Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/687

Rh The little valley where Captain Carles made his experiments, and where I was born, belongs to the Commune of Valleraugue. At the time of which I speak, they harvested scarcely 4,400 lbs. of very poor cocoons, that sold for very little. Recently there were produced, before the malady of which I shall presently speak, 440,000 lbs. of excellent quality, valued on an average at 2⅓ or 2½ francs per pound. At this price, a million of silver money found its way each year into this little commune of not more than 4,000 inhabitants.

Let me remark that this money went not alone to the rich. The small proprietors, the day-laborers, those even who owned not the least land, had the greatest part. In fact, most of the easy proprietors did not raise their own silk-worms; they contracted for them in this way: The laborer received a certain quantity of eggs of the silkworm on the condition of giving a fifth of the cocoons for an ounce of eggs; they received, besides, enough mulberry-leaves to nourish all the worms from these eggs, plus a certain quantity to boot. All the cocoons above this constituted the wages or gain of the raiser.

You see, we had resolved in our mountains this problem, so often encountered and still unsettled, of the association of capital and labor; and resolved it in the best possible way for both. The interest of the proprietor was, in this case, identical with that of the rearer, and reciprocally; for the success of a good workman would equally benefit both parties, and the poor workman could profit only according to his work.

Now, this labor was in reality of little account. Until after the fourth moulting, when the silk-worm is preparing to make his cocoon, the rearing of the worms can be performed by the women and children while the father pursues his ordinary occupation. Only after the fourth moult is he obliged to interrupt his work, and occupy himself, in his turn, in the gathering of leaves. The rearing ended, an industrious family—and such are not rare with us—will have, on an average, from 250 to 500 francs of profit. This bright silver, added to the resources of the year, this profit obtained without the investment of capital, seconded by the wise conduct of our mountaineer Cévennols, leads rapidly to competency. At the end of a few years, the laborer, who had nothing, possesses a little capital to buy some corner of rock, which, by his intelligent industry, he quickly transforms into fertile soil, and in his turn becomes a proprietor.

What I am telling you is not fancy. I speak of facts that have occurred under my own eyes, and that I well know. In the country, and particularly on the soil of our old mountains, people are not strangers to each other, as in our great cities. Between the gentleman and the peasant there are not the same barriers as between the citizen and the laborer in towns. When a child, I played with all my little neighbors; I knew the most secret nooks of the eight or ten houses composing the modest hamlet which bordered the place where