Note 405 — Chapter V · THE MULE AND THE RISE OF A NEW COTTON MANUFACTURE

“The manufacture of cotton cloth was at its best in India until very recent times, and the fine Indian muslins were in great demand and commanded high prices, both in the Roman Empire and in Mediæval Europe. The industry was one of the main factors in the wealth of ancient India, and the transfer of that industry to England and the United States, and the cheapening of the process by mechanical ginning, spinning and weaving, is perhaps the greatest single factor in the economic history of our own time” (Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (1912), p. 71).