The transition half a century or more ago from what Horace Bushnell
called "mother and daughter power to water and steam power," was a
complete revolution in domestic life, and indeed of social manners as
well. When a people spin and weave and make their own dress, you have in
this very fact the assurance that they are home-bred, home-living,
home-loving people. You are sure, also, that the lives of the women are
home-centred. The chief cause for women's intercourse with any of the
outside world except neighborly acquaintance, her chief knowledge of
trade and exchange, is in shopping, dressmaking, etc. These causes
scarcely existed in country communities a century ago. The daughters who
in our days of factories leave the farm for the cotton-mill, where they
perform but one of the many operations in cloth manufacture, can never
be as good home-makers or as helpful mates as the homespun girls of our
grandmothers' days; nor can they be such co-workers in great public
movements.

In the summer of 1775, when all the preparations for the War of the
Revolution were in a most unsettled and depressing condition, especially
the supplies for the Continental army, the Provincial Congress made a
demand on the people for thirteen thousand warm coats to be ready for
the soldiers by cold weather. There were no great contractors then as
now to supply the cloth and make the garments, but by hundreds of
hearthstones throughout the country wool-wheels and hand-looms were
started eagerly at work, and the order was filled by the handiwork of
patriotic American women. In the record book of some New England towns
may still be found the lists of the coat-makers. In the inside of each
coat was sewed the name of the town and the maker. Every soldier
volunteering for eight months' service was given one of these homespun,
home-made, all-wool coats as a bounty. So highly were these "Bounty
Coats" prized, that the heirs of soldiers who were killed at Bunker Hill
before receiving their coats were given a sum of money instead. The list
of names of soldiers who then enlisted is known to this day as the "Coat
Roll," and the names of the women who made the coats might form another
roll of honor. The English sneeringly called Washington's army the
"Homespuns." It was a truthful nickname, but there was deeper power in
the title than the English scoffers knew.

The starting up of power-looms and the wonderful growth of woollen
manufacture did not crowd out