Wheeling Silk Manufactory, 1849

-from The Daily Wheeling Gazette, June 4, 1849, p. 2
 

WHEELING SILK MANUFACTORY.

We have been examining the stock of silk goods manufactured from the cocoons, at the Wheeling Silk Manufactory of JOHN W. GILL, Esq. and are really surprised to find that goods so beautiful in texture and color are produced in Wheeling, or, indeed, any where in the United States. In their texture, particularly, we think them superior to most imported articles of the same sort, certainly so far as durability is concerned. Mr. Gill engaged in his experiment of manufacturing silk some years ago, and has pushed it forward at a considerable loss until the present year, but with a patriotic determination to make it succeed if success was possible. This determination his ample private fortune has enable him to carry out, and now that protection to American Labor and the capital used in giving it employment in such enterprises, has a fair chance of being made adequate to the attainment of the object for which the friends of the Protection System design it, and permanent for some years, at least, we hope that he may very soon realize a full return from investments, in addition to the reputation he has already won, of being one of the first, if not the very first, to establish the manufacture of the finer silk fabrics in the United States.

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