craps of cloth and use them
again. They made over clothing, fashioned rag rugs, conserved
everything they could lay hands on. Their attics were museums where
were horded every sort of object against the time when it might be
needed. But do we follow their example? No, indeed! In fact, we go to
the other extreme and hurry out of the house, either to a junk dealer
or a rummage sale, everything we cannot find immediate use for. To a
certain extent our mode of living has forced us to this course. Most of
us reside in cramped city quarters where there are no spacious attics
in which to garner up articles against a rainy day. Modern apartment
dwellers boast neither attic nor cellar, to say nothing of a farmer's
barn loft. Moreover, we all must scramble so fast to earn our daily
bread that we have no time to make over the old; it is cheaper, we
reason, to purchase new than to fuss with remodelling. Neither are
materials what they were in the old days. Few of the fine old silks and
woolens that would wear for a generation are to be had at present. Also
we have more money than our forebears and this has much to do with our
wholesale wastefulness. With plenty of everything at hand, why save?
And the policy the individual is following on a small scale the nation
is adopting on a much vaster one. We are using up our forests, our
mines, all our resources with no thought of the morrow. We ought to
stop and think about this before it is too late but I doubt if we ever
will."

Captain Dillingham paused.

"There is such a thing," he added, "as people and nations being too
prosperous for their own good. But to return to the cotton gin. The
cotton, having been cleared of its seeds, is now known as lint, and
this is bundled together until enough of it is collected to be properly
baled for the spinning mills."

"What is _proper baling_?" inquired Carl.

"Why, the rough baling simply gathers the cotton together into a big
bundle."

"Well, what's the matter with that?"

"Nothing--so far as it goes," laughed the Captain. "I should be sorry,
however, to see many such bales coming aboard my ship."

"Why?"

"Well, you know what cotton is," answered Uncle Frederick. "After it
has been picked to pieces in the gins it comes out a nice, white,
fluffy mass that takes up no end of room. Were it to be transported in
this condition a few hundred pounds of it would fill a ship or freight
car and cost the owner so much that it would not be worth