SILK CULTURE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1198, 15 February 1895, Page 17

SILK CULTURE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Some time ago you drew attention in your columns to the advisability of increasing the number of our products, and mentioned silk culture as an industry which could be taken up with advantage. You were at the time lamenting the fact that the prices of our staple products—wheat, wool and meat—had a downward tendency.' They have since continually fallen, and it is doubtful if at the present figures they are remunerative at all. Kauri gum is in the same position. The dairy industry has certainly made great progress, but we may expect most desperate competition from the Continent of Europe. Besides, butter and cheese are perishable goods, and require the greatest care in transit, and while being stored in the Home markets. This does not apply to silk. Raw silk and cocoons in bales are like cotton or wool, and do not deterioate through years of storage. It has been pointed out again and again that our soil and climate are eminently suitable for the industry. The labour question presents no difficulty whatever, as experiments made in Australia prove. Our natural advantages far outweigh, by producing a _ uniformly superior quality, any difference in the rate of wages. Besides, there are a very large number of people —the old, the children, and especially the women —who have no income or who would welcome an addition to it. Now that women are coming more and more to the front in competing with men, the silk industry would be the very thing for them to take up, In New South Wales there is a women’s co-operative silkgrowing farm, where, besides raising sill?, they grow fruit, strawberries, flowers for cutting and for perfume. They are getting on very well. The Government of that colony has also established special settlements of Italians and lent them money to build houses and to make a start generally. An expert is engaged to instruct settlers over there. The American Government have a permanent appropriation on their estimates of between ,£2OOO to £SOOO, to be spent at the discretion of the Chief Commissioner for silk culture. Ten 3 eai s ago the industry in the United States employed over 30,000 people. The capital invested was over £3,000,000, and wages paid £1,500,000. It has progressed ever since. The French Government spends about £BO,OOO per annum to encourage silk - growing, and the result is that the industry is worth no less than £32,000,000 every year to that country. In consequence of the China-Japanese war silks at Home have risen 50 per cent, and if we in New. Zealand had taken up the industry years ago we should now be reaping a golden harvest. Japan receives about £1,400,000 per annum from Europe for silkworm eggs alone. On one occasion one of the steamers of the P. and O. Company, the Delhi, was chartered to load with a full cargo of silkworm eggs alone. The cargo was insured for half a million pounds. Besides, the Japanese send about 15,000 bales of raw silk to Europe every year at about 15s per lb, equal to another million. But unless the matter is agitated and organised and worked systematically by giving the settlers the necessary instruction and guidance nothing can be done. It seems to me too much like the immortal Mr Micawber, always to wait for “ something to turn tip” in the shape of better prices, &c. We have the ball at our feet, and all we need do is to pocket our insular prejudices and take up new industries which have kept millions of people profitably employed for centuries. —I am, &c., G. A. Schoch. Wellington, Vth February, 1895.