VISTAS IN SILK AND RAMIE 



end of the tightly wound filament is picked up; and the 

 tiny thread rewound upon bobbins. It takes dexterous 

 fingers to perform this long series of delicate operations 

 and not break the filaments. 



Just about the time the Syrian colony down in Texas 

 had nicely established this home-grown silk industry, a 

 big silk manufacturer in New York decided to find out 

 why raw silk has never been successfully and profitably 

 produced in the United States. It certainly had not been 

 for lack of trying. His Majesty's colonies of South Caro- 

 lina and Georgia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut had all 

 offered generous bounties for silkworm culture thirty 

 years before George III in 1768 agreed to pay a hand- 

 some bonus on every pound of raw silk produced in his 

 American domains. A century later there was a spirited 

 revival which promoted a wild speculation in mulberry 

 trees, rivaling the tulip craze in Holland, and prices 

 zoomed to fantastic heights. Right on my own lawn the 

 1938 hurricane destroyed a gnarled relic of that boom, 

 a gigantic, misshapen mulberry, a picturesque landmark 

 and a banquet hall for the robins and catbirds when its 

 big berries were ripe. The core was too rotted to permit 

 its years to be counted, but the family tradition is that 

 it was one of six planted by my great-great-grandfather 

 about the time the kitchen-ell was added to the house in 

 1820. The story adds that the mulberry boom was 

 pricked in Connecticut and elsewhere by the clipper 



177 



