CARPET (Lat. carpere, to or °card,' as wool), a thick woolen fabric used for covering floors. The word originally meant (in old French) a coarse cloth in which pack ages were wrapped for packing upon the backs of men and animals. As man advanced in civ ilization and desire for comfort, he began to use his packing carpite as a wrap for himself and to cover his feet and limbs at night. From that he began to use it to protect his sandaled feet from cold stone floors. Then the ma terial was made finer and gradually embellished with colors and designs. The art progressed most rapidly in the cold mountain districts of western Asia—Persia, Turkey, Syria. The people of these regions had time, patience and a love for things beautiful. They produced wonderful results with wool, camel's hair, or goat's hair, combined with a flaxen warp. All their work was (and still is) done most labori ously by hand on looms of the crudest sort. These fabrics of the better sort are almost in destructible with ordinary wear. Carpets are still in use in some of the palaces of Persia which have been constantly used since the end of the 16th century.
When woven floor-coverings were first used by matt is hard to tell. Fragments of what might be such are found in Egyptian excava tions indicating a possible use of them as early as 3000 B.c. That the skins of animals and rush mats were used by prehistoric man as protection from the cold stone of the cave dwelling is cer tain. Cyrus the Great had wonderful carpets when he placed Persia at the forefront of. na tions. Alexander found them in use in his vic torious march through Asia to India.
The art of carpet-making in its best sense still remains with the Orient. No Occidental possesses the matchless patience properly to weave by hand the marvelous creations of the Far East. Some of the Indian carpets approach the fineness of those of Persia. The jute and cotton rugs of Japan, and the grass mattings of China, are samples of this art in poorer material.
In the United States there are samples of native workmanship which compare well with the productions of the East. The work of the
Navajo Indian in particular is very quaint and perfect. His rugs or blankets, colored with na tive pigments and laboriously woven by hand, will wear for many years. Cortez found the palaces of Montezuma covered with grand rugs, many of them made of the skins of humming birds sewn together. See Clam AND RUG INDUSTRY.
GOVERNMENTS. The admission of the Southern negroes to the franchise after the war involved their organization and -leadership, and their representation in State and national offices by intelligent whites. As no Southern whites of character would undertake what they re garded as a crusade against civilization, the task fell to Northern Republicans. Those who undertook it were of -all grades of personal integrity and honesty of purpose, from sincere old-fashioned abolitionists to mere scalawag adventurers; but they had one characteristic in common: the lack of property interests in the South to make its injury theirs. Hence the name, implying that their only possessions were in their carpet-bags. The name was at first given only to those whose one motive for residence there was election to office by aid of the negro vote; and the purpose of many was voiced in the utterance of one high official, that when he could no longer hold office from there he would no longer live there. But the regime of monstrous plunder and social and industrial ruin which the system brought on, the levying of fraudulent taxes, and the piling up of huge State debts for the future, soon effaced all distinctions. All Northerners who upheld the system or tried to protect the negroes' voting rights were confounded under the name; all State governments in any way protected from overthrow by United States troops were "carpet-bag' governments; and finally the entire years of Reconstruction, and that attempt itself, are compendiously known as the °Carpet-Bag