The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1883-11-29
Facts About Silk.

The old notion that fine black rib.
bons and silk were boiled In oil is with
out foundation in fact. 1t arose proba-
bly, from a tale invented by a clever
shopman to sell his goods. Silk yarn or
goods would be as completely destroyed
by the process as wool or cotton cloth.
There are silks in market unweighted
with dye, but they are SO hopelessly
mixed with adulterated goods that the
most conscientious buyers are continu-
ally swindled by them; and, more i'm
portant than this, shippers tempt mer-
chants to buy silks that are known to
be weighted with dye by. their unwill-
ingness to pay for legitimate goods.
The standard makers of this year may
another season, driven by the pressure
of cheap demand, manufacture a silk
as worthless as that formerly sold I'M
der their name was trustworthy. There
are many tests of weighted silk. The
best probably consists in boiling a sam
pie in water half an hour. If it retains
its substance after this process it is not
overweighted with dye. The excess of
dye in cheap fringes and trimmings
may be readily determined by soaking
a piece in warm water and squeezing it
in the handkerchief. A common but
unsatisfactory method of testing silks
is to burn a portion of the rawlings.
If the goods be pure silk they will burn
into a fine charcoal, but if weighted
will smolder into a greasy ash. This
test is not delicate enough to detect any
except heavily adulterated silk. There
are durable gros grains manufactured
in this country which have a Justly
earned reputation for strength, but
they have scarcely more lustre than a
poplin, and are not a pure silk, despite
their specious claims, being mixed with
a vegetable fiber which is probably the
herb known to botanists as urticd, q
species of East Ida nettle, the bark
of which is used in ad%ulterating silks.
After the silk passes from the dyer's
hands the manner in which it is woven
is of essential Importance. All other
things being equal, goods woven with
an equal welt and wool are the most
durable; hence the strongest silk is the
old-fashioned taffeta or glace silk of a
generation ago. Corded silks are beau
tiful, but between the reps of the goods
are interstices for the dust to collect in,
which, if allowed to remain, speedily
cuts into the fabric; and no corded
goods can be made without some part
OF the weave being heavier and exerting
a strain on the lighter portion. Taffeta
silks, from the lightness of their con-
struction, are usually handmade goods.
Large quantities of Inexpensive striped
and checked taffetas, known as Summer
silks. are woven in Switzerland in a
circuit of about thirty miles around the
city of Zorich. Whole families of Swiss
peasants, including the man of the
house, his wife, sons and buxom daugh-
tiers, are employed together at hand
looms. A checked taffeta under 81
will usually outwear several silks which
range in price from 81 to 50 yard and
are made, as silks at this price usually
are, by the less durable process of the
power-loom, where the cav never
stops to tie a thread, and the delicate
fiber of the silk must be tightly twisted
to bear the strain of the rougher hand
ling of wholesale work.
A goods equally as strong as tafeta
is India foulard, sometimes called
handkerchief silk. These goods are
woven in a country where the heather
workmen have not yet learned the
clever shams which are practiced in
Christian lands. All foulard silks are
dyed and stamped after they are woven,
except in the case of pongee silk, which
is the natural color of the reeled silk
web. French fou4ands are an inferior
machine-made goods, and are mixed
with large quantities of '.chappe,'' or
short silk, which is rough and liable to
break apart at a slight strain.
Short silk differs from long silk
which is the continuous thread spun by
the worm and reeled off at the flature
lin being composed of the waste of the
filature. The silk which is broken or
tangled in reeling, the rough silk on
the outside of every cocoon, and the
silk of perforated COO from which
the moth has emerged, are always torn
apart and spun again by artificial
means, like cotton or flax. Chappe
is at best a species of silk ''shoddy,"
and is often mixed with cotton or some
other vegetable fiber to strengthen it.
Large quantities of foulard goods are
made in this country, which are similar
to the French goods. The durable
summer silks are woven with an ever
welt and wool, and are composed of
raw OIL half-boiled silk, part of the
natural glue of the cocoon being left in
the goods.-N. Y. Tribune.