They did so without hesitation,--indeed, the great struggle was as to who should be first to do it,--and not only kept their business, but obtained for it an unprecedented increase. In doing this they must have displaced thousands of sewing-women all over the country, as their cheaper fabrics enabled them to undersell the latter everywhere. I know that this was the first effect here, and it is difficult to understand how in other places it should have been otherwise. These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and the collars were produced in great manufactories by steam. They were made by millions, and by millions they were consumed. They were sold in boxes of a dozen or a hundred, at two or three cents apiece, according to the wants of the buyer. He could appear once or twice a day in all the glory of an apparently clean shirt, according to his ambition to shine in a character which might be a very new one. Judging by the consumption of these conveniences, it would seem, that, if one had only a clean collar to display, it was of little consequence whether he had a shirt or not.