ous
materials can be used. Since the threads wherever they cross are united,
the fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is all of a piece
and not composed of parts. In short, we seem to be on the eve of a
revolution in textiles that is the same as that taking place in building
materials. Our concrete structures, however great, are all one stone.
They are not built up out of blocks, but cast as a whole.

Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles. It has maintained
its exclusiveness hitherto by being based upon hand labor. In no other
way could one get so much painful, patient toil put into such a light
and portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or dropping from a
wrist represented years of work by poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid
nuns. A visit to a lace factory, even to the public rooms where the
wornout women were not to be seen, is enough to make one resolve never
to purchase any such thing made by hand again. But our good resolutions
do not last long and in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed
backs, or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more because it
means that some poor woman has put her life and health into it, netting
and weaving, purling and knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and
drawing, thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no longer
see and her fingers have become stiffened.

But man is not naturally cruel. He does not really enjoy being a slave
driver, either of human or animal slaves, although he can be hardened to
it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he
wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He
prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses.
He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than
bending his back over a scythe.

The Machine is not only the Great Liberator, it is the Great Leveler
also. It is the most powerful of the forces for democracy. An
aristocracy can hardly be maintained except by distinction in dress, and
distinction in dress can only be maintained by sumptuary laws or
costliness. Sumptuary laws are unconstitutional in this country, hence
the stress laid upon costliness. But machinery tends to bring styles
and fabrics within the reach of all. The shopgirl is almost as well
dressed on the street as her rich customer. The man who buys ready-made
clothing is only a few weeks behind the vanguard of the fashion. There
is o