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 
