THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK 
_— 
It was being run by great-great-grandsons. 
It had given Great Britain two-thirds of her 
exports. It had been the chief means of 
support of the British nation. It had bought 
most of our food. No wonder it was non- 
progressive. It had been successful, on its 
old lines, for more than 125 years. 
This vast cotton trade is now in trouble. 
It has lost its control of foreign markets. 
Other nations can produce the cheaper lines 
at a lower cost. England has still 40 per 
cent. of the spindles and 29 per cent. of the 
looms, but they are not busy. We still 
have 2,000 firms of cotton exporters, but not 
many of them made a net profit in 192%. 
At first, the cotton men regarded Artificial 
Silk as an upstart and a dangerous competitor. 
They scoffed at it. But in a few years they 
looked at the figures and stopped scoffing. 
They began to use it in their mills. The 
more they used it, the more they increased 
their sales. In 1927, American cotton mills 
used 23,000,000 lbs. of it, an increase of 
50 per cent . 
It has been found that Lancashire cotton 
looms can be adapted to weave Artificial 
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