EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 99 



Tlie inveutory of Cornisli [says AVeeden] reveals the exact processes of his busi- 

 ness. He dyed wool, using two furnaces, and he combed it, either colored or white. 

 Doubtless the spinning was done in the homesteads of eastern Massachusetts by the 

 dames, or the daughters of the dames, who had been taught in spinning classes. The 

 farmers might have taken home the clean " top " wool, from which the "noil" or short 

 fiber had been cleaned by the two pairs of combs worked by two men, on the market 

 day. Another day they would bring in the spun worsted, taking their pay in cloth 

 and yarn. The wool might be their own or " put out" by Cornish for the spinning. 

 Evidently he traded his manufactures for that of others; he combed and wove, but 

 he did not card or spin. The "white" and coverlet yarns were carded in the home- 

 steads; hand cards were very common. Dyeing in two furnaces, combing with two 

 combs, weaving with four looms, a detached and independent fulling-mill, would 

 make a considerable business. Serge was in the looms; when finished it would be 

 worth 3s. 6d. per yard. It was worsted or partly worsted. He had one piece of ker- 

 sey, probably of carded stock, and, probably, obtained by exchange in the operations 

 of the fulling-mill. He was a worsted comber and weaver. John Cornish was — so 

 far as is known — the first organizer of this industry in these busy lands. 



An effort was made in 1697 to introduce the manufacture of woolen 

 clotL. in the counties of Somerset and Dorchester, in Maryland, which 

 was renewed ten years later. Neither attempt had permanent success, 

 but nevertheless occasioned some complaints in England, as did like 

 efforts in Virginia and other colonies, the English Government holding 

 that such manufactures and all acts tending to encourage them were 

 contrary to the acts of navigation. 



American manufactures had slow growth, partly owing to the scar- 

 city of proper labor, but more particularly to the restrictive measures 

 of the English Government; and yet the latter was the incentive, at a 

 later day, to their development. 



In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England was struggling 

 for the mastery of the seas, the direction of commerce, and the monopoly 

 of manufactures. Holland was her rival. During the middle and latter 

 part of the sixteenth century the Dutch provinces rose to industrial 

 and commercial greatness, and their ports the chief depots and them- 

 selves the principal carriers of the world. Though destitute of forests 

 they built more ships than all Europe besides; without mines they were 

 the largest dealers in all metals; planting no vineyards they monopo- 

 lized the wine trade. Producing almost no grain of any kind, yet, when 

 in season of scarcity, France or England needed supplies of corn, they 

 looked not to Poland or Livonia, where it grew, but to the cities of the 

 Dutch, where they were always sure to find a ready and plentiful store 

 in the best supplied granaries of Europe. Without fields of flax the 

 cities swarmed with linen-weavers; destitute almost of sheep, Holland 

 became the center of all woolen manufactures. And such were the re- 

 pute of their fabrics and the superior facilities of their universal navi- 

 gation and intercourse with other countries that Enghsh and Flemish 

 mercliants often knew no better way to forward their goods to remote 

 places than to send them first to Amsterdam, whence they were either 

 reexported or purchased by the Dutch for their own consumption. 



