In Kennebec County, Me., is the quiet borough of East Winthrop, for more than half a century known wherever oilcloth carpeting was used as Baileyville.

Were it not for the inventive brain of one of East Winthrop's early inhabitants, says a contemporary, the village would hardly be known across the lake, but early in the present century one of the numerous family of Maine Baileys evolved a scheme to fill his purse faster than the slow process of nature was likely to do it in growing crops.

Oilcloth carpetings were not known in the long ago, when Ezekiel Bailey pictured in his mind how they might be made, and it was in the little hamlet of East Winthrop that the conceit of their manufacture was hatched and executed. Ezekiel Bailey was, in the days prior to the war of 1812, looked upon as a very likely boy. He was studious and industrious, and while other boys of the village were out in the white oak groves setting box traps for gray squirrels, and spearing pickerel by torch light in the waters of Cobosseecontee, Ezekiel was busy in his little workshop fashioning useful things to be used about the house.

Just how and when and where he was prompted to attempt the making of oilcloth carpet nobody now living at East Winthrop seems to know. Many of the burghers thought he was "a-wastin' uv his time," but they thought different some years later when great factories for the manufacture of oilcloth floor carpeting were erected in East Winthrop, Hallowell, New Jersey, and other places.

And Ezekiel? He amassed a considerable fortune and left the path of life much easier for his kin to pursue. Having met a peddler one day, he bought a table cover made of a combination of burlap and paint. Such things were a luxury in the country at that time, and Ezekiel Bailey was shrewd enough to foresee a big demand for them if the cost could be moderated a bit. While thinking, an idea came to him, and following the idea a small voice which whispered: "Make 'em yourself." He decided to try, and there is a legend to the effect that half the farmers of the village quit work to see the first table cover.

Procuring a square of burlap, or rather enough burlap from which to fashion a square of the desired size, Ezekiel Bailey framed up the fabric as the good old grandmas used to hitch up quilts at a quilting bee, the only difference being that the burlap was framed or stretched over a table made of planed boards large enough for the full spread of the burlap. With paint and brush he began his work. The first coat was a tiller; the next, a thicker one, gave body to the cloth, and when this was rubbed down to a smooth surface the last coat was prepared. This was of a different color and was spread on thick. Then, with a straight edge, a piece of board with a true, thin edge, reaching across the whole surface of painted cloth, the finishing touches were put on. Commencing at one end of the fabric, the straight edge was moved back and forth, and straight along over the fresh paint once or twice, and the whole thing left to dry.

The first table covers were great curiosities, and the homes of the Baileys were visited by all the neighboring housewives, who were anxious to see "how they worked." Of course, it was easy to keep them clean, and they saved the woodwork of the table, which was recommendation enough. To see a cloth was to covet it, and it was not long before Ezekiel Bailey had a considerable business. Employing a boy to help him, he turned out table cloths as fast as his limited facilities would permit, and, as he progressed, new ideas for decorating took shape in his mind. In less than a year he had men out on the road selling them.

The turning out to perfection of an oilcloth carpet in those days was a task that would make a person in these piping times of labor-saving machinery wish for something easier. All the smoothing or rubbing down was done by hand. Heavy, long-bladed knives, as big as the "Sword of Bunker Hill," were used to scrape down the rough body coats of paint, and a smooth surface, on which to stamp the geometrical figures in colors, was fetched after long and laborious polishing with bricks and pumice stone.

Drummers employed by Mr. Bailey traveled to Massachusetts, to New York, and away down into the South, and ere long the demand for oilcloth carpeting became so general that other factories were built and made to chatter and clank with the new industry. There was living not far from East Winthrop at this time a shrewd, wideawake Yankee farmer named Sampson, who had kept his weather eye peeled on the progress of Ezekiel Bailey, and when housewives everywhere began to yearn for the new carpeting, taking a neighbor in as a partner, Mr. Sampson built a factory, and in a very short time was in a position to be considered a formidable rival of Mr. Bailey.

But the originator of the oilcloth carpet was not to be outdone. Discerning good returns from a plant established close to a big center of consumption, Mr. Bailey entered into a deal with New Jersey capitalists, and a big factory was set a-going in that State. A trusted employe of the Bailey concern, Levi Richardson (who still lives and is the proprietor of a modest little store in East Winthrop), was sent to New Jersey to instruct the green hands there in the art of manufacture. While thus engaged, Mr. Richardson's brain was busy with the problem of labor saving, and one day a phantom device for smoothing and rubbing down the first rough coats on the burlaps took form in his mind, and for some weeks he spent his spare time in experimenting. The result was the present patent used in most factories, whereby as much rubbing down can be done in one day as could have been accomplished in four by the old hand method. - Industrial World.