| In the mid-1820s, Americans became entranced with the idea of raising silkworms. Newspapers proclaimed the inevitability of America's rise as the silk-producing power of the world. Dozens of manuals appeared to instruct the uninitiated in the art of sericulture, and speculators snapped up mulberry trees, the silkworms' primary food. Enthusiasm built steadily until the bubble burst in 1839, ruining tree salesmen and dashing culturists' hopes that the United States ever would produce the silk that it consumed. The excitement was spread throughout the nation, but was concentrated in the parts of the country that were poised between agricultural and industrial economies, between trade within local marketplaces and with distant markets.; Sericulture clearly resonated with the beliefs of people in this particular economic relationship. Promoters spoke of silk culture as an industry, with men overseeing the work of silkworm "operatives." They saw themselves as rationalizing and perfecting the forces of nature. Silk's longstanding reputation as a luxury fabric made it incredibly desirable, but it brought to the fore questions of the roles of luxury, virtue, and independence in a republican nation.; If silk was attractive culturally, it also promised to address anxieties over how changes in the national economy would influence the household and society as a whole. Promoters claimed that sericulture would bring quick and easy wealth, but it had other virtues. Silk enthusiasts chafed against shifting cultural patterns that located production away from the home. They mourned the "idle hands" of women and children and sought to reestablish labor within the household under the control of family patriarchs. Westerners saw silk as a compact, valuable commodity that might obviate the need for internal improvements. Easterners worried about their exhausted soil and hoped that sericulture would help arrest the region's political and economic decline.; Ultimately, silk enthusiasts created a community and a culture that eased their entry into a national market by giving them a framework in which local models of exchange seemed to apply. They recognized that the fit between these local models and long-distance transactions was imperfect, but could offer no better solution. |
