American Silk, 1830–1930: Entrepreneurs and Artifacts (review)

Technological and economic historians of Western industrialization have paid much attention to cotton manufacture. Some of them have also given consideration to the woolen industry, but very few of them have written about linen and almost none of them about silk. The introduction to American Silk says, “With this book, the story of American silk begins to be told”(xxiv). Fortunately, this claim need not be taken literally since the book’s useful bibliography shows earlier entries.

The book’s three case studies, each well illustrated and well written by a different author, share six appendixes and an index, as well as the bibliography, but each could easily stand on its own—thus begging the question, Why is this a book instead of three journal articles? Field’s introduction says only that the book “grew out of the chance meeting of three scholars … long engaged in silk industry research … each had adopted a different company, and each had found that the silk men and their mills did not give up their stories easily. … Serendipitously, the three studies dovetailed to span the development of the U.S. silk industry from its beginnings in the 1830s to its decline in the 1930s” (xx). In addition to their own black-and white illustrations, the three articles share a section of color plates showing textures, colors, weaves, and designs for silk yarns, fabrics, trimmings, and garments.

Senechal, who wrote the book’s engaging first six chapters, describes the silk worms that an early nineteenth-century utopian community in Northampton, Massachusetts, unsuccessfully tried to raise for profit as voracious, fussy, delicate, pampered infants. Success evaded the business until the Nonotuck Silk Company (and the industry generally) came under more practical leadership and began importing raw (already reeled but not yet twisted) silk from Europe, China, and Japan. Thanks to development of machinery that provided uniformity of thickness, Nonotuck made silk thread that ran smoothly through Isaac Singer’s newly-invented sewing machines, creating a symbiotic relationship between the rising fortunes of the two enterprises. Only in the twentieth century did the company undergo expansion in size, locations, and products to include woven silk fabric, renaming itself “Corticelli” after its brand of “machine twist” thread.

In Chapters 7 through 12, Field draws on company records to present a history of the Haskell Silk Company of Westbrook, Maine, which cotton manufacturer James Haskell started in 1874. It survived and thrived through two more generations of management by members of the same family before closing in 1930. Unlike Nonotuck, Haskell’s company moved relatively quickly from making thread into producing fabric, building a solid national reputation for high-quality “staple” silk yard goods and selling directly to retailers and to garment makers instead of relying on sales agents.

In the final four chapters, Shaw presents advertisements for, and externally written commentary about, H. R. Mallinson & Company, Inc. of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, to show how the company’s creation of an image for itself and for its product helped to attract fashion-conscious buyers of high-end luxury silk. Mallinson’s pioneered “branding” through print and graphic media.

Regarding the larger picture, Appendix VI offers a helpful timeline for these three northeastern American companies during the century preceding the Great Depression, when they fell victim to rising competition from “artificial silk” (rayon) and to lack of funds. The introduction provides a brief overview of the rise of the American silk industry, with a nod to silk’s ancient Asian origin, nineteenth-century mechanization, immigrant operatives, and encouragement by post-Civil War tariffs (xx–xxiii). Each case history occasionally mentions larger conditions in the American silk industry but makes no systematic effort to indicate how each company’s accomplishments and travails compared with those of the industry in general, rarely mentioning either of the other two companies. Field’s five-page conclusion summarizes similarities and differences in the companies’ experiences.

The authors disparately call on sericulture, technology...