The difficulty of this hand labor can be still better understood if it be remembered that the reeler being obliged to watch at every moment the unwinding of each cocoon, in order to obtain one pound of well reeled silk, she must incessantly watch, and without a moment of distraction, the unwinding of about two thousand seven hundred miles of silk filaments.  For nine pounds of silk, she reels a length of filament sufficient to girdle the earth.  The manufacturer, therefore, cannot and must not depend only on the constant attention that each reeler should give to the work confided to her care.  He is obliged to have overseers who constantly watch the reelers, so that the defects in the work of any single reeler, who otherwise might not give the attention required by her work, will not greatly diminish the value either of her own work or that of several other reelers whose silk is often combined to form a single lot.  In addition to the ordinary hand labor, considerable expense is thus necessitated for the watching of the reelers.

Enough has now been said, we think, to give a good idea of silk reeling, as usually practiced, and to show how much it is behind other textile arts from a mechanical point of view.  To any one at all familiar with industrial work, or possessing the least power of analysis or calculation, it is evident that a process carried on in so primitive a manner is entirely unsuitable for use in any country in which the conditions of labor are such as to demand its most advantageous employment.  In the United States, for instance, or in England, silk reeling, as a great national industry, would be out of the question unless more mechanical means for doing it could be devised.  The English climate is not suitable for the raising of cocoons, and in consequence the matter has not attracted very much attention in this country.  But America is very differently situated.  Previous to 1876 it had been abundantly demonstrated that cocoons could be raised to great advantage in many parts of that country.  The only question was whether they could be reeled.  In fact, it was stated at the time that the question of reeling silk presented a striking analogy to the question of cotton before the invention of the “gin.”  It will be remembered that cotton raising was several times tried in the United States, and abandoned because the fiber could not be profitably prepared for the market.  The impossibility of competing with India and other cheap labor countries in this work became at least a fact fully demonstrated, and any hope that cotton would ever be produced in America was confined to the breasts of a few enthusiasts.

As soon, however, as it was shown that the machine invented by Eli Whitney would make it possible to do this work mechanically, the conditions were changed; cotton raising become not only possible, but the staple industry of a great part of the country; the population was rapidly increased, the value of real estate multiplied, and within a comparatively short time the United States became the leading cotton country of the world.  For many years much more cotton has been grown in America than in all the other countries of the world combined; and it is interesting to note that both the immense agricultural wealth of America and the supply required for the cotton industry of England flow directly from the invention of the cotton gin.