Of the capital employed in the cotton manufacture of In dia generally, it is impossible to form even the slightest conjecture. The materials for the following estimate of the capital employed in this manufacture in Bengal are. supplied by Mr. Grant, in his Analysis of the Finances of that Province, printed in the _Fifth Report on the Affairs of the East India Company. supposes, that the proouce of cotton in Bengal is equal to Four lacks of maunds; hich, after losing three-fourths of its gross weight, by the operations of cleaning and dressing, will sell far aboul twelve lacks of rupees. There is, besides, imported into Bengal, for the use of the cotton manufacturers, cotton from Surat and Mirzapore, in the district of Benares, of the value of six lacks of rupees ; so that the total value of the rude materials used in the cotton manufactures of Ben gal may be estimated at 18 lacks of rupees. The price of fine thread is enhanced to 16 times the value of the raw material ; yet it is a remarkable fact that the labour which thus enhances the value of it scarcely yields a subsistence of nine anas, or about 18 pence per month, being no more than three farthings a day to each spinner,—perhaps 18,000 in all. They could not labour so cheaply, were it not that they are principally the wives and daughters of the hus bandman and manufacturers, who could not otherwise be so usefully employed, at least during the hot and rainy sea sons. The number of weavers, masters and journeymen, Mr. Grant estimates at 300,000, who are generally em ployed in making three million of pieces of cloth annually, the prime cost of which is about 2 crore and 65 lacks of rupees ; yet, as the amount of thread is not above half the price of the finished manufacture, and as the capital laid out in the purchase of such materials seldom or ever can equal the consumption of two months labour, so the whole pro ductive stock at any time required, or actually in use, for completing all those beautiful fabrics, so much the object of our admiration, after allowing a loom, of six rupees, to be renew( d once in 20 year s for every workman, will not exceed 25 lacks of rupees.
The manufacture of silk next claims our notice. Though the Romans procured their silk from China, and were ob liged to depend upon the Persians for a supply of it, there is little doubt that, at this period, it was manufactured in Hindostan. In the Sanscrit there arc names for the silk worm and manufactured silk ; and what is more decisive on this point, there are, and appears to have been from the remotest times, two castes of Ilindoos, whose respective employments were the feeding of silk worms and the spinning of silk. In the year 1762, when the power of the East India Company was pretty firmly established in Hindostan Proper, they sent over some natives of Italy to introduce the Italian mode of spinning. The first attempt to establish a silk manufacture was a little below Calcutta; this, however, did not succeed. In the year 1773, build ings for that purpose were erected at Jungeypoor, in the Raujeshy district of Bengal ; and in the year 1803, about 3000 people were employed here. This is the greatest silk station of the East India Company : The others are at Cossimbazar, Mauldah, Bauleah, COmmercolly, Radna goor, and Rungpoor. It is calculated, that the district of Raujeshy, in which these places are situated, supplies four-fifths of all the silk, raw or manufactured, used in or exported from Hindostan. The raising of silk worms is principally confined to a part of the district of Burdwan, and to the vicinity of the Bliagirathi and Great Ganges, from the fork of these rivers, for about 100 miles down their streams. The introduction of the silk worm has
not yet succeeded in the warmer districts of Hindostan, but it is probable that the country above the Ghauts, where the climate is temperate, will be found suitable.
The mulberry tree used for feeding the worms is the Oriental ; the dryness of the soil, it is supposed, is pre judicial to the China mulberry. The expense of planting this tree on a biggah of land is about 14 rupees ; and the annual expenses afterwards, 9 rupees. Twenty rupees are generally given by the feeders, for the leaves of a biggah. From one biggah, two maunds of cocoons may be pro duced ; and two seer of reeled silk is the produce of one maund. Four crops of mulberry leaves are obtained from the same field in the course of the year.
Wild silk worms are common in the forests of Silhit, Assam, and the Decan ; from them a kind of coarse silk, called tisser, is procured, which is very far inferior in colour and lustre to the other silk. In Silhit, it.is manu factured into a kind of goods called muggadooties ; but it is principally manufactured, mixed with wool or cotton, into an article in considerable request in India, and by no means destitute of beauty or elegance. Much of it is also exported, wrought or unwrought, into the western parts of India.
The best cocoons of the domesticated silk worms are sold by the natives to the Company ; from the rest they wind off the silk. But, previous to this, the cocoons are immersed in a mixture of water and the excretions of the worms, till a fermentation commences, when they arc boil ed in an earthen vessel. a The women wind off the silk from the pod of the worm. A single pod of raw silk is di vided into twenty different degrees of fineness; and so ex quisite is the feeling of these women, that whilst the thread is running through their fingers so swiftly that their eye can be of no assistance, they will break it off exactly as the assortments change, at once from the first to the twen tieth, from the nineteenth to the second." Corme's Frag ments, 412. A hand reel is employed for this purpose, which resembles, in its simplicity and cheapness, all the other implements used by the natives.
The most extensive and flourishing manufacture of wove silks is at Monshedabad and its neighbourhood ; here are also made various kinds of taffetas, plain and flowered, and other sorts of silk goods, both for home consumption and exportation. In the district of Benares, tissues, brocades, and ornamented gauses, are manufactured : in the western and southern parts of Bengal, plain gauzes, principally for home consumption, and mixed goods of silk and cot ton at Mauldah, Boglipoor, and in some parts of the dis trict of Burdwan. Silk stockings are knit with wire in the neighbourhood of Cossimbazar ; they are esteemed the best in Bengal : here are also made satins, silks, car pets, Ecc. Though the silk worm has not yet been in troduced into the Carnatic, and probably would not thrive there, yet in this province the silk weavers make goods of a very strong fabric. Mr. Grant calculates that the trading stock constantly employed in the whole of this species of manufacture, in Bengal and Benares, the chief seats of it, may reasonably be estimated at 10 lacks of rupees, while the prime cost of the raw silk produced in the country, chiefly for foreign exportation, he esti mates at 50 lacks; the largest portion of which is ad vanced by the great foreign exporter ; the sum paid to the warders he calculates at one lack.