156 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



good intentions and public spirit I do not doubt, would carry 

 it. I should anticipate the same results, which followed in 

 former cases, from any extravagant attempts to force its produc- 

 tion at the present time. 



It is said that the silk culture in France yields a profit of 20 

 to 40 per cent. But from the condition of things in France, 

 we can predicate nothing of our own community. When we 

 can obtain men's labor for ^1,25 per week, and women's labor 

 for sixty cents, and children's labor for a few sous and the la- 

 borers provide for themselves, and can be sure of obtaining the 

 high prices, which silk now commands, there is no doubt that we 

 could produce and manufacture silk to equal advantage with any 

 nation. But let the profits be as they are described to be in these 

 countries, who gets these profits ? Not the growers of the silk ; 

 not the operatives in these establishments ; but the owners of 

 these large filatures and manufactories. They skim the cream ; 

 the producers of the silk, the operatives in these foreign manu- 

 factories, the living machines, they must be satisfied with the 

 skim-milk, and that oftentimes somewhat diluted. It is not so, 

 let us thank God, with us. Labor is not so abundant with us, that 

 it cannot command a full compensation ; nor as in the crowded 

 manufactories of Europe, that it surrenders all claims to the 

 perfected article, though perfected by its own toil, and is satis- 

 fied with the ends and the waste. In our favored country, 

 manufacturing labor has been most liberally compensated. But 

 it is said that our people do much more in a day than the labor- 

 ing classes in Europe. If the labor consists mainly in attendance 

 upon machinery, there can be no great difference, where the 

 same number of hours is given. In Lyons, the silk manufac- 

 turers work 14 hours per day, exclusive of meals. In other cases 

 of labor, the operatives orEuropean laborers, do less because they 

 are paid less, and miserably fed and housed. If we get more per- 

 formed by an equal number of hands, the cost of this labor is 

 increased in proportion. But it is said that we have superior 

 advantages to counterbalance the comparative dearness of our 

 labor, in what we are pleased to call Yankee ingenuity and con- 

 trivance. We should be led to infer from the style of .speak- 

 ing adopted, and too current among us, that no other people 



