CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE MAKING OF COTTON GOODS 



In considering which is our most important 

 manufacturing industry, you will not be long in 

 coming face to face with the fact that next to food, 

 clothing is a first necessity of mankind. Many 

 other things which we have come to regard as 

 necessities might be dispensed with; but according 

 to the old Bible story, the need of clothing was the 

 first thing to occur to our first parents after they 

 had eaten of the tree of knowledge; and from the 

 primitive fig-tree costume of Adam and Eve in the 

 Garden, the art of clothing has had a steady and 

 wonderful evolution, century after century, genera- 

 tion after generation, year after year. The savage 

 man has his passion for food, but the desire for 

 clothing is the first step toward civilization, and 

 the step which has been reached in attention to 

 dress will indicate perhaps as closely as anything 

 else the progress a people has made away from 

 barbarism. 



So it is that in clothing the earth's teeming 

 millions, cotton stands forth today King indeed, 

 wool and hemp having but a small place in com- 

 parison Cotton triumphant as the result of a test 

 running through the ages! And every operation 



