PART IV. 



MANUFACTURE OP SEWING SILK AND TWIST. 



The vast consumption of sewing silk and twist, in 

 this country, will ever make it a profitable branch of 

 silk manufacture, not only in silk factories, but in the 

 families of silk growers. For many years after the 

 culture of silk was introduced in Mansfield, the whole 

 crop growed on the farm, was manufactured, by the 

 wife and daughters of the grower, into sewing silk 

 and twist, and sold at high advances, while the labor 

 bestowed upon it, was comparatively of small conse- 

 quence. The Mansfield silk and twist, was long 

 manufactured without the aid of machinery, other 

 than the common reel and spinning wheel, and though 

 it was not carried to that degree of perfection to 

 which it has since arrived ; yet very good articles 

 were made, which were readily sold at a fair price. 



The stock, which has heretofore been manufactur- 

 ed into sewing silk and twist, in Connecticut, is di- 

 rectly the reverse of that used for the same purpose in 

 Italy and other foreign countries. Here, the best 

 quality has invariably been selected ; there, it is man- 

 ufactured into fabrics, while that of an inferior quali- 

 ty is worked up into thread and twist, or cordonnet, 

 as it is there called. It ought, however, to be stated 



