AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 183 



able for the filling. I shall afterward oil the wools for the warp 

 with hog's lard or butter ; after which I shall comb them ; and, 

 since now the king finds it best that we should card the wool for 

 the filling, I shall card them. I shall have the first spun on the 

 distaff, and the last only on the spinning-wheel. I shall put 

 two harnesses on the loom, for stuffs with a simple web, like cloth, 

 and three or four harnesses for twilled stuffs, according to the 

 kind or quality of the cloth, sometimes fourteen hundred, some- 

 times eighteen hundred yarns of warp. I shall full the cloths in 

 the mill, to cleanse and felt them. I shall give them a turn of the 

 teasles, to draw out the hair from the wool. I shall full them 

 again, and sometimes I shall sulphur them ; sometimes, also, I 

 shall shear them with the big shears. I shall give them a light 

 turn of the teasles when they want my cloths all ready finished. 

 I shall repeat these operations once or twice ; and, finally, if I 

 don't want to leave my cloths in the white, I shall carry them to 

 the dyer ; if not, I shall press and colander them." The opera- 

 tions here quaintly described remain the same, in principle, as five 

 centuries ago. Only the 

 means of attaining iden- 

 tical results have been 

 profoundly modified. 



Outside the Low Coun- 

 tries, the wool manufact- 

 ure had made little prog- 

 ress on the Continent, at 

 the time of the discovery 

 of America. The industry 

 received its first great im- 

 pulse in France near the 

 close of the sixteenth 

 century. The Edict of 

 Nantes restored to that 

 country the scattered mer- 

 chants and workmen of 

 the Protestant faith. They 

 brought from the Low 

 Countries, where they had 

 wandered, the arts of spin- 

 ning, weaving, and dyeing 

 woolens, and founded the 

 first establishments for 



making woolen cloths. The infant industries were finally planted 

 in their present nourishing seats by Colbert, the illustrious min- 

 ister of Louis XIV. Seductive offers attracted skilled artisans to 

 her towns. The foundations were laid for the splendid industries 



Fig. 



5. Hand-weaver. (From Schopfer's Panoplia, 

 1568.) 



