On the average only one-fourth of the entire quantity of
silk produced in China, or about 6,000,000 lbs., is exported annually, of which by far the largest quantity, perhaps as much as nine-tenths, goes to England and France. In 1843-44, the total export from all China was only 5100 bales. In 1859, the export of raw silk from Shanghai alone was 75,652 bales!
Besides the raw silk there are annually exported from China a large quantity of silk-stuffs manufactured in China, crape shawls, &c. &c., to the value of from £400,000 to £500,000, the majority of which find a market in the United States.
The social condition of the Chinese silk-spinner is not less deplorable and poverty-stricken than that of the workmen of Europe, who are similarly engaged in the preparation of this costly article of luxury. As in Lyons, in Spitalfields, or among the Silesian Mountains, the Chinese silk-weaver lives and dies in the most abject misery, and the delicate and beautiful fabrics of his loom are produced in a wretched hut of such mean dimensions, that he is sometimes compelled to dig a hole in the soil in order to find room for the treadle. However, the Chinese weaver appears in so far better off than the same handicraftsman in Europe, that he has less to dread from the severity of the climate, and can purchase more food, even though his remuneration be smaller, than the weaver can possibly do in Europe, owing to the much higher price of even the commonest necessities of life.
The recent revolution in Chinese foreign relations will exercise
a permanent influence on the silk culture of China, and, considering the exceedingly low rate of wages in that country, the time cannot be far distant, when one may purchase Chinese silk in Europe more cheaply than home-grown silk, when manufacturers will find it more profitable to purchase this most important raw material in China, than in Italy or the South of France. Acute business men in Hong-kong and Shanghai assured us that it only needed an impulse from without to increase the silk manufacture of China tenfold, and supply the annual demand for silk of the entire globe, which, if we are to believe encyclopedias and such like authorities, amounts to from 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 lbs. What makes Chinese silk especially suitable for the European market is its possessing in great perfection the two chief qualities of substance and colour, while, on the other hand, it is inferior to that of Europe in the fineness and glossy feel of its fibre. In Europe the silk is wound off from a limited number of cocoons, whereas in China it is left to the discretion of the workman to spin it from few or many cocoons as he pleases. Hence results that inequality and unevenness in the texture of the thread, a defect which cannot possibly be remedied by after-manipulation, and which accordingly completely prevents its employment in the manufacture of the more costly fabrics. This drawback, which is the main reason why Chinese silk does not rule the European market, will however admit of being remedied without any difficulty, so soon as the silk districts become more easily accessible, by the
introduction of European labour and machinery, when this valuable and costly product will gain materially both in fineness and suitability.
Only a few years since German and Austrian merchants attached but a small value to Chinese silk as suited to our market, and it seemed to them a positive absurdity, when any one spoke, as we ourselves repeatedly have done from a profound conviction of its truth, of the future influence exercised over the silk markets of the world by the influence of this Chinese raw material. Now-a-days we hear that there is scarcely one single silk factory which can hold its ground, unless, in addition to French and Italian silk, it imports Chinese silk, while the demand for that material increases from year to year, and has very probably not yet attained the one-hundredth part of the development of which it is susceptible.
Tea (Châ[165]) ranks next to silk among the articles which have raised the trade with China to such an importance. The cultivation of the tea plant is of far later date than that of the mulberry tree, and its leaves, although used by the Chinese as a curative from the third century of our era, only came into general use, as providing a universal drink, towards the end of the sixth century.[166] Statesmen and poets sounded
the praises of the new beverage, and while the one employed this excellent and beneficial gift of nature to fill the treasury by the imposition of a tax, the others chanted the praise of the plant in their hymns and songs, and thus, probably without intending it, contributed to increase the revenue of the Government.