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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ...leather, and paper. All sorts of ways were devised to supply these. Old-fashioned looms were set up and ladies wove homespun cloths in their homes. Cotton cloths were easily made, but wool wa... More

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 Excerpt: ...leather, and paper. All sorts of ways were devised to supply these. Old-fashioned looms were set up and ladies wove homespun cloths in their homes. Cotton cloths were easily made, but wool was scarce, and the fur of rabbits and other animals was sometimes used instead of it. A lady in South Carolina made very handsome cloths, says a Charleston newspaper, with a warp of cotton and a woof or filling of rabbit's or of coon's fur. Leather is hard to make, requiring skill and time, so the people set about finding substitutes for it. A Savannah newspaper of the time says: "It is only by custom and convenience that we are confined to leather in the making of our shoes. Any substance which will exclude water and which will endure the rubs and thumps given by the foot will do for shoes. A hatter can make an excellent shoe out of the same felt and by the same process which he uses in makiug hats; using one other mould and some waterproof mixture in the sole to keep out the wet." It then goes on to show how a farmer may make very good shoes out of an old wool hat, and how soft shoes for a lady may be made out of a pair of squirrel-skins. It suggests, too, that a coarse linen called osnaburg may be prepared for upper leathers by boiling it in linseed oil and wax, and then blackening it, and that good soles may be made out of old saddle-skirts, leather machine-belts, or double thicknesses of heavy cloth, with thin pieces of white oak or hickory or of birch bark between them. A factory for making wooden shoes was opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, the soles being made of gum or poplar wood and the uppers of leather. Paper, too, was very difficult to get. As soon as the stock on hand was used up, efforts were made to manufacture it; but only a very poor kind was...

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