47 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



enters, or goods in which the warp is made of cotton, have not the 

 enduring quality of the fabrics woven by our ancestors. President 

 Eliot, of Harvard University, in a recent magazine contribution, 

 says : " The Hessian country girl proudly wears her grandmother's 

 woolen petticoats, and they are as good and as handsome as sixty 

 years ago. A Scotch shepherd's all-wool plaid withstands the 

 wind and rain for a lifetime"; and he adds a eulogy of the old 

 Swiss porter's overcoat, which had kept him warm and dry for 

 twenty-five years. In sharp contrast with these examples the 

 learned college president speaks contemptuously of the " all-cotton" 

 clothing of an American rural community that costs about ten dol- 

 lars a suit, fades promptly, and wears out at the slightest provoca- 

 tion. If President Eliot desired his readers to infer that the farmers 

 and peasants of the foreign countries which he names are better 

 clothed than our own farmer classes, he unconsciously permitted 

 himself too broad a generalization from the interesting and iso- 

 lated instances which he cites. The machine-made cloths of this 

 day and generation do not last a lifetime, or sixty years, or even 

 twenty-five years, either in the United States or in Europe. The 

 fabrics which so excited his admiration were the homespun prod- 

 ucts of hand manufacture. It is true that they had great en- 

 durance, and this quality they secured at the sacrifice of light- 

 ness and compactness. Heavy cloths of the homespun character- 

 istics are not now made by machinery, because the people prefer 

 lighter fabrics, even though they wear out quickly. They are 

 able to gratify their preference because the evolution has reduced 

 the cost of everything in the nature of wearing apparel to a de- 

 gree' only less striking than the increased productive capacity. It 

 is equally difficult to express this gain in figures. But it is indi- 

 cated by the fact that the farmer's wife can affor'd to abandon the 

 spinning-wheel and loom and purchase the finished product of 

 the fleece which she sends to market rather than to transform 

 it herself into the long-lived goods which President Eliot so 

 greatly admires. 



How vaguely do the people realize the thousand-and-one com- 

 forts and conveniences and economies which have been brought 

 into every household by the cheapening of fabrics of almost in- 

 finite variety of form and utility which the woolen manufacture 

 has taken on ! There is now no phase or form of want, of garment, 

 of decoration, or of household economy, which can not be gratified 

 at a reasonable cost. 



The variety of the fabrics into which wool is now converted is 

 one of the most striking features of the evolution. The carpets 

 on our floors, the blankets that cover both our horses and our- 

 selves, the reps and plushes that make the most durable and ele- 

 gant coverings for household furniture, railroad cars, etc., the 



