140 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



XVIIL Manufacture of Silk. — It does not properly belong 

 to my report to say much of the manufacture of silk, excepting 

 so far as it is a household concern ; and as a manufacturing estab- 

 lishment would afford to the farmers a market for their cocoons. 

 In some places, this would be a great advantage. Several 

 establishments for the manufacture of silk have been erected 

 in Massachusetts and New England. Many manufacturing 

 establishments in New England, some silk among others, have 

 been undertaken upon too large a scale, and too far in antici- 

 pation of the actual wants or capacities of the community. 

 Some of them being thus top-heavy have fallen by their own 

 weight ; and others have remained like the leaning tower of 

 Pise, the wonder of spectators, how they sustained their posi- 

 tion. The extraordinary caprices of public affairs, and the 

 embarrassments and fluctuations of the currency, and the 

 explosions of many of the banks, which like the bursting of 

 pieces of cannon, prove often most destructive to those who 

 have the handling of them and scatter their bleeding fragments 

 in the air, have operated greatly against many manufacturing 

 establishments among us. 



The policy of the government has not been favorable to the 

 production of silk, if an impost is to be considered as favora- 

 ble. The removal of all duty upon silks, other than sewings, 

 excepting a merely nominal duty of ten per cent, upon those 

 from beyond the Cape of Good Hope, favors the cheap, ill-fed 

 and unrequited labor of Europe and Asia; but it destroys all 

 competition on our part. The imposition of the enormous 

 duty of forty per cent, on sewings, which it was thought from 

 its magnitude would amount to a virtual prohibition, in its large 

 amount defeated its very object ; for in an article embracing so 

 large a value in so small a bulk, and so easy of being smug- 

 gled, it amounted, virtually, to a premium on its illicit intro- 

 duction. 



I had, however, the pleasure of visiting a manufactory of 

 silk at Nantucket, on a small scale, but Avell conducted ; and 

 which it is thought will demonstrate the practicability of man- 



