As to _knitting_, the century has seen the day pass when all hosiery was knit by hand. First, machines were invented for knitting the leg or the foot of the stocking, which were then joined by hand, and then came machines that made the stocking complete. The social industry so quietly but slowly followed by the good women in their chimney corners with their knitting needles, by which a woman might possibly knit a pair a day, was succeeded a quarter of a century ago by machines, twelve of which could be attended to by a boy, which would knit and complete five thousand pairs a week. Such a machine commences with the stocking at the top, knits down, widening and narrowing, changes the stitch as it goes on to the heel, shapes the heel, and finishes at the end of the toe, all one thread, and then it recommences the operation and goes on with another and another. Fancy stockings, with numerous colours blended, are so knit, and if the yarn holds out a mile of stockings may be thus knit, without a break and without an attendant. By these machines the astounding result was reached of making the stockings at the cost of one-sixth of a mill per pair. The wonderful reduction in the cost of all kinds of textile fabrics due to the perfection of spinning and loom mechanisms, and its power to meet the resulting enormous increase in demand, has enabled the poor of to-day to be clad better and with a far greater variety of apparel than it was possible for the rich a hundred years ago; and the increased consumption and demand have brought into these fields of labour, and into other fields of labour created by these, great armies of men and women, notwithstanding the labour-saving devices. The wants of the world can no longer be supplied by skilled hand labour. And it is better that machines do the skilled labour, if the product is increased while made better and cheaper, and the number of labourers in the end increased by the development and demands of the art. Among the recent devices is one which dispenses with the expensive and skilful work by hand of drawing the warp threads into the eyes of the heddles and through the reed of the loom. Cane-backed and bottomed chairs and lounges only a few years ago were a luxury of the rich and made slowly by hand. Now the open mesh cane fabric, having diagonal strands, and other varieties, are made rapidly by machinery. Turkish carpets are woven, and floors the world over are carpeted with those rich materials the sight of which would have astonished the ordinary beholder a half century ago. Matting is woven; wire, cane, straw, spun glass; in fact, everything that can be woven by hand into useful articles now finds its especially constructed machine for weaving it. CHAPTER XIX. GARMENTS.