en sent home from
the front because they were wounded or else they are not strong enough
to fight. So you see, silk is the language of the whole village."

Henri gave a little shrug to his shoulders.

"It seems as if France must turn out enough silk for herself and all
the world," observed Pierre, motioning to the great bales heaped in a
near-by shipping-room.

"The output is, of course, very small now in comparison with what it
usually is," answered the elder boy. "The war has made a great
difference. Normally France does provide a good share of the world's
silk. But other countries do as much, if not more. For a long time Asia
sent most of the silk to the United States. Labor was very cheap in
China, as well as Canton and Shanghai. The natives, however, employed
very primitive methods in preparing their material and did it very
poorly, often winding the raw silk on bamboo sticks that roughened or
broke it. Frequently the thread would be a mass of dirt and slugs.
Merchants would not stand for this, and now American manufacturers have
gone to China and set up their own filatures equipped with American
machinery."

"How stupid of China to lose a chance like that for trade!"

"The Chinese are the slowest of all the big nations to adopt new ideas,
my father says; but they are waking up. They have been so clever in the
past, and the foremost to discover so many things that it is a pity
others should take from them the fruits of their learning. It is to
China, people say, that we owe the entire silk industry. And careless
preparation of their raw silk has not been their only or greatest
crime."

For a moment Henri paused.

"No. About 1870 the Chinese silk dealers got it through their heads that
what the American manufacturers demanded was a heavy silk thread. Now
instead of selecting more carefully the cocoons from which they wound
their raw silk and reeling it more perfectly, they set their ingenuity
to work to increase the weight of the fibre itself by loading it with
acetate of lead."

"I should think the Americans would have been pretty angry at that!"

"They were. They told the Chamber of Commerce at Shanghai that the
United States would refuse to buy silk of China unless this practice was
stopped. That scared the people, and for a while the adulteration of
the material ceased. But the reform was not for long. From time to time
the natives went back to their old tricks until by and by not only
America, but e