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The Finest of Fabrics: Mormon Women and the Silk Industry in Early Utah
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 46, 1978, No. 4
The Finest of Fabrics: Mormon Women and the Silk Industry in Early Utah
BY CHRIS RIGBY ARRINGTON
WHEN ZINA D. H. YOUNG LOOKED at worms she felt a horror that came, in part, from a birthmark in the palm of her hand shaped like a curled-up worm. Considering this fear, it was one of the ironies of her life that she should be called by Brigham Young to be handmaiden to millions of silkworms, the fundamental basis of the silk industry in Utah. She accepted the call but felt revulsion each time she faced the wriggling hordes. After a day of handling the worms, her sleep was troubled with nightmares, and it was only with the firmest resolve that she could force herself each day to work with them again.
A prominent leader among Mormon women in early Utah, Zina was not alone. Women who carried the burden of the silk industry found that there were many unpleasant things about it. Although the work was menial, time-consuming, and not a financial success, the silk industry was kept alive for about a half-century (1855 to 1905) by church leaders who wanted to develop home industries and by dedicated, ingenious women.
Economic records of the industry are sparse; therefore, it is impossible to determine costs and revenues. A reliable paying market outside the Great Basin was never found. Some sales were made within the region and, intermittently, in California and the East; but the occurrence of these sales rose and fell dramatically. In 1886, before the industry's last big push, Gov. Caleb West reported to the secretary of the interior that an estimated 17,000 pounds of cocoons had been raised in Utah and sold for an average of one dollar per pound. West said, "a large percent of these have been reeled and worked up at home, the residue have been shipped east and west, almost invariably, I understand, at a loss to the producers."
Besides the major problem of having no steady, paying market, the silk industry in Utah was hampered by the difficulty of getting machinery to manufacture silk thread and cloth. Although several factories did make thread, handkerchiefs, and cloth at different times, none was financially successful enough to last. Coupled with a lack of machinery was a lack of skilled workers. A few European immigrants brought with them the knowledge of how to reel silk into thread, and the LDS Relief Society organized these veterans to teach the skills to others. The new students could not practice their trade without machines, however, and the skills were soon forgotten. Sericulture in early Utah, then, consisted mainly of the raising of silkworms in the home until the cocoons were spun.
Although the silk industry was a financial failure, it was a phenomenon nonetheless. Several hundred acres of mulberry trees whose leaves fed the silkworms were planted in Utah, and families from Logan to St. George raised silkworms. According to one report, 28,000 pounds of cocoons were produced during the entire silk-producing period in Utah.
Silk was one of a series of home industries—launched to establish a diversified economy—that included breweries, tobacco growing, cotton growing, lace making, and the making of straw hats. These enterprises were an essential part of the cooperative economy the Mormons sought to establish in their promised land. More a necessity than a whim, home industry was meant to keep money in Utah rather than have it spent for costly imports from thousands of miles away.
For their part in these industries, women acted out an age-old female role that placed them at the very center of the local economic structure.
In Utah's silk industry women returned to a production role in home or cottage industry that was more characteristic of Europe and Asia than of contemporary America. Under the aegis of the Relief Society, women organized themselves for this work.
The Utah silk industry had its roots in the silk mania of the eastern and midwestern states contemporary with the early years of Mormonism. Indeed, a silk boom of considerable popularity occurred during the 1830s, particularly in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois where many Mormons were settled. There was a general revival of interest in growing silk while the Mormons were in Illinois in the 1840s. New England and New York, from which the largest share of early Mormons were recruited, were the centers in this revival. The Mormons left for Utah just about the time that New Englanders were tiring of the silkworm's voracious appetite. The roots of the Utah silk industry can also be found in the Mormon belief in self-sufficiency: ". . . let all thy garments be plain, and their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands." Eliza R. Snow remembered hearing Joseph Smith say "that the time would come when the people would come to Zion to buy the finest of fabrics."
PLANTING THE SEEDS
In Brigham Young's first speech in the Salt Lake Valley he declared, "There is silk in these elements." Soon he was instructing companies migrating to Utah to bring mulberry seeds and silkworms. Several immigrants who had had experience with the industry did so, among them two from England, Elizabeth and Thomas Whittaker. In the late 1850s Thomas bought silkworm eggs in London and transported them to his new home in Centerville, Davis County, Utah. Although his crop of worms failed several times, he kept sending for more until he succeeded. He advertised in the Deseret News on June 4, 1862, that he had raised 1,400 healthy silkworms and would be glad to give some to anyone interested in raising them. Nancy Barrows of Ogden brought mulberry seeds and silkworms with her from the East in 1858. A year later she reeled silk and made the first dress out of Utah silk.
Susannah Cardon and her husband, Paul, became involved in sericulture shortly after arriving in Cache Valley in 1860. Both had participated in the silk industry in their native Italy. They sent to France for mulberry seeds, and when the trees were high enough to produce leaves they sent for silkworms. Susannah became known later as the best silk-reeler in the territory.
Octave Ursenbach and his wife, a one-time lacemaker for Queen Victoria, brought with them from Switzerland an interest in the silk industry. In 1861 they ordered half an ounce of eggs and a manual from a Parisian silk fancier—also a Mormon convert—named Louis Bertrand. Bertrand sent the manual in 1861 and the eggs in 1862. By 1863 the Ursenbachs were able to exhibit in Salt Lake City a basket of 3,000 cocoons and silkworms they had produced in one year from some two dozen worms.
To establish the industry on a churchwide basis, groves of mulberry trees were needed. Brigham Young instructed George Q. Cannon of the European Mission to have Louis Bertrand send six or seven pounds of mulberry seed. The seed, which was probably purchased with monies of the Perpetual Emigration Fund, arrived in Utah with the emigration of 1865 and was planted on Young's experimental Forest Farm. Within a few years some fifty acres of mulberry trees had been planted in Salt Lake City and other towns. From his farm, Young gave free mulberry cuttings to anyone who wanted them. He spread the word about silk through Utah communities during an 1865 presidential tour, and he personally directed the transplanting of about 100,000 mulberry trees by the spring of 1868.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SILKWORM
The process of raising silkworms begins with hatching silkworm eggs. The worms then go through four moultings, between each of which they eat increasing quantities of mulberry leaves. Worms hatched from one ounce of eggs require three-fourths of a pound of fresh, chopped, dried mulberry leaves four times on the first day. By the last stage the same worms require eight daily feedings of one hundred and twenty pounds each. Room temperatures are supposed to be strictly controlled during these stages.
After four moultings, the worms climb up sticks provided for them and spin cocoons of floss, silk, and gum. If allowed to live inside the cocoon, the larva emerges as a moth, ruining the cocoon in the process of getting out. To make silk, the larva is steamed or baked to death inside the cocoon. As it is steamed, the moth hums until dead. The cocoons are set out to dry for two months, after which they are said to last indefinitely.
The next step, reeling, involves dropping cocoons into hot water to wash off the glue. The cocoons are then beaten with a small broom to loosen the ends of threads. The reeler gathers five or six lines together and threads them through an eye on the reeling machine. The machine pulls them through the eye, twisting as it goes. A good cocoon has lines a thousand feet long, and as one line plays out, another is added. Toward the end of the line, it becomes thinner, and the reeler has to know the precise moment to introduce a new line to make the final product uniform, rounded, and without knots.
The thread is then woven into silk on a machine, warp and woof fashion. Sometimes the thread is bleached before being woven into cloth.
The problems of raising silkworms in early Utah were many. The first was space. One sericulture handbook of the day proposed that the novice set aside a room 54 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 10 feet high in which to raise twelve ounces of eggs. The room should not be full of windows but "well-ventilated at the sides, near the bottom, and [have] a ventilator on the top." The second problem was temperature control. One handbook indicated that for hatching silkworm eggs a temperature of 63° or 64°F. "should be carefully maintained for two consecutive days, and on the third increased to 66, fourth to 68, fifth to 70," and so on. Although local sericulturists surely did not measure so carefully, eggs did hatch in Zion.
Another difficulty was feeding. Leaves were supposed to be chopped into squares of between one-eighth and one-sixteenth of an inch. The leaves had to be dry, since morning dew was thought to cause disease. Age was also a factor, with young leaves thought to be best. Finally, sericulturists were warned to be sure their worms did not see lightning. If a storm approached, they were advised to hang black cloth over the windows. The shocking light was thought to harm the worms by stunting their growth.
One faithful soul, Priscilla Jacobs of the Logan Fifth Ward, encountered some difficulties of her own. She threw herself into the work, starting by taking beds out of her new two-room house and moving out to the granary so she could fill her house with worms. She read that Oriental people warmed their eggs before hatching them by wearing them in a sack around their necks and sleeping with them under the pillow. So on Sunday she went to worship service in the Logan Tabernacle with her eggs around her neck. In the middle of the meeting, to her dismay, she felt the worms beginning to hatch. She ran out and hurried home to attend to her wriggling babies.
Another woman, Helen Gould, wrote a poem called "The Silk Worm's Will" about difficulties from the worm's point of view. No doubt inspired by hours of chopping mulberry leaves into one-eighth-inch squares, she portrayed a worm of heroic proportions.
SILK ASSIGNED TO THE WOMEN
During the middle 1860s, when Utah was attracting many European immigrants, official Mormon interest in sericulture grew. Utah's population increased from 11,380 in 1850 to 40,273 in 1860 and to 86,786 in 1870. Sericulture was seen as possible employment for women, children, the aged, the handicapped, and the uneducated. George Q. Cannon called these people "a class of labor with which we are likely to be well supplied."
Moreover, at the same time an irregular market for silkworm eggs and cocoons raised in Utah could be found in Europe, which was experiencing widespread deaths of silkworms because of the disease pebrine. That market dried up in 1875 when Louis Pasteur conquered the disease through improved selection of eggs.
At any rate, Brigham Young urged his people to take up sericulture. In 1868 he sponsored a series of lectures on the subject in the School of the Prophets, an education system for selected church leaders, and at the April conference of 1868 he assigned the carrying forth of sericulture to the women of the LDS Relief Society. "If I cannot succeed in getting the sisters with their children to attend to this business," he said, "I shall be under the necessity of sending to China for Chinamen to come here and raise silk for us, which I do not wish to do."
In a contemporary publication, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that silk work was especially suited to women "who may have no other means of profitably employing their time." Moreover, women should do the work, because "reeling demands an acute and gentle touch found only in the hands of women." The Deseret News added that a silk dress was "the desire of the heart of every woman" and would "provide the pioneer mothers with some of the finery that women by nature love." On a more practical level, the Woman's Exponent saw the work as a way for women to add a few dollars to their budgets. "From the breeding and sale of the eggs alone," one article said, "a handsome income can be secured with little trouble and less outlay."
From another viewpoint, the silk industry was assigned to Mormon women because of their ability to carry out a difficult assignment. In the Relief Society the women had an organization that covered all the Mormon settlements. In the 1870s that organization was put to good use in partnership with the Deseret Silk Association. Zina Young was president of both the Relief Society and the Deseret Silk Association. Stake Relief Society presidents became county chairmen, and ward presidents who reported to them acted as local directors.
The silk industry provided an opportunity for women to develop leadership skills and to demonstrate their perseverance. They held meetings to organize; they publicized their efforts; they traveled to various fairs to show their work. Among the many speeches they gave on sericulture was one given by Zina D. H. Young in October 1879. This appears to be the first talk given by a woman in the male-dominated Mormon General Conference.
Ever praising their work in the silk industry, Brigham Young asked one woman wearing a silk dress to stand up at a meeting. He observed that she had made the dress herself and congratulated her on it. On another occasion, Joseph F. Smith said of the silk ribbons and shawls he saw at April conference, "This is as it should be—the beauty of the work of their own hands."
Newspapers throughout the territory heralded the new industry, and when Brigham Young started on a trip to southern Utah, he was greeted at Spanish Fork by a group of people carrying a large banner inscribed, "Spanish Fork Silk." The letters were formed of cocoons and the border of raw silk.
In 1868 Brigham Young ordered a cocoonery to be built on Forest Farm where his first mulberry trees had been planted. Completed on November 20, 1868, the cocoonery was 20 feet wide, 100 feet long, and 10 feet high, with a capacity for over 2,000,000 w r orms.
Zina D. H. Young directed the work at the cocoonery the first year and was judged to have been "comparatively very successful." Louis Bertrand, who had immigrated to Salt Lake, ran the cocoonery in 1870. Though he filled the building with 800,000 worms, covering 62 hurdles and requiring 30 bushels of leaves per day, Bertrand, "through mismanagement, made a failure," and was thereafter referred to as "a questionable expert in the silk line."
A Kentuckian named Wimmer took over the cocoonery after Bertrand's failure. He ran the operation for two years, "failing each year, and almost killing the enthusiasm—what little there was left—on the subject." Wimmer was also released, and the cocoonery was empty in 1874 because of the failures. The difficulties were thought to have resulted, in part, from the dampness around the cocoonery and from the fact that the building was made of adobe. Brigham Young momentarily lost interest in sericulture and advertised to give away his eggs and mulberry leaves. Then he turned his attention to a small cocoonery he had ordered built behind the Beehive House, near the Eagle Gate.
George D. Pyper wrote about working at that small cocoonery. Along with five girls of the Young household, he spent thirty-five days in constant attendance upon the worms inside. He and the girls were able to raise "many pounds of first-class cocoons, and sixty-four ounces of the best silk worm eggs."
The big cocoonery was reopened again in 1875 under Ann Dunyon. From eighteen ounces of eggs, she obtained almost 400,000 worms. She reeled some of the silk herself. At the end of the season, she told the Deseret News that silk raising was more successful on a small scale than in a big cocoonery. Brigham Young agreed and urged others to continue their efforts within their own homes.
The small cocoonery remained in operation as a center for egg production until Brigham Young's death in 1877. It was then used as a silk experiment station and a center for information for another ten years. The building was pulled down in 1921.
A reliable cash market for Utah's silk still had not developed and in hopes of finding one, George Watt sent samples of raw silk to two Mormon missionaries in the East. They showed it to silk merchants who pronounced it "very good but rather coarse." Nevertheless, little more is said about that possible market. In another attempt to find a cash market, Louis Bertrand sent eggs to a fancier in France who offered to pay gold for them. Bertrand was never able to get payment for the eggs, and other similar ventures usually failed.
Along with the work in Salt Lake City, silkworms were being raised by Mormon women in Cache County, Fillmore, Gunnison, Mill Creek, Nevada City, Ogden, Pine Canyon, St. George, Santa Clara, Spanish Fork, and various other settlements.
For several years, Spanish Fork was one of the leading centers of silk production in Utah outside of Salt Lake City. The first eggs hatched in Spanish Fork were brought from England by Bishop A. K. Thurber. By July 1870 a cooperative society was set up there, with shares sold at ten dollars each. Some twenty families (women and children) produced sixty ounces of eggs that year. These were valued at three hundred dollars, and a market was found for them in California. During the 1870 season, about fifty families in Spanish Fork engaged in silk culture, "nearly all with good success." The number of worms raised by each family varied from 1,000 to 40,000. To encourage this group, Brigham Young purchased thirty-two ounces of their eggs late in 1871. The Spanish Fork Relief Society made gloves, stockings, sewing silk, and other products out of this silk. Considerable pride was taken in their exhibits at the territorial fairs.
The silk industry began in St. George and some nearby southern Utah communities in 1869 when a notice in the manuscript paper, Cactus, said, "Cuttings can be had at Salt Lake City, and Brother J. E. Johnson has a fine lot of mulberry seed for sale." Caroline Jackson planted a grove of mulberry trees in St. George, and others followed her example. Ultimately the production of silk proved less profitable than other commodities, however, and the silk industry limped along in southern Utah until it died in the state generally, just after the turn of the century.
The people of Ogden were introduced to the idea of raising silk in 1869 when women were advised to set aside land for raising mulberry trees. A committee was named to further the industry, but at that point only a few citizens responded by raising silkworms on their own land.
In Mill Creek Ward, southeast of Salt Lake City, a remarkable success was enjoyed by Margaret White in 1875. She went to Brigham Young's cocoonery where she was given some free eggs and lessons on silk raising once a week. With her eleven-year-old daughter to feed the worms, she raised more than 10,000 worms which spun thirty pounds of cocoons.
THE DESERET SILK ASSOCIATION
The responsibility of the Relief Society for the silk industry was reemphasized in 1875 when Brigham Young again gave Zina D. H. Young the mission of forwarding the silk industry among the women. She began extensive canvassing, criss-crossing the territory to teach the proper method of feeding and caring for silkworms. After several suggestions were made in the Deseret News, an official silk association was formed in June 1875. The Deseret Silk Association had as its object "the diffusion of information on the subject," and "encouraging the raising of cocoons and the reeling of silk here, instead of merely producing and exporting the eggs." Elected officers of the new organization were Zina D. H. Young, president; Anson Call, first vice-president; Mary J. Home, second vicepresident; Lelia Tuckett, secretary; Mary Carter, corresponding secretary; Paul A. Schettler, treasurer; and Alexander C. Pyper, superintendent. Although some of the officers were men, the membership consisted almost solely of women. The association began to gather statistics on the silk business in the territory and to acquire machinery. One old loom was purchased for a hundred dollars and put in working order.
In the meantime, the Relief Society organized silk projects in nearly every one of its one hundred fifty local organizations. As described in the Woman's Exponent, the presidents of every Relief Society unit were
While the Relief Society carried on its projects, the Deseret Silk Association began working to solve some of the industry's problems. In February 1876 the association announced it was prepared to buy cocoons for two dollars a pound with money earned from stock sales. Some twenty-five dollars of the stock money was used to buy a reel on which Susannah Cardon of Logan successfully reeled silk. In June, silk was successfully reeled and twisted by machinery at the old beet sugar factory in the Sugarhouse Ward, and two months later, Zina Young received from England the model of a ribbon-weaving loom and prepared to make a full-sized version of it. Under the auspices of the assocation, Utah women sent a silk display to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and they made an elegant silk fringe to ornament the new St. George Temple.
Zina Young's silk campaign throughout the territory paid off. Some 5,000,000 silkworms spun cocoons in Utah in 1877, twice as many as in 1876. Though Zina devoted hours and hours to silk culture, she wrote to Brigham Young's son Willard that she was not going to let it control her: "I wish the Silk business success but do not intend overdoing for it. The soles [souls] of the children of men are of the greatest importance."
The Deseret Silk Association continued to organize new branches, and its ribbon loom was completed and put to work early in the spring of 1878. In August, Zina announced that all silk raisers should send her the season's silk, and the Association would arrange to have it reeled. Each ward was instructed to send one representative to Salt Lake City to learn to reel silk. That person would return home and train one other person.
During this vigorous period, silk products were being made successfully in Utah. Delinda Robinson of Farmington raised and reeled a "fine specimen" of homemade silk, and Mrs. Dunyon exhibited thirty-six skeins of reeled silk produced at Brigham Young's cocoonery. Silk laces, veils, handkerchiefs, and scarves were worn and carried at the 1877 LDS General Conference. These items were sold at the Woman's Commission House along with sewing silk and floss. Grace Wignall of Payson made a pair of silk gloves, a pair of mittens, a veil, two neckties, and some skeins of spun silk in white, black, blue, purple, maroon, and straw color.
A dress made of Utah silk was completed in April 1877. Silver gray in color, it was spun and woven in Farmington by Nancy A. Clark who donated this forty-five-dollar dress to the fund for building the Salt Lake Temple. It was purchased by a Mrs. Barrett who gave it to Eliza R. Snow, general president of the Relief Society. Miss Snow wore the dress on many social occasions. It was one of a small number of silk dresses made in Utah.
Problems came along with successes. For example, during the summer of 1877 grasshoppers made a raid on Paul Schettler's 4,000 mulberry trees "and completely denuded the branches of their foliage."
During the existence of the Deseret Silk Association, many Utah women tried sericulture for the first time. In southern Utah, Ann Cannon Woodbury learned about silk in 1875 and "entered into it with my whole soul, determined to make a success of it." When two girls came down from Salt Lake City to teach silk reeling, Ann invited them to stay with her and teach her the art. Thereafter, she worked in silk for twenty-five years. Her house and barn were frequently filled with the worms. Although problems were not unusual, Ann had a unique difficulty one season:
When Ann's daughter Eleanor had a baby, a neighbor convinced Eleanor to take a few small worms on a mulberry leaf into her little house. Eleanor did and was surprised when they soon required a square yard of her limited space. Her husband suggested in exasperation that she feed the worms to the chickens.
As a girt in Farmington, Annie Clark Tanner, author of A Mormon Mother, frequently went with other young people to pick mulberry leaves. At first she thought it was a picnic, but soon she realized it was hard work, especially climbing the trees. She wrote, "How we scrambled for the easy job to pick from fallen branches." Even though there was a loom in Farmington, Annie never received the silk dress she wanted for that hard summer's work. She did, however, use some dyed silk skeins for art work. "These we put in suitable frames," she wrote, "so for years the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and 'God Bless our Home' were ever before us."
When the Ogden Relief Society took a survey to find out who would join in the work, they discovered that Mariana Combe Beus, an Italian immigrant, already had an acre of mulberry trees, kept worms, had knit silk Stockings, and had nearly enough silk to weave two silk dresses. Jane S. Richards, president of the Ogden Relief Society, looked at silkworms for the first time and said she would rather wear cotton than handle the worms and wear silk. She overcame those feelings, however, and soon had a thousand worms living with her in her home. Another Ogden woman, Louise Harris, was surprised at how much space the growing worms could occupy.
Many mulberry trees were planted on Ogden streets during this period. Later, when their ripe sticky fruit fell on the sidewalks, some of them were cut down.
THE UTAH SILK ASSOCIATION
The Deseret Silk Association apparently was not as stable an organization as some wished. When an application for money to buy machinery was made to the territorial legislature through the Deseret Silk Association, it was turned down. Upon the urging of Eliza R. Snow, John Taylor decided to authorize the formation of a new organization.
The Utah Silk Association was incorporated with capital stock of $10,000 on January 17, 1880. Its stated purpose was "to encourage silk culture in Utah by disseminating information, distributing silkworm eggs, and acting as a central board for the sale of cocoons and the manufacture of silk." Many local Relief Societies bought shares of stock at ten dollars each. Officers elected were William Jennings, president; Eliza R. Snow, vice-president; A. M. Musser, secretary; and Paul A. Schettler, treasurer. Again, there were male officers, although, in this case, men were not permitted to be members. The exclusion of males from membership was in keeping wdth the view that sericulture was the responsibility of women.
Almost immediately the legislature appropriated $1,500 to help the association buy machinery. The water-powered equipment could reel silk into any strength or thickness and mix silk with cotton in any proportion. The new machinery was installed in a factory completed in August 1880 at the mouth of City Creek Canyon. Many, if not most, of the factory workers were women. Even this mechanization could not make the industry thrive. The City Creek factory operated for ten years and experienced some success, selling a considerable amount of reeled silk and various silk fabrics. Several other silk factories were also in operation in Salt Lake City in the 1880s. In 1890 the City Creek factory closed. Two years later it had reportedly become a "rendezvous for thieves and hard characters," and the city council ordered it demolished.
Despite problems, Utah sericulture in the early 1880s was fairly healthy. A census taken in 1882 by Daniel Graves found 45,727 mulberry trees growing in the territory, eighty-two people engaged in raising silk, 397 pounds of cocoons raised that year (not counting Salt Lake City), four ounces of eggs produced, and twenty ounces of eggs for sale. Graves said his count was not totally accurate, since not everyone had reported. He thought there were twice as many mulberry trees in the territory as reported.
Gov. Caleb West reported to the secretary of the interior in 1886 that a hundred acres of mulberry trees were growing in Utah and that seven silk looms were at work in the city. In 1887 Governor West reported that $1,000 was invested in the Utah silk industry, that ten workers were employed, that ten looms were in operation, and that $5,000 worth of goods had been produced that year. His report did not include work being done in private homes. However, in 1889 the Ogden Standard reported, "The cultivators of the silk worm seem to have fallen off considerably during the past three years. A few years ago nearly every family in town had their mulberry trees and their cocoon spinners." Daniel Graves said machinery was lying idle and the industry was "almost at a stand still." The next real revival of silk activity was in 1896.
UTAH SILK REACHES OUTSIDERS
Although the Utah silk industry basically lived and died inside the Great Basin, its existence was made known to outsiders in several interesting exchanges in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wdfe visited Utah. Mrs. Hayes was presented with an elegant white collarette made of Utah silk by Relief Society members. In May 1895 the Utah Silk Association presented a silk gown to Susan B. Anthony for her eightieth birthday when she presided at the Intermountain Woman's Suffrage Convention in Salt Lake City. Ms. Anthony congratulated the women on their efforts in silk culture and said the dress was "made by women, too, who stand on a plane of perfect equality of political rights and privileges with the men of their state." This was in reference to Utah women having the vote.
The most dramatic contact of Utah silk with the outside world occurred at the World's Fair of 1892. The Deseret News reported that the Utah silk exhibit
One of the women who worked at the exhibit was Elise T. Forsgren of Brigham City. She was called by the LDS General Authorities on a four-month mission to the World's Fair, and she won a gold medal for the state for her reeling. The exhibit included a United States flag made from silk grown and woven in Provo. Also shown were a pair of silk portieres embroidered with a sego lily, the floral emblem of Utah. The women of Davis County contributed seven pieces of furniture for the ladies' reception room in the Utah building. The pieces were upholstered in sage green home-made silk brocaded with wild sage. The tops of the windows in the reception room were "festooned very artistically with cocoons."
The Utah silk exhibit received medals and diplomas from the W'orld's Fair departments of manufacture and agriculture. The Woman's Exponent reported that the exhibit was received with surprise, since no one suspected so much silk was being raised in Utah. As a result of the fair, Emmeline B. Wells was asked to speak on sericulture to the National Council of Women. Utah silk was also exhibited at the territorial fair in October 1894 and at the cotton exposition of 1895 in Atlanta, Georgia.
THE UTAH SILK COMMISSION
The Utah Silk Commission was established in 1896. Zina D. H. Young was elected as the commission's president, with the following people as members: Isabella E. Bennett, Margaret A. Caine, Ann C. Woodbury, and Mary A. Cazier. At the same time, "An Act for the Establishment of Sericulture" was passed by the state legislature. The main feature of the act was a bonus of twenty-five cents per pound for cocoons produced in the state. Because bounty payments to individuals and organizations might reach as much as $2,000 per year, production once more began in earnest. Reeling classes were held, more mulberry trees were planted, and the incorporation of local silk associations was renewed. Many silk items were produced, including clothing used in Mormon temple ceremonies.
While more non-Mormons were moving into the state by this time, sericulture was still tied to the Mormon church. This is demonstrated in the bylaws of the Willard Co-operative Sera-culture Society:
In Ogden a survey of mulberry trees was conducted. People who wanted eggs were given them free by the state and urged to hatch them when the leaves would be budding. In Salt Lake City the Ladies Republican Club formed a class in sericulture, raised a hundred pounds of cocoons, and received $25 in bounty. They calculated that $482 of expenses in the silk industry would bring them $900. The Utah Silk Commission's state prize for the best silkworms in 1897 was awarded to Ellen M. Humphrey of Sevier County, who reported:
The next year Margaret Caine organized an exhibit of $10,000 worth of Utah silk products for the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha. The following year she presented a paper on silk culture at the International Council of Women held in London.
Sixteen-year-old Isabell C. Brunson of Millard County was one of the many persons who had disheartening experiences with sericulture. As a member of a family with fifteen children, she took up worm raising "expecting to earn enough money to supply my daily needs and eventually make myself independent. . . . earning a little for my very own was a glorious thought to me." She fed one thousand worms three times a day all summer, never varying by fifteen minutes from the proper feeding times: 6 A.M., 12 noon, and 6 P.M. Her efforts resulted in a fifty-pound flour sack filled with cocoons. Unable to find a market for her cocoons, she finally destroyed them.
Under the bounty system, the cocoon crop did grow. In 1897 and 1898, 4,769 pounds of cocoons were raised. That figure rose to 7,493 pounds of cocoons in 1899 and 1900, a crop that would have been larger had it not been for a salt storm in Box Elder County that destroyed most of the crop near the last moult. The crop went down to 6,479 pounds in 1901-2. Again, the crop would have been larger, but an outbreak of smallpox occurred, requiring fumigation in many homes where worms were growing. In 1903-4, the crop grew to 8,647 pounds. So, the cocoon crop had nearly doubled in seven years. Bounty money was paid to persons in Box Elder, Cache, Davis, Emery, Grand, Kane, Salt Lake, Sanpete, Sevier, Tooele, Utah, Washington, Wayne, and Weber counties.
Although the industry obviously made progress, the financial burden of the bounty was judged too heavy by the legislators and was discontinued in 1905. In several areas, such as Utah County, the industry struggled on even after the bounty stopped. Silkworms continued to spin in Utah County until 1906 when Stake President David John "proposed that the Silk Association be dissolved as silk could be more reasonably purchased from China and Japan and from the East."
A dedicated few sericulturists around the state held on in pockets that died out one by one. A woman at Rockville, Utah, stood off workmen with a rifle to prevent them from cutting down the eight mulberry trees fronting her property when they were trying to widen the road to Zion's Canyon in 1904. Slowly the munching stopped, however, and rooms dedicated to silkworms and silk reeling were filled once again with beds and washstands.
CONCLUSION
The silk industry appears to have been a mixed blessing for Mormon women. They made little money at it and were burdened with the kind of menial work that so often fell to women. Yet, they demonstrated resourcefulness and perseverance in a task that they struggled with for forty-five years. They used their own organization, the Relief Society, effectively, and they found a strengthened sisterhood in their effort.
Part of the answer to the decline of the silk industry lies in the encroachment of the outside world into the Great Basin. The railroad arrived in 1869, the end of cooperative economics was signaled in 1890, and Utah became a state in 1896. Subsequently, Mormonism's communitarian economy could not remain unchallenged and isolated as it had been before. The turn of the century brought Utah closer to the rest of the United States, and that had an impact on the Mormon ability to maintain industries like sericulture.
Travelers through Utah can still observe groves of mulberry trees and sidewalks covered with rotting sticky-sweet mulberries. Some mothers still make jam or stew from the fruit, and some youngsters still get sick from eating too many of the berries. At conference time today, inevitably some Mormon women sit on the tabernacle benches dressed in silk dresses and blouses. They listen to the men speak, unaware of the nibbling worms that manufactured their silk and disturbed the dreams of sisters from another era.
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