Boston passed an ordinance for a similar 
 tax for the same purpose. 
 
 This provincial legislation on the school and its maintenance 
 indicates that it was a provincial as well as a town institution, 
 and gives a reason why board was provided for the scholars. 
 
 In 1762 the Manufactory House was ordered sold, but the 
 sale did not take place, perhaps from lack of a purchaser, and 
 it remained standing until 1806, when Hamilton Place was run 
 through its site. 
 
 When this spinning school was opened there was a large 
 spinning bee on the common, where many women operated their 
 spinning wheels. Chief Justice SAMUEL Sewall, who was the 
 moderator of the town meeting when the spinning school was 
 authorized, presided on this occasion. " 
 
 In 1753, on the fourth anniversary of the society, there was 
 another large spinning bee held on the common at which 300 
 weavers were in three rows, with their leader borne on the 
 shoulders of men, and a large number of weavers with their 
 leader weaving on a raised platform. Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper 
 "improved" the occasion by a discourse. This affair attracted 
 to the town the largest number of people ever known at any 
 one time. 
 
 The town of Boston voted in 1754 to use the Old Town 
 House on the site of the present Old State House, for a spin- 
 ning school and appropriated £^0, old tenor, to put the build- 
 ing in repair. 
 
 Charlestown had taken similar action in regard to its old town 
 house the preceding year. 
 
 Another movement in textile instruction is indicated by the 
 town notice September 2, 1762, that the spinning school in the 
 Manufactory House is again opened and that any person may 
 learn to spin without charge and be paid for their spinning after 
 the first three months, and that a premium of .^18 old tenor is 
 offe'red to the four best spinners. 
 
27 
 
 At a town meeting April 4, 1769, a committee of which 
 William Molyneaux, a leading Boston merchant of Huguenot 
 ancestry, born in 1716 and died October 22, 1774, was the 
 chairman, reported in favor of setting up spinning schools in 
 various parts of the city, and hiring rooms and spinning wheels, 
 and the employment of school mistresses, and buying wool 
 which " can be converted into shalloons, durants, pamblitts, 
 callamancoes, durois, legathies^ and in general men's summer 
 wear." None of these fabrics are known by this name today, 
 or indeed what manner of cloth, other than they were woolen 
 goods. 
 
 The action of the town varied somewhat from the recom- 
 mendation of the committee. The whole project was put into 
 the hands of Mr. MoLYNEAUX to whom the town gave ^200 to 
 purchase equipment and hire rooms and employ school 
 mistresses, atid also loaned him ;£^300 to purchase wool. 
 
 I have been unable to learn anything of the several places 
 which it was authorized should be hired for this purpose, except 
 that the Manufactory House was granted him for the purpose 
 for seven years at an annual rental of five peppercorns. It 
 should be remembered that this building was then the property 
 of the Province and not of the town. 
 
 A year later, March, 1770, we learn that he had a large 
 number of spinning wheels and had engaged rooms for enabling 
 many young women to earn their support. 
 
 The energy of Mr. MOLYNEAUX inspired great activity in 
 spinning schools throughout the community outside of Boston 
 and large quantities of cotton and woolen goods were made. 
 
 In this good work Mr. MOLYNEAUX had personally advanced 
 amounts beyond the appropriations, and at the town meeting in 
 March, 1770, he requested a further allowance from the town 
 in reimbursement, but the question was laid over until an 
 adjourned meeting when Justice Dana could be present and 
 give legal advice and at the later meeting Justice Dana was 
 in attendance and gave his opinion that he doubted whether 
 the town could legally remit the amount asked for, and no 
 
28 
 
 further action was taken except to give Mr. MoLYNEAUX, " a 
 vote of thanks for his faithful discharge relative to the spinning 
 business." 
 
 While Mr. MOLYNEAUX may have longed for an hour of 
 Judge Sewell, who presided at the town meeting when spin- 
 ning schools were authorized, fifty years before, he did not rest 
 here, but at once presented a memorial to the General Court in 
 which for the first time during this fifty years there is any dis- 
 closure of methods and equipment of this succession of spinning 
 schools, and this action also indicates the close relation between 
 town and Province in regard to these schools. 
 
 He states that they have thoroughly instructed at least three 
 hundred children in the art of spinning, and to whom a large 
 amount has been later paid in wages, and that he has received 
 only a loan from the town of ;^500 without interest, while 
 between ;^i 1,000 and ;^i 2,000 has been expended in fitting 
 up the machinery ; the first amount is evidently old tenor, but 
 not the later ones. 
 
 The equipment of this institution is interesting as it includes 
 on hand 40,000 skeins of fine yarn fit to make any kind of 
 women's wear and a large amount of dyestuffs; and for the 
 plant, a large number of spinning wheels which he had made, 
 also " complete apparatus " among which is cited twisting and 
 winding mills, fifty looms, furnaces for hot and cold presses, 
 and dyehouse with large copper tanks. 
 
 There does not appear to be any record showing that this 
 memorial received different treatment from the usual govern- 
 ment claim, but whatever may have been the injustice of town 
 and Province, the official record shows that the people owed a 
 great debt of gratitude to this wise merchant in giving of his 
 skill and his fortune toward the extension of the textile art in 
 such a manner that the immediate results made many women 
 self-supporting at a time when the opportunities for work out- 
 side of domestic employment were few. 
 
 I have omitted all reference to the long continued petitions, 
 votes and appropriations relative to the linen duck manufacture 
 
29 
 
 in the town of Boston, as it was at best a manufacturing scheme, 
 or a succession of them, by promoters which was brought to an 
 end by the granting of a petition to discharge the obHgations of 
 the surviving members of the Linen Manufactory as the enter- 
 prise had been a failure. It does not appear that there ever 
 was any provision for the textile education of the young in the 
 enterprise. 
 
 Sails in northern countries were always made of Hnen, until 
 Seth Bemis made duck from sea island cotton at Watertown 
 in 1809. A few years ago sea island cotton was used in making 
 at New Hartford, Conn., a set of sails for one of the defenders 
 of the International cup. 
 
 In closing this account of the sagacity and enterprise in textiles 
 of the people of Massachusetts Bay, it may be well to note that 
 an important provision for the beginnings of the manufacture of 
 cotton goods at about the time of the Revolution rested upon 
 the wisdom of Governor JOHN WiNTHROP, who in 1633 encour- 
 aged the development of all water powers near to settlements 
 for grain mills and saw mills. 
 
 These mills are said to have been generally built of stone and 
 were one story in height. One hundred and fifty years later 
 when power spinning machinery was surreptiously imported, 
 many of these grain and saw mills were extended a story higher 
 with wood, and there were twenty-seven such spinning mills in 
 Massachusetts before 181 2, — none of which are believed to be 
 now standing, — but the charter and vested rights of many a 
 water-power in this Commonwealth rest upon the run-of-stone 
 which they must still retain. 
 
 The inventions of the spinning jenney by Hargreaves in 
 1667, and the spinning frame by Arkwright in 1769, which 
 surreptitiously reached this country just before the Revolution 
 were the beginning of the end of making cloth solely as a 
 domestic occupation, and cotton manufacturing had begun. 
 
 It should be stated there was always one marked difference 
 between hand made cotton goods in Old England and New 
 England, that whereas in New England such cloth was made 
 
30 
 
 entirely of cotton, and inventories in Colonial times show that it 
 was appraised at a higher price than linen, but pure hand-made 
 cotton was not made in Old England until after 1760, but was 
 woven with linen warp and cotton filling, yet the English 
 imported a large amount of calico, which was the trade name for 
 cotton cloth obtained from Calcutta whether white or hand 
 printed. 
 
 The extent of cotton manufacture involves amounts " beyond 
 the dreams of avarice," and yet itsincrease had been largely the 
 additional use by those within the zone of the cotton manufac- 
 ture. Civilized people are using an increased amount of cotton 
 cloth both in elaboration of dress, and of late years in the substi- 
 tution of cotton for wool, either pure or mixed in many fabrics. 
 
 Yet the cotton manufacture has hardly made its mark among 
 the unnumbered millions of the Orient or the barbarous people 
 of warm countries. It has been estimated that only about 20 to 
 25 per cent, of the population of the earth wearing cotton cloth, 
 use manufactured goods. 
 
 Labor in those countries is so cheap and land transportation so 
 dear, that the differences in cost generally equate themselves in 
 a distance of fifty miles from navigable waters. 
 
 The great amount of concentration of human skill in the 
 cotton manufacture has accomplished wonderful results in 
 reducing the cost of the manufactured product, and therefore 
 extending its usage. 
 
 Although it may have made the cheaper class of goods more 
 uniform in their quality, yet the finer varieties of fabrics still con- 
 tinue to be the result of handicraft. 
 
 The finest muslins are still spun and woven by hand in India 
 by a cult whose skill was well established at the time of the 
 earliest acquisitions of authority by the East India Company in 
 that country. 
 
 The artistic weaving of the World is that of the Gobelins, who 
 still maintain handicraft methods at their little Flemish Colony 
 in Paris, where they were established by Louis XIV., who also 
 introduced the Merino sheep into France.