A Silk Industry for the Empire R. A. M. SAMUEL,
amongst his other talents, has gifts as a remembrancer to the British people about their neglected opportunities in trade. Like the Dean of St. Paul's, he finds statistics fascinating, and nothing pleases him better than to animate them and make them talk. Some time ago he reminded the nation that a profitable industry is awaiting those who will take the s:lk-worm seriously. Artificial silk is an excellent thing—indeed, a wonderful thing, as is admitted by all who contemplate its origin—but it is not every- thing. There is still a place for real silk, and there is no reason why various countries in the British Empire should not make the real silk industry their own. The holding at this time of a remarkably successful Artificial Silk Exhibition is an opportune moment to emphasize the fact that real and artificial silk need never clash or compete. There is a great and growing market for the beautiful fabrics of the new material, but real silk will always be a luxury that those who can afford it demand with eagerness.
It was in an address to the Bradford Textile Society some time ago that Mr. Samuel suggested that just as the raising of seven trees of Brazilian rubber in Kew Gardens led to the development of the vast British rubber industry, so a real silk industry might be developed out of next to nothing. Perhaps Mr. Samuel did not remember certain facts which made his analogy extraordinarily apt. Again and again, the silk industry, which began in China, was spread to other parts of the world by means as slight as those rubber seeds which came to Kew Gardens. For instance, a Chinese princess is said to have taken eggs of the bombyx morn overland from China to India, and not only the eggs but some seeds of the mulberry tree in order that the silk-worms yet to be hatched might have in India their natural food. -Again, Justinian persuaded two Persian monks who had arrived at Constantinople, to return to China, where they had learned the mysteries of the silk industry, and bring back to him some of the eggs. Exportation of the eggs from China was forbidden, but the monks hid them in a bamboo cane, and it is said that from those smuggled eggs were derived all the silk-worms which supplied Europe with silk for hundreds of years.
The Silk Committee at the Imperial Institute has inspired the organization of a real silk industry in Cyprus. This industry promises well, and Mr. Samuel invites others to follow the example of the Cypriotes, who are reeling the silk for themselves, instead of sending the cocoons to Marseilles as used to be done. There is no reason at all why the men and women who make sericulture a part-time occupation should rely upon French, Italian or other skilled manipulators for the reeling. They could learn for themselves to throw singles, tram and organzine.
History, however, suggests certain cautions. The real silk industry has flourished only where labour has been very cheap, and attempts, chiefly made by monarchs who revelled in silk clothing, to force the industry where conditions were unsuitable have always failed. Nor was it only silk-loving monarchs who made this mistake. In the United States in 1838 there was a sort of minor South Sea Bubble in connexion with silk. It was said that vast profits could be made by culti- vating silk-worms in America's Sea Islands, and during the characteristic boom which followed crops in some of the Islands were destroyed to make room for mulberry plants. Dealings in mulberry plants and seeds were as hectic in their way as the late land boom in Florida. But within a few months the bottom fell out of the market and the new plantations were uprooted to make room for the old crops.
Still, there is undoubtedly a threatened shortage of natural silk. Where there is a trade vacuum enter- prising people do well to flow in. Nearly all the silk now used here is foreign. Great Britain pays about £2,000,000 a year for this foreign silk. The United States takes three-quarters of all the silk produced, and her demand is increasing. The whole world, according to the figures given in the Wool Record and Textile World, produces only 35,000 tons of raw silk a year. It is said that good raw silk could be produced in Jamaica, Kenya and Rhodesia. In those countries the ambition to produce more has already been stirred. The Americans, apparently, must have real silk, and are willing to pay whatever price within reason is likely to be asked for it. The prospect, therefore, is that if the supply does not keep pace with the demand, British silk-spinners will become idle through lack of the raw material. Even now British spinners find it difficult to get enough waste silk.
Nobody pretends that sericulture could ever be corn- parable in magnitude with the rubber industry, but it might for all that pay well ; and it can be so easily fitted in with other occupations that it almost cries out to be adopted in every British country where one of the several families of silk-worm will thrive and spin its exquisite cocoons in return for its staple diet of leaves.
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