cotton and wool. A far more revolutionary and more hated machine than
the power-loom was the combing-machine called Big Ben.

"Come all ye Master Combers, and hear of our Big Ben.
He'll comb more wool than fifty of your men
With their hand-combs, and comb-pots, and such old-fashioned way."

Flax-spinning and linen-weaving by power machinery were slower in being
established. Englishmen were halting in perfecting these machines.
Napoleon offered in 1810 a million francs for a flax-spinning machine. A
clever Frenchman claimed to have invented one in response in a single
day, but similar clumsy machines had then been running in England for
twenty years. By 1850 men, women, and children--combers, spinners, and
weavers--were no longer individual workers; they had become part of that
great monster, the mill-machinery. Riots and misery were the first
result of the passing of hand weaving and spinning.

In the _Vision of Piers Ploughman_ (1360) are these lines:--

"Cloth that cometh fro the wevyng
Is nought comly to were
Till it be fulled under foot
Or in fullyng stokkes
Wasshen wel with water
And with taseles cracched,
Y-touked and y-tented
And under taillours hande."

Just so in the colonies four centuries later, cloth that came from the
weaving was not comely to wear till it was fulled under foot or in
fulling-stocks, washed well in water, scratched and dressed with
teazels, dyed and tented, and put in the tailor's hands. Nor did the
roll of centuries bring a change in the manner of proceeding. If grease
had been put on the wool when it was carded, or sizing in the warp for
the weaving, it was washed out by good rinsing from the woven cloth.
This became now somewhat uneven and irregular in appearance, and full of
knots and fuzzes which were picked out with hand-tweezers by burlers
before it was fulled or milled, as it was sometimes called. The
fulling-stocks were a trough in which an enormous oaken hammer was made
to pound up and down, while the cloth was kept thoroughly wet with warm
soap and water, or fullers' earth and water. Naturally this thickened
the web much and reduced it in length. It was then teazelled; that is, a
nap or rough surface was raised all over it by scratching it with
weavers' teazels or thistles. Many wire brushes and metal substitutes
have been tried to take the place of nature's gift to the cloth-worker,
the teazel, but nothing has been invented to r