Silk factory

“ John Lombe succeeded in getting employment in a silk mill in Piedmont, where the art of silk-throwing was kept a secret. He was employed as a mechanic, and had thus an opportunity, in course of time, of becoming familiar with the operation of the engine. Hutton says that he bribed the workmen; but this would have been a dangerous step, and would probably have led to his expulsion, if not to his execution. Hutton had a great detestation of the first silk factory at Derby, where he was employed when a boy ”

“ Taffetas, satins, silk cloths, and serges are fabricated here, as are silk ribbons, plain and figured velvets, stuffs of silk and silver, stuffs of silk and gold, galloons, gold and silver fringes, and silk stockings. The factory employs three hundred and sixty-six looms, and affords occupation to two thousand persons. ”

“ The industry is carried on in a great number of neighbouring townships, but the cloth is commonly finished or dressed in the city itself, this procedure differing from that of the wool manufacturers in Gloucestershire and the west of England, who carry out the entire process in one factory. Formerly much of the business between manufacturer and merchant was transacted in the cloth halls, which formed a kind of market, but merchants now order goods directly from the manufacturers. Artificial silk is important among the textile products. ”

“ It has many modern textile factories, and others producing metalware, enamelware, glassware and plastics. There is also a government-owned flatted factory provided to meet the special requirements of small scale silk weavers. ”

“ Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to introduce the cultivation of the silk industry into the United States. As the business requires a large amount of cheap labor for a short time during the year, [91] it has not as yet been found profitable. Machines are of little use, except in reeling the silk. ”

“ Moreover, the heavy duties imposed upon raw and thrown silk, which accompanied the strict prohibition of the importation of manufactured silk goods in 1765, by aggravating the expenses of production and limiting the market at the very epoch of the great mechanical inventions, prevented any notable expansion of consumption of silk goods, and rendered them quite unable to resist the competition of the younger and more enterprising cotton industry, which, after the introduction of colour-printing early in the nineteenth century, was enabled to out-compete silk in many markets. ”

“ In addition, the raising of raw silk has been built up principally in countries where there is a system of home industry—a social and industrial system never developed in the United States. However, although America has never been a factor in the producing of the raw material, it has risen to a place of utmost importance in the manufacture of the finished textile. Immense quantities of raw silk are imported from abroad—principally Japan, Italy, and China—and its conversion into the finished products constitutes a most important part of our industry. ”

“ Those who objected to a duty on steel have found they were biting something more than a file. Silks in 1860, hardly unwound from the cocoon, were creeping along with only a small showing of sewing-silk and a few trimmings, but now this industry rises to national importance, furnishing apt employment to many thousand women as well as to men; and the annual products, sharply competing with even the Bonnét silks of Lyons, amount to the round sum of $34,500,000. Notwithstanding the exceptionally heavy duties, I am assured that silk goods in general are sold for 25 per cent. ”

“ An almost equal quantity of cotton, wool and waste-silk threads is mixed with the silk. A few thousand hand-looms are still worked in the town, more especially producing the richest materials, 50,000 or 55,000 in the surrounding districts, and some 33,000 machine looms in the suburbs and neighbouring departments. Allied industries such as dyeing, finishing and printing, employ 12,000 workers. Altogether 300,000 workpeople depend upon the silk industry. In 1905 the total value of the manufacture was £15,710,000, the chief items being pure silk textures (plain) £3,336,000 ”

“ The French manufacturers may cry as loudly as they like for protection, or resort to the production of cheaper goods of lower quality; they may sell 3,250,000 kilogrammes of silk stuffs at the same price as they sold 2,500,000 in 1855-1859--they will never again regain the position they occupied before. Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the United States and Russia have their own silk factories, and will import from Lyons only the highest qualities of stuffs. ”

“ The higher pride of the present day is that we buy seven million pounds of raw silk from the stranger, employ a hundred and fourteen thousand of our own people in the manufacture of it by the aid of machinery, and sell it to the stranger, and our own people, at a price as low as that of the calico of half a century ago. In 1853 the exports of silk manufactures, including those of silk mixed with other materials, silk-yarn and silk-twist, amounted to the enormous sum of two millions sterling, having doubled since 1849. ”

“ In consequence shopkeepers, who studied the market as if it were a thermometer, refused to cumber their counters with expensive goods which must only be shelved after their color or design was out of date. Such conditions had created an American market for cheap silks such as was unknown in Europe where quality was a far greater factor in the sale of silk materials. In the United States these flimsy dress goods could be turned out with little expense on American power-looms by unskilled workmen, whereas in other countries experienced men were needed to make them. ”

“ Pierre opened his eyes.
"Organzine, for example, is used for the warp of woven silk materials and is generally spun from the best quality raw silk, the threads being firm and strong. Tram, on the other hand, is silk of a second grade and is composed of a greater number [149] of fibres. Many of the mills manufacturing woven silks prefer not to own throwing mills. Often their plants are in large cities where land is expensive and they must economize space; or the manufacturers estimate that they can get thread thrown for them cheaper than they can do it themselves. ”

“ The textile industries, some of which are of ancient date, are among those that have most rapidly developed. Handlooms and small spinning establishments have, in the silk industry, given place to large establishments with steam looms. The production of raw silk at least tripled itself between 1875 and 1900, and the value Textiles. of the silks woven in Italy, estimated in 1890 to be £2,200,000, is now, on account of the development of the export trade, calculated to be almost £4,000,000. ”

“ This cannot be gauged by the decrease in imports of raw material from the fact before mentioned that formerly London was the centre of distribution for Eastern silk, which is now disembarked at other European ports for continental consumption. The shrinkage is the more noticeable in the throwing branch of the industry. Many of the mills formerly in operation in Derby, Nottingham, Congleton and Macclesfield have been closed owing to the importation of foreign thrown silks from Italy and France, where a lower rate of wages is paid to the operatives em- ployed in this branch. ”

“ At first applied to silk weaving only, the use of this machine has since been extended to the bobbin net, carpets, and other fancy manufactures. By its agency the richest and most complex designs, which could formerly be achieved only by the most skilful labourers, with a painful degree of labour, and at an exorbitant cost, are now produced with facility by the most ordinary workmen, and at the most moderate price.
Of late years the silk manufacture has greatly improved, both in character and extent. ”

“ The superfluity could not be brought from abroad without the money to purchase it being acquired by some species of industry or other exercised within the realm. For the encouragement of the national industry, therefore, the acquisition of the superfluity by purchase comes to the same thing with its acquisition by the introduction of the manufacture. From the title of this act, "For Silkwomen," it may be inferred that the trifling branches of the silk manufacture, consisting merely of knitting, that had as yet been introduced into England were exclusively in the hands of females. ”

“ The chief source of trouble appears to lie the many types of variation that may occur, not only on account of the great number of qualities required in the product, but also due to the varying conditions under which the silk is produced. In the early days of the industry, when farm production was the chief source of supply, particularly in Japan and China, satisfactory grading was almost an impossibility. However, now that sericulture and reeling has come more and more into the hands of the large companies and filatures, a greater degree of standardization can be reached. ”

“ Most of the raw silk of commerce is produced in China, Japan, and Italy. It is also produced to a large extent in Italy, Turkey, and Greece, also France and Portugal. The cultivation of silk is not only carried on by private firms, but is encouraged by the government to the extent of granting money to the manufacturers.
Various attempts have been made to raise silkworms in the United States. All have failed on account of the high price of labor necessary to feed the worms. ”

“ Every workman should consider himself a link in the big chain, and try to make himself familiar with the other links. Then he will feel as if he is really doing something, and not just pegging away day after day as if he were a machine. That is why I want to learn all I can about silk as a complete industry. It makes winding bobbins and reeling thread a more important matter. Some firms, Uncle Adolph says, have moving picture lectures and by means of them explain to their employees the entire process of their particular industry so they will be more intelligent about what they are doing. ”

“ But a great part of all the different branches of our woollen manufacture, of our tanned leather, and of our hardware, are annually exported to other European countries without any bounty, and these are the manufactures which employ the greatest number of hands. The silk, perhaps, is the manufacture which would suffer the most by this freedom of trade, and after it the linen, though the latter much less than the former. ”

“ It can be grown from the seed and multiplied to any extent from the cuttings. Our brethren in every ward should take this matter in hand and plant out these cuttings, and send for the silkworms, and set in operation a new branch of industry, which will employ us some six weeks or two months in the summer time in feeding and taking care of the worms; the residue of the labor—winding and manufacturing the raw material into silk can be conducted through the year. Millions of dollars worth of silk might thus be annually produced in this Territory, from labor that now counts very little. ”

“ The French undoubtedly take the lead in silk fabrics, for which they are admirably qualified by exquisite taste and great artistic skill; but the silk manufacture in England is now so interwoven, in many of its branches, with the manufacture of wool and cotton, and aided by improved machinery, that it may be considered as firmly established. ”

“ If we depended for this upon European mills, the color desired would be out of fashion before the thread arrived.
As to the weaving of silk, it is said that we are obliged to import the very best raw silk, owing to the high price of labor here—poor silk requiring great cost in labor. "It costs five times as much to tic a knot here as in France." In the best silk, the thread is not lumpy; but, in weaving the lumpy thread of poor silk, the weaver is constantly busy picking off the imperfections. ”

“ It is fussy work. It would cost an American manufacturer lots of money to get the sort of thread he wants. You remember, too, how some of the best reelers that you saw when you were here before sometimes had to take as many as five or more filaments from different cocoons to get raw silk of a necessary coarseness; even then, in spite of all their care, the skeins have to be sorted and sometimes re-reeled to perfect the thread and make it acceptable to American buyers. Our weavers over here would not begin to be so particular ”

“ The duty on raw silk is so very great that it will not do to import it into the United States for manufacture. We suppose, if a duty in proportion to their value were levied on silk and linen goods, we would no longer be so dependent on other nations for these articles. Or if a reduction were made on the duty of the raw material, capitalists would establish silk manufactures in the United States. ”

“ Besides, there is the same old problem of the lack of cheap labor. You see, reeling silk is often slow work. Different breeds of silkworm turn out, as you know, different qualities of thread. You wouldn't believe how it varies as to size, cleanliness, lustre, and perfection of filament. The Americans cannot afford to pay people to classify all these varieties; nor stop their machinery at irregular intervals to pick out the imperfections, or slugs, as we call them ”

“ When the crop is being gathered in, the chief merchants send their agents to all parts of the chief silk districts, in order to collect and buy up these small quantities (varying greatly in value, as may be readily imagined) , and depositing them in regularly assigned warehouses, where they can be sorted according to quality. This done, the silk is packed in bales of 80 catties, or about 106 lbs. ”