182 Materials and Their II (nulling 



few shops had more than ten or twelve workers 

 in them. The materials were brought into the 

 shop by hand and the number of pieces was car- 

 ried in memory or chalked up in crude figures on 

 the wall of the shop. When the material had 

 been paid for, there was very little to be consid- 

 ered except the amount of money to be paid to 

 the man who had done the job. The whole 

 process was so simple that each man could learn 

 all of it as he grew from apprentice to journeyman 

 and, consequently, all the men who were working 

 at a certain trade knew all that was required in 

 that trade, from the securing of the raw material 

 until the customer bought the finished product 

 of the shop. 



I remember very well the old hand weavers 

 whom I saw, in boyhood, at work on their looms 

 in their own cottages, making the same kind of 

 cloth which had been made by their fathers and 

 grandfathers before them. They would go down 

 to the wool factor's warehouse and choose the 

 wool, take it to the carders, and have it combed. 

 Their women folk would spin it, then they would 

 take it to the dyer to be colored as they required. 

 They would make their own design and weave the 

 cloth. Then they would sell the cloth to the mer- 

 chant who came round about twice a year and bar- 

 gained with them for the goods. These craftsmen 

 knew every step of the system or method by which 

 the wool was secured from the grower, bought 

 from the factor, converted into cloth, and sold 

 at last to the customer. Each journeyman thus 

 knew his trade in actual fact, from first to last. 



