But for craftsmen and their like, the amateur dyers as opposed to the regular professionals, the required information is not easy to obtain. Their leaders and teachers, as a rule, profess a scorn of the wonderful discoveries which, in the last half century, have revolutionized the art of dyeing more, perhaps, than any other branch of handicraft. And the dyeing chemists and writers have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the far larger and more important and more profitable field of commercial or professional dyeing, and only here and there is one found who has given any special attention to the dyes and processes needed by those working only on a small scale. For my own part, after teaching the principles and practice of modern dyeing to class after class of chemical students at Columbia, my attention was called to this particular branch of the subject by finding, one spring, that some friends had started a hand-weaving industry at a settlement house in which I was interested, but had not made any arrangement for a dyehouse at the same time. This was a serious omission because it is almost impossible to buy in the market raw materials for hand-woven rugs, table-covers, and the like, that are dyed just the right shade and, at the same time, are fast to both light and washing; and, unless this last is guaranteed, there is little or no excuse for charging the large prices necessary to pay for the extra expense of the hand labor. Wishing, therefore, to help out my friends, I offered to assist as far as possible in this part of the work. That summer was spent on the St. Lawrence, where it was possible to study some of the textile work of the French _habitants_ whose dyeing processes, designs, and looms had descended from mother to daughter since the old Colonial days; and in the autumn I fitted up a little dyehouse and started with a small but intelligent class of neighbors who were working at the looms. Of course, it was foolish to attempt to teach them the scientific chemical formulæ used by my students uptown. The processes must be short and simple—must give the desired shades on cotton, linen, wool, and silk in the course of an hour or an hour and a half at the outside, counting from the time when the class was called to order. And the colors must be absolutely fast to light, and, wherever possible, to washing also.