It Wasn't Neo to Us

Abstract

"When I hold these paper leaves between my fingers, far off across the countless ages I hear the sound of women beating out the fibers of hemp and flax to shape the first garment, and above the roar of the wheels and spinnies of the factory, I hear the whirr of the worlds first spinning wheel and the voice of the woman singing to herself as she sits beside it, and know that without the labor of those first women kneeling over the fibers and beating them swiftly out, and without the hum of those early spinning wheels, neither factory nor paper pulp would ever have come into existence. . . . This little book! it has got its roots down, down, deep in the life of [people] on earth; it grows from there." Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man Chicago, 1977, p.409