St. George Visitation, April 9,2005
Utah Silk

Most Worshipful Grand Master Ridge, Most Worshipful Past Grand Masters, Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master and Grand Wardens, Worshipful Grand Lodge Officers, Worshipful Past Masters, Worshipful Masters, Wardens, Brethren, and Ladies. My talk this evening is entitled “Utah Silk.” My information source is the St. George Temple Visitors Center Web Page. But first I want to set the stage for this talk. About thirty years ago a TV ad touting a nasal decongestant used the intro phrase “Take your sinuses to Arizona.” The implication here was that if you had nasal congestion due to allergies, etc., use of this nasal decongestant was as good as moving to Arizona to be rid of the cause of allergies. As you well know, most of the people that flocked to Arizona came from back east. The term back east comes from that well known coordinate system: up north, down south, out west, and back east. There were many things about back east that they missed in their new home. One of the most noticeable things they missed was their trees, Arizona being a rather barren land. And so as time went on, they busily planted the trees they were used to having near their homes. About twenty years later, these trees came into full maturity and all was well - - - except that they noticed that they began to have allergies again. Now since they were already in Arizona, they couldn’t move somewhere else any more. They had moved the problem from back east to Arizona, because of their longing for familiar things, and were now forced to use the nasal decongestants that those twenty year old ads featured.

I mention this Arizona story because the Utah Pioneers had some similar experiences. Most of them also came from back east and missed many of the niceties they had abandoned when they began their trek out west. And so in addition to their need for fabric of any kind, they longed for a fabric like silk for dresses, shawls, and scarves. Brigham Young thought that silk would not only be a useful fabric for his followers but could also become a money generating export. After all, his philosophy was that if you can’t afford to import it, you have to manufacture it yourself. Some of his followers from the Midwest and New England had experience in producing silk and a few had brought mulberry seeds with them, mulberry leaves being the staple of the silkworm diet. In 1855, Brigham Young imported additional mulberry seedlings from France and planted them on his Forest Dale Farm. After the seeds had become trees that produced mulberry leaves, he imported silk worm eggs from France and began a campaign to have Utah women get into the silk raising business. In 1866 he planted an additional 11,340 seedlings, many of them in St. George, site of his winter home. Silk worm eggs were introduced to Washington County in 1871.

Do you realize how difficult is to make silk? Let me describe the process for you. Silkworm eggs are about the size of a pinhead and must be stored in rooms like cellars cooled to 50 degrees or so during the winter. After mulberry leaves appear in late spring, the silk worm eggs are brought out of storage and placed on wooden trays to hatch. However, these trays must be located in a room kept at a temperature between 75 and 80 degrees. Many women took to wearing bags of silk worm eggs around their neck to ensure that the constant temperature needed for hatching was achieved. For the next 40 days after hatching, these silk worms eat mulberry leaves around the clock, moulting about every ten days, growing from a length of about 1.8 inches to a length of three inches each, and expanding from a diameter as thin as thread to that of larger than a pencil. So you must plan ahead to allow for this growth. Not only that, but you must also burn the droppings from the worms to prevent disease. When the silk worms reach three inches in length, they begin to spin their cocoon. In 48 hours they extrude 1000 to 1300 yards of silken fiber to form their cocoon. Here’s a fact to put things in perspective for you: one ounce of silk worm eggs produces 160 pounds of cocoons. I won’t go into detail on how you get the silk out of the cocoons, but suffice it to say that multiple cocoons are required to produce a single strand of silk thread the diameter of human hair. Most silk growers could not afford separate storage rooms for their silk worms and their barns were not adequately insulated to maintain the 75 to 80 degree temperature required, so they used a room in their house instead. Talk about dedication, these women really wanted their silk.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, what began as a small effort by individuals expanded to a large-scale cooperative effort when the Deseret Silk Association was formed on June 15, 1875. With support from the Relief Society, women throughout the state learned the art of silk production. As silk production expanded, the territorial legislature formed the Utah Silk Association in 1880 and funded the purchase of reeling machinery for a factory at the mouth of City Creek Canyon. Stock in the association sold for $10 per share. In 1886 the territorial legislature sought to incentivize the silk industry by providing a 25 cents-per-pound bonus for cocoons. The Silk Association oversaw bonus payments. After that, Utah silk was sold in California and back east and a display of dresses, shawls, and scarves was exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892. Elise T. Forsgren from Brigham City spent four months at the fair demonstrating the art of silk making. In 1895, Emmeline B. Wells, editor of the ‘Woman’s Exponent,’ presented a paper on Utah silk making to the National Council of Women. Susan B. Anthony was presented with a hand made black silk dress by the women of Utah on her 80th birthday.

Silk production never did reach the hoped-for export profits, however. Technology and changing times eventually got in the way of an essentially manual operation. After the transcontinental railroad was completed in May of 1869, all sorts of commodities became available at affordable prices, and the self-sufficient necessity for Utah citizens eased. Finer Oriental silk became available at lower prices than Utah could match. Furthermore, by the turn of the century, Utah women were less inclined to participate in the hard and tedious work of silk making. Thus, the great Utah silk making experiment came to a formal close 50 years after it began when the state legislature ceased funding for the Utah Silk Association in 1905. The legacy lives on, however; the mulberry trees from the great silk making experiment continue to provide welcome shade from the harsh St. George summer weather.

I thank you for your kind attention.