SILK STOCKINGS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2081, 24 January 1920, Page 4

SILK STOCKINGS.

Bolne interesting details concerning silk stockings, real and artificial, are given in the Adelaide Observer, as follows: —“Madam, watch your. Stockings!” This, it seems, is a most necessary caution to wearers 'of some kinds of artificial silk hose, A perfectly appalling thing happened to a group of beautiful mannequins taking part in a French fete; there was a sudden very heavy ■shower-, and the mannequins got a thorough soaking. They had to retire hurriedly, because their apparently silk stockings dissolved in the rain, and sank about their ankles in a mess of pasty colour. The socalled “silk” stockings were produced from wood pulp, hence the disaster. And would you believe it? The art of making that self-same artificial silk is making such tremendous way that it threatens to lake the market from that patient, hard-working, creepy-crawly, pale grey thing, the silkworm, dear to the heart of every small schoolboy who can raise a cardboard box. worry a neighbour for mulberry .leaves, and wheedle threepence out of dad with which to buy a dozen specs that eventually become silkworms, that • being the market price in the schoolboy world. Can you bear to hear that the fad of wearing .something Ilia I looks like silk stockings has brought Ibis about, and so widespread is the craze for silk stockingwear, in Ihe fiscal year of .1919, 15,900,000 pairs of stockings manufactured from artificial silk were exported from the United States. Think of that! And to add insult to injury, the artificial silk manufacturers exported lo every part of the world, and actually invaded Hit* countries in which natural silk is produced —China, Japan, and Italy, (lie chief silk-producing countries of the world. Poor little silkworm, its rival seems to be a material easy (u produce. An American magazine tells us that : “The process by which the forests are turned into silk stockings is a, comparatively .simple one. Wood pulp is treated with caustic soda to form a sodium cellulose, and then dissolved in carbon bisulphides. The product, alkali-ccliulose-xaulhate, is a viscous solution popularly called “viscose,” and. after being filtered and allowed to ripen by standing, is forced through capillary tubes into a liquid which solidities the threads, which arc, whim completed, similar in appearance,' dimension, and chemical qualities to the fibre produced by the silkworm. This silk fibre or thread is used in the precise manner in mamifaclnring as arc the threads ))reduced ‘by the silkworm, which arc of similar- composition and characteristics. The artificial product lias in fact a greater brilliancy, being more lustrous than natural silk, hut a somewhat harsher feeling. Some of the early shortcomings of I he artificial product, lack of strength and elasticity, have been considerably lessened, and these artificial silks are now used in fabrics for both warp and tilling threads, for hosiery, dress I rimming, upholsteries, and rugs, also taking Ihe place of real silk for insulating electric wire and making durable mantles for incandescent lights/’