ls ready for spinning
were brought home in the same way, and made a still bigger bundle which
was light in weight for its size. Sometimes a red-cheeked farmer's lass
would be seen riding home from the carding-mill, through New England
woods or along New England lanes, with a bundle of carded wool towering
up behind her bigger than her horse.

Of the use and manufacture of cotton I will speak very shortly. Our
greatest, cheapest, most indispensable fibre is also our latest one. It
never formed one of the homespun industries of the colonies; in fact, it
was never an article of extended domestic manufacture.

A little cotton was always used in early days for stuffing bedquilts,
petticoats, warriors' armor, and similar purposes. It was bought by the
pound, East India cotton, in small quantities; the seeds were picked
out one by one, by hand; it was carded on wool-cards, and spun into a
rather intractable yarn which was used as warp for linsey-woolsey and
rag carpets. Even in England no cotton weft, no all-cotton fabrics, were
made till after 1760, till Hargreave's time. Sometimes a twisted yarn
was made of one thread of cotton and one of wool which was knit into
durable stockings. Cotton sewing-thread was unknown in England.
Pawtucket women named Wilkinson made the first cotton thread on their
home spinning-wheels in 1792.

Cotton was planted in America, Bancroft says, in 1621, but MacMaster
asserts it was never seen growing here till after the Revolution save as
a garden ornament with garden flowers. This assertion seems oversweeping
when Jefferson could write in a letter in 1786:--

"The four southermost States make a great deal of cotton. Their
poor are almost entirely clothed with it in winter and summer. In
winter they wear shirts of it and outer clothing of cotton and wool
mixed. In summer their shirts are linen, but the outer clothing
cotton. The dress of the women is almost entirely of cotton,
manufactured by themselves, except the richer class, and even many
of these wear a great deal of homespun cotton. It is as well
manufactured as the calicoes of Europe."

Still cotton was certainly not a staple of consequence. We were the last
to enter the list of cotton-producing countries and we have surpassed
them all.

The difficulty of removing the seeds from the staple practically thrust
cotton out of common use. In India a primitive and cumbersome set of
rollers called a chu