| Cotton was not exported to Europe until
the eighth century A. D.. It was brought to Spain then by the Moors of North
Africa. The Europeans liked this textile and began to make cotton cloth. By the
fifteenth century, the cotton industry had spread from Spain to central Europe
and the Low Countries. When Columbus arrived in the West Indies, he found the Indians wearing cotton clothes. Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror of Peru, found that the Incas were growing cotton for use in the making of clothes. Magellan found the Brazilians swinging in cotton hammocks. And Cortes was so impressed by the beauty the cotton tapestries and rugs that the Aztecs made, that he sent some of them as presents to King Charles Ⅱ of Spain. The Chinese were the first people to make silk clothing, and, for more than 2000 years, they were the only people in the world who knew how to make silk. The Chinese guarded the secret of their silk manufacture carefully. Their merchants grew rich in the silk trade with other Asian countries and Europe. Silk, in fact, was so expensive that it was known as the cloth of kings. During the reign of Emperor Justinian of Constantinople, two Persian monks who lived in China brought silkworms to Europe. In the years that followed, western Europeans learned how to grow silkworms and use the silk from the cocoons. Silk is still one of the most useful textiles in clothing manufacture because of its extremely strong fibers. A thread of silk is two-third as strong as an iron wire of the same size and so smooth that dirt cannot cling to it easily. Two hundred years ago, most of the people of the world had little or no clothing. Clothing was taken care of very carefully and handed down from parents to children. Many people never owned a new garment in their lives, and, except for the rich, no one had more than one outfit of clothes at a time. Primitive man made slices long before he made permanent records on clay tablets or parchment scrolls. For many centuries, the shoemaker was interested only in covering the foot. Although he used fancy leathers and decorated shoes in many ways, he paid little attention to the fit of a shoe. In fact, it was only after 1850 that someone lit upon the idea of making differently-shaped shoes for the left and right foot. |