my astonishment when I compared 

 their easy mode of operation and mine. 

 Availing myself, however, of what I 

 then saw, I made a loom, in its general 

 principles nearly as they are now made; 

 but it was not until the year 1787 that 

 I completed my invention, when I took 

 out my first weaving patent Aug. I of 

 that year." 



As usual this worthy man, who had 

 won the right to the title he received, 

 was not the only discoverer or inventor 

 of the thing credited to his name. Long 

 before his time a description of a sim 

 ilar loom had been presented to the 

 Royal Society of London, but he had 

 no knowledge of it. He spent between 

 ^"30,000 and .40,000 bringing his in 

 vention to a successful stage, but failed 

 to make it profitable to himself. A 

 small return was made to him later, at 

 the suggestion of the principal mill- 

 owners of the country, when he re 

 ceived from the government the sum 

 of ;io,ooo. His work has been much 

 improved in detail since, but it has 

 never been altered in its main prin 

 ciples. 



But with all our arts and marvelous 

 machines the most beautifully fine cot 

 ton fabric is yet the Dacca muslin. It 

 is called "woven wind," and when 

 spread out upon the grass it is said to 

 resemble gossamer. It used to be made 

 for the Indian princes before the days 

 when the British took possession of 

 the country. It was made only in a 

 strip of territory about forty miles long 

 and three miles in width. With the 

 change in rulers the weavers largely 

 dropped the work which they and their 

 ancestors had done for centuries, hand 

 ing down their art from father to son; 

 they took to the business of raising 

 indigo, as their soil and climate were 

 well adapted to its production and the 

 demand was good. 



Yet there are some of them weaving 

 at this day, though not in sufficient 

 numbers to produce the muslin as a 

 regular article of commerce. A bam 

 boo bow strung with catgut, like a 

 fiddle string, is used to separate the 

 fiber from the seed. It is carded with 

 a big fishbone. The distaff is held in 

 the hand and the loom is a very old- 

 fashioned affair, home-made of bam 



boo reeds, so simple that a few shillings 

 will purchase one, though a lifetime 

 will not make one able to use it. 



The weaver chooses a spot under the 

 shade of a large tree, digs a hole in the 

 dirt for his legs and the lower part of 

 the "geer" and fastens his balances to 

 some convenient bough overhead. His 

 exceedingly fine threads will not work 

 well except in such a shady spot and 

 early in the morning, when there is 

 just the right amount of moisture in 

 the tropical air. There is no line of 

 hand work in which there is such a con 

 trast to-day as in the business of mak 

 ing cotton goods. Machinery has 

 vastly outstripped the hand in quantity 

 of product and accuracy, yet the old 

 ways prevail in the manipulation of 

 the very finest of web. Although Whit 

 ney's saw gin made a revolution in the 

 industry, yet the long and delicate 

 fibers of sea-island cotton are separated 

 from the seed in the old way of pass 

 ing seed cotton between two rollers 

 which are going in different directions. 

 The smooth seeds of this cotton pop 

 away from the fiber quite readily with 

 out breaking it. If it were pulled 

 through Whitney's gin there would be 

 more or less tearing and breaking. So 

 the great invention does not apply to 

 cleaning the very finest material. The 

 short wool fibers of common cotton 

 are not so much hurt by the saw teeth 

 and the amount of work done by the 

 gin makes this damage of no account. 



At the Atlanta Cotton Exposition in 

 1882 the old and the new were strik 

 ingly contrasted. The mountain peo 

 ple of the South, in many instances, 

 live after the old fashions of colonial 

 times. They make homespun cloth 

 which is a revelation to us. Some of 

 these people were induced to show 

 their work at the exposition, and they 

 were as much astonished at the apparel 

 of their visitors who gazed upon them 

 and their strange labor as were the vis 

 itors at the work and manners of the 

 mountaineers. 



Two carders operated hand cards, 

 two spinsters ran the spinning-wheels 

 and one weaver made cloth upon a 

 hand loom. In ten hours these five 

 people made eight yards of very coarse 

 cloth. 



56 



