EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 109 



tion outside the seacoast towns he would have seen that his auditors, 

 men and women, 19 out of 20, were clothed in apparel of their own 

 make, from the hat on the head to the shoes on the feet, and that the 

 woolen garments, most of them, were dyed yellow with the bark of the 

 hickory. 



The dyes used at this time and for many years subsequently were 

 mostly those easily obtainable on the farm. To dye scarlet, madder 

 was used; 1 pound of madder fresh from the garden would dye 2 pounds 

 of wool. The wool was washed clean, then boiled about fifteen minutes 

 in strong alum water, and the madder was boiled in thin bran water. 

 The wool dipped from the alum water and then put in the bran water 

 was boiled fifteen or twenty minutes, and washed out in softsoap suds 

 after it was cool. By leaving out the alum, a good brown color was 

 obtained. A crimson color was obtained by taking 2 gallons of the juice 

 of pokeberries, when they were quite ripe, and adding half a gallon of 

 strong vinegar, to dye 1 pound of wool, which must be first washed 

 very clean with hard soap. The wool, when wrung dry, was put into 

 the vinegar and pokeberry juice, and simmered in a copper vessel for 

 one hour, then taken out and let drip and spread in the sun to dry. 

 The hickory and the butternut furnished familiar colors. The madder, 

 pokeberry, and hickory were used also in the household manufacture, 

 when it was endeavored to impart some finish to the goods, but in many 

 cases the wool was undyed and the garment was quite as valuable. 



An English official, who made some note of the growing desire among 

 the colonists to do their own manufacturing, to the detriment of the 

 English trader, gives some insight into the state of manufactures at this 

 time: 



Upon actual knowledge, therefore, of these northern colonies, one is surprised to 

 find that, notwithstanding the indifference of their wool and the extravagant price 

 of labor, the planters throughout all New England, New York, the Jerseys, Pennsyl- 

 vania, and Maryland (for south of that province no knowledge is here pretended) 

 almost entirely clothe themselves in their own woolens, and that generally the peo- 

 ple are sliding into the manufactures proper to the mother country, and this not 

 through any spirit of industry or economy, but plainly for want of some returns to 

 make to the shops; that their trade, so valuable to Great Britain, should, contrary 

 to the policy of all other nations, be suffered to run off into clandestine channels, 

 and that colonies, on which the fate of this country will be found to depend, should, 

 without the least regard to influence of impressions early made on the human mind, 

 be suffered to remain in this day under these little, factious democracies which had 

 their first rise in the republican ideas of licentious times. 



That " little, factious democracies," the outcome of " licentious times," 

 should clothe themselves and " slide " into manufactures proper to the 



)ther country was an apparition that alarmed every British store- 

 Deeper, and the greedy British trader had his alarms embodied in the 

 acts of the British Parliament suppressing American industry and 

 American trade. 



The rigid enforcement of statutes whose sole object was to keep the 



