PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 251 



cotton ports of our country, any unusual quantities of the other 

 textile fabrics would not be likely to find a profitable market. 

 Still, each will be wanted. Every one of them, but especially silk, 

 will be always wanted. 



If our cotton region should be opened to northern enterprise 

 and free labor, without the danger of further political troubles, 

 cotton would come down to the level of other agricultural pro- 

 ductions, probably not higher than five cents per pound, and would 

 be the cheapest of the textiles ; the others then would be only 

 used as necessities or luxuries. If all the men who deserve it 

 should be hanged, there will still be a considerable demand for 

 hemp. If there should be more wool than is required to make 

 all the people comfortably warm in weather like this, we are still 

 liable to be hungry — a very "unfortunate sensation," and recur- 

 ring at very short intervals — then we can eat the sheep. The 

 good matrons who have marriageable dausihters, will always be 

 found buying large quantities of house linen. But those daugh- 

 ters will have silk, no matter how much it may cost or how cheap 

 cotton may be. Those of you who have noticed the ladies at 

 the show windows of your silk stores in Broadway, or watched 

 them seated at the counters where the samples are arranged in 

 such tempting profusion ; those of you who have seen, as I have, the 

 look of intense satisfaction, the sparkling eyes, or heard the 

 exclamations of delight, all such will agree with me that only 

 dollars commensurate with their wants, are then required to make 

 a silk bazaar, the highest type of paradise for woman on this 

 side the stars. Talk about " beauty unadorned" — nonsense. We 

 have beauties as fair as the fairest — as faultless as the Venus of 

 Conova, but they would pout, and fret, and worry, till the house 

 would become intolerable were silk dresses denied them. We 

 ha^Je but little patience with the frivolous Avho think only of 

 dress ; but we have still less respect for the habitually careless. 

 A becoming silk dress adds to the happiness and power of the 

 young woman, and she knows it. The matron feels that a silk 

 dress gives her dignity ; the quakeress who has been taught to 

 look upon plainness of apparel as almost a religious essential, 

 will have her silks. They maybe plain in color, almost to drab, 

 but they must be of the best texture. The women know that 

 there is no other clothing material so durable or so beautiful as 

 silk. Silk they will have, and if we do not make it in our coun- 

 try, we must make something else to exchange for it. Here the 



