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As John entered its big iron gates, he saw bales of cotton going into the mill by one door, and he knew the other door at which they would come out in the form of woven calico. In rapid thought he followed them to the upper floors, and then traveled down with them to the great weaving-rooms in the order their processes advanced them.
He knew that on the highest floor a devil would tear the fiber asunder, that it would then go to the scutcher, and have the dust and dirt blown away, then that carding machines would lay all the fibers parallel, that drawing machines would group them into slender ribbons, and a roving machine twist them into a soft cord, and then that a mule or a throstle would spin the roving into yarn, and the yarn would go to the weaving-rooms, where a thousand wonderful machines would turn them into miles and miles of calico; the machines doing all the hard work, while women and girls adjusted and supplied them with the material.
She faithfully examined the weaving-rooms and the dairies, the smoke-house and the smithy, all with growing enthusiasm. Then they visited the big lofts; drying-rooms for the clothes and drying-rooms for the wood; hay-lofts, and lofts for dried leaves for the sheep to eat. The dormant housewife in her awoke to life and consciousness at all this perfection.
Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands, though she did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom, but by her slaves and freed-women. Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms which were in the house.
They passed through the spinning department, in which the long lines of frames were tended by children, and reached the weaving-rooms whose looms required the attention of women, with here and there a man who had failed to make a success of male occupations and sunk to the ill-paid feminine activities.
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