Historically, the United States has never been a big country in mulberry sericulture, and many people don't even know that the United States can also grow mulberry and silkworms. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

However, if you compare the map of China and the United States, you can find that China and the United States are both located in the northern hemisphere, and most of the regions are the same in dimension, so there is no reason why you can find a suitable area for the growth of silkworms in China, but you can't find a place with a suitable climate in the United States.

In fact, the United States can not only grow mulberry and silkworms, but also have a suitable climate and soil for the growth of high-quality silkworms.

In fact, as early as the beginning of the 17th century, the British colonizers brought silkworms to the United States, and the Mulberry silkworm industry was formed in Georgia and Lena in South Cairo in the 18th century.

However, with the independence of the United States, the tobacco industry and cotton cultivation flourished, resulting in the gradual disappearance of the labor-intensive mulberry industry on the North American continent.

In the late 18th century, with the support and rewards of the U.S. government, the silkworm fever re-emerged in the United States. In 1825, three-quarters of households in Mansfield were engaged in silkworm farming, and an average nursery in Hartford sold 300,000 mulberry seedlings a year. Driven by this speculative silkworm craze unique to the United States, mulberry seedling cultivation has emerged in the surrounding states of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

However, this speculative trend is not benign, and will inevitably lead to the phenomenon of mixed good and bad, and even a large number of mulberry trees that are not suitable for raising silkworms are planted, and the final silk produced is of poor quality.

Eventually, under the blow of the mulberry epidemic in the 1840s, the silkworm fever caused by the speculative boom ebbed, and this silkworm fever re-emerged, only a dozen years later, and the location was changed to California.

Louis Provence, a horticulturist from France, immigrated to California in 1854 and worked in a mulberry nursery in New York during the Mulberry Fever. After immigrating to California, Louis believed that the climate in California was very suitable for the growth of silkworms, and he successfully introduced three kinds of mulberry trees in California, white mulberry, rusan and Italian mulberry, which were found to be the most suitable for California's climatic conditions.

In 1867 he published the California Silk Farmer's Handbook, in which he praised the climatic conditions of California, saying, "We have the best silk-producing land in the world; We have the pure air that silkworms need; The sericulture season is sunny from June to October; The sun is abundant, and the mulberry leaves grow luxuriantly".

Louis's idea of developing silkworm farming in California was still supported by many people, and a banker Henry funded him so that Louis successfully introduced a batch of silkworm seeds from France in 1860, but the silkworm seeds imported from China could not hatch for three consecutive years, which made Louis feel that Chinese silkworms may not be suitable for the climate of California, resulting in the unsuccessful introduction of Chinese silkworms.

Louis's outreach campaign was a success in the first few years.

Because of the outbreak of silkworm microparticle disease in Europe, the silkworm eggs in Europe carry the virus, so a large number of silkworm eggs are imported from other regions, and the silkworm eggs without the virus in California have become bestsellers. At the same time, the government is worried that the end of the gold rush will lead to a large loss of immigrants from California, and it also hopes to develop the sericulture industry. Beginning in 1862, the California government gave high subsidies to the silkworm industry, with a reward of $250 for every 5,000 mulberry trees planted and $300 for every 100,000 cocoons produced.

Government subsidies have greatly spurred the cultivation of mulberry silkworms in California, and 4 million mulberry trees have been planted in California in ten years, but it has also stimulated a wave of speculation, and a large number of mulberry species that are not suitable for silkworm breeding have been planted to defraud the government of subsidies.

But this industry can be regarded as growing up in California, and with the silkworm disease in Europe, California sericulture is very profitable, and a hectare of silkworms can get a profit of 2,000 US dollars or even more.

But California's mulberry sericulture has a drawback, which is that it mainly exports silkworm seeds, which are higher-value products, rather than silk and silk, which are the interrupted products of the mulberry sericulture itself. The profits were so lucrative that it was because of the European silkworm epidemic, not because California had really cultivated the advantages of silkworm farming.

Silkworm seed orders from Europe are enough for the California silkworm industry to digest, and even the supply exceeds demand. Italy claims that it will have to import an additional $8 million a year from Japan to meet the requirements.

This kind of abnormal silkworm fever, which is oriented to silkworm seed production and mulberry planting, obviously cannot last. In 1869, the government eliminated the subsidy, and the enthusiasm for mulberry cultivation in California began to cool. After the Franco-Prussian War, France began to restore sericulture, and strict disinfection and microscopic examination of female moths to control silkworm disease were promoted, and this method was also applied in Italy, and California's silkworm exports to Europe began to be reduced.

Historically, after the 1880s, the silkworm industry in California stagnated, and even after the development of the silk industry in the eastern United States, it mainly imported raw silk raw materials from China and Japan for production, rather than using raw silk raw materials produced in the country.

The United States does not lack excellent climatic conditions and land suitable for growing mulberry and silkworms, and does not lack scientific technology and high-quality silkworm seeds.

In fact, the most important reason is the problem of manpower, especially in California, where manpower is particularly lacking, and most of the limited human resources have entered the mining industry with better wages and little specialized skills, rather than investing in tedious technical work to raise silkworms.

Even if the pioneer of California's silkworm industry, horticulturist Louis believes that California's warm climate does not require complex equipment, does not need to build special houses, only needs to place silkworm seeds in the sun without incubation equipment to hatch, and the demand for labor is only one-eighth of that in Europe, but California still cannot provide sufficient labor, because California's manpower is really not even one-eighth of Europe's.

Lewis once believed that only the problem of labor and labor costs could be solved by employing large numbers of Chinese immigrants, and that silk reeling was an industry that could not completely replace skilled workers with machines, and that there were millions of skilled silk reeling women in China who could earn only 5 to 10 cents a day, while in California they could earn 75 cents or more. Native Americans in California cannot accept a salary of less than $1, and even if they are paid this salary, it will not prevent them from incurring a large amount of waste silk in production due to their unfamiliar technology.

Historically, Louis's vision was not realized, and California was unable to bring in a large number of silk reeling workers, because even if a large number of Chinese workers entered California, ninety percent of them were single men, and most of the women they talked about were female prostitutes who were illegally trafficked by gang members.

But in this history, due to the intervention of the Daming Labor Export Company, the way of Chinese immigration to California has changed, the coolie trade was abolished early, and with the efforts of these years, the number of immigrants entering California through the labor export company finally reached 100,000, and these immigrants are all family immigrants, at least a small family of one man and one woman, or a family of three, so there are forty or fifty thousand adult women among the Chinese immigrants in California.

So history changed, and the California silkworm fever was taken over by an influx of Chinese women before the tide ebbed in 1880.

But at first, the Chinese did not enter this industry that they were very familiar with, because the immigrants who poured here at the beginning came for the 100 acres of rice fields provided by the labor company. As early as 10 years ago, the labor company occupied a large amount of wasteland in the delta area where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers were still flooded at that time, and then the labor company invested heavily in more than two years of construction to build a berm, turning these swamps and low-lying lands into reclaimable arable land, and the amount was as high as 2 million acres.

Later, the Daming Labor Export Company, using this huge land, continued to attract landless farmers from China, and rented these lands to Daming families who were willing to come to cultivate at a low rent of one tael of silver a year, resulting in the introduction of 20,000 Daming families in just a few years.

After these Daming immigrants came to the California region, they combined the agricultural technology they had mastered for thousands of years with the fertile land, and soon showed the Americans what is the best agricultural national skill, first in the field of Chinese natural skills, vegetable cultivation, monopolized the California market. It went on to become California's largest producer of fruit and grain.

However, whether it is the production of vegetables or fruits, it is a labor-intensive, and the land-intensive industry, even the most land-intensive grain production, cannot allow a family to fully utilize a hundred acres of land.

At the beginning, the labor company leased 100 acres of land to each family, hoping to increase the attraction of the Ming people, and at the same time, it also hoped to let the Ming immigrants occupy the land as soon as possible, so as to prevent the covetousness of the California rogue capitalists who were increasingly greedy for the land assets of the labor company at that time.

As a result, these families have large tracts of land at a very low cost, which they cannot use at all, and it is very uncomfortable for farmers to leave the land in ruin. The common people, who are still very simple, while working hard to cultivate as much land as possible, call friends and want to share their benefits with their relatives. So they recruited their clansmen, fellow villagers and friends from the country, and shared the land they could not grow with their relatives and friends. Of course, there are also new immigrants who quietly sublease to themselves, and the labor companies turn a blind eye to this, which encourages this practice.

As a result, within ten years, the labor company recruited 100,000 families from Daming.

In the beginning, everyone focused on food cultivation and vegetable and fruit production, but California's sparse population, with a total population of just over 700,000, made it impossible to consume too many agricultural products.

In addition, after the economic crisis in 1873, the people of the Ming Dynasty in the rich areas of the Pearl River Delta also began to immigrate, and many of them were silkworm farmers, after these people came to California, they found that California also had a silkworm industry, and some housewives began to use their homes to raise silkworms.

Mulberry sericulture began to transfer from the hands of white people in California to the local Chinese, and soon became accustomed to women who stayed at home and even had small feet, so they made mulberry sericulture a huge industry in the California Delta.

California's mulberry sericulture has not only been able to meet the export of silkworm seeds, but has also begun to have surplus cocoons that do not need to be hatched and bred, but are reeled. But in the past two years, it was only those women who reeled silk by hand at home, and when the scale of silkworms became larger and larger, a businessman finally saw a business opportunity and decided to introduce a very mature machine silk reeling industry from Daming.

No one expected that a businessman's profit-making move would completely change the trajectory of Chinese immigrants. Because of the large demand for silkworm cocoons for machine silk reeling, the local people have been promoted to expand the mulberry planting area and the scale of silkworm raising. Mulberry planting, in turn, created a greater demand for labor and attracted more immigrants.

Originally, after the labor export company's 2 million acres of land were used up, they were worried that they would be weak in attracting family immigrants, but after the Ming merchants introduced the silk reeling industry, it greatly promoted the development of the local mulberry sericulture.

Mulberry sericulture is a labor-intensive industry, and the reason why China and Japan have always had an advantage in the silk reeling industry in history is because both countries have a surplus of labor. China's mulberry sericulture is best developed in the Jiangnan region and the Pearl River Delta region, in addition to the climatic conditions, the most important thing is that these areas are the most densely populated.

Grain cultivation is a labor-intensive industry, rice cultivation is more labor-intensive than wheat cultivation, and mulberry sericulture is three times more labor-intensive than rice cultivation.

If wheat is planted extensively and without intensive cultivation, a strong laborer can cultivate 30 acres of land, and the labor company's 2 million acres of land in California can attract a maximum of 70,000 or 80,000 peasants, including their families, and if they are rice, a person can cultivate a maximum of 10 acres, which can attract 200,000 families and kill 450,000 people, but if it is silkworms, it is possible to attract more than 1 million people.

Compared with grain production, taking the most delicate mulberry fish pond in the Pearl River Delta as an example, digging the pond mud to fertilize the fields and raising fish every year are heavy manual labor, and the work of planting mulberry on the pond base and picking mulberry leaves is also carried out by men. Men have to dig ponds, raise fish, dig pond mud, plant mulberries, pick leaves, and so on, all of which are very labor-intensive. Women raise silkworms, reel silk, and weave thick, while men plough and weave. On average, a family only manages three to five acres of land at most.

In this way, 2 million acres of land can attract more than 400,000 families, and it is not difficult to exceed a million people.

If the climate is formed, the silk reeling industry will develop, and the factory will reel and weave thickly, which will be more attractive to labor.

The labor export company noticed this change for the first time, and found that after the immigrants from the Pearl River Delta region brought, they began to dig the low-lying land that was usually abandoned into ponds, and planted mulberry and silkworms on the pond base, and then they began to recruit more relatives and friends on their own, because digging ponds, raising fish, and planting mulberry This mulberry fish pond model is not a production method that can be carried out by a family, but a production mode rooted in the clan organization of China's rural society. Even when the Pearl River Delta region developed mulberry fish ponds, the conditions were formed only after the government came forward to organize labor to strengthen the river embankment.

When they saw hope of attracting more immigrants, labor companies immediately took the government's place, organized labor, strengthened embankments on a large scale, built new canals, and drew water from the abundant Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers to help immigrants develop the mulberry fishpond industry.

As a result, the mulberry fishponds in the Pearl River Delta region soon developed in the California Delta region, and the demand for labor in the mulberry fishpond industry attracted more Ming immigrants, which eventually led to the outbreak of Ming immigrants to California after 1873.

However, the development of mulberry sericulture in California cannot be without limits, in just three years, the local raw silk market is saturated, there are only a few local German immigrants to open silk weaving factories, there is not much raw silk consumption, even if the local Chinese immigrants are encouraged to set up weaving factories, there are no conditions, because California has such a small population, a few silk factories have met the market.

But labor companies found that the silk weaving industry in the eastern United States was very developed, and customs data showed that more than 1,000 tons of raw silk were imported each year, worth up to 10 million US dollars. However, the raw silk imported from the United States mainly comes from China, Japan and Italy. If California's raw silk can be transported to the eastern United States to occupy this huge market, there is still room for further expansion of California's raw silk production scale.

Expanded production of raw silk will attract more immigrants, but transporting raw silk from California to the eastern United States would require a circumnavigation of South America from the Pacific Ocean, which will take more time and freight than shipping from China to the eastern United States, let alone European raw silk.

Unless the railroad connecting the east and west can be built, the labor export company believes that California's raw silk industry has come to an end, and when the agricultural product market is saturated and the silkworm industry is saturated, the labor export company believes that the immigration boom in Daming has basically come to an end.

Based on this judgment, Wu Chongyao, director of the foreign affairs department who personally manages the labor export company, suggested that the labor export company should fund the construction of the troubled Pacific Railway, and strive to open up this super railway that Americans dream of within two or three years.

After the construction of the Pacific Railway, it is bound to greatly reduce the cost of immigrating from the eastern part of the United States to the west, and then there will inevitably be a large number of poor European immigrants who will move from the eastern part of the United States to the western part of the United States to compete with the Ming immigrants for living space.

Therefore, Zhu Jinglun tried his best to obstruct the construction of the Pacific Railroad, and finally before the outbreak of the financial crisis in the United States in 1873, the railway was never built, because of this economic crisis, mainly caused by the speculation of the American railroad, the flashpoint was the 100 million dollar bond issued by the Northern Pacific Railroad, which dragged down the American financial giant Jay Cook Company, causing thousands of American companies to go bankrupt.

Almost from the outbreak of the crisis in 1873, the construction of American railroads came to a standstill, and the Pacific Railroad project also fell into an embarrassing situation.

Not only the Pacific Railroad project was suspended, but most of the railroads under construction in the United States were either bankrupt or abandoned, and there are very few railroads in the United States that are operating normally.

As a result of Zhu Jinglun's efforts to fight against rogue capitalists like Stanford, he obstructed the railway, but now Wu Chongyao wants the labor company to help build the railway, which really makes Zhu Jinglun very entangled.

However, Wu Chongyao's reason is also very sufficient, this east-west railway connection in the United States can indeed promote the development of California's industry, and the development of California's economy is bound to require more labor, immigrants from the eastern United States can enter here, and immigrants from the Ming Dynasty can also enter here.

If the Ming immigrants lose the motivation to immigrate because they are afraid of the anti-Chinese sentiment of the white people, it is obviously an act of choking and abandoning food.

Zhu Jinglun can rebuild this railway that he has worked hard to fight for no reason, he is really awkward, and after carefully weighing the pros and cons, Zhu Jinglun still decided to fund and continue to promote the construction of this railway, but he must get enough benefits in the construction of this railway.

Zhu Jinglun's plan is to buy a large number of shares of this railway, and then penetrate him, the stock price will inevitably skyrocket, and then sell it out to make a profit.