“In above £4000, laid out the last Year, reckning House-rent, Servants wages, Loss by Learners, with the interest of the Money, there was not above £200 lost, one chief reason of which was the kindness of several Persons, who took off good quantities ... at the price they cost me to spin and weave ... and ... the East India Co., gave encouragement to make their bags.” But the loss increased as time went on.... “In 1690 his design of employing the poor to spin flax was taken up by the Patentees of the Linen Manufacture, who made the Poor and others, whom they employed, to work cheaper; yet that was not sufficient to encourage them to continue the manufacture.... The poor spinners, being thus deserted, Mr. _Firmin_ returned to ’em again; and managed that trade as he was wont; But so, that he made it bear almost its own Charges. But that their smaller Wages might be comfortable to them he was more Charitable to ’em, and begged for ’em of almost all Persons of Rank with whom he had intimacy, or so much as Friendship. He would also carry his Cloth to divers, with whom he scarce had any acquaintance, telling ’em _it was the Poor’s cloth, which in conscience they ought to buy at the Price it could be afforded_.”[277] ... Finally, “he was persuaded by some, to make trial of the _Woollen Manufacture_; because at this, the Poor might make better wages, than at Linen-work. But the price of wool advancing very much, and the _London_-Spinsters being almost wholly unskilful at Drawing a Woollen-Thread, after a considerable loss ... and 29 months trial he gave off the project.”[278] Footnote 277: Firmin (Thomas) _Life_, pp. 33-6. Footnote 278: _Ibid._ pp. 39-40. Firmin’s experiment, corroborating as it does the results of other efforts at poor relief, shows that at this time women could not maintain themselves by the wages of flax spinning; still less could they, when widows, provide for their children by this means. But though the spinster, when working for wages received so small a return for her labour, it must not be forgotten that flax spinning was chiefly a domestic art, in which the whole value of the woman’s labour was secured to her family, unaffected by the rate of wages. Therefore the value of women’s labour in spinning flax must not be judged only according to the wages which they received, but was more truly represented by the quantity of linen which they produced for household use. D. _Silk, and Gold and Silver._