artificial silk the cellulose is dissolved in a cupro-ammoniacal
solution, but instead of being forced out through minute openings to
form threads, as in that process, the paste is allowed to flow upon a
revolving cylinder which is engraved with the pattern of the desired
textile. A scraper removes the excess and the turning of the cylinder
brings the paste in the engraved lines down into a bath which solidifies
it.

Tulle or net is now what is chiefly being turned out, but the engraved
design may be as elaborate and artistic as desired, and various
materials can be used. Since the threads wherever they cross are united,
the fabric is naturally stronger than the ordinary. It is all of a piece
and not composed of parts. In short, we seem to be on the eve of a
revolution in textiles that is the same as that taking place in building
materials. Our concrete structures, however great, are all one stone.
They are not built up out of blocks, but cast as a whole.

Lace has always been the aristocrat among textiles. It has maintained
its exclusiveness hitherto by being based upon hand labor. In no other
way could one get so much painful, patient toil put into such a light
and portable form. A filmy thing twined about a neck or dropping from a
wrist represented years of work by poor peasant girls or pallid, unpaid
nuns. A visit to a lace factory, even to the public rooms where the
wornout women were not to be seen, is enough to make one resolve never
to purchase any such thing made by hand again. But our good resolutions
do not last long and in time we forget the strained eyes and bowed
backs, or, what is worse, value our bit of lace all the more because it
means that some poor woman has put her life and health into it, netting
and weaving, purling and knotting, twining and twisting, throwing and
drawing, thread by thread, day after day, until her eyes can no longer