Part 8 (1/2)
Spinning doubtless was an ever-ready refuge in the monotonous life of the early colonist. She soon had plenty of material to work with.
Everywhere, even in the earliest days, the culture of flax was encouraged. By 1640 the Court of Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.sed two orders directing the growth of flax, ascertaining what colonists were skilful in breaking, spinning, weaving, ordering that boys and girls be taught to spin, and offering a bounty for linen grown, spun, and woven in the colony. Connecticut pa.s.sed similar measures. Soon spinning-cla.s.ses were formed, and every family ordered to spin so many pounds of flax a year, or to pay a fine. The industry received a fresh impulse through the immigration of about one hundred Irish families from Londonderry. They settled in New Hamps.h.i.+re on the Merrimac about 1719, and spun and wove with far more skill than prevailed among those English settlers who had already become Americans. They established a manufactory according to Irish methods, and attempts at a similar establishment were made in Boston.
There was much public excitement over spinning, and prizes were offered for quant.i.ty and quality. Women, rich as well as poor, appeared on Boston Common with their wheels, thus making spinning a popular holiday recreation. A brick building was erected as a spinning-school costing 15,000, and a tax was placed on carriages and coaches in 1757 to support it. At the fourth anniversary in 1749 of the ”Boston Society for promoting Industry and Frugality,” three hundred ”young spinsters” spun on their wheels on Boston Common. And a pretty sight it must have been: the fair young girls in the quaint and pretty dress of the times, shown to us in Hogarth's prints, spinning on the green gra.s.s under the great trees. In 1754, on a like occasion, a minister preached to the ”spinsters,” and a collection of 453 was taken up. This was in currency of depreciated value. At the same time premiums were offered in Pennsylvania for weaving linen and spinning thread. Benjamin Franklin wrote in his _Poor Richard's Almanac_:--
”Many estates are spent in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting.”
But the German colonists long before this had been famous flax-raisers.
A Pennsylvania poet in 1692 descanted on the flax-workers of Germantown:--
”Where live High German people and Low Dutch Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, There grows the flax as also you may know, That from the same they do divide the tow.”
Father Pastorius, their leader, forever commemorated his interest in his colony and in the textile arts by his choice for a device for a seal.
Whittier thus describes it in his _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_:--
”Still on the town-seal his device is found, Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a three-foil ground With _Vinum, Linum, et Textrinum_ wound.”
Virginia was earlier even in awakening interest in manufacturing flax than Ma.s.sachusetts, for wild flax grew there in profusion, ready for gathering. In 1646 two houses were ordered to be erected at Jamestown as spinning-schools. These were to be well built and well heated. Each county was to send to these schools two poor children, seven or eight years old, to be taught carding, spinning, and knitting. Each child was to be supplied by the county authorities on admission to the school with six barrels of Indian corn, a pig, two hens, clothing, shoes, a bed, rug, blanket, two coverlets, a wooden tray, and two pewter dishes or cups. This plan was not wholly carried out. Prizes in tobacco (which was the current money of Virginia in which everything was paid) were given, however, for every pound of flax, every skein of yarn, every yard of linen of Virginia production, and soon flax-wheels and spinners were plentiful.
Intelligent attempts were made to start these industries in the South.
Governor Lucas wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Pinckney, in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1745:--
”I send by this Sloop two Irish servants, viz.: a Weaver and a Spinner. I am informed Mr. Cattle hath produced both Flax and Hemp.
I pray you will purchase some, and order a loom and spinning-wheel to be made for them, and set them to work. I shall order Flax sent from Philadelphia with seed, that they may not be idle. I pray you will also purchase Wool and sett them to making Negroes clothing which may be sufficient for my own People.
”As I am afraid one Spinner can't keep a Loom at work, I pray you will order a Sensible Negroe woman or two to learn to spin, and wheels to be made for them; the man Servant will direct the Carpenter in making the loom and the woman will direct the Wheel.”
The following year Madam Pinckney wrote to her father that the woman had spun all the material they could get, so was idle; that the loom had been made, but had no tackling; that she would make the harness for it, if two pounds of shoemaker's thread were sent her. The sensible negro woman and hundreds of others learned well to spin, and excellent cloth has been always woven in the low country of Carolina, as well as in the upper districts, till our own time.
In the revolt of feeling caused by the Stamp Act, there was a constant social pressure to encourage the manufacture and wearing of goods of American manufacture. As one evidence of this movement the president and first graduating cla.s.s of Rhode Island College--now Brown University--were clothed in fabrics made in New England. From Ma.s.sachusetts to South Carolina the women of the colonies banded together in patriotic societies called Daughters of Liberty, agreeing to wear only garments of homespun manufacture, and to drink no tea. In many New England towns they gathered together to spin, each bringing her own wheel. At one meeting seventy linen-wheels were employed. In Rowley, Ma.s.sachusetts, the meeting of the Daughters is thus described:--
”A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met at sunrise with their wheels to spend the day at the house of the Rev'd Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning match.
At an hour before sunset, the ladies there appearing neatly dressed, princ.i.p.ally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment. After which being present many spectators of both s.e.xes, Mr. Jewell delivered a profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: ”Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”
Matters of church and patriotism were never far apart in New England; so whenever the spinners gathered at New London, Newbury, Ipswich, or Beverly, they always had an appropriate sermon. A favorite text was Exodus x.x.xv. 25: ”And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands.” When the Northboro women met, they presented the results of their day's work to their minister. There were forty-four women and they spun 2223 knots of linen and tow, and wove one linen sheet and two towels.
By Revolutionary times General Howe thought ”Linen and Woollen Goods much wanted by the Rebels”; hence when he prepared to evacuate Boston he ordered all such goods carried away with him. But he little knew the domestic industrial resources of the Americans. Women were then most proficient in spinning. In 1777 Miss Eleanor Fry of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, spun seven skeins one knot linen yarn in one day, an extraordinary amount. This was enough to weave twelve linen handkerchiefs. At this time when there were about five or six skeins to a pound of flax, the pay for spinning was sixpence a skein. The Abbe Robin wondered at the deftness of New England spinners.
In 1789 an outcry was raised against the luxury said to be eating away the substance of the new country. The poor financial administration of the government seemed deranging everything; and again a social movement was inst.i.tuted in New England to promote ”Oeconomy and Household Industries.” ”The Rich and Great strive by example to convince the Populace of their error by Growing their own Flax and Wool, having some one in the Family to dress it, and all the Females spin, several weave and bleach the linen.” The old spinning-matches were revived. Again the ministers preached to the faithful women ”Oeconomists,” who thus combined religion, patriotism, and industry. Truly it was, as a contemporary writer said, ”a pleasing Sight: some spinning, some reeling, some carding cotton, some combing flax,” as they were preached to.
Within a few years attempts have been made in England and Ireland to encourage flax-growing, as before it is spun it gives employment to twenty different cla.s.ses of laborers, many parts of which work can be done by young and unskilled children. In Courtrai, where hand spinning and weaving of flax still flourish, the average earnings of a family are three pounds a week. In Finland homespun linen still is made in every household. The British Spinning and Weaving School in New Bond Street is an attempt to revive the vanished industry in England. In our own country it is pleasant to record that the National a.s.sociation of Cotton Manufacturers is planning to start on a large scale the culture and manufacture of flax in our Eastern states; this is not, however, with any thought of reviving either the preparation, spinning, or weaving of flax by old-time hand processes.
CHAPTER IX
WOOL CULTURE AND SPINNING
_With a Postscript on Cotton_