This spinning wheel was powered by the spinner’s foot and because it left both hands free to work the fibers, it could be used to spin anything, although it was mostly used for wool or flax (used to create linen thread.) Because processing flax for spinning is time-consuming, colonial governments in this country awarded bounties to encourage its growth and production, but Ireland emerged as the main producer of flax. What linen Americans did produce was usually in small quantities for domestic use. During the colonial boycotts of English goods leading up to the American Revolution, however, men and women throughout the colonies clothed themselves in homespun to protest parliamentary taxation and representation policies. Women gathered for “spinning bees,” determined, as one young woman from New York declared, to form “a fighting armey of amazones…armed with spinning wheels.”