EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 125 



and the loom. Cottons and woolens of various descriptions were made 

 in quantities sufficient for domestic use. Georgia was similarly situated. 

 Her seaboard population imported their woolens from England, those 

 in the interior raised fine sheep, giving good wool, from which they 

 made the few woolen goods worn in that temperate country. 



In this rapid sketch of -the condition of the woolen manufacture at 

 the close of the last century it is impossible to give statistics, for none 

 have been collected, but it may be stated that from 1790 to 1800 we 

 manufactured all our own wool, for, in 1790, none was exported; none 

 in 1792; none in 1799 and 1800. But we imported, some wool from 

 K u rope and manufactured it in America, thus showing that we did not 

 raise all the wool that we manufactured. The raw wool was wanted 

 and the farmers did not raise enough of it for the manufacturing 

 demand of families and the few factories then in operation. It was the 

 want of this supply of wool, coupled with the large importations of 

 English woolens, that forced some of the early woolen mills into the 

 cotton manufacture. 



Nor was the great prosperity of the agricultural and commercial 

 classes, and the earnings of capital in mercantile ventures at the 

 beginning of the century, favorable to the growth of the woolen manu- 

 facture. The merchant was satisfied that he could make more money 

 by carrying goods than in making them, and the agriculturist was sat- 

 isfied to buy the clothing his household industry did not supply him, by 

 exchanging therefor the product of his fields. Consequently, industry 

 and capital found employment in trade and the manufacturing interest 

 made no progress. 



The great discouragement to manufactures was the prejudice against 

 everything of home production. For years after the Eevolutionary war, 

 and particularly in these days of high prosperity, foreigners dictated 

 the fashions and directed the sentiments of the fashionable circles of 

 our commercial cities, and our own citizens allowed themselves to be 

 taught that American people and American products were inferior to 

 those of foreign production, and some of the present day are still taking 

 the same lesson. 



But the household industry was not suffered to decline. The Ameri- 

 can farmer made most of his own clothing, and he was the last to en- 

 courage foreign goods, ape foreign manners, or adopt foreign fashions. 

 It is true that the most wealthy of these, the large planters and some 

 near the coast, bought foreign clothing, but the great mass, the filers 

 of the soil, those who grubbed and those who followed the plow, that 

 class among whom true nationality and patriotism dwell and always have 

 dwelt, wore homespun goods. The household industry or family cloth- 

 ing manufacture in wool, as well as cotton and hemp, was very consider- 

 able. The country made up all its own wool, flax, and hemp. Stocking 

 knitting was carried on to some extent in Pennsylvania, and the great 



