No. 124.] 301 



5. In the manufacture, which includes dyeing, we employ three 

 men, eight girls and three youths, of eighteen years and under. 



6. American raw silk, properly reeled, is decidedly superior to 

 the foreign article for manufacturing purposes. 



7. We have no practical knowledge of the comparative quality of 

 silk made from the different kinds of trees in common use in this 

 country. 



8. So fiir as the present tariff has been tested, it does not appear 

 to have operated in a manner favorable to the silk manufacture. What 

 modifications are needed, is a question which I am not prepared to 

 answer. Whether any protective tariff for silk is needed, or is just 

 and proper, is another question, which you have not asked, and 

 which I do not answer. But however this question may be answered, 

 I am inclined to believe that the Northampton Association can com- 

 pete successfully, both in price and quality, with the best foreign 

 manufactured sewing silk usually imported. 



9. I have no doubt that both the growth and manufacture of silk 

 are destined to be permanent and extensive branches of American 

 industry, but in these as in every department of labor, prudence, 

 judgment, economy and order are indispensable to success. The 

 great defect of American raw silk is, that it is badly reeled, and it 

 is in consequence, unfit to be employed for the production of a good 

 manufactured article. The cause of the bad reeling is to be found 

 in the simple fact, that it is reeled in the families where the worms 

 are fed, and the cocoons produced. It is probable that ti.ere are 

 circumstances which will always prevent silk that is reeled in fami- 

 lies, from being well reeled. But even if in every individual instance 

 properly reeled, the silk in one family will be reeled with a different 

 degree of care, and of a different degree of fineness from the silk 

 of most other families, and when the manufacturer purchases Ameri- 

 can raw silk in considerable quantity for manufacture, he finds him- 

 self in possession not of one uniform kind and quality of silk adapted 

 to his purpose, but of numerous varieties from very coarse to very 

 fine, from very even to very imeven, each variety in small quantity, 

 thus presenting an insuperable obstacle to the production of a good 

 manufactured article from such stock. The remedy of the evil is as 

 simple as the cause. Raw silk must be reeled only in large quanti- 

 ties of a uniform quality and fineness, in order to be employed in 

 manufactures. This is equivalent to saying that it should not be 

 reeled in families where only small quantities can be produced. The 

 proper business of families, and the only business adapted to them in 

 the silk culture, is the feeding of the worms and the production of 

 the cocoons. This is all that is done by private families in Italy 

 and India — large silk growing countries — and is all that can be done 

 by private families in America with advantage, if we desire to make 

 this country a large silk growing and silk manufacturing country, 

 and until the necessity of this division of labor is perceived, and 

 family reeling discontinued, American raw silk will never acquire a 

 high character generally, nor will the American silk manufacture 

 from native produce, ever rest on a secure foundation. The North- 



