96 



Industrial and Material Progress 



3. Cloth and Clothing, 



Up to tlie time of the revolutiori, our people depended chiefly on 

 Great Britain for their supplies of clothing and clothing material. 



During the colonial period the British board of trade, and their 

 agents in America, tried in every way to discourage and repress at- 

 tempts on the part of the colonists to start home manufactures. 



In 1T05, Lord Cornbury writes to Secretary Hodges: ''I am well 

 informed that upon Long Island and Connecticut they are setting up 

 woolen manufactures, and I myself have seen serge made upon Long 

 Island that any man may wear. Xow, if they begin to make serge, 

 they will in time make coarse cloth and then fine. The consequence 

 will be that if once they can see that they can clothe themselves, not 

 only comfortably but handsomely too, without the help of England, 

 they who are not very fond of submitting to England would soon think, 

 of putting in execution designs they have long harbored in their 

 breasts." (Doc. Hist. L 711.) 



Mr. Caleb Heathcote writes in 1708, to the board of trade in London : 

 " What in the first place I arrived at in my proposals was to divert 

 the Americans from going on with the linen and woolen manufacture, 

 and to have turned their thoughts to such things that might be useful 

 and beneficial to Great Britain, They are already so far advanced that 

 three-fourths of the linen and woolen they wear is made among them- 

 selves." (Doc. Hist. vol. I.) 



But Governor Cosby, in 1 732, did not see so much dansfer to British 

 manufactures, for he writes to the board of trade: ''The inhabitants 

 here are more lazy and inactive than would generally be supposed, and 

 their manufactures extend no further than what is consumed in their 

 own families, a few coarse linsey-woolseys for clothing, and linen for 

 their own wear." 



Subsequently, in 1767, we find Governor Moore reporting to the 

 board of trade about some small manufactures being .«et up by one 

 Wells, who is supported by a set of men who call themselves the "So- 

 ciety of Arts." 



But, in spite of these discouragements, the enterprising spirit of the 

 people, and indeed the necessities of their situation, led to the rapid 

 development of cloth making. The Hollanders had brought with 

 them their knowledge of making linen, and custom and tradition had 

 kept alive in every family the skill which this art required. Every 

 house had its spinning wheel, and every farm its patch of growing flax. 

 Mother and daughters and servants were all employed as thev hnd time 



