360 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



referred in our report for the year 1878. At that time, referring to the 

 lack of a home market for cocoons, we made the following suggestion : 

 u As a means of meeting the difficulty, I have urged, and would urge, 

 that Congress give to this Department the means to purchase, erect, 

 and appoint with skilled hands, on the Department grounds, a small 

 filature or reeling establishment. In such an establishment reelers 

 could be trained, and the cocoons, at first raised from eggs distributed 

 by the Department, could be skillfully reeled and disposed of to our 

 manufacturers. A market would thus be formed for the cocoons raised 

 in different parts of the country, and a guarantee be given to those who 

 choose to embark in silk-culture that their time would not be thrown 

 away. All industries should be encouraged in their infancy ; and for 

 the first few years, or until the silk industry could be considered well 

 established, the cocoons should be paid for at the European market 

 rate, plus the cost of reeling. * * * This last should be looked 

 upon as a premium offered by the Government to the raisers, in order 

 to stimulate the industry until such time as the reeling might be safely 

 left to private enterprise, when Government encouragement could be 

 withdrawn." 



The correspondence of the Bureau very fully shows that, once a home 

 market for cocoons has been established, one of the great obstacles now 

 existing to success in silk-culture will have been removed. 



There is but one way to create this home market, and that is the 

 erection of filatures for turning the cocoon into raw silk. The great 

 obstacle to this, the high price of labor, will, we have some reason to 

 believe, be largely removed by recent improvements in the automatic 

 silk-reeling machinery invented by Mr. E. W. Serrell, jr., of New York, 

 now resident in the south of France. Keferring to this machinery, Mr. 

 Consul Peixotto, of Lyons, France, wrote to the Department of State, 

 under date of October, 1880, as follows : 



"But how can we overcome the competition of Europe and Asia with 

 regard to labor % I am happy to be able to answer this question here 

 and now. 



" In the month of June last, recommended by the Department of State, 

 which under the present administration has done so much to encour- 

 age our home manufactures and develop our foreign trade, and pro- 

 vided with letters by the Commissioner of Agriculture, there came to 

 Europe a young American engineer, who, before leaving home, had 

 already given much time and study to the subject, and who since has 

 devoted several months to visiting and carefully inspecting the princi- 

 pal filatures of France and Italy. This gentleman, Mr. Edward W. 

 Serrell, jr., of New Yoi k, believed it possible to invent machinery which, 

 by the use and application of electricity, would not only overcome exist- 

 ing difficulties, produce a superior quality of thread, but solve at the 

 same time the all-important labor question, and render silk-reeling in 

 the United States as possible and profitable as anywhere else in the 

 world. 



" It affords me very great satisfaction to say that, in my judgment, Mr. 

 Serrell has at length been successful, and that very shortly this fact will 

 be abundantly and incontestable 7 proven, both for the now unhappy and 

 rapidly-declining silk-reeling industry of Europe, as well as for the, from 

 an American point of view, still more important and valuable interest, 

 the successful planting of silk industry in the United States in all its 

 varied stages and branches, from the mulberry tree, the maynanerie or 

 hatching-house, the reeling-mill, to a still higher perfection than what we 

 have already attained in the fabrication of tissues. What the cotton- 



