"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 even the greater part of Europe, got all out of patience with them. When they finally remedied the evil it was too late. Other countries had learned the art of silk-raising and had stepped in and snapped up most of the trade. My father says that now America, which is the largest silk consumer of the world, buys only about a quarter of her raw silk from China." "So the evil-doer does not always prosper," laughed Pierre.