216 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
posed of to our manufacturers. A market would thus be formed for the 
cocoons raised in different parts of the country, and a guarantee be 
given to those who choose to embark in silk-culture that their time would 
not be thrown away. All industries should be encouraged in their 
infaney; and for the first few years, or until the silk industry could be 
considered well established, the cocoons should be paid for at the Euro- 
pean market rate, plus the cost of reeling, which would range from 50 
cents to 75 cents per pound of choked cocoons. This last should be 
looked upon as a premium offered by the government {o the raisers, in 
order to stimulate the industry until such time as the reeling might be 
safely left to private enterprise, when government encouragement could 
be withdrawn. 
Meanwhile, and pending Congressional aid, those who desire to raise 
silk-worms in this country for profit have three alternatives, either (1) 
to ship the choked cocoons to Europe, (2) to reel them, or (3) to raise 
eggs and sell these. 
(1) That the children and more feeble persons in a household may find 
profitable employment in raising cocoons to be shipped abroad is proved 
by the case of Mr. E. Fasnach, of Raleigh, N. C., who has for several 
years been in the habit of thus shipping the cocoons reared by his family. 
He sends in bales, 6 by 5 feet in size, and averaging about 40 pounds of 
stifled cocoons, for which he has obtained as high as $2.50 per pound 
net, the freight costing only $3 per hundred pounds between Raleigh 
and Marseilles. Mr. B. A. Weber, of Rockford, Ill, last year raised 40 
pounds of cocoons, and also shipped to Europe through New York 
brokers; and others have done likewise; but I would advise no one to 
invest capital on this basis. 
(2) Nor would it be safe for individuals to rely on reeling their own 
silk. The art of reeling in modern filatures and with steam appliances 
has been brought to such perfection that the hand-reeler cannot hope 
to produce a first-class article. The only way in which silk-reeling can 
be managed profitably, at present, is where a colony of silk-raisers com- 
bine to put up and operate a common filature, as in the case of the set- 
tlement at Silkville, Kans., the colony of French and Italians who 
located at Fayetteville, N. C., in 1876, or the Italian settlement at Vine- 
land, N. J 
(3) Under existing circumstances, more money has been made by the 
ale of eggs than by either of the other means, and silk-worm growers 
in this country have gradually drifted into this branch of the industry. 
Eggs raised in this country are free from disease, and, the fact that as 
high as $6 and $8 per ounce have been paid for them, and that France 
paid in 1876 114,000 franesand in 1877 1,691,400 francs for eggs exported 
from the United States,* is as eloquent in showing the remarkable adapta- 
tion of ourcountry to silk-culture as that other fact, not generally known 
that the chief of the French commission to our Centennial confessed 
that there was no silk in France superior to some that was there on ex- 
hibition and grown in North Carolina. The production of a certain num- 
ber of eggs does not necessarily prevent the production at the same 
time of choked cocoons or reeled silk; and the pierced cocoons that have 
been used for breeding purposes have also a certain market value, com- 
manding about $1 per pound at Patterson, N. J. This egg-producing 
branch of the industry can, however, only admit of a limited expansion. 
As a means of indicating the profits in silk-culture I have prepared 
the subsidiary estimates. Optimistic theorists have done much harm in 
* These figures are on the authority of the Moniteur des Sotes for January 18, 1879, 
but they may include also those received from China through the United States. 
