ABSTRACT
THE needle is an even more primitive instrument of women's toil than the spinning-wheel. Yet between the days when fishbone, bone, or ivory was used to fashion the skins of animals or rude fabrics into clothing, and the age when the domestic manufacture of steel needles planted in Worcestershire and Warwickshire towns by the Germans was developed into one of the great machine industries, stretched a period of obscurity for the English women who wielded the needle. As civilization increased its importance, sewing-women were more frequently mentioned in literary annals. In Piers Plowman they appeared as fine ladies using the needle for charity.
