ne person to attend to every reel; but now with
modern machinery a single girl can watch twenty-four spools at once. One
of the interesting things is that all the finest reels used in France,
Italy, China, and Japan, come from America."

"But why don't the Americans reel their own raw silk, then, instead of
importing it?"

"They have no cocoons. My father says they tried raising silk in
America, but it was not successful. Mulberry trees will grow in some
parts of the country, but there is no cheap labor to be had over there
as here, and therefore it costs too much to feed and care for the
silkworms, and reel the raw silk. It is far less expensive for American
merchants to import the reeled silk for their looms. But they can beat
us at making machinery, if not at raising cocoons."

Henri chuckled.

"My father says," he went on, "that the Americans did not perfect the
reeling machines so much for our good as for their own. They used to get
all kinds of silk thread from the different parts of Europe; and it
could not be woven on their looms, which are finely adjusted and
require material of uniform size and strength. So they perfected
machinery for the preparation of silk thread, and practically insisted
that if they were to buy of us in Europe the material ordered must be
made as they wanted it. Most of the countries over here were glad enough
to comply with their demands, for the Americans are not only enormous
buyers, but their machines are much better than ours."

"Why couldn't they have cocoons shipped to them in bulk?" speculated
Pierre.

"They could not be easily packed, for they are not in form to ship. It
would be foolish. Besides, there is the same old problem of the lack of
cheap labor. You see, reeling silk is often slow work. Different breeds
of silkworm turn out, as you know, different qualities of thread. You
wouldn't believe how it varies as to size, cleanliness, lustre, and
perfection of filament. The Americans cannot afford to pay people to
classify all these varieties; nor stop their machinery at irregular
intervals to pick out the imperfections, or slugs, as we call them; also
the many knots must be tied by hand. It is fussy work. It would cost an
American manufacturer lots of money to get the sort of thread he wants.
You remember, too, how some of the best reelers that you saw when you
were here before sometimes had to take as many as five or more filaments
from different cocoons to get raw silk