"She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands;
She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff."
She was also the first one to weave cotton and silk. It was Mama Oclo, the wife of Manco Capac, as the Inca historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, tells us, who taught the women of ancient Peru "to sew and weave cotton and wool and to make clothes for themselves, their husbands and children."
And it was a woman, Se-ling-she, the wife of the emperor, Hwang-te, who lived nearly three thousand years before Christ, to whom the most ancient Chinese writers assign the discovery of silk. Her name is perpetuated in the name China, the goddess of silkworms, and under this appellation she still receives divine honors.
The preparation and weaving of silk were introduced into Japan by four Chinese girls, and the new industry soon became there, as in China, one of the chief sources, as it is to-day, of the country's wealth. To perpetuate the memory of these four pioneer silk weavers the grateful Japanese erected a temple in their honor in the province of Setsu.
According to tradition, the eggs of the silk moth and the seed of the mulberry tree were conveyed to India, concealed in the lining of her headdress, by a Chinese princess. She was thus instrumental in establishing in the region watered by the Indus and the Ganges the same industry which her countrywomen had introduced into the Land of the Rising Sun.
Cashmere shawls and attar of roses, the costliest of perfumes, are attributed to an Indian empress, Nur Mahal, whom her husband, in view of her achievements, as well as on account of his passionate love for her, called "The Light of the World."[228]
And what shall we say of those exquisite creations of woman's brain and hand—needle-point and pillow lace? These two inventions, like the manufacture of silk, have given employment to tens of thousands of women throughout the world; and, in such countries as Italy, Belgium and France, where lace-making has received special attention, they have for centuries been most prolific sources of revenue. Silk fabrics in ancient Rome were worth their weight in gold. The finest specimens of point lace are, even to-day, as highly prized as precious stones, and, like the great masterpieces of plastic art, are handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation. In no other instance, except possibly in the hairspring of a watch, is there such an extraordinary difference in value between the raw material and the finished product as there is in the case of the finest thread lace.
A great sensation was caused in Italy a few decades ago when a humble workwoman, Signora Bassani, succeeded in rediscovering the peculiar stitch of the celebrated Venetian point, which had been lost for centuries. She was at once granted a patent for her invention, which was by her countrymen regarded as an event of national importance.
After painting and sculpture, probably no art has contributed more to the development of the esthetic sense among the nations of the world than has the art whose chief tools are the needle and the bobbin in the deft hands of a beauty-loving woman. If the name of the first lace-maker had not been lost in the mists of antiquity, it is reasonable to suppose that she, too, would long since have had a monument erected to her memory, as well as the weavers of silk and makers of attar of roses and cashmere shawls. She was surely as deserving of such an honor.
More conclusive information respecting woman as an inventor is, strange as it may appear, afforded by a systematic study of the various races of mankind which are still in a state of savagery. Such a study discloses the interesting fact that woman, contrary to the declaration of Proudhon, has not only been the inventor of the distaff, but that she has furthermore—pace Voltaire—been the inventor of all the peaceful arts of life, and the inventor, too, of the earliest forms of nearly all the mechanical devices now in use in the world of industry.