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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 65 mony between employers and their work-people, and most successfully advanced their material, intellectual, and moral welfare.” This mill has been selected as illustrative of our highest achieve ments in the department to which it belongs. We would by no means have it inferred that its products are superior to those of mills of less magnitude. The Manchester Mills, with an annual product of dress goods of 250,000 pieces of fifty yards each; the Hamilton Woolen Company, with a product of 800,000 pieces, and the Wash ington Mills, with a product of 2,000,000 pieces, manufacture worsted fabrics of no less excellence. It is due to the last establishment to say, that it was the first in this country to manufacture certain all- wool dress fabrics formerly obtained exclusively from France. Some of these fabrics which it was the first to introduce, such as the all-wool matelasses, are made not only by this establishment, but by Messrs. Martin Landenberger & Co. and Thomas Dolan & Co., of Philadel phia, and have high repute in our markets. A very important class of dress fabrics was not undertaken in this country until 1872,—that of black alpacas, mohairs, and brilliantines. It was, not long since, believed that these goods could not be success fully made elsewhere than in Bradford, England. The Arlington Mills, of Lawrence, Massachusetts, were the first in this country to overcome the difficulties of this fabrication, and have since made a specialty of this branch of manufacture; these goods forming a large part of their annual production of five million yards. The black alpacas, mohairs, and brilliantines exhibited in great variety by this company, as well as by the Farr Alpaca Company, of Holyoke, were fabrics equal in all respects to the productions of the best manufac turers in the old-established seats of the worsted-industry in Europe. Reference must be made to other worsted fabrics not included in the category of dress goods. The manufacture of lastings, which are made from long-combing wools of English blood, has until recently been regarded as an exclu sive English monopoly, and the English lastings at the Exhibition well sustained their traditional reputation. All attempts in this country failed until after 1867, when the Lowell Manufacturing Com pany first successfully achieved the fabrication of this article. They were followed by the Peacedale Manufacturing Company, of Rhode Island, and others; and at present the American shoe-manufacturers are largely supplied by lastings of domestic production. Before the late war, English bunting, made like lastings of long- combing wools, formed the sole material for our national flags. The United States Bunting Company, of Lowell, first successfully achieved 5