Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1890-01-30
slLKwoRm RAISING.
Chief Walker Talks Of the American wo-
mans Chances In This Line.

mans Chances I'm This Line.
'I have just returned from Europe"
said Chief Walker, of the newly created
silk division in the department Of agri-
culture, with a reeling machine that
seems likely to accomplish the great
problem the solution of which will turn
the United States into a gigantic silk
farm. This one difficulty, as things are
now. alone stands in the way of the silk
producing industry in America. So
troublesome and costly is the process of
reeling silk with the contrivances thus fan
applied that manufacturers on this side
of the water cannot afford to pay cocoon
raisers here living prices for their prod
uct, if they are to compete successfully
with foreign competition. For this rea-
son comparatively few cocoons are raised
in this country-not more than 10000
pounds in all, probably-of which
amount we ourselves buy one-half for
experimental purposes. One fair sized
silk factory can easily consume 100000
pounds of cocoons in a year. But if this
new machine, just completed after my
own designs on the idea of a French in
ventor, fulflls my expectations, it will
be found to be practically automatic, so
that, as one might say, the cocoons put
in at one end will come out raw silk at
the other. A contrivance that accom-
plishes this will so considerably reduce
the expense of making the raw silk that
American manufacturers can buy CO.
coons here for material, instead of i'm
porting it, in the shape of raw silk, from
Japan and elsewhere aboard, as they do
now. The moment that the cost of pro-
ducing raw silk is brought down big
per cent. below the foreign market price
of the article, the profits of silk manu-
facture will rise proportionately, and
the business will jump into activity all
over the country. A corresponding de-
mand will, of course, arise for cocoons,
and the market price for cocoons will go
up sufficiently to draw thousands of
farmers into the occupation Of raising
them"
Sand why the farmers?" asked The
Star reporter.
81 should rather say the farm women.
1t is to them that the great American
silk manufacturers of the future will
look for their supplies of cocoons. The
production of silk cocoons is an industry
especially adapted to the use and oppor-
tunity of farm people. In France each
farmers wife raises a few pounds of
cocoons every spring, and makes little
money by selling them; in this way
mainly is the silk crop grown. Women
of the agricultural class in the United
States are not obliged to work in the
fields as French women are, and thus
they have more time to devote to such
pursuit. There is vast amount of waste
female labor in this country, or rather
idleness, that might be turned to labor,
and here is a purpose to which this spare
hen time might be devoted for six weeks
in the year, at any rate, during the CO.
coon raising season. No occupation could
possibly be more easy and agreeable for
a woman than the raising of cocoons,
and it will offer new source of income
to rural wives and daughters, north,
south, east and west, as quickly as this
little mechanical problem is solved. The
machine which hope embodies the solu-
ton of it is already put together, and the
first trial of it will be made at once"
"But how is woman to get started in
the silk raising business?"
easily enough. Any woman in the
| United States who will take the trouble
to write to us in March of any year, with
request for silkworm eggs, will be sent
about April quarter of an ounce of
! them, or about 5000, in little box. The
eggs will have been kept on ice by us to
prevent Matching, and all the beginner
need do is to put them in a dry place
where they will come out of themselves.
The 5000 worms will take up table
space forty feet square, and the most
convenient way is to put together roughly
tier of big square shelves for them, one
above the other, with spaces of two feet
between. On these or on ordinary tables,
the worms should be placed and allowed
to feed four or five times day upon as
many mulberry or Usage leaves as they
will consume; no other sort of food will
do. When they are ready to spin their
cocoons, light brush must be put over
them for them to climb up on. Once
spun, the cocoons may be detached from
the brush and thrown into boiling water
for few seconds to kill the worms in
side; otherwise they would bore out and
spoil the silk. With two ounces of eggs
a year woman ought to be able to raise
fifty or sixty pounds of cocoons per
annum, Matching the eggs April Is, and
gathering the cocoons June 1. The lat
ter are worth about 81 pound now; we
buy most of the cocoons at that rate from
the women whom we supply with eggs.
When the great demand for cocoons ar
rives-as it surely will before long-10O,-
900 women, producing fifty pounds each
per annum, will supply fifty factories
with material for turning out an enor-
NOUS amount of silken fabric. Wash
ington Star.
n. NJ