The Secret of Everyday Things

MP3 Audio CD. The Secret of Everyday Things


THREAD

Uncle Paul resumed his talks on things that grow and things that are made, while his nephews, Jules and Emile, and his nieces, Claire and Marie, listened to his "true stories," as they liked to call them, and from time to time asked him a question or put in some word of their own.

Continuing the subject of cotton-manufacture, he called his hearers’ attention to the number of processes the raw material must go through before it emerges as finished fabric ready for making into wearing apparel, and to the countless workmen that must, from first to last, have been engaged in its production and in all the operations leading up to its final application to household uses.

"Then I should think" said Marie, "that cotton cloth would be very expensive if all those workmen are to get their pay for the time and labor they have put into its manufacture."

"On the contrary," Uncle Paul assured her, "the price is kept down to a very moderate figure; but to accomplish this surprising result two powerful factors are called into play,—wholesale manufacture and the use of machinery. The process employed for spinning cotton into the thread that you see wound on spools will help you to understand my meaning.