_On the converting of English Grass, and Grain Plants cut green, into Straw, for the purpose of making Plat for Hats and Bonnets._
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 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 the 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 Indian straws, being _small whole_ straws, instead of small straws made by the splitting of large ones, here was a _roundness_ in them, that gave _light and shade_ to the plat, which could not be given by our flat bits of straw.