worsteds rise

Nathaniel Leake House

Woolen mills throughout the period either had to combat this new cloth or go to the expense of installing machinery for making it. The result was that from 1889 to 1909 the trend in wool manufacturing was downward while in worsteds it was upward. In 1889, about 200,000,000 yards of woolens and less than half that amount of worsteds rolled off the looms. Twenty years later, worsted production was nearly three times the volume of ordinary woolens.--Harry Poindexter