d Roman priests were made of the finest
linen.

During the Middle Ages, Italy, Spain, and France were celebrated for
their linen fabrics. Religious intolerance in France drove 300,000 of
her best textile workers into England, Ireland, and Scotland. Irish
linen weaving began as early as the eleventh century.

Linen has never been largely woven in America except in the coarser
forms of crash and toweling, although linen weaving was one of the
Puritan domestic industries. The reason America has not been able to
equal Europe in its production of fine linens is because the process
for separating the fiber from the stalk requires the cheapest form of
labor to make it profitable, hence most of the American-grown flax is
raised only for seed.

=Silk.= Silk was used in the East as a fabric for the nobility. It was
first used in China and later in India. It was brought into Europe
about the sixth century. Up to that time the Chinese had a monopoly of
the industry. By the tenth and eleventh centuries silk fabrics were
made in Spain and Italy. At the close of the sixteenth century silk
was being produced at Lyons, France. It was afterwards introduced into
England, and the English silk for a long time replaced the French in
the European market.

HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF TEXTILE INDUSTRIES

The development of the textile industry may be divided into four
stages or periods: first, the family system; second, the guild system;
third, the domestic system; and fourth, the factory system.

=The Family System.= Under the family system the work of spinning and
weaving was carried on by members of a household for the purpose of
supplying the family with clothing. There were no sales of the
product. Each class in society, from the peasant class to that of the
nobleman, had its own devices for making clothing. This was the system
that existed up to about the tenth century.

=The Guild System.= As communities became larger and cities sprang up,
the textile industry became more than a family concern. There was a
demand for better fabrics, and to meet this demand it became
necessary to have a large supply of different parts of looms. The
small weaver who owned and constructed his own loom was not able to
have all these parts, so he began to work for a more prosperous
weaver. The same conditions applied to spinning, and as early as 1740
spinning was carried on by a class distinct from the weavers. As a
result the small weaver was d