THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK 
a book and sell for 12s.,” says Roger W. 
Babson, speaking of the future development 
of Artificial Silk. This is now only an idea. 
But in five years it may be a fact. 
Clothing has evolved. For hundreds of 
thousands of years, the human race wore 
bark and feathers and skins. Then they wore 
homespun wool. Then linen came in, for the 
rich only. Then came cotton and gave the 
world cheap clothes. Silk was only for the 
rich few. And now comes Artificial Silk, for 
rich and poor alike, with infinite possibilities 
such as no other textile has ever had. 
It is now known that Artificial Silk will 
create a boon in the chemical trades. It has 
given the chemical companies an unexpected 
new customer, needing thousands of tons of 
chemicals a year. 
It will create a boom in the making of 
textile machinery as well. New types of 
machines are now wanted. Many that are 
now in use are makeshifts, adapted from 
cotton mills. This new yarn, that can be 
spun in two-mile lengths, requires new ma- 
chines for the weaving of it. It offers a 
great opportunity for inventors—for the Ark- 
ITA