The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1910-08-18
TRADE SCHOOLS OF THE PAST.
How the Daughters Of New England
Households Learned a Wide Va
riety Of Technical Crafts
NJ Hume

at Home
Those early New Englanders were in
trade schools from the time they began
70 crawl on the floor among their mo.
theirs looms and spinnlng-wheels There
was hardly a home in early New Eng
land that didn't give a large number
Of technical courses in which men and
women were always teaching by doing,
and the boys and girls were always
learning by initiating
The facts about this are 80 simple
and so familiar that we don't stop to
think Of their meaning When in The
spring the wood.ashes from the winter
fires were poured into the lye.barrel,
and water was poured in with them, and
the I've began to trickle out from the
bottom Of the barrel, and the winters
savings Of grease were brought out, and
the grease and the I've were boiled to-
gether in the big kettle, and mother had
finished making the family's supply Of
soap for another year, the children had
taken not only little lesson in indus
triousness, BY helping to make the soap
but little lesson in industry, too, by
observing the technique and organiza-
ton Of the soap business from start to
finish A boy from that family, even II
he never learned to read or write, might
some day have some ideas about soap.
Spinning was very small part Of
the department of textiles. In the sub
department 81 fax, after heckling that
flax with combs Of increasing degrees OF
hneness, after spinning II into yarn, after
Keeling the yarn OF into skeins, after
"buckingg the skeins in hot I've, and
after using shuttle and loom to weave
The stuff into cloth, the home woman Of
those days had to accomplish some
twenty subsequent processes Of buck
ing, rinsing, posing, drying and bleach
ms before the cloth was ready for use.
This Was in Spare Moments.
In tne sub-department Of wool, in
addition to being carders, spinners and
weavers, women were dyers, handling all
the color resources Of the times.
We pass over, as trivial, the making
Of flax and wool stahs into articles OF
actual use. We say nothing about the
Transformation Of cloth into clothes, Ia
bic covers. napkins; nothing about the
weaving Of yarn on little lap looms into
the narrow fabrics for hair-laees, glove
ties, belts, carriers and hat-bands; moth
ing about the incessant knitting Of yarn
into mittens and stockings; nothing
about host Of other details, They
we're for idle moments
Sweet domestic days, when girls then
stayed at home and helped their mo-
Tiers and let father support the fam.
ilyl
1t seems a. if even Rip Van Wrinkle,
in his most shlftless mood ought 70
have been able to support large mum
Der Of daughters under such eondi-
tons
Does Il astonish you that they ma
tured youngf There, all about them,
from babyhood. we're the basic processes
by which the world was sheltered,
clothed and fed. Those processes were
numerous but simple. Boys and girls !
observed them, absorbed them, through /
eyes, through fngertips, al through |
those early years when eyes and finger
tips are the nourishing points Of the
intellect.
John Winthrop, the FIRST governor Of
Bay colony, was married
as seventeen. His parents were not
only willing, but aiding and abetting.
They considered him man.
Mercy Otis, in Revolutionary days, in
the wife Of the patriot,
James Warren, and Abigail Smith, the
wife Of the future president, John Adj
ans, both married before twenty. A
study Of their lives will show that at
that age they were mature.
To-day, in Boston, woman Of TWEEN
tv is considered SO immature that many
Of the hospitals win not admit her even
10 her preliminary training for the trade
Of nurse till she had added at least
three years more to her mental develop
ment. William Hard in the August
Everybody's Magazine.
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