299 



fine dress fabrics on broad-power looms, difficulties which in 

 England had vanquished those who had attempted the same before. 

 One by one, however, they were steadily overcome, and there is 

 now scarcely anything that we cannot weave in pure ramie, warp 

 and weft, from the lightest gossamer to cloth that has a brenking 

 of nearly 5 00 lbs. to the inch, from heavy tapestries to light dress 

 goods, from fancy upholstery repps to muslins. All the fabrics 

 here shown, are of pure ramie, warp and weft, and were woven at 

 our mills under my personal direction. 



Again and again we were fairly beaten, the workers would not 

 stay to be so worried, the looms broke down under the strain put 

 on them, the winding of the yarns drove everybody silly ; but we 

 always began again, determined to succeed, and would not accept 



failure. 



Not the least of our difficulties were created by the yarn spinners. 

 To get weaving yarns spun for me I applied to the spinners of gas 

 mantle yarns, or of ramie thread, to worsted spinners, flax spinners, 

 and jute spinners. Numerous and costly experiments were made 

 in England, but none of the yarns were satisfactory, as the 

 spinners had not the proper plant on which to spin ramie yarns, 

 and were unwilling to put up the same, and they soon tired of 

 making experiments to reach the perfection of manufacture I 

 required. I then went to France ; but the yarns though beautiful 

 in appearance, were too brittle. I then went to Germany, and at 

 last found spinners willing to take any amount of trouble to do 

 what I required. " We do not care what trouble Mrs. Hart gives" 

 they wrote, " so long as we please her in the end." In England 

 the spirit of the replies to my requests, used to be in those early 

 days. "Well — it is the best we can do, and if you do not like it, you 

 must lump it." It is the scientific spirit of painstaking industry 

 which gives Germany her increasing commerce, in spite of 

 hampering tariffs ; it is the conservative spirit of anti-scientific 

 ignorance which loses Great Britain her commercial supremacy, in 

 spite of the benefits of free trade. In nothing is this more visible 

 than in the ramie industry ; once almost solely in the hands of 

 Great Britain, whose colonies could supply her with indefinite 

 supplies of raw material, and lost through over-reaching specula- 

 tion and lack of science, this industry passed to Germany, who 

 applied to the elucidation of its secrets and the perfection of its 

 methods, the science and patience lacking in this country. 



To return to the story of our own work. Having now overcome 

 the technical difficulties, my next care was to place the goods on 

 the market, but though orders were placed by the best dress and 

 upholstery houses our plant, was then too small, our possible out- 

 put too limited, and our capital too narrow to do ourselves justice. 

 I had borne all the expense of the great experiment, and not being 

 a capitalist, this was only done at the cost of great personal 

 sacrifice. I was assured by business friends, and by willing pro- 

 moters, that it would be easy to find capital to enable me to 

 increase the plant, take advantage of the trade offered, and create 



