An Ancient Working System

In our world of polyester fabrics closely mimicking real silk, we never pause to think of how authentic silk fabric from authentic silkworms is manufactured.  In 1932, two ladies, Alice Tisdale Hobart and Mary A. Nourse traveled to the far-away country of China and wrote about ancient methods of manufacturing still being practiced, How Half the World Works, National Geographic Magazine, April, 1932.

The story is quite fascinating.  Silkworms are "So small at hatching that 700,000 weigh only a pound. . . within 42 days they have shed their skin four times, and the same 700,000 worms weight 9,500 pounds" (photo caption, p. 511).  From the rural countryside, family workers (including children of all ages) feed the worms, captive in trays in the semi-darkness, fresh, finely cut-up mulberry leaves.  As soon as they make their silk cocoons, the silkworms are finished with their part.  The families work to harvest the silk by unwinding the strands of silk carefully from the cocoons.

It is in the city factories that the silk strands "are painstakingly turned into beautiful silks and satins" (p. 513) by the spinners and weavers.

In addition to silk production, other major products from small farms in China are rice and wheat.  "Since earliest historic days the bulk of the Chinese people have been farmers - frugal, hard-working, conservative. Governments and dynasties have come and gone, but the methods of these people and their devotion to the land remain steadfast" (photo caption, p. 519).

"In the north wheat is commonplace, rice a luxury, while exactly the reverse holds true of the south.  China's production of rice in a normal year exceeds 700,000,000 bushels" (photo caption, p. 520).  Yet, in 1932, China had to import rice to feed its people.

Chinese people do not waste anything!  Even human waste was used to fertilize their fields.  If we break a dish we certainly would throw it away.  In the China of 1932, there were those who could put together the pieces of pottery by glueing together the pieces or by drilling small holes and inserting metal 'bridges.'  There were women who would patch any article of clothing while-you-waited.  There was "No machinery, only the simple tools that have been passed down, like a legacy, through the generations, from father to son" (p. 522).

The authors conclude, "So, century after century, generation after generation, life in China has flowed in the old accustomed paths, unbroken, unjarred by the other half of the world that lives by the creed of efficiency and speed.  Each year the invasion of machinery is greater. . . yet the old order gives way reluctantly" (p. 524).