SILK TRADE. Since the days of Marco Polo the silk trade has been a colourful part of the world's caravans. The first routes through India and Persia to China carried silk which found its way into the more civilized centres of the world. Legend has it that Alexander the Great was inspired to march against the Per sians to satisfy the demand of his people for silken fabrics which the Persians dealt out in meagre portions at high prices to the peoples of the Western world. The search for the shorter route to the Indies by Columbus and his fellow adventurers was associated with the demand for silk in the Europe of the Renaissance. With the development of silk weaving in Europe and in the United States, especially during the i9th century, raw silk, the thread of the silk cocoon, became one of the world's active commodities. China held the lion's share but Italy and France were substantial contributors to the world's supply. As operations in the United States increased, the potential supply increased first in Europe because of the research by Pasteur, in discovering the cause of the imperfections in silk resulting from diseased silkworms, and later by the progress made by the Japanese in building up their raw silk industry.
The rise of silk in the latter half of the i9th century and the 2oth century is indicated by comparing the importations into the United States in 1851 and 1939. The importation was 88,5141b. in 1851 at an average value of $1.37 a pound and 51,1oo,000lb. in 1939 at an average value of $2.71. While this would appear to represent a large increase in volume used without a corresponding increase in value, the 1939 values of silk represented a low period in its history. At the high point of silk demand in 1919 and 1920, Japanese raw silk brought $17.45 per pound in the New York market. At the close of 1939, the price was $4.34 a pound. This last was not an indication, however, of a rising market for silk it self. Consumption in the United States decreased from 54,000,000lb.
in 1938 to 5i,000,000lb. in 1939 with the possibility that in 1940, new synthetic yarns would trespass upon silk's only remaining monopoly, the silk hosiery industry. The fabric industry throughout
the world had already relinquished silk for rayon and the intro duction of newer types of synthetic yarns such as nylon threat ened inroads into the hosiery field which in 1939, in the United States, consumed 90% of the raw silk imported.
Transactions in raw silk for many hundreds of years were based on individual evaluation by men whose senses of sight, feeling and smell were considered especially acute in determining the rela tive quality of the silks offered them. The grades used were sea sonable and frequently the grade name one year represented a dif ferent grade the following year. The motion pictures were not the first industry to employ superlatives and super-superlatives in de scribing the quality of their products. Certain characteristics of raw silk, by the end of the i9th century, were determined by laboratory tests, notably the true fibre weight. Silk is naturally hydroscopic ; it absorbs water readily without detection. In the early years of silk trading, dishonest merchants were known to add to the weight of their shipments by giving them a heavy treatment of water before shipping. To protect themselves, the silk buyers of Italy, as early as 1724, evolved a method of drying the raw silk in ovens, weighing it before and after the treatment to determine the actual amount of moisture in the silk. A normal amount of moisture was fixed at 11% above the dry weight and the sum of the absolute dry weight plus the i i % allowance was termed con ditioned weight. The establishments conducting the test were known as conditioning houses. The principal conditioning houses in the world today are in Zurich, Switzerland; Lyons, France (established in 1805); Manchester, England; Hoboken, N.J., Chi cago, Ill., and Philadelphia, Pa., in the United States; Yokohama and Kobe, Japan; and Shanghai, China. The practice became so widely recognized that in 1927, the Japanese Government an nounced that thereafter, all silk shipped from Japan would be tested for conditioned weight and the silk sold on that basis.