new one. Judging by the consumption of
these conveniences, it would seem, that, if one had only a clean collar
to display, it was of little consequence whether he had a shirt or not.

To digress a moment, I will observe, that, when I first saw these
ingenious contrivances to escape the washerwoman's bill, as well as the
cuffs made by the same process for ladies' use, they both struck me so
favorably, while their cheapness was so surprising, that my curiosity
was inflamed to see and know how they were made. In company with my
sister, I visited the manufactory. It was in a large building, and
employed many hands, who operated with machinery that exceeds my ability
to describe. They took a whole piece of thin, cheap muslin, to each side
of which they pasted a covering of the finest white paper by passing the
three layers between iron rollers. The paper and muslin were in rolls
many hundred feet long. The beautiful product of this union was then
parted into strips of the proper width and dried, then passed through
hot metal rollers, combining friction with pressure, whence it was
delivered with a smooth, glossy, enamelled surface. The material for
many thousand collars was thus enamelled in five minutes. It was then
cut by knives into the different shapes and sizes required, and so
rapidly that a man and boy could make more than ten thousand in an hour.
Every collar was then put through a machine which printed upon it
imitation stitches, so exactly resembling the best work of a
sewing-machine as to induce the belief that the collar was actually
stitched. Two girls were working or attending two of these machines, and
the two produced nearly a hundred collars per minute, or about sixty
thousand daily. The button-holes were next punched with even greater
rapidity, then the collar was turned over so nicely that no break
occurred in the material. Then they were counted and put in boxes, and
were ready for market.

Besides these shirt-collars, there was a great variety of ladies' worked
cuffs and collars, adapted to every taste, and imitating the finest
linen with the nicest exactness, but all made of paper. Some hundreds of
thousands of these were piled up around, ready for counting and packing,
sufficient, it appeared to me, to supply our whole population for a
twelvemonth. They were sold so cheaply, also, that it cost no more to
buy a new collar than to wash an old one. Like friction-matches, they
were used only once and then