It is a huge task to clothe the modern world. No one realizes how much it means until he looks into the work of the textile-mills which have grown up in our own and in other countries. Cities like Lawrence, Lowell, and Fall River, Massachusetts, are what they are because of their great factories. In these places they produce miles of cloth every week. =Men and Clothes.= Of all the animals in the world man is the only one that provides himself with artificial covering. All the others have perfectly fitting coats provided by nature, and these coats are adapted to the conditions under which the individual animal is forced to live. Man calls in the help of plant and animal life to supply himself with clothing for his protection against the cold of winter and the heat of summer. He also uses clothing as an adornment. We have come to consider clothing as a badge of civilization and a mark of man’s superiority to all the other animals. Those races that pay the least attention to clothing are the lowest in the scale of civilization. Such races are found in South America, in Central Africa, and on some of the islands of the South Seas. There is scarcely a trace of civilization to be found among them. They have a kind of community life, but they live in a most primitive fashion. Their food consists chiefly of roots, plants, fish, and game which can be easily secured. They have rude shelters or crude huts; wear very little clothing; and their religion is a belief in witches and evil spirits. Where they have idols they are of the most hideous workmanship, representing in a most grotesque way bad influences and vicious passions. =The Materials.= The first clothing man wore was made from the skins of animals and from the bark of trees. Later on it was learned that wool could be spun, and that by using crude needles cloth could be sewed together. Wool, silk, cotton, linen, paper, and many others materials have come into common use. All of these are produced by groups of people of whose working conditions we are in ignorance and whose very existence is unknown to most of us. Among civilized people the use of wool has grown to such an extent that the sheep-raising industry has become one of the biggest businesses in all sections of America. The sheep-herder lives a lonely life and yet rarely complains, and is never happier than when out in the fields with his charges. At shearing time the sheep are brought into a shed, and after a few futile struggles in an effort to escape the process, they sit quietly head up while the fleece is taken from them. When they go into the shed they are grimy gray; after the shearing when they leave it they are a light yellowish white. Thousands of people are employed in the wool industry; in securing the product, spinning it, weaving it into cloth, and making it into garments for our use.