The wool industry dates back to prehistoric man. The patience, care, and skill involved in its manufacture have ever exercised a potent influence on civilization. It is, therefore, interesting and gratifying to note the intelligent eagerness of our first colonists for wool culture. It was quickly and proudly noted of towns and of individuals as a proof of their rapid and substantial progress that they could carry on any of the steps of the cloth industry. Good Judge Sewall piously exulted when Brother Moody started a successful fulling-mill in Boston. Johnson in his _Wonder-working Providence_ tells with pride that by 1654 New Englanders "have a fulling-mill and caused their little ones to be very dilligent in spinning cotton-woole, many of them having been clothiers in England." This has ever seemed to me one of the fortunate conditions that tended to the marked success of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, that so many had been "clothiers" or cloth-workers in England; or had come from shires in England where wool was raised and cloth made, and hence knew the importance of the industry as well as its practical workings. As early as 1643 the author of _New England's First Fruits_ wrote: "They are making linens, fustians, dimities, and look immediately to woollens from their own sheep." Johnson estimated the number of sheep in the colony of Massachusetts, about 1644, as three thousand. Soon the great wheel was whirring in every New England house. The raising of sheep was encouraged in every way. They were permitted to graze on the commons; it was forbidden to send them from the colony; no sheep under two years old could be killed to sell; if a dog killed a sheep, the dog's owner must hang him and pay double the cost of the sheep. All persons who were not employed in other ways, as single women, girls, and boys, were required to spin. Each family must contain one spinner. These spinners were formed into divisions or "squadrons" of ten persons; each division had a director. There were no drones in this hive; neither the wealth nor high station of parents excused children from this work. Thus all were levelled to one kind of labor, and by this levelling all were also elevated to independence. When the open expression of revolt came, the homespun industries seemed a firm rock for the foundation of liberty. People joined in agreements to eat no lamb or mutton, that thus sheep might be preserved, and to wear no imported woollen cloth. They gave prizes for spinning and weaving.