1840.] SENATE— No. 36. 155 



of labor required ; or these calculations are too often the strata- 

 gems of purely interested persons, who have only some private 

 ends to accomplish, and are for inducing others to beat the bush 

 that they may catch the bird. A highly enterprising and 

 industrious cultivator told me, two years since, that the ensu- 

 ing year he designed to make 5000 lbs. of raw silk. He cer- 

 tainly had no intention to deceive, and I believe deluded no 

 person of sound mind but himself The year passed on. but 

 not 50 lbs. were made. He has since somewhat modified his 

 expectations, and calculates this year upon making 2000 lbs. 

 When the silk comes to be weighed, we can best determine 

 the fulfilment of the prediction. Most certainly I should re- 

 joice in such splendid results of domestic industry, if labor 

 can be thus applied to advantage ; but with the liberal boun- 

 ties of the state, offering two dollars a pound upon reeled and 

 thrown silk, sufficient as has been confidently stated to cover 

 the entire cost of production, we have not yet reached in the 

 whole State one quarter of that product in a year. This 

 dreaming with our eyes open is prejudicial to the substantial 

 and permanent success of any good enterprise. Successive 

 disappointments and losses, almost inevitable under such cir- 

 cumstances, produce universal discouragement ; create disgust ; 

 and throw back the cause, which occasions them, almost as far 

 beyond its true position as the expectations of its friends had 

 placed it in advance. The largest amount, as far as I can 

 ascertain, ever made by any individual in the country, in any 

 one year, was made by William Atwood, of Mansfield, Conn. 

 This was one hundred and eight pounds. Such an amount 

 has rarely been approached by any other person. 



The attempts made to force the silk culture by legislative 

 encouragement, bounties, and penalties, in Georgia, Virginia, 

 and Connecticut, in former years, though urged by the same 

 eloquent arguments by which its friends now commend it, 

 proved utter failures. The country was not then, and it is not 

 now, prepared to go into the cultivation of silk upon that ex- 

 tended scale to which the imaginations of some men, whose 



