Mat 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



ON THE STRAW PLAIT TRADE. 453 



of plait were used, and employed numbers of children in the plaiting 

 districts. But the most important of double plaits is that termed twist 

 edge, and made within the past fourteen years. This plait was also 

 named whip-cord edge, from the fact of the straw being whipped over as 

 it were. It is also made in whole-pipe seven and eleven straws, and is 

 a staple article of English wear, forming the true straw bonnet, by ex- 

 hibiting English straw to the best advantage. The discovery of this 

 valuable plait has been attended with happy results, as it is a description 

 capable of being used in almost every kind of hat or bonnet. 



These various descriptions of straw plaits have enabled the trade to 

 produce so many novelties that Tuscan plaits for bonnets declined as 

 articles of wear, the beauty of English straw plaits, as displayed by these 

 new patterns, leading the public to give them the preference ; and 

 although the lowering and subsequent abolition of the duties on foreign 

 Tuscan brought that article into competition with the English straw 

 manufacture, no injury has been sustained by the straw trade. Tuscan 

 is chiefly confined to girls' hats at the present time, and its low price 

 since the removal of the duty has completely abolished the making of 

 Tuscan plait in England from Italian straws. 



The plaits now enumerated of English make from the wheat straw 

 were those shown at the Great Exhibition in 1851. At that concentra- 

 tion of the best productions of the plaiting districts, the skill of the 

 English plaiter was fully shown. From that date plaiting has continued 

 to progress, not so much in the invention of a number of new plaits, as 

 in the superior quality and extent of the manufacture. The newest 

 feature is the production of various coloured plaits of excellent patterns, 

 suitable for ladies' hats, the last and popular colours being produced in 

 mixed and dyed plaits, as mauve, magenta, &c. Many valuable patterns 

 have been made by mixing rice straw with dyed straw, as rice and black, 

 rice and mauve, rice, black, and brown, and similar patterns. 



The progress made in English plaiting up to the present time has 

 been thus remarkable in the varieties produced to meet the public 

 taste and the necessities of the million. And although foreign straw 

 plaits from Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, have been brought to 

 compete with them, they have nearly all failed in this respect. A few 

 single plaits of a choice character are used for white goods, but the 

 greater portion, from the inferiority of their colour, are only suitable for 

 use when dyed. 



Straw plait is a domestic manufacture, carried on in the cottages of 

 the agricultural labourers of the three counties of Bedfordshire, Hertford- 

 shire, and Buckinghamshire, and portions of Essex and Suffolk. The 

 plaiters are generally the wives and children of the labourers ; a few are 

 men. No plait is made in factories. 



Children are taught usually in schools, and are sent at the early age 

 of four years ; besides plaiting, they are taught the simple elements of 

 spelling and reading. In most villages there is a plaiting school, which 



