No. VIII.

On the converting of English Grass, and grain Plants cut green, into Straw, for the purpose of making Plat for Hats and Bonnets.

Kensington, May 30, 1823.

208. THE foregoing Numbers have treated, chiefly, of the management of the affairs of a labourer’s family, and more particularly of the mode of his disposing of the money, earned by the labour of the family. The present Number will point out what I hope may become an advantageous kind of labour. All along I have proceeded upon the supposition, that the wife and children of the labourer be, as constantly as possible, employed in work of some sort or other. The cutting, the bleaching, the sorting and the platting of straw, seem to be, of all employments, the best suited to wives and children of country labourers; and the discovery which I have made, as to the means of obtaining the necessary materials, will enable them to enter at once upon that employment.

209. Before I proceed to give my directions relative to the performance of this sort of labour, I shall give a sort of history of the discovery to which I have just alluded.

210. The practice of making Hats, Bonnets, and other things, of straw, is perhaps of very ancient date; but, not to waste time in fruitless inquiries, it is very well known, that, for many years past, straw coverings for the head have been greatly in use in England, in America, and indeed in almost all the countries that we know much of. In this country the manufacture was, only a few years ago, very flourishing; but, it has now greatly declined, and has left in poverty and misery those whom it once well fed and clothed.

211. The cause of this change has been, the importation of the straw hats and bonnets from Italy, greatly superior, in durability and beauty, to those made in England. The plat made in England was made of the straw of ripened grain. It was, in general, split; but, the main circumstance was, that it was made of the straw of ripened grain; while the Italian plat was made of the straw of grain, or grass, cut green. Now, the straw of ripened grain or grass is brittle; or rather, rotten. It dies while standing, and in point of toughness, the difference between it and straw from plants cut green is much about the same as the difference between a stick that has died on the tree and one that has been cut from the tree. But, besides the difference in point of toughness, strength, and durability, there was the difference in beauty. The colour of the Italian plat was better; the plat was brighter; and the Italian straws being small whole straws instead of small straws made by the splitting of large ones, there was a roundness in them, that gave light and shade to the plat, which could not be given by our flat bits of straw. In addition to these differences, there was, on our side, the further disadvantage of being compelled to use brimstone and other things, to bleach, or rather, to clean and to give a colour to our straw. This caused the articles made of our straw to change colour when they came to face the rain and sun; while the Italian articles, though usually somewhat clarified in the same way, remained unchanged, because the straw of which they were composed had been cut green, and bleached by scalding.

212. It seems odd, that nobody should have set to work to find out how the Italians came by this fine straw. The importation of these Italian articles was chiefly from the port of LEGHORN; and therefore, the bonnets imported were called, Leghorn Bonnets. The straw-manufacturers in this country seem to have made no effort to resist this invasion from Leghorn. And, which is very curious, the Leghorn straw has now begun to be imported, and to be platted in this country. So that we had hands to plat as well as the Italians. All that we wanted was the same kind of straw, that the Italians had: and it is truly wonderful, that these importations from Leghorn should have gone on increasing, year after year, and our domestic manufacture dwindling away at a like pace, without their having been any inquiry relative to the way in which the Italians got their straw! Strange, that we should have imported even straw from Italy, without inquiring whether similar straw could not be got in England! There really seems to have been an opinion, that England could no more produce this straw than it could produce the sugar-cane.

213. Things were in this state, when, in 1821, a Miss Woodhouse, a farmer’s daughter in Connecticut, sent a straw-bonnet of her own making to the Society of Arts in London. This bonnet, superior in fineness and beauty to any thing of the kind that had come from Leghorn, the maker stated to consist of the straw of a sort of grass, of which she sent, along with the bonnet, some of the seeds. The question was, then, would these precious seeds grow and produce plants in perfection in England? A large quantity of the seed had not been sent; and it was therefore, by a Member of the Society, thought desirable to get, with as little delay as possible, a considerable quantity of this seed.

214. It was in this stage of the affair that my attention was called to it. The Member just alluded to applied to me to get the seed from America. I was of opinion that there could be no sort of grass in Connecticut, that would not, and that did not, grow and flourish in England. My son James, who was then at New-York, had instructions from me, in June, 1821, to go to Miss Woodhouse, and to send me home an account of the matter. In September, the same year, I heard from him, who sent me an account of the cutting and bleaching, and also a specimen of the Plat and of the Grass of Connecticut. Miss Woodhouse had told the Society of Arts, that the grass she used was the Poa Pratensis. This is the smooth-stalked meadow-grass. The specimen sent home by my son appeared to be of this sort. So that it was quite useless to send for seed. It was clear, that we had grass enough in England, if we could but make it into straw as handsome as that of Italy.

215. Upon my publishing an account of what had taken place with regard to the American Bonnet, an importer of Italian straw applied to me to know whether I would undertake to import American straw. He was in the habit of importing Italian straw, and of having it platted in this country; but, having seen the bonnet of Miss Woodhouse, he was anxious to get the American straw. This gentleman showed me some Italian straw, which he had imported, and, as the seed heads were on, I could see what plant the straw had been made of. The gentleman who showed them to me, told me (and, doubtless, he believed) that the plant was one that would not grow in England. I, however, who looked at the straw with the eyes of a farmer, perceived that it consisted of dry oat, wheat, and rye plants, and of Bennet and other common grass plants.

216. This quite settled the point of growth in England. It was now certain that we had the plants in abundance; and, the only question that remained to be determined was, Had we SUN to give to those plants the beautiful colour which the American and Italian straw had? If that colour were to be obtained by art, by any chemical applications, we could obtain it as easily as the Americans or the Italians; but, if it were the gift of the SUN solely, here might be a difficulty that it was impossible for us to overcome. My experiments have proved that the fear of such difficulty was wholly groundless.

217. It was late in September, 1821, that I obtained this knowledge, as to the kinds of plants that the foreign straw was made from. I could, at that time of the year, do nothing in the way of removing my doubts as to the powers of our Sun in the bleaching of grass; but, I resolved to do this when the proper season for it should return. Accordingly, when the next month of June came, I went into the country for the purpose. I made my experiments, and, in short, I proved to demonstration, that we had not only the Plants, but the Sun also, necessary for the making of straw, yielding in no respect to that of America or of Italy. I think that, upon the whole, we have greatly the advantage of those countries; for, grass is more abundant in this country than in any other. It flourishes here more than in any other country. It is here in a greater variety of sorts; and for fineness in point of size, there is no part of the world which can equal what might be obtained from some of our downs merely by keeping the land ungrazed till the month of July.

218. When I had obtained the straw, I got some of it made into plat. One piece of this plat was equal in point of colour, and superior in point of fineness, even to the plat of the bonnet of Miss Woodhouse. It seemed, therefore, now to be necessary to do nothing more than to make all this well known to the country. As the Society of Arts had interested itself in the matter, and as I heard that, through its laudable zeal, several sowings of the foreign grass-seed had been made in England, I communicated an account of my experiments to that Society. The first communication was made by me on the 19th of February last, when I sent to the Society specimens of my straw and also of the plat. Sometime after this, I attended a Committee of the Society on the subject, and gave them a verbal account of the way in which I had gone to work.

219. The Committee had, before this, given some of my straw to certain manufacturers of plat, in order to see what it would produce. These manufacturers, with the exception of one, brought such specimens of plat as to induce, at first sight any one to believe that it was nonsense to think of bringing the thing to any degree of perfection! But, was it possible to believe this? Was it possible to believe that it could answer to import straw from Italy, to pay a twenty per cent, duty on that straw, and to have it platted here; and, that it would not answer to turn into plat straw of just the same sort grown in England? It was impossible to believe this; but possible enough to believe, that persons now making profit by Italian straw, or plat, or bonnets, would rather that English straw should not come, to shut out the Italian, and to put an end to the Leghorn trade.

220. In order to show the character of the reports of those manufacturers, I sent some parcels into Hertfordshire, and got back, in the course of five days, fifteen specimens of plat. These I sent to the Society of Arts on the 3d of April; and I here insert a copy of the Letter which accompanied them.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.

Kensington, April 3,1823.

Sir,—With this letter I send you sixteen specimens of Plat, and also eight parcels of Straw, in order to show the sorts that the plat is made out of. The numbers of the plat correspond with those of the straw; but each parcel of straw has two numbers attached to it, except in the case of the first number, which is the wheat straw. Of each kind of straw a parcel of the stoutest and a parcel of the smallest were sent to be platted; so that each parcel of the straw now sent, except that of the wheat, refers to two of the pieces of plat. For instance, 2 and 3 of the plat is of the sort of straw marked 2 and 3; 4 and 12 of the plat is of the sort of straw marked 4 and 12; and so on. These parcels of straw are sent in order that you may know the kind of straw, or, rather, of grass, from which the several pieces of plat have been made. This is very material; because, it is by those parcels of straw that the kinds of grass are to be known.

The piece of plat, No. 16, is American: all the rest are from my straw. You will see, that 15 is the finest plat of all. No. 7 is from the stout straws of the same kind as No. 15. By looking at the parcel of straw, Nos. 7 and 15, you will see what sort of grass this is. The next, in point of beauty and fineness combined, are the pieces Nos. 13 and 8; and, by looking at the parcel of straw, Nos. 13 and 8, you will see what sort of grass that is. Next comes 10 and 5, which are very beautiful too; and the sort of grass, you will see, is the common bennet. The wheat, you see, is too coarse; and the rest of the sorts are either too hard, or too brittle. I beg you to look at Nos. 10 and 5. Those appear to me to be the thing to supplant the Leghorn. The colour is good, the straws work well, they afford a great variety of sizes, and they come from the common bennet grass, which grows all over the kingdom, which is cultivated in all our fields, which is in bloom in the fair month of June, which may be grown as fine or as coarse as we please, and ten acres of which would, I dare say, make ten thousand bonnets. However, 7 and 15, and 8 and 13, are very good; and they are to be got in every part of the kingdom.

As to platters, it is to be too childish to believe that they are not to be got, when I could send off these straws, and get back the plat, in the course of five days. Far better work than this would have been obtained, if I could have gone on the errand myself. What, then, will people not do, who regularly undertake the business for their livelihood?

I will, as soon as possible, send you an account of the manner in which I went to work with the grass. The card of plat, which I sent you sometime ago, you will be so good as to give me back again sometime; because I have now not a bit of the American plat left. I am, Sir,

Your most humble and

Most obedient servant,

Wm. Cobbett.

221. I should observe, that these written communications of mine to the Society, belong, in fact, to it, and will be published in its PROCEEDINGS, a volume of which comes out every year; but, to this case, there would have been a year lost to those who may act in consequence of these communications being made public. The grass is to be got, in great quantities and of the best sorts, only in June and July—and the Society’s volume does not come out until December. The Society has, therefore, given its consent to the making of the communications public through the means of this little work of mine.

222. Having shown what sort of plat could be produced from English grass-straw, I next communicated to the Society an account of the method which I pursued in the cutting and bleaching of the grass. The letter in which I did this I shall here insert a copy of, before I proceed farther In the original the paragraphs were numbered from one to seventeen: they are here marked by letters, in order to avoid confusion, the paragraphs of the work itself being marked by numbers.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS.

Kensington, April 14,1823.

A.—Sir,—Agreeably to your request, I now communicate to you a statement of those particulars, which you wished to possess, relative to the specimens of Straw and of Plat, which I have, at different times, sent to you for the inspection of the Society.

B.—That my statement may not come too abruptly upon those members of the Society, who have not had an opportunity of witnessing the progress of this interesting inquiry, I will take a short review of the circumstances which led to the making of my experiments.

C.—In the month of June, 1821, a gentleman, a Member of the Society, informed me, by letter, that a Miss Wood-house, a farmer’s daughter of Weathersfield in Connecticut, had transmitted to the Society a straw bonnet of very fine materials and manufacture; that this bonnet (according to her account) was made from the straw of a sort of grass called poa pratensis; that it seemed to be unknown, whether the same grass would grow in England; that at all events it was desirable to get from America some of the seed of this grass; and that, for this purpose, my informant, knowing that I had a son in America, addressed himself to me, it being his opinion, that, if materials, similar to those used by Miss Woodhouse, could by any means be grown in England, the benefit to the nation must be considerable.

D.—In consequence of this application, I wrote to my son James (then at New-York), directing him to do what he was able in order to cause success to the undertaking. On the receipt of my letter, in July, he went from New-York to Weathersfield, (about a hundred and twenty miles;) saw Miss Woodhouse, made the necessary inquiries; obtained a specimen of the grass and also of the plat, which other persons at Weathersfield, as well as Miss Woodhouse, were in the habit of making; and, having acquired the necessary information as to cutting the grass and bleaching the straw, he transmitted to me an account of the matter; which account, together with his specimens of grass and plat, I received in the month of September.

E.—I was now, when I came to see the specimen of grass, convinced that Miss Woodhouse’s materials could be grown in England; a conviction, which, if it had not been complete at once, would have been made complete immediately afterwards by the sight of a bunch of bonnet-straw imported from Leghorn, which straw was shown to me by the importer, and which I found to be that of two or three sorts of our common grass, and of oats, wheat and rye.

F.—That the grass, or plants, could be grown in England was, therefore, now certain, and indeed that they were in point of commonness next to the earth itself. But, before the grass could, with propriety, be called materials for bonnet-making, there was the bleaching to be performed; and it was by no means certain that this could be accomplished by means of an English sun, the difference between which and that of Italy or Connecticut was well known to be very great.

G.—My experiments have, I presume, completely removed this doubt. I think that the straw produced by me to the Society, and also some of the pieces of plat, are of a colour which no straw or plat can surpass. All that remains, therefore, is for me to give an account of the manner in which f cut and bleached the grass which I have submitted to the Society in the state of straw.

H.—First, as to the season of the year, all the straw, except that of one sort of couch grass, and the long coppice-grass, which two were got in Sussex, were got from grass cut in Hertfordshire on the 21st of June. A grass headland, in a wheatfield, had been mowed during the forepart of the day; and, in the afternoon, I went and took a handful here and a handful there out of the swaths. When I had collected as much as I could well carry, I took it to my friend’s house, and proceeded to prepare it for bleaching according to the information sent me from America by my son; that is to say, I put my grass into a shallow tub, put boiling water upon it until it was covered by the water, let it remain in that state for ten minutes, then took it out, and laid it very thinly on a closely mowed lawn in a garden. But, I should observe, that, before I put the grass into the tub, I tied it up in small bundles, or sheaves, each bundle being about six inches through at the butt-end. This was necessary, in order to be able to take the grass, at the end of ten minutes, out of the water, without throwing it into a confused mixture as to tops and tails. Being tied up in little bundles, I could easily, with a prong, take it out of the hot water. The bundles were put into a large wicker basket, carried to the lawn in the garden, and there taken out, one by one, and laid in swaths as before mentioned.

I.—It was laid very thinly—almost might I say, that no stalk of grass covered another. The swaths were turned once a day. The bleaching was completed at the end of seven days from the time of scalding and laying out. June is a fine month. The grass was, as it happened, cut on the longest day in the year, and the weather was remarkably fine and clear. But, the grass which í afterwards cut in Sussex, was cut in the first week in August; and, as to the weather, my journal speaks thus:

K.—The grass cut in Sussex was as well bleached as that cut in Hertfordshire; so that it is evident that we never can have a summer that will not afford Sun sufficient for this business.

L.—The part of the straw used for platting is that part of the stalk which is above the upper joint; that part which is between the upper joint and the seed-branches. This part is taken out, and the rest of the straw thrown away. But, the whole plant must be cut and bleached; because, if you were to take off, when green, the part above described, that part would wither up next to nothing. This part must die in company with the whole plant, and be separated from the other parts after the bleaching has been performed.

M.—The time of cutting must vary with the seasons, the situation, and the sort of grass. The grass which I got in Hertfordshire, than which nothing can, I think, be more beautiful, was, when cut, generally in bloom—just in bloom. The wheat was in full bloom; so that, a good time for getting grass may be considered to be that when the wheat is in bloom. When I cut the grass in Sussex, the wheat was ripe, for reaping had begun; but that grass is of a very backward sort, and, besides, grew in the shade, amongst coppice wood and under trees, which stood pretty thick.

N.—As to the sorts of grass, I have to observe, generally, that in proportion as the colour of the grass is deep—that is to say, getting farther from the yellow and nearer to the blue, it is of a deep and dead yellow when it becomes straw.— Those kinds of grass are best, which are, in point of colour, nearest to that of wheat, which is a fresh pale green. Another thing is, the quality of straw as to pliancy and toughness. Experience must be our guide here. I had not lime to make a large collection of sorts; but, those which I have sent you contain three sorts which are proved to be good. In my letter of the 3d instant I sent you sixteen pieces of plat and eight bunches of straw, having the seed heads on, in order to show the sorts of grass. The sixteenth piece of plat was American. The first piece was from wheat cut and bleached by me; the rest from grass cut and bleached by me. I will here, for fear of mistake, give a list of the names of the several sorts of grass, the straw of which was sent with my Setter of the 3d instant, referring to the numbers, as placed on the plat and on the bunches of straw.

O.—These names are those given at the Botanical Garde at Kew. But, the same English names are not, in the country, given to these sorts of grass. The Fiorin grass, the Yellow Oat-grass, and the Brown-Bent, are all called couch-grass; except that the latter is, in Sussex, called Red Robin. It is the native grass of the Plains of Long Island; and they call it Red Top. The Ray-grass is the common field grass, which is, all over the kingdom, sown with clover. The farmers, in a great part of the kingdom, call it Bent, or Bennet grass; and, sometimes it is called Darnel-grass. The Crested Dog’s-tail goes, in Sussex, by the name of Hendonbent; for what reason I know not. The sweet-scented Vernal grass I have never, amongst the farmers, heard any name for. Miss Woodhouse’s grass appears, from the plants that I saw in the Adelphi, to be one of the sorts of Couch-grass. Indeed, I am sure that it is a Couch-grass, if the plants I there saw came from her seed. My Son, who went into Connecticut, who saw the grass growing, and who sent me home a specimen of it, is now in England: he was with me when I cut the grass in Sussex; and he says, that Miss Woodhouse’s was a Couch-grass. However, it is impossible to look at the specimens of straw and of plat, which I have sent you, without being convinced that there is no want of the raw material in England. I was, after first hearing of the subject, very soon convinced, that the grass grew in England; but, I had great doubts as to the capacity of our sun. Those doubts my own experiments have completely removed; but, then, I was not aware of the great effect of the scalding, of which, by the way, Miss Woodhouse had said nothing, and the knowledge of which we owe entirely to my son James’s journey into Connecticut,

P.—Having thus given you an account of the time and manner of cutting the grass, of the mode of cutting and bleaching; having given you the best account I am able as to the sorts of grass to be employed in this business; and having, in my former communications, given you specimens of the Plat wrought from the several sorts of straw, I might here close my letter; but, as it may be useful to speak of the expense of cutting and bleaching, I shall trouble you with a few words relating to it. If there were a field of Ray-grass, or of Crested Dog’s-tail, or any other good sort, and nothing else growing with it, the expense of cutting would be very little indeed, seeing that the scythe or reap-hook, would do the business at a great rate. Doubtless there will be such fields; but, even if the grass have to be cut by the handful, my opinion is, that the expense of cutting and bleaching would not exceed four-pence for straw enough to make a large bonnet. I should be willing to contract to supply straw, at this rate, for half a million of bonnets. The scalding must constitute a considerable part of the expense; because there must be fresh water for every parcel of grass that you put in the tub. When water has scalded one parcel of cold grass, it will not scald another parcel. Besides, the scalding draws out the sweet matter of the grass, and makes the water the colour of that horrible stuff, called London porter. It would be very good, by-the-by, to give to pigs. Many people give hay-lea to pigs and calves; and this is grass-tea. To scald a large quantity, therefore, would require means not usually at hand, and the scalding is an essential part of the business. Perhaps, in a large and very convenient farm-house, with a good brewing copper, good fuel and water handy, four or five women might scald a wagon-load in a day; and a wagon would, I think, carry straw enough (in the rough) to furnish the means of making a thousand bonnets. However, the scalding might take place in the field itself, by means of a portable boiler, especially if water were at hand; and, perhaps, it would be better to carry the water to the field, than to carry the grass to the farm-house; for there must be ground to lay it out upon the moment it has been scalded, and no ground can be so proper as the newly mowed ground where the grass has stood. The space, too, must be large for any considerable quantity of grass. As to all these things, however, the best and cheapest methods will soon be discovered when people set about the work with a view to profit.

Q.—The Society will want nothing from me, nor from any body else, to convince it of the importance of this matter; but I cannot, in concluding these communications to you, Sir, refrain from making an observation or two on the consequences likely to arise out of these inquiries. The manufacture is one of considerable magnitude. Not less than about five millions of persons in this kingdom have a dress, which consists partly of manufactured straw; and a large part, and all the most expensive part, of the articles thus used, now come from abroad. In cases where you can get from abroad any article at less expense than you can get it at home, the wisdom of fabricating that article at home may be doubted. But, in this case, you get the raw material by labour performed at home, and the cost of that labour is not nearly so great as would be the cost of the mere carriage of the straw from a foreign country to this. If our own people had all plenty of employment, and that, too more profitable to them and to the country, than the turning of a part of our own grass into articles of dress; then, it would be advisable still to import Leghorn bonnets; but, the facts being the reverse, it is clear, that whatever money, or money’s worth things, be sent out of the country, in exchange for Leghorn bonnets, is, while we have the raw material here for next to nothing, just so much thrown away. The Italians, it may be said, take some of our manufactures in exchange: and let us suppose, for the purpose of illustration, that they take cloth from Yorkshire. Stop the exchange between Leghorn and Yorkshire, and, does Yorkshire lose part of its custom? No: for, though those who make the bonnets out of English grass, prevent the Leghorners from buying Yorkshire cloth, they, with the money which they now get, instead of its being got by the Leghorners, buy the Yorkshire cloth themselves; and they wear this cloth too, instead of its being worn by the people of Italy: aye, Sir, and many now in rags, will be well clad, if the laudable object of the Society be effected. Besides this, however, why should we not export the articles of this manufacture? To America we certainly should; and I should not be at all surprised if we were to export them to Leghorn itself.

R.—Notwithstanding all this, however, if the manufacture were of a description to require, in order to give it success, the collecting of the manufacturers together in great numbers, I should, however great the wealth that it might promise, never have done any thing to promote its establishment. The contrary is, happily, the case: here all is not only performed by hand, but by hand singly, without any combination of bands. Here there is no power of machinery or of chemistry wanted. All is performed out in the open fields, or sitting in the cottage. There wants no coal mines and no rivers to assist: no water-powers nor powers of fire. No part of the kingdom is unfit for the business. Every where there are grass, water, sun, and women and children’s fingers; and these are all that are wanted. But, the great thing of all is this: that, to obtain the materials for the making of this article of dress, at once so gay, so useful, and, in some cases, so expensive, there requires not a penny of capital. Many of the labourers now make their own straw hats to wear in summer. Poor rotten things, made out of the straw of ripened grain. With what satisfaction will they learn, that straw, twenty times as durable, to say nothing of the beauty, is to be got from every hedge. In short, when the people are well and clearly informed of the facts, which I have, through you, Sir, had the honour to lay before the Society, it is next to impossible that the manufacture should not become general throughout the country. In every labourer’s house a pot of water can be boiled. What labourer’s wife cannot, in the summer months, find time to cut and bleach grass enough to give her and her children work for a part of the winter? There is no necessity for all to be platters. Some may cut and bleach only. Others may prepare the straw, as mentioned in paragraph L. of this letter. And doubtless, as the farmers in Hertfordshire now sell their straw to the platters, grass collectors and bleachers and preparers would do the same. So that there is sarcely any country labourer’s family that might not derive some advantage from this discovery; and, while I am convinced that this consideration has been by no means overlooked by the Society, it has been, I assure you, the great consideration of all with,

Sir,

Your most obedient and

Most humble Servant,

Wm. Cobbett.

223. Since writing the above Letter, several things have occurred to me which I did not before think of; and I have made some inquiries respecting the Leghorn Hats, Plat, and Straw, the result of which inquiries it may be useful to communicate to my readers. In treating of a matter like this, it is very difficult to make oneself clearly understood, unless one repeat a good deal; and yet, to be clearly understood is the main thing, because here is to be no effect at all produced, or a real practical effect: people are, by this Treatise of mine, to be induced to spend their time, or money, or both, in the cutting of grass, and the bleaching of it; or, I write in vain. Unpleasant as repetition is, I must therefore repeat, rather than run the risk of not being understood. The heads, under each of which there remains something to be explained, or observed on, are: the Sorts of Grass or Grain; the Season for Cutting; the Act of Cutting; the Act of Bleaching; the Housing of the Straw; the Pulling of the Straw; the platting; the Knitting of the Plat together; the Cost, to the importer, of the Leghorn Hats, Plat, and Straw.

224. SORTS OF GRASS OR GRAIN.—The PLATE, which I insert here, exhibits a pretty good representation of three sorts of Grass just at the season when they are coming out into bloom. Figure 1. is the Sweet-scented Vernal Grass; Fig. 2. the Crested Dog’s Tail; and Fig. 3. the Bennet Grass, or Ray Grass. At the Office of the Register, No. 183, Fleet-street, these may be seen in nature: little bunches of them, in straw, that was harvested by me. However, by attentively looking at this Plate, any one may soon learn to distinguish these sorts from others. But, the reader is not to conclude, that these are the only sorts that will answer the purpose; nor, indeed, is he to conclude, that they are the best sorts that can be found. They are the best that I have yet found. They make, as may be seen by the specimens in Fleet-street, very fine and beautiful straw; but, amongst the great multitude of sorts of grass, I, or others, may possibly find other sorts as well or better suited to the purpose. The grass made use of by Miss Woodhouse is, unquestionably, the common Couch Grass. It is a great mistake to suppose, that there is any sort of grass growing in Connecticut, which does not also grow in England. Miss Woodhouse, in her communication to the Society of Arts, called her grass the Poa Pratensis. This is the smooth-stalked meadow-grass of England, and this is one of the most common grasses that grows in England. But Miss Woodhouse could only tell the name that was given to her; and it appears pretty evident to me, that the person who gave her the name to send to the Society, mistook the Agrostis Vulgaris for the Poa Pratensis. The former is, in its seed head, very like the latter, only on a smaller scale. The Agrostis Vulgaris is our common Couch Grass, to extirpate which from our fields, or, rather, to keep it in check, costs millions of money every year. It was certainly not necessary to send to Connecticut for the seed of this greatest of all the curses of English agriculture. In some parts of England, particularly in Suffolk and Norfolk, this wicked grass is called Spear Grass, and that is the very name which Miss Woodhouse’s grass goes by in Connecticut. Doubtless the name went out with the first settlers from the eastern part of England. They found the same sort of grass that they had left behind them, and they gave it the same name. The Couch Grass has a finer stalk than the smooth-stalked meadow-grass. It is also very tough; and this was probably the reason for selecting it in Connecticut.

225. But, there are many other sorts of grass. The yellow oat-grass, particularly, is very fine; I think the finest of all. A specimen of the straw of this grass may be seen at 183, Fleet-street. This straw would make plat a great deal finer than that of the bonnet of Miss Woodhouse. Not only finer, but a great deal finer. Perhaps it is not more than half the size of the straw made use of by Miss Wood-house, while the colour is as beautiful as it possibly can be. It is not, however, of the straw of grass only, or even principally, that I have to speak. None of the immense quantity of hats and plat imported from Leghorn, is made of the straw of grass. The Leghorn manufacture is made of the straw of grain, and principally of the straw of wheat, which, though not nearly so fine, in point of size, as the straw of many kinds of grass, is perhaps, in point of colour, equal to the straw of even the best sorts of grass. This is what the Italians make their plat of. This is the material of which all those thousands upon thousands of bonnets are made that we see upon women’s heads in England! How astonishing, then, is it, that English manufacturers in straw should have fallen into beggary, supposing all the while, that they could not make plat like that of the Italians for want of materials to make it of, or for want of sun sufficiently bright to bleach those materials! The simple facts are these: the Leghorn bonnets are made of wheat straw; but, this straw comes from plants that are very fine and spindling in consequence of their standing very thick upon the ground; and, this Italian wheat is cut while it is green instead of remaining till it be dry. This makes it tough, instead of being rotten: and the smallness of the stalk enables the platters to make fine plat of the whole round straw, instead of making use of the straw when split.

226. I believe, that some sorts of oats would do very well. It is not impossible that barley might do. Rye, I should imagine, would be very good; but it is a fact that the Italians generally “make use of wheat. If I were to sow wheat for the purpose, or indeed any other grain, I would sow about fifteen Winchester bushels to the statute acre. That, I should think, would give me the straw fine enough. If you sow wheat for the purpose, recollect, that there are some sorts of wheat which have a brown straw, and some sorts which have a white straw. The Italians sow, I believe, very frequently, the spring-wheat for this purpose. I mean the spring bearded wheat. This sort of wheat has a very white straw; and it may be sown at the same time that barley is sown. But I think that the sort of wheat that I should choose is that sort, which they call, in Hampshire, the old fashioned while straw, which has a small brown grain; but the flour of which, and the straw of which, are whiter than those of any other kind of wheat. This is a winter wheat. It must be sown in the fall of the year; and, the straw would be the tougher and brighter, if the land were a good stiff loam upon a bottom of chalk, great quantities of which land are found in Hertfordshire, the north of Hampshire, and divers other parts of the kingdom. I have often remarked, that if the land be of a loose texture, the straw of the wheat is seldom bright and sound. The finest and brightest straw that I ever saw in England, came from wheat which grew on a bed of almost solid clay. The straw was small enough, to be sure, and the ears short enough; but the straw was the whitest and brightest that I ever saw stand upon any land in England.

227. An acre of wheat, would yield a prodigious quantity of straw; and as to the straw being as good for the purpose of making plat as is the straw which is grown in Italy, I have demonstrated the affirmative of the fact. I have left nothing for conjecture. I have left nothing to dispute about. I have gone into an English field. I have cut the wheat in that field, I have bleached it in English sun. I have then clarified it, after the manner of the Italians. I now offer for public inspection, at No. 183, Fleet-street, a bunch of this straw placed by the side of a bunch of straw imported from Italy. The Italian straw is from the spring wheat; my straw is from winter wheat. The eye can hardly be fixed upon any thing of the straw kind more bright and beautiful than these samples; but if there be any difference, the English wheat has produced the most beautiful straw. After this, I trust we shall hear no more about the importing of the seeds of foreign plants, for the purpose of raising bonnet straw. I do not blame those who have imported the seeds even of couch-grass. They could not know that the importation was not necessary. The importation could do no harm. But, it would do a great deal of harm to make people believe that it was necessary now to wait for the bringing of any foreign plant to perfection. I have demonstrated (and this is the great merit of the thing) that we have all the materials already in England; that we have every plant which the Italians and the Americans have, only that we have them, as far as relates to all sorts of grass, in greater perfection, and in greater abundance.

228. THE SEASON FOR CUTTING THE PLANTS.—I have before observed, that I cut my wheat and collected my grass in Hertfordshire, just at the time when the wheat was in full bloom. Upon further inspection of my wheat straw, I am of opinion that a better rule than that of the existence of the full bloom may be adopted. I have observed, in paragraph L. of my letter to the society, of the 14th of April, that no part of the straw is used for platting, except that part of the stalk, which you find between the upper joint and the seed-head, or tassel, or bunch of flowers, or, to speak in the language of the Botanists, the panicle. When the straw has been bleached in the sun, you pluck the top part of the stalk out of the upper joint. Now, if the stalk be round and full at the part where it meets at the upper joint, the plant appears to me to be at the proper age; but if it be not round and full where it meets at the upper joint, then it appears not to be quite ripe enough. If you pluck upwards a wheat plant, taking hold of the ear, you will not find the plant give way at the root; but you will find the upper part of it come away, the separation being at the upper joint. Now, if the straw, or, rather, the stalk, be round, full, and tough, down in the socket, where the separation takes place, then it appears to me that the plant is far enough advanced; but it certainly is not far enough advanced, if that part of the stalk which comes out of the socket, be soft, watery, and easily pinched asunder. This appears to me to be a very safe rule; and it holds good with regard to the plants of grass, as well as with regard to the plants of grain. This is the best way of determining the season for cutting; because, it applies to every kind of plant individually, and if it be well attended to, it will be impossible that much injury should arise to any party from cutting the grass or grain out of season. The season of the year when the several plants come to perfection may be seen by referring to the work of the greatest authority, called Houtus Kewensis. But Mr. AITON, the King’s gardener, has published an Epitome of this work, which is quite sufficient for all useful purposes. It contains an account of every plant which is grown in the Botanical Garden of Kew; that is to say, every plant of which the Botanists of Europe have any knowledge: giving, at one view, the Botanical name and the English name, of every plant, a list of the different species, together with the following particulars annexed to each species; first, a reference to some book in which the figure of it is drawn; second, the country from which it is brought, if an exotic; third, the time when first known, if of modern discovery: and, which is more particularly useful to our present purpose, the time of flowering. So that nothing can be more useful, as well as entertaining; and I owe it especially to those of my readers who are zealous in promoting the object of this present number of “Cottage Economy,” to point out so compendious a source of information.

229. THE MANNER OF CUTTING.—I have already said that the plants may be mowed. Indeed, it signifies not with what instrument they be severed from the earth, provided they be properly collected together. For the cutting of grass by a handful at a time. I had a small reap-hook made, which was fastened to the end of a straight handle about a foot and a half long. With the hook in one hand, the woman that was using it collected, into her other hand, a good quantity of the tops of the grass. Holding these in one hand, she, with her hook, cut off the stalks as close to the ground as possible. Then, lifting up her grass, she gave the butts of it a rap with the back of her hook, and thus shook away the undergrowth, and every thing that did not belong to the stalks, the tops of which she held in her hand. For some time I had these handfuls of grass tied at the butts in separate handfuls. This operation being rather tedious, I afterwards had the grass tied in little bundles; but I am by no means certain, that, in the end, any time was saved by this more hasty manner of proceeding. Tied up in little handfuls, all the subsequent operations became easy in the extreme; and though my experience is not sufficient to induce me to speak very positively upon the subject, I am much disposed to think that, where the grass is cut by handfuls, to tie it up in handfuls is the best way. In general, and especially in case of fields of grain, the severing will, of course, take place by the scythe or the reap-hook. The latter, most likely, a great deal the best; because, in this case, strings would be laid out upon the land to receive the grips of green wheat, as bonds are laid out to receive the grips of ripe wheat. All those who may wish to procure plaiting straw may not be husbandmen; and therefore I ought here to, observe, that the grips are the little parcels of wheat which the reapers lay down upon the ground as they are proceeding with their work. When these are bound up, they are called sheaves; and in their former state they are called grips, because, they consist of little parcels which the reaper has gripped in his hand, in going from the one side of his work to the other. In cutting the wheat, rye, and oats, or even grass, if it stood out in the clear in a field, the reaper would take grips in the same manner as if he were cutting ripe wheat. Strings, instead of bonds, would be laid upon the cleared ground to receive the grips; and one woman would cut and tie up with the greatest neatness, and with two ties to a grip, a quarter of an acre of grass in a day. While she was doing this, others would be employed in taking away the grass or the grain plants, scalding them, and laying them out to bleach. These would have to be turned, as we have seen. But, as to the division of labour, that would take care of itself, in a very short time. The expense of cutting would be very little; especially when we consider the quantity of plat that would be produced from an acre of land.

230. THE MANNER OF BLEACHING.—I have not much to add, upon this subject; except that I think it necessary to press upon the reader, that great care must be taken about the scalding. It is not the Italian sun and the American sun that has given those countries the fine and tough straw. We have finer grass than either of them; and we can have as fine straws of grain. Our sun is also quite sufficient for the purpose; and I believe, better than a hotter sun; but, the scalding we knew nothing about till we got the knowledge of it from Connecticut. Miss Woodhouse did not communicate this secret to the Society of Arts. Doubtless the girls of Connecticut had the secret communicated to them by some one that had been in Italy. When I sent to Connecticut to inquire about the seed, I instructed my son James to make inquiries into every thing concerning the matter. Thus it was that he came at the knowledge of the scalding, without which all the rest of the knowledge relating to the subject would be useless. On Monday, 26th of this May, I cut two handfuls of grass, in my ground at Kensington, of the sort called, by the Botanists, Alopecurus Pratensis, or Meadow Fox-tail grass. One of the handfuls was scalded, and the other was not. Both were laid out upon the grass to bleach. On Wednesday night, that is to say, at the end of about two days and a half, the two parcels were taken in. The one not scalded was still nearly green, and the one that was scalded was as white as wheat straw generally is at harvest. These two samples may be seen by any body, at the Office of the Register, in Fleet-street. The grass was in bloom: it is a coarse grass, wholly unfit for platting; but it was the forwardest in my meadow, and it was as good as any other for the purpose of demonstrating the effect of scalding. This is the great secret of all; and I cannot help repeating the remark, which I have made elsewhere, how curious it is, that this secret should have been kept from us here in England until long after it had been communicated to the farmers’ daughters in Connecticut. Any body who lives in the country, can try the effect of the scalding at any moment. Those who wish to see the effect, and have not an opportunity of being in the country, may see it by calling at the Office of the Register. But, besides this bleaching in the sun, the Italians and the Americans also make use of a clarifying by the means of brimstone. All the Leghorn Plat and Leghorn Straw and Hats that are imported, are clarified by brimstone. My Son found that the same was practised in Connecticut; and. when straw bonnets are cleaned in England, they are cleaned by the means of brimstone, All the split straw is clarified by brimstone. My own opinion is, that we have some grass that will make plat even more beautiful without this clarifying, than any other thing will make with clarifying. But this is a matter of little interest. The Italians clarify the whole of their manufacture with brimstone; and, in that article, we do not yield to them at any rate. This clarifying is the easiest thing imaginable. The straw, the plat, or the bonnet, is wetted a little with clean cold water, which is then shaken off from it, leaving it in a wettish state. It is then shut up in a tub, in a box, in a cupboard, or in some place with some brimstone put into a little pan, and set upon the bottom of the box or tub, and set fire to. This is all that is necessary. This gives to the straw or plat or bonnet a very brilliant colour certainly; but a colour which I think may be surpassed without the use of brimstone. However, this is of no consequence at all; all that I pretend to is, to show that we can get in England, from our own fields, and our own grain and grass, materials for platting as fine and as good as can be obtained in Italy or in Connecticut.

231. THE HOUSING OF THE ROUGH STRAW.—In speaking of that part of bleaching which consists of clarifying, I might have observed, that the clarifying is a thing not to be bestowed upon any part of the plant, except that which is really for use. That part, therefore of which I have spoken in paragraph L of my Letter of the 14th of April, is, of course, to be pulled or plucked from the rest of the plant, and to be trimmed and got ready for use before it be clarified; for it would be useless to clarify the seed-heads and the bottom of the plats, by way of preparation for the litter heap, or the bed of the farm-yard. But, before this pulling or plucking take place, the straw must be housed in its rough state; that is to say, it must be put away in a barn or granary, or some other safe and convenient place. For this purpose it should be tied up in neat and smooth bundles; and I am satisfied that it would answer the end of the proprietor to have it tied up in coarse stuff like hop-sacking, which would keep dust away from it, and protect it from various other injuries. At any rate, it should not be tied up unless perfectly dry. If not perfectly dry it will mould, or at any rate, grow damp; perhaps heat a little; and in either of these cases all your labour is thrown away. Care should be taken, besides, that the place where it is deposited be perfectly dry. Not only must there be no wet fall upon the straw; but there must be no dampness in the floor or in the walls of the building;. A good dry barn might do very well; a malt-kiln, a hop-kiln, a granary, or, for a small quantity, a room in a house, which room has a boarded floor.

232. THE PULLING OF THE STRAW.—That is to say, the act of taking the useful part from the other parts of the plant. The labours, of which I have hitherto spoken, are of a bustling kind, and are to be performed chiefly out of doors. This pulling or the straw may be performed by the fire-side. The way to go to work might be this. Here I should say to a labouring man’s wife, is a bundle of rough straw, weighing ten pounds. I have found, by experience, that every ten pounds of rough straw yield two pounds of pulled straw. Take this bundle, bring me back two pounds of pulled straw, and I give you so much money. The pulled straw would have the seed heads, or panicles on it; and would probably be sold, in that state to the platters, or the employers of the platters. That is the state in which the straw is now imported from Italy. What a curious thing! that we should be importing from Italy things which are so common in our own country, that we can hardly move about that country without actually treading upon these things! In all probability the course of the business will, in general, be this: one person will grow the plants, and harvest the straw. Another will purchase the rough straw of him, have it pulled and sell the pulled straw to the platters, who will, as they now do in the case of the split straw, carry the plat to market and sell it. This appears to me likely to be the course of the trade; but the women in labourer’s, farmer’s, country tradesmen’s, and even in gentlemen’s houses, will make collections of grass for themselves. They will find out, I warrant them, those sorts of grass, which when turned into bonnets, make a face look prettiest. There will not remain many banks and hedges in the kingdom unexplored for the purpose of discovering grass wherewith to make rare and beautiful straw. This is peculiarly an affair of the Women; and I never yet knew any thing to fail that they set about with a hearty good will.

233. THE PLATTING.—There will scarcely be any difficulty in finding people to plat English straw, seeing that there are enough already found to plat the Leghorn straw, imported into this country. This work has been for some time carried on by the industrious and most praiseworthy inhabitants of the Orkney Islands. Some persons in those islands have, at this time, some small parcels of my straw; and I expect samples of their plat in about a month’s time. But, there will platters be found in all parts of the kingdom. If those who have been accustomed to plat the soft split straw, were, from some whim or other, to object to work upon the new manufacture, other platters would rise up to supply their place. There will be too many persons interested in converting our own straw into plat, to suffer the manufacture to fail for want of persons to work in it.

234. THE KNITTING OF THE PLAT TOGETHER.—The English straw plat is put together as boards are put on the side of a barn; that is to say, the plat, or lists of plat, are made one to cover a part of the other; and they are sewed through and through, the needle and thread performing the office of the nails in the case of the barn. Not thus is it with the Leghorn hats and bonnets. In order to make these, the plat is not lapped, a part of one list over a part of the other; but the lists are fastened to each other after the manner, or form, of boards put together by glue; that is to say, the edge of one list of plat is fastened to the edge of another list; and thus throughout the whole bonnet, just as boards, joined on to the edges of each other, form a table; and so neatly and cleverly is this work of knitting the lists of plat performed, that you can no more discover the joinings of the plat in the one case, than you can the joinings of the boards in the other case. This is called knitting the plat; and there are at present, as far as I understand, not many persons in England, and those who are here are principally foreigners, who know how to do this business. Now, then for the honour of the Girls of Old England? Shall we be compelled to send young fellows to Italy and Connecticut to fetch us Italians and Yankees to carry on this work of knitting together plat made of English straw? Recollect, the Yankee girls found out the way to knit the plat together. There were no foreigners to go to do the work for them or to teach them to do it. There is Miss Woodhouse’s Bonnet at the apartments of the Society of Arts. That bonnet is knit together after the Italian manner; and am I to have the cruel mortification of hearing one English woman express a doubt of her being able to do the same thing?

235. THE COST, TO THE IMPORTER, OF LEGHORN PLAT AND STRAW.—The Plat which is imported from Leghorn in the shape of plat, pays a duty of seventeen shillings the pound weight, and stands is the importer in about sixty shillings a pound, altogether. The plat which is imported in the form of hats, pays a duty of five and eight pence per hat, unless the hat exceed twenty-two inches in diameter, and then the duty is double. What the prime cost of the hat is, when bought in Italy, and what the amount of the freight and insurance, I cannot say. Of Leghorn straw no great quantity appears to have been imported. Some, however, is imported, and it pays a duty of twenty per cent.; and probably stands the importer, all charges included, in three, four, or five shillings a pound. Now, I will pledge myself to furnish any quantity of straw of any degree of fineness, not finer than hog’s bristles, to persons ready to contract with me for it I should not be afraid to say that I would furnish straw, equal in all respects to Leghorn straw, for less than half the price which Leghorn straw costs. How cheaply, then, can such straw be furnished by persons who live in the country, who have the land, the grass, the grain, the barns, and, into the bargain, the labouring people, all ready to their hand!

236. In conclusion, I have to observe, that, I by no means send forth this Essay as containing opinions and instructions that are to undergo no alteration. I am, indeed, endeavouring to teach others; but I am myself only a learner. Experience will, doubtless, make me much more perfect in a knowledge of the several parts of the subject; and the fruit of this experience I shall be careful to communicate to the public. I am strongly disposed to believe that the manufacture, the establishment of which I am endeavouring to promote, will be beneficial to my country in many respects, and particularly, that it will tend to better the lot of the labouring classes; to cause them to live better than they now live; to give them better food and better raiment than they now have; and to assist in driving from their minds the effects of that pernicious and despicable cant which has long been dinning into their ears, that hungry bellies and ragged backs are marks of the grace of God. At the time when I was leaving a felons’ jail, in which I had been imprisoned for two years for having expressed my indignation at the flogging of Englishmen in the heart of England, under a guard of Hanoverian bayonets; at that time, in answer to some gentlemen, who presented me with an address, congratulating me on the preservation of my health, and expressing their indignation at the fine of a thousand pounds which I had just paid, and at the bonds for seven years into which I had been compelled to enter, my observation to those gentlemen was, that I should always remember this treatment, but that the only way in which, I should seek to be revenged of my enemies, was by rendering services to that Country of which they were the insolent oppressors.