Japan's great silk business is in a very bad way. More than one-third of Japan's farming families (6,000,000 people) make part of their living by raising mulberry trees, feeding the leaves to silkworms, selling the cocoons that the worms spin out of their lower jaws. Several hundred thousand little Japanese girls earn their living and their marriage dowries in the filatures where the silken cocoons are un reeled. Until last summer the U.S. bought 90% of Japan's raw silk exports, amounting in 1940 to $150,311,000. Then the freezing of Japanese credits in the U.S. virtually stopped the trade.
Last week Japan offered...
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