University of Virginia Library

5032. MANUFACTURES, Household.—[further continued]

The interruption of our
intercourse with England has rendered us one
essential service in planting, radically and
firmly, coarse manufactures among us. I
make in my family two thousand yards of
cloth a year, which I formerly bought from
England, and it only employs a few women,
children and invalids, who could do little on
the farm. The State generally does the same,
and allowing ten yards to a person, this
amounts to ten millions of yards; and if we
are about the medium degree of manufacturers
in the whole Union, as I believe we
are, the whole will amount to one hundred
millions of yards a year, which will soon reimburse
us the expenses of the war.—
To Mr. Maury. Washington ed. vi, 471.
(M. 1815)