CHAPTER XXXIV. 
THE COTTON FACTORY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES 
“The four Southernmost States make a great 
deal of cotton. Their poor are almost entirely 
clothed in it in winter and summer.” 
So wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1786. Without 
doubt his observation was first-hand and authentic. 
But where was this cotton manufactured? In a 
cotton mill somewhere? No, that cannot be, for 
no cotton mill had yet been built on American soil. 
The cotton was home manufactured from lint, the 
seed having first been hand-picked. This manu- 
facturing was done in the home, for the home use 
of the inhabitants and the household. With the 
coming of the cotton gin, not only did the pro- 
duction of cotton increase, but its manufacture 
and use increased as well. 
Before the Civil War slave women, directed 
by their mistresses, largely clothed the plantation 
force with “homespun,” as it was called. And it 
may be noted that even now, in spite of the cheap- 
ness of the manufactured product, many an old- 
fashioned country woman still cards her cotton into 
rolls, spins the product into thread on the spinning 
wheel, and with laborious shuttle weaves the 
thread into vari-colored counterpanes for her 
beds, into “breeches cloth” for her good man, or 
into underclothing for herself. 
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