Meisen Maru (Silk Circle)

Silk is amazing stuff. I read somewhere that the Chinese have been making silk for over 5,000 years. I have trouble imagining how the idea must first have occurred to them. To make silk, you have to kill the silkworm before it emerges from its cocoon. If you don’t, the worm chews a hole on the way out. Then you can’t unravel the cocoon in one continuous strand. Imported silk has been found with mummies entombed a thousand years before Christ walked the earth. During the 1800’s, when women in Great Britain and the United States wished to protest slavery, they wore silk instead of slave-produced cotton. I wonder if they had any idea (or even if they cared) whether the workers producing silk were treated ethically or not. The same question nags at me when I see goods for sale labeled “Free Trade.” How do I know my purchase will actually help the people who need it most?