ion to require, in order to give it success, the _collecting of
the manufacturers together in great numbers_, I should, however great the
wealth that it might promise, never have done any thing to promote its
establishment. The contrary is happily the case: here all is not only
performed _by hand_, but by hand _singly_, without any combination of
hands. Here there is no power of machinery or of chemistry wanted. All is
performed out in the open fields, or sitting in the cottage. There wants
no coal mines and no rivers to assist; no water-powers nor powers of fire.
No part of the kingdom is unfit for the business. Every-where there are
grass, water, sun, and women and children's fingers; and these are all
that are wanted. But, the great thing of all is this; that, to obtain the
materials for the making of this article of dress, at once so gay, so
useful, and in some cases so expensive, there requires not _a penny of
capital_. Many of the labourers now make their own straw hats to wear in
summer. Poor rotten things, made out of straw of ripened grain. With what
satisfaction will they learn that straw, twenty times as durable, to say
nothing of the beauty, is to be got from every hedge? In short when the
people are well and clearly informed of the facts, which I have through
you, Sir, had the honour to lay before the Society, it is next to
impossible that the manufacture should not become general throughout the
country. In every labourer's house a pot of water can be boiled. What
labourer's wife cannot, in the summer months, find time to cut and bleach
grass enough to give her and her children work for a part of the winter?
There is no necessity for all to be _platters_. Some may cut and bleach
only. Others may prepare the straw, as mentioned in paragraph L. of this
letter. And doubtless, as the farmers in Hertfordshire now sell their
straw to the platters, grass collectors and bleachers and preparers would
do the same. So that there is scarcely any country labourer's family that
might not derive some advantage from this discovery; and, while I am
convinced that this consideration has been by no means over-looked by the
Society, it has been, I assure you, the great consideration of all with,

Sir, your most obedient and
most humble Servant,
WM. COBBETT.

223. In the last edition, this closing part of the work, relative to the
straw plat, was not presented to the public as a thing which admitted of
no alteration; but