cloth. Women generally could spin two skeins of linen yarn a day; but
there is record of one, a Miss Eleanor Fry of East Greenwich, R.I., who
spun seven skeins and one knot in one day,--an amount sufficient to
make twelve large lawn handkerchiefs such as were then imported from
England.

Within four years another Rhode Island family of Newport are recorded in
1768 as having "manufactured nine hundred and eighty yards of woolen
cloth, besides two coverlids (coverlets), and two bed-ticks, and all the
stocking yarn of the family."

The Council of East Greenwich fixed prices at that time at rates which
seem purely arbitrary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus for
spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins to the pound, the price
was not to exceed sixpence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer work
in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was the same per skein. Weaving plain
flannel or tow or linen brought fivepence per yard; common worsted and
linen, one penny a yard; and other linens in like proportion.[11]

Silk growing and weaving had been the result of the silkworm cocoons
sent over by James the First, who offered bounties of money and tobacco
for spun and woven silk according to weight. Three women were famous
before the Revolution as silk growers and weavers,--Mrs. Pinckney, Grace
Fisher, and Susanna Wright; and at all points where the mulberry-tree
was indigenous or could be made to grow, fortune was regarded as
assured. The project failed; but the efforts then made paved the way for
present experiment, and even better success than that already attained.

The manufacture of straw goods, amounting now to many million dollars
yearly, owes its origin to a woman,--Miss Betsey Metcalf, who in 1789,