594 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[January i, 1883. 



silk factories of England denounce the silk thread 

 of the Indian filatures in the most unboundod man- 

 ner. They will, in fact, have next to nothing to 

 do with Indian silk. They write out to the silk 

 factors of Bengal in such strains as these; — 'We 

 cannot do anything with your silk thread, because 

 it is so very badly spun. It is atrociously uneven, 

 thick in one place and thin in another. In the 

 same bank thick and thin threads are placed cheek 

 by jowl in the moat careless manner imaginable. 

 The Japanese send us beautiful threads, even and 

 well assorted, so do the French ; but your ludia 

 spinners are utterly incompetent. The raw matern 

 or body of your Indian silk is quite as good .-is 

 that of Japan or France. But what is the good 

 of that to us, if you send us such uneven threads, 

 that the webs woven out of them are quite un- 

 saleable except at unremunerative prices?' 



" The fact of the matter is that Bengal silk would 

 have gone 10 the wall before now if it had not 

 been for a great rise in the price of flosK silk. Floss 

 silk is made out of a part of the cocoon that used 

 to be considered nearly waste and worthless. Its 

 price has risen enormously of late, and so Bengal 

 silk baa been saved from utter ruin. But this only 

 proves the worthleseness of Bengal spinners. It costs 

 little skill to sell waste and refuse. Bengal silk has 

 been saved by its waste, as Samaria was saved by 

 means of its lepers in the days of Elisha." 



The writer then goes on to plead for efforts to raise 

 the poor ^vi-etches in the moral and social scale, in a 

 manner which does more credit to his heart than 

 his head. He insists on much higher wages being 

 paid, to the workmen, marriage being made a sine qua 

 non in L-vbourers and managers and so on. But on no 

 commercial principles can high wages be given for 

 Inferior work, and this is shewn conclusively, if in a 

 coarse materialistic form by another WTiter, who, in 

 no way sees "the utility of matrimony in the reeler 

 and European supervisor." The difference in the two 

 writers is between a man who believes that human 

 beings have souls as well as bodies, and a man who 

 regards human beings merely as productive machines. 

 The original correspondent pleaded that the spinners 

 should be taught to read and wi-ite, so as to escape 

 the wiles of " that pucka scoundrel, the Gomashta." 

 That is the story all over India : the peasantry are 

 preyed on by money lenders and others with intellect 

 and learning misdirected. We are glad to see such 

 testimony as this borne to European agency : — 



"The only one preserviuj; influence in silk seems 

 hitherto to have been the European element. Assistants 

 and principals have, in an unexpectedly large number of 

 instances, been men of purity, integrity, virtue, kind- 

 ness, .good education, and even scientific attainments. 

 Let not then the error committed in tea be repeated in 

 silk— the penny wisdom and pound folly of gftting rid 

 of men of virtue and good education, on account of their 

 high salaries, and getting immoral and inferior men on 

 low salaries, which, if they were too small to marry 

 upon, were still large enough to enable tlieir possessors 

 to imbible large potaiione of 'whiskey,' to the no small 

 detriment of the luckless shareholders in tea com- 

 panies." 

 Then comes Information about the floss silk : — • 



"The waste silk that I have seen referring to is culled 

 chusiuni silk. It is the outer part of cocoon. It is 

 so worthless that is used only for Jloss silk. Thirty 

 years ago it used to be sold for furteen rupees a 

 maund, now it is sold for one hundred and tifty 

 rupees a maund,— that is to say, its value is now 

 more thau ten times what it is was thirty years ago. 

 Silk for weaving costs from three hundred to eight 

 hundred rupees a mauud. Tliirty years ago the com- 

 mon regulation price for the best silk was live hundred 

 and sixty rupees a maund. Nearly all the silk manu- 



factured in Rajshahye and Moorshedabad goes to 

 France and England to be woven into 'iilk handerohiefs 

 for the heads of Negroes in the West Indies, the 

 Southern states of America, and Guianu (British, Dutch, 

 and French). Its thread is so uneven that it is tit 

 for nothing else. This is owing to the badness of 

 the workmen. The ignorance and brainless character 

 of Indian katannees is a greater evil than even Eajshahye 

 rack-renting. They dissipate their brains in debauchery 

 and have none left for learning how to make an even 

 silk thread Notwithtsanding the prudent and gen- 

 erous efforts of many European managers, and the 

 etill more valuable efforts of their wives, who distri- 

 bute medicines and cumforts, like sago, arrowroot, 

 port wine, and flannel, the katamiees, male and female, 

 as a class, are fattened by ignorance, poverty, small 

 pay, debauchery' and the diseases produced by de- 

 bauchery, to become a flock of sheep for the grave 

 to feast upon. And instead of Bengal producing the 

 very best silk in the whole world as it ought to do, 

 it produces a mass of worlibless uneven thread, that 

 being neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor even red herring, 

 drives a luckless man of business, who has the mis- 

 fortune to deal with it, to hie wit's end. But surely 

 Englishmen are competent to grapple with this matter. 

 And if our rulers, our men of business, and our 

 moneyed classes will only put their shoulder to the 

 wheel, and act in accordance with the dictates of 

 common sense, and Christian justice and generosity, 

 we sh.aU soon be in a position to say with truth. — 

 'Nous avons change tout cela.'" E. L 



Education might do much, but the one great remedy for 

 the state of thongs depicted is Christianity received into 

 the hearts and influencing the lives of the people. But 

 we cannot expect that the effects of thirty centmiea or 

 more of idolatrous debasement can be cured in one gen- 

 eration or in several, and if the natives of Bengal have 

 not brains enough, or such idiotized brains that they cannot 

 or will not learn to spin g<iod, or even silk thread they 

 must just lose the industry and its profits. — The othe 

 writer we have refen'ed to insisted that not only is the 

 spinning bad but the cocoons inferior. He Elites : — 



"The European cocoon isfar the best in existence, and, 

 combined with European reeliug, the silk must be the 

 best, and we can never hope to equal this. Next comes 

 the China and Japan coc ons, being far superior to our 

 miserable ' MuUivoltini,' and John Chinaman makes a 

 much better and careful reeler than our lazy Bengali ; 

 consequently our silk is the worst, and always will be 

 so, until we have a better breed of the annual worm. 

 This is the chief want. There is a very small quantity 

 of the Japan annual worm in some parts of Moorshedabad 

 and Midnapore, which is gradually dying out, being 

 very much diseased, besides not being such a profitable 

 worm to the Bengali rearer, as this worm takes from 28 

 to 30 days to form its cocoons, whereas the small 

 miiltivoltini takes only from 20 to 22 days to form its 

 cocoons ; this gives them a few days of feeding, which is 

 all they look to : the fact of the superior silk is quite 

 ignored. This leads to another cause ; the rearer, as a 

 rule, reels his own silk now, a coarse, uneven thread, 

 which he finds pays him far better than selling his 

 cocoons unless at a price which mnkes it quite im- 

 Dossible for any filature to reel at a profit. For this 

 coarse silk there is a great demand in the Bombay and 

 Madras markets, which places get their silk now from 

 the country, whereas they had it formerly from China 

 and Japan. John Chinaman is clever enough to see 

 that even reeling paid much better than his former 

 uneven thread, so he now sends his silk to Europe evenly 

 reeled ; and we, do our best, caunot get the Bengal 

 reeler to reel an even threail, even were he to try, which 

 he never dies ; lie has his bad cocoon to handioip him. 

 To me it is quite evident that, unless a very much 

 superior cocoon is brought to Bengal, a few years will 

 see the industry totally ruined. I know the climate is 



