o 



OG RURAL 3IICHIGAN 



mostly home grown. Both concerns have produced 

 virgin woolen fabrics to meet such specific demand 

 as may arise. 



The unfavorable wool market of 1920-1921 led 

 the Michigan State Farm Bureau to dispose of a 

 portion of its warehouse stock that had accumulated 

 through the wool pool, by arranging for the con- 

 version of certain grades into blankets and cloth. 

 Thus residents of the State acquired material made 

 from undoubted virgin wool, became accustomed to 

 look to a home market for raw wool, and in so much 

 relieved the local wool market situation. 



Even the native Indians had their primitive grist- 

 mill. One of these is described by W. J. Beal. "A 

 long pole or sapling was pinned to a tree, like a well- 

 sweep; a small pole was suspended from the elevated 

 end of the sweep, the lower part of which v.-as pestle- 

 shaped ; the top of a stump was hollowed out, to hold 

 the corn. The sweep was then worked up and down 

 by one of the squaws, while another steadied and di- 

 rected the pestle, which smashed the corn as it came 

 down." ^ The white man had an easier way. At 

 Big Eapids on the Muskegon, at Owosso, at Grand 

 Eapids, at Elsie, at Jonesville, at Lansing, and at 

 very many other points of vantagi: throughout the 

 State, especially in the southern peninsula, a mill- 

 dam impounded the waters which gave power to the 

 mill. The early mills were of low capacity, Ean- 

 som grist-mill on Ransom's Creek in Grand Tra- 

 verse County had "one run of stones and a capacity 



^ "Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XXXII, 237. 



