Cascami Seta, the sorting

Sorting was a women's department, and an older women's department in particular: fingers worn out by the spinning frames were 'recycled' here, where speed did not matter but the ability to tell silk grades apart by eye did.

Work never restores you, because it is never carried out in your own rhythm: it must always conform to an external rhythm, that of the machine or that of the boss.

From the cascame — the silk-mill's waste — 30-40% of usable silk by weight was still recovered: this was the industry's central economic move — making the first round's discard yield again.