Yarn and Cloth Making

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: YARN AND CLOTH MAKING YARN MAKING The story of fabric making through its long and varied development is a fascinating tale which reads like a fairy legend inspired by some magic genii. Even in earliest times man has had a desire to conquer the forces of nature, to harness and control them for his good. In...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: YARN AND CLOTH MAKING YARN MAKING The story of fabric making through its long and varied development is a fascinating tale which reads like a fairy legend inspired by some magic genii. Even in earliest times man has had a desire to conquer the forces of nature, to harness and control them for his good. In primitive man this desire was so strong that he appealed to the spirit world for aid: to the spirits of earth and sky, to the supernatural power in plants and animals. Likewise ancient and medieval man sought the help of good fairies, and good-natured giants, wishing caps, seven league boots, magic rings, invisible cloaks and magic wands. No doubt the belief in these supernatural powers was an inspiration to man as he pushed forward to conquer, but the real impulse which stimulated the existence and growth of industry, including the textile arts, was grim necessity. The magic force which made possible its achievement was man's inventive faculty responding to economic pressure. Fabric making did not advance along the highroad of easy success. With many hindrances and failures, by much experimenting and testing it struggled on to successful accomplishment, as outlined in the following text and pictured in the accompanying illustrations. However, no chronological sequence in development is claimed, or one that is found in a single locality. In these pages we will find that in no other industry has man obtained a greater mastery over the forces of the earth than in fabric making. For whether by means of the first awkward implements guided entirely by hand, or by means of highly developed self-acting tools obedient to power, he has so harnessed nature's forces as to utilize the life about him, both plant and animal, in supplying his need for textiles. Crude beginnings are ...