Mandarin, which makes the Empire line in cottons in addition to the Dynasty silks and brocades, employs up to 1,300 workers. It provides a recreation room, catered meals and classes in English for its work force. Most of its permanent staff are highly skilled people, like the young sewing-machine operator who stitches intricate rose and tea-leaf designs on quilted fabrics at high speed, working from memory with unerring accuracy. The cutters, tailors, and pressers are advanced craftsmen, trained by long apprenticeship. Mandarin introduces about fifteen new silk and brocade patterns each year, originated by its own designer, Doris Saunders, with such names as Cherry Blossom, Ivory Blue, Sing Song and Garland. Its stockroom carries nearly 500 patterns, including as many as eight different color variations on a single pattern. Wives of visiting VIPs often tend to go haywire when exposed to this exciting inventory, and have had to be led or dragged away from the shelves. Most of the brocades are woven by the Fou Wah mills in Tsuen Wan. Finished garments are packed in waterproof paper and special shipping boxes and sent to the U.S. by air express or sea freight. Mandarin keeps its finger on the high-fashion pulse through its Dynasty Salon in the colony’s Hotel Peninsula, but it also cagily remains in touch with a wider and less sophisticated market by noting what the American sailors buy at its servicemen’s outlet in Wanchai, where the fleet comes in. Textiles have become the largest single factor in the colony’s economy. Textile exports totaled $273.5 million in 1960, or 55 percent of the colony’s entire domestic exports. In 1961, textiles constituted 52 percent of all exports. The industry employs 42 percent of all the workers in registered and recorded industries. It has a capacity of 614,000 spindles and 18,700 looms. All this is cause for rejoicing in Hong Kong textile circles, but to textile producers in England, the United States and Canada, it is a problem that becomes greater all the time. The United States absorbed 31 percent of the colony’s textile exports in 1960, and the British Isles were a close second with 26 percent. Textile exports to the United States took a sharp drop in 1961, while those to the British Isles showed only a slight decline. There was much concern among Lancashire mill-owners when Hong Kong cottons began to hit the English market. American textile producers and textile union leaders joined in a protest that was echoed with lesser volume by the Canadian textile industry. In all three countries, textile men declared that if they had to compete with Hong Kong’s low wage-scales, they would be driven to the wall.