In many places in Kiangsu province batteries of the large dye pits were seen sunk in the fields and lined with cement. These were six to eight feet in diameter and four to five feet deep. In one case observed there were nine pits in the set. Some of the pits were neatly sheltered beneath live arbors, as represented in Fig. 66. But much of this spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing of late years is being displaced by the cheaper calicos of foreign make and most of the dye pits we saw were not now used for this purpose, the two in the illustration serving as manure receptacles. Our interpreter stated however that there is a growing dissatisfaction with foreign goods on account of their lack of durability; and we saw many cases where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantities on the grave lands. In another home for nearly an hour we observed a method of beating cotton and of laying it to serve as the body for mattresses and the coverlets for beds. This we could do without intrusion because the home was also the work shop and opened full width directly upon the narrow street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home at night were serving as a work bench about seven feet square, laid upon movable supports. There was barely room to work between it and the sidewalk without impeding traffic, and on the three other sides there was a floor space three or four feet wide. In the rear sat grandmother and wife while in and out the four younger children were playing. Occupying the two sides of the room were receptacles filled with raw cotton and appliances for the work. There may have been a kitchen and sleeping room behind but no door, as such, was visible. The finished mattresses, carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were suspended from the ceiling. On the improvised work table, with its top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the morning before our visit, a mass of soft white cotton more than six feet square and fully twelve inches deep. On opposite sides of this table the father and his son, of twelve years, each twanged the string of their heavy bamboo bows, snapping the lint from the wads of cotton and flinging it broadcast in an even layer over the surface of the growing mattress, the two strings the while emitting tones pitched far below the hum of the bumblebee. The heavy bow was steadied by a cord secured around the body of the operator, allowing him to manage it with one hand and to move readily around his work in a manner different from the custom of the Japanese seen in Fig. 67. By this means the lint was expeditiously plucked and skillfully and uniformly laid, the twanging being effected by an appliance similar to that used in Japan.