70 TUB CALIFORNIA 



will yet increase in proportion to the increase of produc- 

 tion. 



During the last four or five years the consumption of 

 the raw material has actually increased about 2,000,000 

 Ibs. 



France, too, produces less of the raw material than 

 she requires for her manufactories. In 1835 she ex- 

 ported some $22,700,000 of manufactured silks, and. 

 imported some four or five million dollars worth of the 

 raw material ; foreign demand, then, does actually exist 

 to an almost unlimited extent ; a wide door invites us 

 to enter and occupy. 



You may swell the product even beyond the exports 

 of cotton, which the last year amounted to the enor- 

 mous sum of $61,000,000, and not sensibly affect the 

 price of raw silk, certainly not so as to prevent adequate 

 returns for the costs of production. If our embarrass- 

 ments then are measured by millions, here is an article 

 the home consumption and the foreign demand for which 

 will also count by millions will meet the exigency of 

 our case. Every State in our Union may remit the 

 annual interest on its foreign loans, in bales of raw 

 silk, aye, and may ultimately remit the principal, too, 

 without exceeding the demand. 



Here, then, certainly is an article which we largely 

 consume at home, and which will command a ready 

 market in any quantities abroad. But can we produce 

 it ? Why, I ask in reply, can we not ? Nature has 

 surely thrown no insurmountable obstacles in our way ; 

 we are nearly or quite on the same parallel of latitude 



