Home Life in Colonial Days Part 8

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 Hampshire 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_

The art of spinning was an honorable occupation for women as early as the ninth century; and it was so universal that it furnished a legal t.i.tle by which an unmarried woman is known to this day. Spinster is the only one of all her various womanly t.i.tles that survives; webster, shepster, litster, brewster, and baxter are obsolete. The occupations are also obsolete save those indicated by shepster and baxter--that is, the cutting out of cloth and baking of bread; these are the only duties among them all that she still performs.

The wool industry dates back to prehistoric man. The patience, care, and skill involved in its manufacture have ever exercised a potent influence on civilization. It is, therefore, interesting and gratifying to note the intelligent eagerness of our first colonists for wool culture. It was quickly and proudly noted of towns and of individuals as a proof of their rapid and substantial progress that they could carry on any of the steps of the cloth industry. Good Judge Sewall piously exulted when Brother Moody started a successful fulling-mill in Boston. Johnson in his _Wonder-working Providence_ tells with pride that by 1654 New Englanders "have a fulling-mill and caused their little ones to be very dilligent in spinning cotton-woole, many of them having been clothiers in England." This has ever seemed to me one of the fortunate conditions that tended to the marked success of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, that so many had been "clothiers" or cloth-workers in England; or had come from shires in England where wool was raised and cloth made, and hence knew the importance of the industry as well as its practical workings.

As early as 1643 the author of _New England's First Fruits_ wrote: "They are making linens, fustians, dimities, and look immediately to woollens from their own sheep." Johnson estimated the number of sheep in the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts, about 1644, as three thousand. Soon the great wheel was whirring in every New England house. The raising of sheep was encouraged in every way. They were permitted to graze on the commons; it was forbidden to send them from the colony; no sheep under two years old could be killed to sell; if a dog killed a sheep, the dog's owner must hang him and pay double the cost of the sheep. All persons who were not employed in other ways, as single women, girls, and boys, were required to spin. Each family must contain one spinner. These spinners were formed into divisions or "squadrons" of ten persons; each division had a director. There were no drones in this hive; neither the wealth nor high station of parents excused children from this work. Thus all were levelled to one kind of labor, and by this levelling all were also elevated to independence. When the open expression of revolt came, the homespun industries seemed a firm rock for the foundation of liberty.

People joined in agreements to eat no lamb or mutton, that thus sheep might be preserved, and to wear no imported woollen cloth. They gave prizes for spinning and weaving.

Great encouragement was given in Virginia in early days to the raising and manufacture of wool. The a.s.sembly estimated that five children not over thirteen years of age could by their work readily spin and weave enough to keep thirty persons clothed. Six pounds of tobacco was paid to any one bringing to the county court-house where he resided a yard of homespun woollen cloth, made wholly in his family; twelve pounds of tobacco were offered for reward for a dozen pair of woollen hose knitted at home. Slaves were taught to spin; and wool-wheels and wool-cards are found by the eighteenth century on every inventory of planters' house furnishings.

The Pennsylvania settlers were early in the encouragement of wool manufacture. The present industry of hosiery and knit goods long known as Germantown goods began with the earliest settlers of that Pennsylvania town. Stocking-weavers were there certainly as early as 1723; and it is a.s.serted there were knitting-machines. At any rate, one Mack, the son of the founder of the Dunkers, made "leg stockings" and gloves. Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who was in Germantown in 1759, told of a great manufacture of stockings at that date. In 1777 it was said that a hundred Germantown stocking-weavers were out of employment through the war. Still it was not till 1850 that patents for knitting-machines were taken out there.

Among the manufactures of the province of Pennsylvania in 1698 were druggets, serges, and coverlets; and among the registered tradesmen were dyers, fullers, comb-makers, card-makers, weavers, and spinners. The Swedish colony as early as 1673 had the wives and daughters "employing themselves in spinning wool and flax and many in weaving." The fairs inst.i.tuted by William Penn for the encouragement of domestic manufactures and trade in general, which were fostered by Franklin and continued till 1775, briskly stimulated wool and flax manufacture.

In 1765 and in 1775 rebellious Philadelphians banded together with promises not to eat or suffer to be eaten in their families any lamb or "meat of the mutton kind"; in this the Philadelphia butchers, patriotic and self-sacrificing, all joined. A wool-factory was built and fitted up and an appeal made to the women to save the state. In a month four hundred wool-spinners were at work. But the war cut off the supply of raw material, and the manufacture languished. In 1790, after the war, fifteen hundred sets of irons for spinning-wheels were sold from one shop, and mechanics everywhere were making looms.

New Yorkers were not behindhand in industry. Lord Cornbury wrote home to England, in 1705, that he "had seen serge made upon Long Island that any man might wear; they make very good linen for common use; as for Woollen I think they have brought that to too great perfection."

In Cornbury's phrase, "too great perfection," may be found the key for all the extraordinary and apparently stupid prohibitions and restrictions placed by the mother-country on colonial wool manufacture.

The growth of the woollen industry in any colony was regarded at once by England with jealous eyes. Wool was the pet industry and princ.i.p.al staple of Great Britain; and well it might be, for until the reign of Henry VIII. English garments from head to foot were wholly of wool, even the shoes. Wool was also received in England as currency. Thomas Fuller said, "The wealth of our nation is folded up in broadcloth." Therefore, the Crown, aided by the governors of the provinces, sought to maintain England's monopoly by regulating and reducing the culture of wool in America through prohibiting the exportation to England of any American wool or woollen materials. In 1699 all vessels sailing to England from the colonies were prohibited taking on board any "Wool, Woolfells, Shortlings, Moslings, Wool Flocks, Worsteds, Bays, Bay or Woollen Yarn, Cloath, Serge, Kersey, Says, Frizes, Druggets, Shalloons, etc."; and an arbitrary law was pa.s.sed prohibiting the transportation of home-made woollens from one American province to another. These laws were never fully observed and never checked the culture and manufacture of wool in this country. Hence our colonies were spared the cruel fate by which England's same policy paralyzed and obliterated in a few years the glorious wool industry of Ireland. Luckily for us, it is further across the Atlantic Ocean than across St. George's Channel.

The "all-wool goods a yard wide," which we so easily purchase to-day, meant to the colonial dame or daughter the work of many weeks and months, from the time when the fleeces were first given to her deft hands. Fleeces had to be opened with care, and have all pitched or tarred locks, dag-locks, brands, and feltings cut out. These cuttings were not wasted, but were spun into coa.r.s.e yarn. The white locks were carefully tossed and separated and tied into net bags with tallies to be dyed. Another homely saying, "dyed in the wool," showed a process of much skill. Blue, in all shades, was the favorite color, and was dyed with indigo. So great was the demand for this dye-stuff that indigo-pedlers travelled over the country selling it.

Madder, cochineal, and logwood dyed beautiful reds. The bark of red oak or hickory made very pretty shades of brown and yellow. Various flowers growing on the farm could be used for dyes. The flower of the goldenrod, when pressed of its juice, mixed with indigo, and added to alum, made a beautiful green. The juice of the pokeberry boiled with alum made crimson dye, and a violet juice from the petals of the iris, or "flower-de-luce," that blossomed in June meadows, gave a delicate light purple tinge to white wool.

The bark of the sa.s.safras was used for dyeing yellow or orange color, and the flowers and leaves of the balsam also. Fustic and copperas gave yellow dyes. A good black was obtained by boiling woollen cloth with a quant.i.ty of the leaves of the common field-sorrel, then boiling again with logwood and copperas.

In the South there were scores of flowers and leaves that could be used for dyes. During the Revolutionary War one enterprising South Carolinian got a guinea a pound for a yellow dye he made from the sweet-leaf or horse-laurel. The leaves and berries of gall-berry bush made a good black much used by hatters and weavers. The root of the barberry gave wool a beautiful yellow, as did the leaves of the devil's-bit. The petals of Jerusalem artichoke and St.-John's-wort dyed yellow. Yellow root is a significant name and reveals its use: oak, walnut, or maple bark dyed brown. Often the woven cloth was dyed, not the wool.

The next process was carding; the wool was first greased with rape oil or "melted swine's grease," which had to be thoroughly worked in; about three pounds of grease were put into ten pounds of wool. Wool-cards were rectangular pieces of thin board, with a simple handle on the back or at the side; to this board was fastened a smaller rectangle of strong leather, set thick with slightly bent wire teeth, like a coa.r.s.e brush.

The carder took one card with her left hand, and resting it on her knee, drew a tuft of wool across it several times, until a sufficient quant.i.ty of fibre had been caught upon the wire teeth. She then drew the second wool-card, which had to be warmed, across the first several times, until the fibres were brushed parallel by all these "tummings." Then by a deft and catchy motion the wool was rolled or carded into small fleecy rolls which were then ready for spinning.

Wool-combs were shaped like the letter T, with about thirty long steel teeth from ten to eighteen inches long set at right angles with the top of the T. The wool was carefully placed on one comb, and with careful strokes the other comb laid the long staple smooth for hard-twisted spinning. It was tedious and slow work, and a more skilful operation than carding; and the combs had to be kept constantly heated; but no machine-combing ever equalled hand-combing. There was a good deal of waste in this combing, that is, large clumps of tangled wool called noil were combed out. They were not really wasted, we may be sure, by our frugal ancestors, but were spun into coa.r.s.e yarn.

An old author says: "The action of spinning must be learned by practice, not by relation." Sung by the poets, the grace and beauty of the occupation has ever shared praise with its utility.

Wool-spinning was truly one of the most flexible and alert series of movements in the world, and to its varied and graceful poises our grandmothers may owe part of the dignity of carriage that was so characteristic of them. The spinner stood slightly leaning forward, lightly poised on the ball of the left foot; with her left hand she picked up from the platform of the wheel a long slender roll of the soft carded wool about as large round as the little finger, and deftly wound the end of the fibres on the point of the spindle. She then gave a gentle motion to the wheel with a wooden peg held in her right hand, and seized with the left the roll at exactly the right distance from the spindle to allow for one "drawing." Then the hum of the wheel rose to a sound like the echo of wind; she stepped backward quickly, one, two, three steps, holding high the long yarn as it twisted and quivered.

Suddenly she glided forward with even, graceful stride and let the yarn wind on the swift spindle. Another pinch of the wool-roll, a new turn of the wheel, and _da capo_.

The wooden peg held by the spinner deserves a short description; it served the purpose of an elongated finger, and was called a driver, wheel-peg, etc. It was about nine inches long, an inch or so in diameter; and at about an inch from the end was slightly grooved in order that it might surely catch the spoke and thus propel the wheel.

It was a good day's work for a quick, active spinner to spin six skeins of yarn a day. It was estimated that to do that with her quick backward and forward steps she walked over _twenty miles_.

The yarn might be wound directly upon the wooden spindle as it was spun, or at the end of the spindle might be placed a spool or broach which twisted with the revolving spindle, and held the new-spun yarn. This broach was usually simply a stiff roll of paper, a corn-cob, or a roll of corn-husk. When the ball of yarn was as large as the broach would hold, the spinner placed wooden pegs in certain holes in the spokes of her spinning-wheel and tied the end of the yarn to one peg. Then she took off the belt of her wheel and whirred the big wheel swiftly round, thus winding the yarn on the pegs into hanks or clews two yards in circ.u.mference, which were afterwards tied with a loop of yarn into knots of forty threads; while seven of these knots made a skein. The clock-reel was used for winding yarn, also a triple reel.

The yarn might be wound from the spindle into skeins in another way,--by using a hand-reel, an implement which really did exist in every farmhouse, though the dictionaries are ignorant of it, as they are of its universal folk-name, niddy-noddy. This is fortunately preserved in an every-day domestic riddle:--

"Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, Two heads and one body."