Silk industry

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our extensive imports of raw and manufactured silks are encouraged by us as consumers, instead of being producers. We now contribute to support foreign enterprize and industry, to produce the article of silk, which we might, with proper encouragement, raise ourselves, not only for our own consumption, but for exportation. ”

“ Now of course as people saw more and more uses to which silk could be put they came to want it; and the [49] monarchs of all countries, realizing that silk-making would bring money into their coffers, urged their subjects to take up sericulture. Henry IV of France did much to make it popular among the French peasants, offering rewards to those who would grow mulberry trees. England was found to have too cold a climate for silk cultivation; so James I, who was king at that time, tried to have the industry transplanted to the new colony of Virginia. ”

“ Silk was so valuable that it was then sold for an equal weight of gold. Indeed, a law was passed that no man should disgrace himself by wearing a silken garment. The Emperor Heliogabalus despised the law, and wore a dress composed wholly of silk. The example thus set was followed by wealthy citizens. A demand for silk from the East soon became general. ”

“ And we must not leave out Italy when talking of silk-growing nations, for our neighbors, the Italians, have done as much if not more silk exporting as has France. You see their climate is ideal for raising silkworms; and when they are not beset by a plague that destroys their crops, as it did between 1864 and 1878, the industry prospers wonderfully with them. ”

“ The silk manufacture, though originating in the secretion of a tiny caterpillar, is perhaps equally extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands of pounds weight of this slender thread, no thicker than the filaments spun by a spider, give employment to millions of workers throughout the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The inherent delicacy of many of the processes, and the fact that silk as a luxury trade is especially susceptible to changes of fashion, have retarded the use of machinery and preserved the finer fabrics as an artistic handicraft. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Raw white silk, the tsatlee silk of the European market, is produced by hand-reeling at the Chinese silkworm farms. The custom for centuries has been for each farmer to reel his own cocoons, his whole family taking part in the industry. The process is of the most primitive kind. Little care is taken to ensure cleanliness, and the product is so uneven in reeling that it does not fetch nearly so high a price as the product of the steam filatures—the difference being often as much as Tls. ”

“ There is one great textile industry—one of the most staple and valuable—still in the primitive condition of former times, and employing processes and apparatus essentially the same as those known and employed before such development had taken place. We mean the art of silk reeling. The improvements made in the production of threads of all other materials have only been applied to silk in the minor processes for utilizing waste ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The trade was accordingly thrown open. Silk mills were erected at Stockport and elsewhere; Hutton says that divers additional mills were erected in Derby; and a large and thriving trade was established. In 1850, the number employed in the silk manufacture exceeded a million persons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. ”

“ The growing of our silk, as you know, is done in our southern provinces; while its manufacture takes place in our great northern cities. Marseilles is the big market for raw silk, and Lyons the centre for the manufactured fabric. Meanwhile England has come to excel in silk manufacture and she now excludes our French made goods whenever she can that her people may patronize their own makers, who get their silk from the English colonies. And it is in this great and wonderful story of silk-making that you and Marie are now to have a share," concluded Father Benedict. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are told that the manufacturer wants reeled silk and not cocoons. Its value depends upon the way it is reeled, which is best done at a filature, where cheap skilled labor can be obtained. There are no filatures in this country. Our raw silk comes from abroad—about twenty-four per cent, from Europe and the rest from Asia. The Japanese now have filatures, and send us silk equal to the best from Europe. The coarse, inferior silks are kept at home, and America gets the best and finest. Raw silk is costly and of small bulk, so that its freight is trifling, though it comes so far. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Throwing. The manufacture in the United States begins with raw silk. We import our raw silk chiefly from Italy, China, and Japan. It is handled here first by the “throwster,” who winds it from the skein and makes various kinds of thread for different purposes.
Raw silk wound on spools in a single thread, and [Pg 207] called singles is often used to make warps (that is, the threads running lengthwise of a piece of cloth) for piece-dyed goods, or cloth which is woven with the gum in the silk, and afterward boiled out and dyed. ”

“ So, in general, it may be said, as we think, that all goods made substantially of silk will be treated as silk commercially, unless it directly appears that commerce has given another name to the admixture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”