Countdown to Christmas
21 - Cotton Underwear
- Marx's co-author Friedrich Engels wrote indignantly in 1844 that the beautiful linen underwear on the clotheslines in working-class neighborhoods was being replaced by cheap cotton.
- As usual, he didn't get it right.
Industrial mass production enabled by cotton (later also synthetic fabrics) made clean laundry affordable to workers. Underwear could be changed more frequently. Hygienic conditions improved and there was more money for other things. Mass-produced underwear was a huge, often overlooked advancement for humanity. Plus, linen makes your underpants itch.
Inventors
The invention of the "Spinning Jenny" (a spinning frame with several spindles) by James Hargreave in 1765, cleared the way for mass textile production, for which cotton was well suited.
Underwear had been known since ancient times, but the innovation was now mass production, replacing laborious expensive manual labor. Cotton underpants came about spontaneously without a named inventor. Later in the 19th century, scientists like Gustav Jäger recognized its effect on public hygiene.
Underwear is, of course, very useful. But be careful! Because it is now a cheap and ordinary commodity, it is generally NOT suitable as a Christmas present - unless you are giving it to people you want to humiliate. Only very, very expensive underwear (preferably with the price tag left attached by “accident”) could be considered an exception under certain and rare circumstances.
