1882.] HOME MANUFACTUEES. 197 



our home manufactures now, nearly so mucli as we used to pre- 

 tend we wanted them. Versatility is called for. 



If our tasteful and quick-witted mothers and grandmothers 

 were alive and had the markets which our present manufacturers 

 have, don't you forget that they would make the hand loom dis- 

 tinguish itself by its ability to shift the pattern of every web 

 without degrading the quality. The most precious fabrics in the 

 world are still woven by hand, and might as well be in New Eng- 

 land if our young people only knew the latent artistic skill within 

 them. It is undeniable that we are working wonders with our 

 power machines. We can manufacture clothes for every naked 

 savage on the continent of Africa in a week and throw in hat and 

 boots and a patent time-keeper to match, but for all that, I noticed 

 that our most powerful mill-owner set a hand-loom to work when 

 he wanted a wedding dress for his daughter. Right on the heels 

 of the Centennial exhibition, when the newspapers were telling us 

 how we were ruining Switzerland with our American watches, J 

 happened into the village store and found the watch-maker's win 

 dow filled with elegant Swiss goods. I forget how many watches 

 had been sold within a week, but remember the reason very well. 

 "Folks don't want their watches all alike." 



The machine must have its patterns and sell a good many pieces 

 of a pattern to pay, while the clever hand-worker need never 

 make two things alike. It is impossible to forestall his market, or 

 run him off the track, for there is no knowing which is his market 

 or what track he will take next. 



There are many domestic arts that would be greatly helped by 

 a little machinery. Don't let us run away with the doctrine that 

 only big mills can be made to pay. That depends altogether upoL 

 the management. We may and have for thousands of years got 

 along without big mills, but we must have little ones for educa- 

 tion. One of the greatest sawyers of Michigan timber began, to 

 my knowledge, with a mill and a stream of water that would 

 oarely furnish the power to slit a Long John potato into planks. 

 I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that we need little mills as much as we 

 need little fish, for the big ones to swallow, and we continually 

 need small mills at which the independent, trained workmen of 

 the large mills may graduate. 



The other rainy day I found a nice townsman busy as could be 

 making an axe helve for himself. It was worked out by "John 

 Allen's pattern," of wide-grained, tough, butt hickory, and was 



