REARING SILKWORMS. 119 



About this time silk was produced and manu- 

 factured in both the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennes- 

 see, Mississippi, Louisiana, and other states of 

 the South. They made large quantities of silk 

 thread, as well as cloth and hosiery; but they 

 did not enter upon the business on a very large 

 scale. Most persons who raised the cocoons also 

 manufactured the silk to suit themselves, and 

 many of the garments then woven are still cher- 

 ished as heirlooms in old families of the South. 

 Many of the mulberry trees then in use have 

 become almost wild, for want of care and cultiva- 

 tion. The silk business, like most agricultural 

 affairs in those days, was rather an individual 

 matter. Few, if any, of the cocoons raised were 

 sent from the farms where they were raised and 

 reeled till the whole work was done. But with 

 the years the influence of slave-labor grew more 

 and more upon the people. The masters became 

 less inclined to labor, and the slaves became, if 

 possible, less fitted for anything but to toil 

 unceasingly in the dull routine of plantation- 

 work. Their habits of life in every way unfitted 

 them for work in silk-cocooneries, or even in 

 silk-mills. Thus it was that in those early days 

 of our national life, the silk industry fell into 

 the background, and was wellnigh obliterated, 

 save here and there, like an oasis in a desert, a 



