The principal branches of this manufacture consist in the dyeing,
winding, warping, throwing, and weaving. The first needs no explanation;
the winding is the process between the throwing and the weaving. After
the silk is thrown it is dyed, and then wound off preparatory to the
loom. The warping is stretching the parallel threads on the loom,
preparatory to weaving.
_Throwing_ silk, is twisting two threads into one for the purpose
of weaving. The single thread, as wound off from the cocoon, is
designated the raw silk.
There are two descriptions of thrown silk. One is called _tram_,
and consists of two threads simply twisted together. This description of
thrown silk is used in the shuttle or transverse threads of a piece of
silk on the loom. The other variety of thrown silk is called
_organzine_. In this, the single threads are first twisted up,
previous to their being twisted together. This is used for the warp, or
parallel threads upon the loom.
Throwing of silk was an important branch of manufacture in this country,
until the duties were reduced in 1826. Since that period it has
declined. The manufacture of thrown silk is chiefly carried on at
Macclesfield, Congleton, and in the West of England. As silk can be
thrown more cheaply in foreign countries than it can be in England,
there has been a difference between the throwsters and the weavers of
Coventry and Spitalfields, the latter having requested the protecting
duty against foreign thrown silk to be reduced, to the manifest injury
of the former.
It may be as well to explain to the reader the weights which are used
in the silk trade. The weight of silk is estimated by _deniers_, an
old Italian weight, of which twenty-four are equal to an ounce, used
only in the silk trade, in the same manner as the weight called a _carat_
is employed by those who deal in diamonds, and other precious stones.
It is the custom to reel off, upon an engine established in the silk
trade, a measure of four hundred ells of tram or organzine, (which are
both double threads,) and the weight of this quantity establishes the
fineness or coarseness of the silk. Four hundred ells of the finest
Italian tram will weigh eighteen deniers; and although this silk will
occasionally run so coarse as to weigh forty deniers, the qualities
mostly in use vary in weight from eighteen to thirty deniers. The China
and Bengal silk varies from thirty-five to eighty deniers in its weight.
Turkey silk, the importation of which has lately much increased, and
which is worked up in the single thread on account of the coarseness of
the texture, varies from thirty to fifty deniers; which, as the others
are weighed in the tram or double thread, will be in the proportion of
sixty to one hundred deniers.
Silk is the staple manufacture of France, and has always received the
fostering protection of the government. The raw material is the produce
of the country; and, as the growers of silk are not permitted to export
it, it is purchased by the manufacturers at a much cheaper rate than it
can be procured by us. The value of the raw silk yearly produced in
France is estimated at about three millions and a half sterling--the
produce of manufacture at about two millions and a half; so that the
silk trade of France is to be valued, on the whole, at about six
millions sterling.
This is the estimate which is made by the acknowledgment of the French
government; but there is every reason to suppose that it is much more
considerable. This is certain;--that it is of the greatest value to that
nation, and has received such protection, and, in consequence, is in
that flourishing condition, that, at present, no other country can
compete with it.--_Metropolitan_.
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