Spasmodic efforts continued through the years but the next peak of interest came about following the tremendous increase in the use of silk after the World War. Raw silk values rose rapidly achieving the high price in the United States, the chief market, of $21.00 a pound in 1919 as contrasted with $3.64 in 1914. A new wave of interest in sericulture spread around the world. In the United States, intensive efforts were made in California to produce larger cocoons than those in the Orient and more frequent crops of cocoons than might be possible in a less favourable cli mate. The cocoons were raised and were of superior grade—but again the problem of reeling them into raw silk, on a commercial basis, proved the stumbling block of competition with the Orient. Some attempt was made to ship cocoons to Japan, but the com merce was not sufficiently developed to be successful on a wide scale. Other attempts in the United States were instigated by a promoter who not only sang the praises of meeting world competi tion on raw silk but also promised his clients special profits from producing a silk filament pre-coloured by injection of dyestuffs into the silkworm. Louisiana, Florida and Canada were the scenes of greatest activity among the buyers of the mulberry trees and the rainbow-hued silkworms. Newspaper accounts implied that fortunes were to be made and that, with the exception of the dyers who would find themselves without an occupation, the entire public would be grateful to the promoter. A year later, the in vestors were seeking buyers for their cocoons. None were found, and once more sericulture in the United States proved to be impractical.
In Persia, the venture assumed another role, that of acting as a substitute for the Persian poppy crop. The anti-narcotic divi sion of the League of Nations pinned their hopes on the mulberry tree as a means of reducing the world output of opium. Persia, as one of the ancient homes of the silk industry, would have a natural aptitude for sericulture, it was thought, and the assistance of American silk manufacturers was sought in buying reeling machinery and employing skilled workers from France and Italy to teach the modern methods of raising and reeling silk. The Americans were already engaged in other fields and did not par ticipate, but the industry was started. However, as in so many other cases, Persia found that producing the silk was only half the problem; the other half was the marketing of it. In 1939, Persian Government representatives presented to New York fabric dealers samples of plain and printed fabrics made in the factories of Iran (Persia) with the hope that the makers could share in the great dress market of the world but the exhibit, the type of fabrics and their styling, as well as the limited amount being made, did not result in any great show of interest on the part of potential buyers.
During this period, the American manufacturers returned to China, the original source of silk, and still the source of some of the strongest and best silk grown. The difficulty was the lack of modern methods of preparation for the user, the fabric manufac turer and the lack of standardization in the grades and quantities produced. To demonstrate the meaning of the modern require ments, the American silk industry subscribed a large sum of money to initiate the study of sericulture in three of the mission ary colleges in China. Buildings were erected, land bought for
mulberry orchards, modern laboratory equipment installed and courses of study established in the methods of raising and feeding worms so as to avoid disease and the consequent imperfect silk filament, in the proper sizing of the silk thread by efficient reeling, in the making of the size and type of skein required by high-speed modern looms, and in the conditioning and testing of the silk to determine its grade for the purchaser. It was thought by the Americans that the Chinese would be sufficiently interested to carry on the work when it had been demonstrated that the Amer ican market could be more equally shared with the Japanese if the methods were adopted. The Chinese, however, had found that they could sell their silk made in the accustomed manner to the European buyers who did not require the same high standard of efficiency as the Americans due to their less pressing high-wage problem and the use of older, slower looms. After a few years, the campaign was discontinued not only because of the results but also of the increasing domestic upheavals in China itself which resulted in disruption of many of the relationships so necessary to successful prosecution of the enterprise.
India was another experimental field. The Indian Government, especially at Mysore, evinced much interest in the educational work done by the Americans in providing the proper grade and adequate quantity of raw silk for the United States market. Simi larly ambitious were officials in the Black sea area of Russia, in Greece, Spain and even South Africa but the American market continued to look mainly to China and Japan for its supplies and by 1936, United States Department of Commerce report on foreign commerce and navigation omits all mention of any of the smaller countries.
Raw silk can be profitably produced where there is not only low cost labour but labour working at low wages for long hours at a high degree of efficiency under modern conditions of factory organization, as evidenced in the success of the Japanese in cap turing and maintaining the lion's share of the world markets.