Newport daily independent., 1902-07-21
HISTORY OF STRAW HATS.
The Making of PIaited HeRdgenr Said to Re of Ancient Origin--
 Antiquity of Leghorns-


 By what happy process prehistoric man first consummated headgear we do not know exactly; but it must obviously have been q late incident in the evolution of that interesting individual. Perhaps leafy bough, broken off and held aloft, was the very first thing in tiles" and if this were so then some of the garden hats, dear to the gentler sex to-day, may obviously boast direct descent from antiquity. When our remote kinsmen had found next that little shaping "confection" of twigs would remain on the head without being held there, the thing was done, and from that brilliant conception down to the sweetest and latest achievement of Paris the steps are simple and easy, says the London Globe.
 Historically, the straw hat is wrapped in good deal of mystery. When once established in something like it's present form it became so much matter of course that few ancient writers thought of alluding to it any more than they would have dwelt on the homely fact that man had shoes on his feet or unmention- ables to his lower limbs. Authorities have generally held that the plating of straw for the purpose was not practiced in England before the lat ter part of the eighteenth century, but this is far too late a date. Spenser himself mentions such an in- dustry. "Some plaid with straws," and Shakespeare in "The Tempest" makes Iris sing:
 Come hither from the furrow and be merry. Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on.
 And in "A Lovers Complaint the poet speaks again of plaited hive of straw being worn by a fickle maid to preserve her complexion from the sun. In the reign of James I. the author of "Crudites" tells us that the finest "strewen hats" were worn both by men and women in Piedmont, many of them having hundred seams, and being consequently very costly, three pounds six shillings, having been paid for two straw hats and bands for the use of Lord Will liam Howard.' After that the head covering, once a despised essential of rustic costume, became the joy of the court, a prime instrument in the affected simplicity of an age whose only inspiration was pre- tense.
 Queen Anne's great ladies wore straws. These were followed by leg horn chips" which were carried in to overwhelming popularity on the beautiful heads of the Misses Gun ming, the ladies to whom we owe this at least, that they not only graced their own charms by the most natural and becoming headgear that can be worn, but gave a mighty impulse of British industry which fiourished for many years afterward.
 These leghorn plaits proving too expensive for general use, Luton and Dunstable came to the assistance of the foreign producer; all over Herts and Suffolk, and down into Essex, it became possible for adroit women fingers to earn as much by the fire- side as the men earned by blow or sickle far afield. Straw, straw, straw, straw!-everything is orna- mented with 1t, from the cap to the shoebuckle, and Ceres seems to be the favorite idol. not only with the female. but with the male part of the world as we'll, for the gentle mems waistcoats are ribbed with straw, and they look as if they had amused themselves in Bedlam for some time past manufacturing the flimsy doublet." wrote an essayist in the European Magazine in 17sS, allud- ing to the craze which followed on the duchess of Rutland's use of the material as an ornament to dress Even to-day the old skill in weaving the glossy yellow stalks is not quite forgotten. and any day one may see in the old localities cottage women and girls sitting at their doors gos- siping with their neighbors, while the strands accumulate around them, or weaving as they walk to market, where the factors are still ready to buy the product of the labor, clean, healthy, easily-learned, and practiced without apparatus.