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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 93 Association of America,” published in the United States Industrial Directory of 1876; and by the exceedingly well-written and carefully- executed History of the Silk-Industry of America, prepared for the Centennial Exposition by L. P. Brockett, M.D., and published under the auspices of the Silk Association of America. These works will be freely drawn upon without further acknowledgment. The writer will add that he has verified the observations of Mr. Allen and Dr. Brockett, as well as his own impressions and notes at the Exhibition, by a recent personal visit to most of the representative silk-manu facturing establishments in this country. The Silk-Culture.—We will first notice the growth and extension of the silk-culture in this country. The production of the raw material was attempted in the earliest periods of our colonial history, in the Southern colonies, where the conditions of climate were most favor able for the growth of the mulberry and the raising of silk-worms; but the more profitable culture of tobacco and rice, and subsequently of cotton, together with the incapacity of the only working popula tion of the South, the negroes, to perform the delicate operation of reeling, caused the silk-culture, in that section, finally to wholly dis appear. It was more successful in Connecticut, where the conditions of climate were less favorable, but where the necessities of the people, and their habits of thrift, had developed an active household industry. Through the influence of Dr. Stiles, afterwards President of Yale College, a State bounty was given, in 1763, for the culture of the mulberry and the production of raw silk. In 1766, half an ounce of mulberry-seed was sent to every parish in the State. The domestic culture of silk was very general in the State during and subsequent to the Revolution. It became a fixed industry, however, only in the town of Mansfield, where it had been introduced by Dr. Aspinwall, in 1766. This town became noted for the production of silk grown and reeled in the households. “ Mulberry orchards,” of the hardy native white mulberry, were distributed throughout the township, and rows of this tree shaded the highways and fringed the cultivated fields. The production of silk in a single family sometimes amounted to one hundred and thirty pounds in a season, and most of the labor was performed by women and children. The silk, very imperfectly reeled, was spun on a hand-wheel into a roughly-made sewing-silk (dyed in the household), which was usually sold in barter to the country stores. The floss, waste, and pierced cocoons, being mixed with wool, cotton, or flax, were made into coarse stuffs for every-day wear. The domestic production of this town from 1820 to 1831 was of an annual value of not less than $50,000. In this domestic manu-