Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-06-28
HOW SILK is MADE.
The Product of Spinners Who Work
Without Pay.

rope. Thirteen and a half centuries
ago they smuggled some silkworm
eggs out of China. And all the silks
of Europe have been spun by these
eggs caterpillar descendants.
| China had been cOrnering all the
silk of the world and sending big
caravans lavishly laden with fine raw
land finished silken wares to Syria
and other countries. while Persia be-
came the silk market for the celes-
tial empire and Europe, and supplied
| the Greeks and Romans with their
graceful silk robes until the middle OF
the sixth century. Then the war with
the Emperor Justinian brought the
Persian silk traffic nearly to ruin
when the two HISTORIAN monks came
| in from China with relief.
The monks had a quantity Of silk
worm eggs concealed which they de-
livered to Justinian. And he soon had
the European monopoly of silk max
ling But at his death many others
took a part in 1t until France, Austria,
Italy, and the LeVant have become
celebrated for their silks and pro-
duce them through all the elaborate
processes from the spinneret of the
caterpillar to the fine fabric that
adorns the butterflies Of fashion. All
of these processes and their every
stage of art, of nature, of machinery.
need much labor and skilled watch
full eyes and deft fingers.
Long Process In Making.
The people that know say that more
time is needed to get up silk frock
from the raw materials of the null
berry leaf than is needed to build
locomotive from the ores. And more
| persons are required in the conStruc-
| ton of the gown which simply orna-
ments the ballroom than in the con-
struction of the giant iron engine
which is intrusted with hundreds and
hundreds of lives and multimillions
of dollars of foods and stuffs and
other merchandise.
| So that II is not at all wonderful
that silk dresses are dresses of price.
It is only wonderful that they are not
dresses of greater price and beyond
everything save the pOcketbook or
Nine. Croesus. 1t Is wonderful that
even the girls in the mills who fly
the shuttles can have waists and skirts
and Haunting ribbons of that costi-
liest of textiles which they are help
ling to make.
But the real price paid for the silk
is paid by the women and children of
India, China, and Japan, of the
Levant, and the south Of Europe,
who work for inconceivably small
wages that you and 1 may buy at in
conceivably small prices. They are
known to the economists as the cheap
est labor in the world. And they are
the people that feed and care for the
silkworms and reel the silk filaments
from the silk cocoons.
| Eggs Like Turnip Seeds.
The silkworms are called by the en-
tomologists the larvae of the moth
Bombyx mort. Their eggs look like
turnip seeds and weigh only about a
hundredth of a grain. They are hatch
ed artificially and the caterpillars are
raised in rooms with plenty of light
and air and even temperature. They
are hungry creatures and are given
enormous quantities Of fresh mulberry
leaves which increase their weight
about ten thousand times in thirty or
| forty days. They are now about three
inches long, climb little twigs and
branches supplied them and spin their
cocoons.
To do this they throw out two
streams of viscid, semi fluid fila
ment through the spinneret just under
the mouth. The two fllaments merge
into one as they harden. Twenty -four
hours later the little caterpillar is veil
| ed in his mesh and three, four, or five
days afterward his cocoon is finished.
He has shrunken to half his size,
| transformed into chrysalis and hous-
ed in his little satiny lodge ready to
come out a little later as full fledged
moth and lay his three or four hundred
eggs before dying. However, since
1t Injuries the silk fabric when he
breaks through the cocoon the silk
| raisers slip him, cocoon and all into a
| steam heater and allow only enough
| chrysalides to survive to supply them
| with eggs
The cocoon has an outer tangle Of
struggling threads which anchor it to
| the twig and an inner sheath incasing
the chrysalis. The outer thread is floss
| or waste. The inner Is thoroughly
soaked in water to loosen it and then
| caught on a fine brush and passed
| through an eyelet to a reel and wound
in continuous thread 500 to 1000
yards long. The silk is taken in skeins
| from the reels and is then the raw silk
| of commerce.
A great many people at different
| times have tried persstently to grow
| this raw silk in the United States. But
they all have failed, although some
California enthusiasts are still trying
| and still hoping for success. But un-
| less there is a distinct change In things
|
America save by engaging children to
do the work and engaging them at cru
| ely small wages.
The United States has it's success in
| silk manufacture. It's silk throwing
and silk weaving machinery is the
most nearly perfect anywhere and its
| mechanical power is the largest and
the best. Mansfield, Conn.,, in 1910 had
| the first silk mill of the western hem
| ;c,, lot phila6p1-
phia had the next and four years after,
in 1884, Baltimore had the third. New
| York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,
| Connecticut, and New Jersey soon be-
| came silk centerS. And when the Eng
lish took the duty from silk in 1860
many of their silk throwsters and
| Weavers were thrown out of work and
| came over to America with their ma
| chimes and men. They settled in Pat
erson, n. j., and made Paterson the
pre- eminent silk center of the states.
an honor still its own.
| But even so by 1870 the Americans
were manufacturing only % per cent OF
| the silk they were using. BY 1880 the
| percentage was 3S, and 1890, 55, and
| 1885, So. In 1868 they imported only
| 512,449 pounds of raw silk and in 1909
they imported 23,333,I50 pounds of raw
| silk or two-fifthS of ill the raw silk
of the world. The American silk mills
have a capital of $1O0,000,000 and en-
| ploy over $1,000 persons.
| They get most of their raw silk
from Japan and the next largest guam
tity from China, which really produces
more silk than any other country. But
| the Chinese use more than half their
| silk themselves 80 that this never
reaches the outside world and conse-
quently nobody knows just how much
China really has. The Chinese and ia
panese silk comes into the Pacific ports
and thence it hurries to New York on
the silk special" a train that has the
right of way over every other on the
road and is carefully tended as is no
other. For all the trainmen know that
each car is loaded with $125,00O worth
| of silk or more and the entire train
carries silk worth anywhere from
million to two millions of dollars. All
| the raw silks that enter America go di-
rect to New York. And this has made
of New York the second greater raw
silk market in the world. Shanghai
! is the first.
The raw silks are tested for moisture