shillings a-yard. The highest priced material,
consumed in a limited quantity, consists
in the finest blacks and scarlets. At from
four to five shillings per yard an excellent
pure wool cloth can be produced. Cheap
cloth has rendered cheap clothes possible, and
extinguished the custom of hereditary wardrobes.
In our younger days, all the mechanics
and humbler classes who wore Sunday
clothes were content with the second-hand
garments of the wealthy. Their appearance
was mean, and their cost, taking wear into
consideration, extravagant.

The change was helped on curiously
enough by negro emancipation. While the
negroes of the West Indies were slaves,
their owners clothed them simply in a shirt
and trousers of a kind of striped mattrass
sacking. When emancipated, the first
desire of the coloured gentleman was to
dress like his late proprietor. The Jews of
London, well posted up, as the Americans say,
to this fact by their West Indian Hebraic
correspondents, hastened to send out consignments
of second-hand clothes which had been
previously cleaned and remade. Thus, Julius
Caesar Twigg or Napoleon Bonaparte Buxton
was able to rig himself out in the latest
fashions from England for as many half-
crowns as it cost his white rival pounds
sterling. The demand soon exceeded the
supply; the Yorkshire manufacturers were
called upon for a cheap cloth, and they found
it in two materials- cotton and shoddy. Instead
of making the cloth of all wool, a warp
of cotton was introduced under a woollen
weft, and a strong, durable, good-looking
article was produced at a cheap rate. But
cheap wool was also needed for the face or
weft, and this was found by tearing up old
woollen clothes, re-washing, dyeing, and spinning
them, with the addition of more or less
new wool. This is shoddy. Thus, shoddy
and cotton-warp gave cloth for the million.
A great deal of virtuous indignation
has been wasted on shoddy making
which is only one way of utilising what
used to be grievously thrown away to
rot. The cheap cloth soon found its way
into English shops, and drove out the
old clothes trade. The new demand had
another effect; it stimulated the ingenuity of
mechanical manufacturers to comb wools
that had hitherto been deemed too short for
combing, in order to mix them with shoddy;
and thus arose a demand for wool from all
parts of the globe, that has been increased
beyond all calculation. At first, purchasers
were taken in by cheap coats and trousers
but now the thermometer of price is perfectly
understood. We have seen a beautiful
article in wool made of old worsted stockings.
The mixed coloured shooting suits
now so much in vogue are chiefly made of
shoddy, just as fine paper is made of rags.
By our manufacturing skill, cheap iron and
coal, capital and credit, by a repeal of all the
monopolies and all duties on raw produce
with which our staple trade was once fenced
round, we are able to sell woollen all over the
world, and to buy from Egypt, from
Abyssinia, from Syria, the East Indies, and all
regions where sheep can live, anything which
is wool or hair, in addition to the fine
qualities obtained from Germany and Australia.
In France, on the contrary, under an
absolute protective system, foreign woollen
cloth is loaded with prohibitory duties;
but, as the French manufacturers are quite
unable to supply any large sudden order
for military cloths and blankets, or any
of the cheaper sorts of warm woollen goods,
the French government, since the
commencement of the war, has been obliged
to lay out upwards of a million sterling
in British blankets, rugs, and broadcloth.
Perhaps the very great-coats they lent our
troops last winter were spun and milled in
Yorkshire.

Army cloth is a trade of itself. There
are a number of manufacturers who make
nothing else. Army cloth has no face, no
right or wrong side; it cuts equally well
every way. For a sea-traveller's coat there
is nothing better than a soldier's grey great-
coat, which costs, in large quantities, about
five shillings a-yard. Nothing is more deceptive
than a bright-faced cloth; when unclipped
and unsmoothed, cloth wears the best.
Flushing, better known as P-coating, is
another separate Yorkshire manufacture,
chiefly found about Dewsbury. This like
broad-cloth has been reduced in price, and
can be had from one shilling a-yard, used in
the commonest slop-clothing, up to ten
shillings, for the suits of members of Royal
Yacht Club and other sea-going amateurs.
An A.B. Jack gets a capital P-coat at five
or six shillings a-yard,

Tweed is one of the favourite names among
tailors' goods. It formerly meant a sort of
plaid of pure woollen, manufactured on the
banks of the river of that name from Scottish
Cheviot and black-faced wool. It has since
been cheapened by cotton and shoddy mixtures,
and improved by Australian wool,—
the staple of all our best cloth. Tweed is
manufactured not only in Scotland but in
Yorkshire and Gloucestershire, of mixed
British and foreign wool, and means
anything that for a particular season the tailors
agree to call by that name.

After going through the various samples of
the varieties enumerated, we did not pause
over the curiosities of cloth fabric, such as
cloth of two colours, one on each side, chiefly
valuable as cloaks for pickpockets, or the
elephantine cloth made once and never again
for the Great Exhibition of eighteen hundred
and fifty-one. These feats are the toys of
rich manufacturers, and not worth serious
attention. Indeed it may be laid down as a
rule that the greatest manufactures and
most important trades rest on the unattractive