g. There are a great many qualities and kinds of thread
and each one has to be specified."

Pierre opened his eyes.

"Organzine, for example, is used for the warp of woven silk materials
and is generally spun from the best quality raw silk, the threads being
firm and strong. Tram, on the other hand, is silk of a second grade and
is composed of a greater number of fibres. Many of the mills
manufacturing woven silks prefer not to own throwing mills. Often their
plants are in large cities where land is expensive and they must
economize space; or the manufacturers estimate that they can get thread
thrown for them cheaper than they can do it themselves. Anyway, they
either send their own raw silk here to be thrown according to certain
specifications, or they tell us to get the raw silk ourselves and throw
it into the varieties required. If the firm sends its own silk it comes
to the throwster in bulk with an order to throw a certain proportion of
it into organzine of so many threads and twists; and the rest into tram
of specified size, the price being computed by the pound."

"I understand."

"The throwsting of silk is a great test of the reeling. If the reeling
has been well done, and the size of the strand is uniform, we have no
trouble; but if the reeling has been poor, and the gum not thoroughly
soaked out of the filament, the threads will snarl and break when they
are put on the machines. Frequently there is great loss from poorly
reeled cocoons, as I think I told you. And you must keep in mind that
the cocoon gives us two kinds of silk thread--the reeled silk, which is
of the best quality and is the continuous filament wound from the cocoon
requiring no textile machinery to prepare its fibres; and the spun silk,
which is made from the loose floss taken off before the cocoon is
reeled, or comes from cocoons that were too imperfect to be wound off by
the reelers. The latter variety must be treated much as are the fibres
from the cotton plant, or those of sheep's wool. By that I mean that the
short lengths have to be twisted and spun together before they can be
woven on a loom. Do you see the difference?"

Pierre nodded.

"Reeled silk comes direct from the cocoon, leaving the filatures on
spools, as you saw when you were here before. After that it is brought
to these mills and wound over into hanks or skeins of a specified
length--usually from 333 to 500 yards. The foreman told me that long ago
they had to employ o