LOOM AND THE SEWING-MACHINE 49 



heavy linen in my grandmother's home, we use a rela- 

 tively cheap, sleazy, factory-spun, factory-woven 

 and factory-finished sheet, which we used to send out 

 to commercial laundries, and which we replaced about 

 every two years. With domestic laundering they last 

 about twice as long. True, the first cost of our fac- 

 tory-made sheets is much less than the cost of the 

 hand-made linens, but the final and complete cost is 

 much greater and at no time do we have the luxury 

 of using the linens which in my grandmother's home 

 were accepted as their everyday due. I do not know 

 what her linen sheets cost in labor and materials 

 fifty years ago. We pay about $1.25 for ours, and on 

 the basis of commercial laundering, have to purchase 

 new ones every two years. Our expenditure for sheets 

 for thirty years, with a family one-quarter the size of 

 grandmother's, would therefore be $18.75 P er sheet 

 much more, I am sure, than was spent for sheets dur- 

 ing the same period of time in my grandmother's 

 home. And at the end of thirty years, we would have 

 nothing but a pile of sleazy cotton rags, while in the 

 old home they still had the original sheets probably 

 good for again as much service. 



Before the era of factory spinning and factory 

 weaving, which began with the first Arkwright mill 

 in Nottingham, England, in 1768, fabrics and cloth- 

 ing were made in the homes and workshops of each 

 community. Men raised the flax and wool and then 

 did the weaving. Women did the spinning and later 



