THE LOOM IX THE XEW WORLD 



383 



about to be described as " primitive," and 

 compared with the wonderful machines 

 of today, this is no doubt a correct 

 description. Yet, in sober fact, the two- 

 barred loom of our great cotton area, is 

 actually a highly developed machine. 

 It must have come at the end of long 

 ethnological periods, and it remains in 

 actual commercial use to this very mo- 

 ment for certain classes 

 of fabrics such as rugs 

 and tapestries. Besides 

 all this, it contains 

 every principle incor- 

 porated in the latest 

 product of our great 

 loom factories. There 

 is no fabric made today 

 which has not been 

 made on this appar- 

 ently simple framework 

 of sticks and string; 

 there are at least two 

 interesting fabrics, true 

 tapestry, and oriental 

 pile-knot rugs, which 

 are still made on it, and 

 which cannot be made 

 on any other type of 

 loom. 



It is a gra\'e error to 

 imagine that the loom 

 of today and its humble 

 prototype are entirely 

 disconnected phenome- 

 na. There is a perfect 

 sequence of dcAelop- 

 ment from the one to 

 the other, and no one can thoroughly 

 comprehend a modern weaving machine 

 who is not familiar with the earlier forms. 



The particular invention which was 

 the dividing line between modern looms 

 and true hand looms, was of Chinese 

 origin. The discovery of silk filament 

 suggested the need of some way in which 

 the'great number of fine warp ends could 



be more easily manipulated than by the 

 heald rods operated by hand. It was 

 then discovered that by making the 

 heald loops in a frame, or what we call a 

 heddle, and attaching them by strings to 

 a branch of a tree or some other support 

 at the top, and by loops of cord to the 

 feet of the weaver at the bottom, the 

 warps could l)e more easily separated, 



Upper portion of i'eruvian belt loom, showing loom bar (instead of string 

 in Ojibway loom) to which the warp threads are directly attached. This 

 arrangement, allowing no play or elasticity in the warps, is necessary for a 

 close-textured fabric, in which firm beating up of the weft is necessary and 

 where the weft alone is the decorative element. Below, the warps are shown 

 divided into groups to avoid tangles in weaving 



and both hands left free for insertion 

 of weft and for other important func- 

 tions in weaving. 



This particular type of loom is still 

 used in India and gives no doubt a 

 very fair idea of what the first Chinese 

 treadle loom looked like. In the New 

 World this form of loom occurs only with 

 Spanish intrusion. 



