S90 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



[No. 7 



companies, and deceived by their confident tone, we 

 had formed a very different opinion; and by republishing 

 their reports in this journal, we may have, unintention- 

 ally, helped to delude the public. If the adventurers in 

 silk-culture in the northern states have really done 

 much in producing silk, the facts have not been made 

 public, in any way comparable to the industry used to 

 extend the publicity of their first expectations and in- 

 tentions. 



The only certain and direct evidence of the very 

 small amount of silk yet produced, which has reached 

 us, is in the " Statistical Tables" formed and published 

 by order of the government of Massachusetts. From 

 this work it appears that all the silk factories of Massa- 

 chusetts (four in number,) in the year ending April 1, 

 1837, employed 125 hands, and produced of manufac- 

 tured goods, the value of .$56,150. This does not show 

 how much raw silk was produced; but the probability 

 is, that these factories worked up all the silk made in 

 Massachusetts, as the larger portion of their raw ma- 

 terial was certainly of foreign growth. 



A gentleman of Virginia, who was desirous of go- 

 ing into the silk culture, and has since done so, last 

 year visited the principal silk establishments in the 

 northern states, for the purpose of gaining informa- 

 tion as to their operations and the results. He told us 

 'that the greatest annual product of raw silk which 

 he could hear of, at any one establishment, amounted 

 to no more than 40 pounds. It was true that at some of 

 them, silk manufactures were carried on; and they had 

 been at others, which had suspended or stopped manu- 

 facturing, on account of pecuniary difiiculties; but the 

 materials for these manufactures were mostly import- 

 ed from foreign countries. 



The only inference which we can draw from the 

 information before us, and the testimony above refer- 

 red to, positive and negative, is, that most of the ad- 

 venturers in the silk business (so called,) have consi- 

 sidered the making of silk as a secondary, ulterior, 

 and perhaps contingent object, and have been laboring 

 and speculating in the culture of mulberry plants, not 

 to feed silk-worms, but to sell to newer adventurers; 

 and the vast profits to be derived from the making of 

 silk, were held up to the public principally to produce 

 greater eagerness to purchase the plants and cuttings 

 of Chinese and other varieties of the mulberry, at the 

 enormous and extortionate prices at which they have 

 been sold. The article at page 355, headed " Morus 

 Multicaulis" is a capital specimen of these stimulat- 

 ing reports. This may be a bona fide and disinterest- 

 ed statement; but certainly it has every appearance of 

 a salesman's indirect puff— such as are at least half 

 the publications on this subject which have appeared. 

 There is no advertisement so effective as that which 

 appears in the false guise of editorial approval and re- 

 commendation. 



But without the advance of prices, which this wri- 

 ter anticipates, for plants of the inuUicaubs, those 

 heretofore obtained are sufficiently high to make it far 

 more profitable to sell the plants, than to keep them to 

 feed silk-worms on, or than to pursue any other branch 

 ©f agricultural industry. From every single cutting 



of one bud, (allowing for all necessary risk of loss 

 and failure,) may be raised, in one year, a plant of 

 four feet or more in height; and such plants, (of one 

 year's growth) divested of all the side branches, have 

 been sold regularly and readily at $25 per hundred; 

 and the twigs, trimmed off, at $2 per hundred buds — 

 and a single plant will sometimes produce a hundred 

 such buds. An acre of rich land will bring more than 

 10,000 plants, and the crop is completed and ready for 

 market in one season. By cutting off the whole tops, 

 at the ground, (so as to take away every bud,) each 

 root will, in the second summer, produce three or four 

 times as many buds as in the first year's growth, to b& 

 again cut off and sold. Were there ever greater pro- 

 fits offered? And is it not perfectly natural and rea- 

 sonable that these profits should be preferred to those 

 offered by silk-culture proper, even though doubled by 

 legislative bounties? 



Thus the true, and, as we fully believe, the great pro- 

 fits which may be realized by rearing silk, have been 

 lost sight of, and disregarded, to reap the greater 

 though transitory profits of selling mulberry plants. 

 And the combined action of the cunning salesmen 

 and puffers, and the strong disposition of the pub- 

 lic to be duped and cheated by every professional 

 humbugger, has produced a multicaulis mania, that 

 promises to equal any of its fore-runners in the annals 

 of speculation and delusion. Enormous profits have 

 thus already been made by northern nursery-men, and 

 much of them from southern purchasers. And we 

 are sorry to learn that the same spirit is spreading ra- 

 pidly in Virginia; and that many persons are now be- 

 ginning what is called the "silk-business" — but which 

 is merely raising mulberry plants and cuttings to selL 

 And a profitable business this may be, to early adven- 

 turers; though a bad one for all the later ones, who do 

 not design to put their mulberry trees to their legiti- 

 mate use of feeding silkworms. It is plain enough, that 

 even if millions of dollars should be received for plants 

 that are not used, first or last, for any purpose except 

 to be sold, that there will be no gain to the communi- 

 ty; and a total loss to the buyers and producers who- 

 cannot sell. It is thus that truly valuable products, 

 and a profitable branch of agricultural industry if pro- 

 perly pursued, may be converted into a humbug, and 

 become one of the many modes of producing deception 

 and loss to dupes, and profit to the dupe-makers. 



What adds to the strangeness of the slow advance 

 of the product of silk in the north, is the fact that 

 there existed, for several years, two periodical journals, 

 published at a low price, and circulated very exten- 

 sively, which were devoted exclusively to giving in- 

 formation on, and encouraging the extension of silk 

 culture. These were the ' Silk-Culturist' of Hartford, 

 and the ' Silk- Worm' of Albany. Another such pub- 

 lication has recently been started in another state. 

 Here is a most prodigious and imposing array of means; 

 and the end, or result, is in comparison ludicrously 

 sm.all, even though it may exceed ten-fold the amouni 

 of that of which we have yet been informed. 



There has been another new branch of agricultural 

 industry proposed in this country, and (if we were to 

 judge from printed reports,) it might be said was com- 



