The Story of Silk

by Sara Ware Bassett

"Your father used to say that no knowledge comes amiss," was his mother's soft answer. "How proud your father would be of you, Pierre!"

"But I must know more, and more, and still more, Mother, before I can get to the top!" exclaimed the boy eagerly. "And now to tell you of weighted silks. You see, in dyeing silk the material shrinks and loses about a quarter of its weight. Manufacturers found that by adding chemicals, or sugar and glucose during the boiling off, they could make up for this loss. That is how the custom started. Black silks, which shrunk the most, were treated first. Later the practice spread to colored, and even to white silks. Now, alas, the evil seems to have come to stay. Salts of tin in varying degrees are used in the dyeing of most silks, and the result is that the material becomes crisp and harsh so that it cracks when folded, and does not wear long."

"What a pity!"

"Yes. And yet perhaps the Americans, who are none too anxious to wear out their old clothes, are quite as well satisfied," chuckled Pierre.

"In what an endless number of ways silk is used!" reflected Madame Bretton.

"Yes. And when you have done with the ribbons, and trimmings, and braids, and silks, and upholstery brocades, and satins, think of the velvets and plushes that can now be made in this country in all sorts of fancy designs on power-looms instead of on hand-looms as formerly. Of course it is still cheaper to import certain kinds of velvets and plushes; but a great many of them are made here, as are the larger proportion of the velvet ribbons which are easily turned out on high-power machines."

"What about silk hosiery and underwear?" questioned his mother, much interested.

"Silk stockings and silk gloves, Uncle Adolph says, are a big American product. There is little finishing to them except putting the buttons on the gloves. In fact I read the other day that the silk used for them was only slightly adulterated, and that they were made even better than in Europe. But making underwear seems to be another story. Each garment manufactured has to be shaped as it is made, and therefore the process is a special one and the knitting is slow. This results in expensive labor, and a very limited output. After the seams are finished, the buttons on, the fancy braid and facings in place, and the final trimmings stitched where they belong, the profit is small. All this can be done much cheaper in Europe, and were it not for the protection of a high tariff, Uncle Adolph says, Americans would buy all such goods abroad. The tariff protects the American silk industry at every turn. I don't know where the United States would be without it! Then you must remember that after this silk underwear is done it is not sold to individual customers in any considerable quantity. Instead it retails piece by piece, and therefore every piece has to be folded and packed separately. No wonder such things are expensive here!"

"I never realized before how interesting the problems of making things were," said Madame Bretton, glancing up at Pierre.

"It is all fascinating when you take it as a whole. But if you just do one part of the work over and over and never connect it with the entire process, it is tiresome enough. Every workman should consider himself a link in the big chain, and try to make himself familiar with the other links. Then he will feel as if he is really doing something, and not just pegging away day after day as if he were a machine. That is why I want to learn all I can about silk as a complete industry. It makes winding bobbins and reeling thread a more important matter. Some firms, Uncle Adolph says, have moving picture lectures and by means of them explain to their employees the entire process of their particular industry so they will be more intelligent about what they are doing. I think that is a fine thing. Nobody likes to do some uninteresting thing over and over, week after week and year after year, unless he understands what he is doing. Even the money you earn doesn't help to make your work less monotonous. How can employers expect their men to have any ambition, or any desire to turn out flawless products unless they realize that each detail of a process makes the perfect whole? I mean to know every step of the road I am traveling so when I get to the top——"