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Another of the great and in some ways one of the most remarkable industries of the Orient is that of silk production, and its manufacture into the most exquisite and beautiful fabrics in the world. Remarkable for its magnitude; for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China, at least 2600 years B. C.; for having been founded on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than four thousand years, expanding until a $1,000,000 cargo of the product has been laid down on our western coast at one time and rushed by special fast express to New York City for the Christmas trade.

Japan produced in 1907 26,072,000 pounds of raw silk from 17,154,000 bushels of cocoons, feeding the silkworms from mulberry leaves grown on 957,560 acres. At the export selling price of this silk in Japan the crop represents a money value of $124,000,000, or more than two dollars per capita for the entire population of the Empire; and engaged in the care of the silkworms, as seen in Figs. 184, 185, 186 and 187, there were, in 1906, 1,407,766 families or some 7,000,000 people.

Richard's geography of the Chinese Empire places the total export of raw silk to all countries, from China, in 1905, at 30,413,200 pounds, and this, at the Japanese export price, represents a value of $145,000,000. Richard also states that the value of the annual Chinese export of silk to France amounts to 10,000,000 pounds sterling and