The next stage through which silk passes, is that of dyeing. Here, too, impositions have grown chronic and general. In times past, as we learn from a ribbon-manufacturer, the weighting by water was the chief dishonesty. Bundles returned from the dyer’s, if not manifestly damp, still, containing moisture enough to make up for a portion of the silk that had been kept back; and precautions had to be taken to escape losses thus entailed. Since then, however, there has arisen a method of deception which leaves this far behind—that of employing heavy dyes. The following details have been given us by a silk-throwster. It is now, he says, some five-and-thirty years since this method was commenced. Before that time silk lost a considerable part of its weight in the copper. The ultimate fibre of silk is coated, in issuing from the spinneret of the silk-worm, with {126} a film of varnish which is soluble in boiling water. In dyeing, therefore, this film, amounting to 25 per cent. of the entire weight of the silk, is dissolved off; and the silk is rendered that much lighter. So that originally, for every sixteen ounces of silk sent to the dyer’s, only twelve ounces were returned. Gradually, however, by the use of heavy dyes, this result has been reversed. The silk now gains in weight; and sometimes to a scarcely credible extent. According to the requirement, silk is sent back from the dyer’s of any weight, from twelve ounces to the pound up to forty ounces to the pound. The original pound of silk, instead of losing four ounces, as it naturally would, is actually, when certain black dyes are used, made to gain as much as twenty-four ounces! Instead of 25 per cent. lighter, it is returned 150 per cent. heavier—is weighted with 175 per cent. of foreign matter! Now as, during this stage of its manufacture, the transactions in silk are carried on by weight, it is manifest that in the introduction and development of this system, we have a long history of frauds. At present all in the trade are aware of it, and on their guard against it. Like other modes of adulteration, in becoming established and universal, it has ceased to be profitable to any one. But it still serves to indicate the morals of those concerned.