The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 341
The next operation is that of bowing the cotton, to clear it
from dirt and knots. A large bow, made elastic by a complica-
tion of strings, is used ; this being put in contact with a heap
of cotton, the w^orkman strikes the string with a heavy wooden
mallet, and its vibrations open the knots of the cotton, shake
from it the dust and dirt, and raise it to a downy fleece. The
hand-mill and bow have been used immemorially throughout
all the countries of Asia, and have their appropriate names in
the Arabic and other languages : they were formerly used in
America, whence the term, still applied in commerce, " bowed
Georgia cotton^'' The hatters of Great Britain still raise their
wool by the bow. The cotton being thus prepared, without
any carding, it is spun by the women ; the coarse yarn is spun
on a one-thread wheel, and very much resembling those used
at the present day by the peasantry in the west of Ireland.
The finer yarn is spun watli a metallic spindle, and some-
times without a distaff; a bit of clay is attached as a weight to
one end of the spindle, which is turned round with the left
hand, whilst the cotton is supplied with the right ;
the thread is
wound upon a small piece of wood. The spinster keeps her
The convention of American Geologists and Naturalists who met at New Ha-
ven in May last (1845. )j were invited, together with their ladies, by Mrs. Whit-
ney, the widow of the inventor of the Cotton gin, to attend an evening party at
her house, wliicli was accepted, where they had an elegant supper and conver-
sazione.
" It is melancholy," says Mr. Bains in his Historj' of the Cotton Manufacture,
p. 114, "to contrast with the sanguine eagerness of inventors, the slowness of
mankind to acknowledge and reward their merits,—to observe how, on many oc-
casions, genius, instead of realizing fame and fortune, has been pursued by disas-
ter and opposition,—how trifling difficulties have frustrated the success of splendid
discoveries,—and how those discoveries, snatched from the grasp of their broken-
hearted authors, have brought princely fortunes to men whose only talent was in
making money. When inventors fail in their projects, no one pities them ; when
they succeed, persecution, envy, and jealousy are their reward. Their means
are generally exhausted before their discoveries become productive. They plant
a vineyard, and either starve, or are driven from their inheritance, before they can
gather the fruit."
Would it not be greatly to the credit of the cotton manufacturing interest in
this country and in Europe, to present Mrs. Whitney with some token of their
respect and veneration for the memorj- of the inventor of the Cotton gin?