Hollinger Corp. pH 8.5 } SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION : PHILADELPHIA. PAPERS OF 1875. SILK CULTURE AND HOME INDUSTRY. READ BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION APRIL 8th, 1875. By DR. SAML. CHAMBERLAINE. The following is a list of the Papers read before the Association : She 1871. Compulsory Education. By Lorin Blodget. Bt ae Arbitration asa Remedy for Strikes. By Eckley B. Coxe. pa The Revised Statutes of Pennsylvania. By R. C. McMurtrie. ‘a Local Taxation. By Thomas Cochran. Infant Mortality. By Dr.J.S. Parry. 1872. Statute Law and Common Law, and the Proposed Revision in Penn- sylvania. By E. Spencer Miller. Apprenticeship. By James S. Whitney. The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of Pennsylvania. By Francis Jordan. Vaccination. By Dr J.S. Parry. The Census. By Lorin Blodget. 1873. The Tax System of Pennsylvania. By Cyrus Elder. The Work of the Constitutional Convention. By A. Sydney Biddle. What shall Philadelphia do with its Paupers? By Dr. Ray. Proportional Representation. By S. Dana Horton. -Statistics Relating to the Births, Deaths, Marriages, etc.,in Philadelphia. By John Stockton-Hough, M. D. On the Value of Original Scientific Research. By Dr. Ruschenberger. “On the Relative Influence of City and Country Life, on Morality, Health, fecundity, Longevity and Mortality, By John Stockton-Hough, M.D. 1874. ~The Public School System of Philadelphia. By James S. Whitney. The Utility of Government Geological Surveys. By Prof. J. P. Lesley. The Law of Partnershif. By J. G. Rosengarten. Methods of Valuation of Real Estate for Taxation. By Thomas Cochran. Whe Merits of Cremation. By Persifor Frazer, Jr. vOutlines of Penology. By Joseph R. Chandler. 1875. Brain Disease,and Modern Living. Dr. Ray... “Hygiene of the Eye, Considered with Reference to the Children in our _ Schools. By Dr. F. D. Castle. “ The Relative Morals of City and Country. By Wm. S. Peirce. WSilk Culture and Home Industry. Dr. Saml. Chamberlaine. ww r VO- 4-904, RM SILK CULTURE AND HOME INDUSTRY. HE domestic industry that belonged to the last century and to the early part of this nineteenth century has no longer any existence amongst us. In those days the cotton, flax and wool was raised by the father and his sons, and carded, spun and woven by the wife and daughters. The father boasted of the quantity he could raise; the wife prided herself upon the excel- lence and beauty of her ome manufacture. She supplied, with her own hand and her daughters’ help, all the needs of her house- hold, and prepared, beforehand, for the anticipated wants of sons and daughters, when it should be their turn to enter upon the cares and duties of a family. In those days the spinning wheel was at hand in every household. Now it is only to be seen asa gilded sign over Milliken’s linen store. Then it told of the home, of the American home, and of the English family traits that came to us from our Anglo-Saxon fathers ; it told of careful housewifery, of motherly supervision over the daughters, and of domestic labor carefully apportioned to the strength and capacity of each. The steam engine, with its tyranny of labor, was not then known, and the constant tread-mill demand for ten hours steady work had not been heard. It is only now, after the experience of two gener- ations, that we realize how the steam engine and the factory have destroyed home industry and our homes. In England this is in a measure perceived, and we find reports of an Anti-steam Asso- ciation, amongst whom steam-power is abjured ; all labor that is possible to human hands being committed to human hands, and no aid other than animal power is permitted, nor even this where man-power will suffice. Whether this is but the suggestion as yet of John Ruskin, or has been truly put into effect, the very sugges- tion proves that more work for human hands to do is the want of our times, and that an industry to occupy the time and attention of those who stay at home is the need for us. We need it to supplement the “power of steam; to produce yet more work for 4. Silk Culture and Home Industry. steam power to do; to provide ‘‘ the small things’’ for ‘‘ the day of small things,’’ while steam provides the great. There was, however, a time when the factory and the steam- power promised better things. Those were the days of the Lowell factory girl. We may not deny her the title of lady. She was refined, educated. She performed her daily work with skill and even elegance. She returned from her factory duties to read or to sing, or to play the harp or piano, and laid these aside to write for her Lowell journal. She maintained the character and refine- ment of a lady, while receiving her wages as a workwoman. She was not degraded by her work; she elevated the work itself by the skill that her literature and education enabled her to throw into it. But the Lowell factory girl was a product of silk culture. Sixty years ago she gathered the mulberry leaves, fed the worms, cured the cocoons and reeled the silk at home; and this she used herself or sold at the nearest store, often in the way of barter for family wants. The factory was erected. The wages were more than her home product ; they were sure and steady ; her worms might not be a success. Moreover it was money that she got, and this seemed better than bartering for goods. She ceased to raise silk, therefore ; suffered her stock of worms to die out and failed to renew the trees that by this time began to die of very age. The factories got all their silk from China, and she became the Lowell factory girl, to be supplanted in time by the ruder and coarser hired girl, who now performs her factory work ; for if we may believe a late report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, the Lowell factory girl, with her literature, and her music, and her journal, is a woman of a past age: she exists no more as such. The factory that withdrew her from her domestic industry at home has discarded her for the cheaper and ruder labor that does not ‘‘ mingle the beautiful with the useful ’’ [“szscuct utile dulcz’’ ]. But she no longer raises silk. The “‘ ten, twenty, fifty or an hun- dred pounds ” (Cobb, p. 128) that her mother or her grandmother produced, is no longer added to the comforts of the family, nor to the wealth of the State. The eight or nine thousand pounds that a single county of Connecticut produced in 1828 (Cobb) are brought from foreign countries (China or Japan) to the very mills in which she worked, and the labor of her father and her brothers is sent in the shape of hard-earned gold to pay for the Silk Culture and Home Industry. 5 silk that she might have made and that her trees might have easily produced. Times have changed, and with times’ changes have come great changes of fortune to us all. Especially since the great upturn- ing of our social condition by the war for slavery, have changes been wrought in the fortunes of many who had not thought to labor for a living. Still more, we are suffering from a stagnation of all trades and all business, so that even some who have property and possessions are yet suffering for want of income from these. We need, our country needs, we all need a new industry to set in motion the wheels of trade, to start anew the stagnant or sluggish circulation of money. We need, especially, a home industry ; something to occupy profitably the Zome hours of those who feel the need of money, yet are not able to enter the lists of labor and to contend with hand and arm against the brawny hands and arms that have been early used to labor. ‘The raising of silk would supply this need. ‘The labor is hight, the expenses small, the apparatus required, none.