Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-06-12
CRAZY OVER MULBERRlEs.
Everybody Expected to Get Rich 60
 Years Ago Raising silkworms.

4LtSiyDouy GApCELcQ 10 1St 1SlSH oV
 Years Ago Raising Silkworms.
 James I, who almost insanely hated tobacco, was determined that silk worms should be reared In Virginia, mainly because he thought he could thus destroy the tobacco culture, which he ordered abandoned
 For time silk culture met with great success in Georgia. In 1759, 10, 900 pounds of raw silk were thence exported to England. Connection. was, however, the center of the in dustfy. As late as 1925 the culture of silk was very general there and also hourished in Massachusetts.
 Silk worms were fed on the white mulberry (Morus alba until 1880, when there appeared the Chinese mulberry or Morus multicaulis. It was predicted that by it's culture two crops of silk could be used annually. Soon all the agricultural literature and newspapers of the country became sur feited with descriptions of this won- derfu1 tree.
 Many documents relating to sericul- ture were published by congress. The legislature of nearly every state pro- vided for the payments of liberal bounties for planting mulberry trees and raising cocoons.
 Thus it was that a speculative fu- rore, a veTitable madness seized upon all classes of people. and particularly upon the shrewd, calculating Yankee, 1t ragged like an epidemic. Not only agriculturalists but doctors of diyin-- ity, law and medicine, scholars, trades men and mechanics, men and women, old and young. were infected with an insane passion to raise mulberry trees.
 Everyone thought that the glorious day was dawning when each farm would be nursery for the young trees, and every house have it's CO., cooneries and its silk worms yielding two or more crops of cocoons yearly. The farmers wives and daughters, when not feeding the worms, were to reel the silk, which would become as cheap as cotton, every woman having at least dozen silk dresses.
 The large profits anticipated in pro- ducing silk were insignificant com pared with the fortunes that all ex- pected to make by raising the new mulberry tree. Tn 1884 trees of a sea sons growth were sold at $3 to $5 a hundred but they soon sold $25, $1oo and $500 hundred, and sometimes ST each.
 There Is recorded an instance of two trees of one seasons growth, rais- ed by one Elder Sharp of North Wind ham, Conn which were sold at auc- ton. The first brought $106 and the second $100. Further sales were then withheld because the bidding was not considered sufficiently spirited.
 When the craze reached it's height but little silk was produced, for every one was busy raising the new mul- berry tree. Men expected to make fortunes in few months buying land and planting mulberry slips, and the silk companies almost without excep- tion sank their capital in this way, many fully equipped mills being clos ed
 One farmer planted $1 GOO worth of trees on three-quarters of an acre and sold them the next year for $6.00O.
 Tn 1889, just before the people came to their senses, nurseryman sent an agent to France to purchase several million young trees. He carried$SO.OO0 in cash, as 8 first payment. When the trees arrived the inevitable crash had come, and the nurseryman failed for so large an amount that he could never reckon up his indebtedness. His trees were offered in vain at $1 per hundred for pea brush.
 When the fever was over and the people realized that their capital stock was suddenly worthless, they pulled up all the mulberry trees in a rage and burned them as brushwood.
 Tn 1s41 violent storm, following a general blight destroyed most of the remaining morus multioaulis trees and even the more hardy white mulberry variety. This was the finishing blow and thus silk culture in America practically ceased to exist. No indus try in this country ever received such a crI1shinp stroke