NETTLE-CLOTH.
Some little time ago, when one of our most distinguished botanists was asked his opinion about the desirability of forming a collection of all the vegetable substances which are or have been used in medicine both by civilised and savage races, he replied that it would take a large building to hold it. Although a series of fibre-yielding plants would be much less in number, the list would still be a long one, provided we knew all those in use by savage tribes. Very few of these, however, are extensively used for clothing. Putting aside wool and silk, which are animal products, we have only cotton and flax of prime importance. Hemp of fine quality is largely grown in Italy, and there woven into cloth for ordinary purposes; but as yet this use of hemp in other civilised countries appears to be limited, though the fibre is everywhere employed for cordage. With the exception of jute, which is chiefly made into coarse fabrics, all other vegetable fibres believed to be suitable for important textile industries may be said to be as yet only on their trial. But a number—such as the so-called New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), Manila hemp (Musa textilis), pine-apple (Bromelia ananas), American aloe (Agave Americana), and some yielded by certain species of palms—are known to possess very valuable properties. We have omitted to mention any members of the Nettle tribe—to which, however, the hemp-plant is closely allied—as we propose to say a few special words about them.
Growing both wild and cultivated in suitable localities scattered over a large area in South-eastern Asia, there is a species of nettle to which a peculiar interest is attached. The reason of this is that the liber or inner side of its bark yields a fibre excelling every other derived from the vegetable kingdom for fineness, strength, and lustre combined. In China, this fibre is called by English-speaking people, China grass; in India it is called rhea; and in the Malayan Archipelago by the name of ramie. It was some time before botanists discovered that the material which was known in commerce by three different names was the produce of the same plant—a stingless nettle. For more than half a century, much attention has now been devoted to the Urtica nivea or Bœhmeria nivea (a newer name), as the China grass plant is called in scientific language. Long in use in China and Japan for making ropes and cloth—much of the latter being of very fine quality—it was introduced into England for manufacturing purposes soon after Mr Fortune the well-known botanist returned in 1846 from his travels in China. Small quantities had, however, been sent to England long before this. Even as early as 1810, some bales of the Indian-grown fibre were received at the India House, London, and its great strength as a rope-making material ascertained. Indeed, it is stated on high authority, that this fibre has been in use in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century.
In Messrs Marshall’s great flax-mill at Leeds, China grass was spun to some extent for about ten years after 1851, and its snow-white silky yarn is more or less constantly in use in some kinds of Bradford fabrics. But unlike the jute fibre, which has created in the course of a single generation a gigantic industry, the trade in China grass has scarcely advanced at all. The value of the latter is admitted on all hands; there is practically an unlimited demand for it; plenty of it could be grown in India, and yet it is not cultivated to any extent. This is solely owing to the great amount of manual labour required to separate the fibre and bark from the stem, and then the fibre from the bark, no machine having been yet invented which will do this at once efficiently and cheaply.
The Indian government have long been vexed that the latent wealth of the plant yielding this much-prized rhea fibre cannot be realised. In 1869 they offered a prize of five thousand pounds for the best, and another of two thousand pounds for the second-best machine which would separate and prepare the fibre, at a cost of fifteen pounds per ton in India, in such a way that it would fetch fifty pounds per ton in England. It may here be mentioned that it sometimes sells as high as eighty pounds per ton, and even higher; while the highest price for jute rarely exceeds twenty-five pounds, and for flax of fine quality, forty pounds. Naturally, the Indian administration hoped that the offer of these handsome prizes would bring forward as competitors some of the ablest machinists in Europe. But whether it was owing to the inherent difficulty of the problem, to the expense of taking out heavy machines to India, or to that apathy with which it is frequently said we in this country regard everything Indian, practically nothing came of the competition. Mr John Greig of Edinburgh sent a machine for trial which so far met the conditions that he received a douceur of fifteen hundred pounds. About thirty competitors applied to have their machines tried; but eventually Mr Greig alone put in an appearance. It was found that by his method it cost fully fifteen pounds per ton to prepare the fibre in India; and when this was sent to London, it was valued at only twenty-eight pounds per ton.
In 1875, Dr Forbes Watson—one of a small band of scientific men who have done much to bring under notice the industrial resources of India—suggested that, in order to save the expense of freight, trials of machines should be made in England instead of India. Green stems of the plant grown in the south of France were promised for the purpose; and towards the end of that year, several inventors had entered their machines for competition; but owing to unforeseen difficulties, it was found impossible to hold the trials. Unwilling to abandon the hope of attaining their great object, the government of India issued a new notification to inventors in 1877. This time the prizes offered were five thousand pounds for the best, and one thousand pounds for the second-best machine or process for preparing rhea fibre which would be worth forty-five pounds per ton in London, at a cost of not more than fifteen pounds per ton laid down at any port of shipment in India. The trials having been arranged to take place, as before, at Saháranpur in September 1879, ten competitors appeared; but only seven had their machines tested. When the fibre prepared by each arrived in London, it was found that the highest value put upon any of the samples was twenty-six pounds per ton. Accordingly, none of the competitors could claim the full amount of either of the prizes; but Messrs Van der Ploeg and Nagoua, two textile machinists well known on the continent, were each awarded five hundred pounds, and Mr Cameron one hundred pounds. On the failure of this second competition, it was determined not to renew the offer of a prize until it could be proved by private enterprise that the rhea plant could be cultivated with profit in India. The unfavourable reports on the best samples prepared at the second trial at Saháranpur seem to have convinced the Indian government that at present the prospect of producing Indian rhea which would successfully compete with the fibre of the same plant grown and prepared in China, is not very hopeful.
Notwithstanding this second failure on the part of the government of India to obtain by rewards a machine capable of turning the cultivation of the rhea plant in that country into a commercial success, so confident are many good judges of the great value of China grass as a textile material, that the interest in it is increasing from year to year. Its cultivation is spreading over Southern Europe, considerable areas being now laid out into plantations of China grass in Italy and the south of France. Spain and Portugal are beginning to grow it; and on the south side of the Mediterranean, Algiers and Egypt are also moving in the same direction. It is believed that this recent development of ramie culture in the Mediterranean region—to call the plant by the name our French neighbours appear to prefer—is to some extent owing to Favier’s recent method of treating the fibre, the patent for which is owned by a Company located at Avignon. This plan is very simple, and considering how much the use of steam—we do not mean as a motive force—has quickened many processes, even in the textile industries, it is wonderful that it had not been thought of before. M. Favier merely exposes the stems of the plant to the action of steam for about twenty minutes in a closed wooden trough, after which the bark and fibre are easily stripped from the stem. By the retting process, or steeping in cold water, it takes days, sometimes weeks, to effect the decortication of the stems; and we have seen how difficult it has been found to do this by machinery. But although M. Favier’s process greatly simplifies matters in this early stage of the preparation of the fibre, the gummy substance and outer skin still require to be removed from it.
Only the other day, it was announced that Professor Frémy, a distinguished French chemist, has, after an elaborate series of experiments, found out a method of readily separating the fibre from these extraneous matters. He takes up the ribbons of bark with attached fibre, as obtained by M. Favier’s plan, and subjects them to a peculiar treatment, which mainly consists in boiling them under pressure in an alkaline solution. During the operation, everything deleterious is removed from the useful portion of the fibre, which is then ready for the ordinary operation of the spinner. There seems good grounds for believing that the combined processes of Messrs Favier and Frémy, which are about to be tried on a scale of some magnitude in France, will prove a commercial success. It will be curious to watch the future history of a plant which has so long baffled every attempt to raise it into conspicuous importance as an article of commerce, about which volumes have been written, and the fibre of which is now well known by its valuable properties to those engaged in textile industries in every civilised country.
There is another Indian nettle, called Urtica heterophylla, which produces a strong, fine, white, glossy fibre. Best known by the name of the Neilgherry nettle, it is nevertheless widely diffused over India. The stem, branches, and leaves are covered with stiff sharp bristles, which give it a formidable, or, as some say, a ferocious appearance. These also inflict acute pain if they should happen to be touched, but fortunately the effect of the sting soon passes away. The prepared fibre of this plant is sometimes called vegetable wool; and it is better suited, from its appearance, for mixing with real wool than rhea fibre, which has been a good deal used for this purpose. In some parts of India, the fibre of the Neilgherry nettle is used by the natives in the manufacture of cloth. It has been partially experimented upon for textile purposes in England; but there seems to have been a difference of opinion as to its merits. Owing to its sting, there are even greater difficulties in separating its fibre than is the case with rhea; but these might be overcome by some mechanical or chemical treatment. It is a quick-growing plant, and could be cultivated to any extent, should a demand for it arise.
We must pass over other species of urtica, and come to the common stinging nettle of Europe. As is well known, this plant furnishes a nutritious food for swine and some other animals, and in Scotland is occasionally used for making a kind of soup termed nettle kail; and in default of a better, its roots will furnish, along with alum, a yellow dye. The tenacity of its fibre has long been known. It has been woven into cloth in past times, but no doubt only on a limited scale, in nearly every country where the plant grows. Nor have its properties as a textile material been altogether overlooked in modern times, at least in the British Islands, since lace, parasol covers, and other fancy articles made of common nettle fibre have been on exhibition in the Museums of Economic Botany at Kew and Dublin for the last thirty years, besides having been occasionally brought under the notice of the public in various other ways. At Dresden, Herr F. C. Seidel has recently established a manufactory for nettle-cloth, in which, according to what seems to be an authentic report, he uses fibre of the common species; but the significant remark is added, that he prefers to get his material from the Chinese nettle.
Some persons think that they see a great nettle industry looming in the future, if only a process of readily separating the useless parts of its stem without injuring the fibre could be discovered. We are of course speaking of the common nettle. A statement has been published which one can very readily believe—namely, that the profitable extraction of its fibre is possible only when it is cultivated. In the wild state, the plant is branchy; but when grown on suitable soil at regular distances of from five to eight inches apart, it forms single stems from four to fully seven feet high. Even if they would serve as well as cultivated plants, and could be economically gathered from many widely scattered localities, all the wild nettles growing in our waste places and old churchyards would be a bagatelle in the sense of furnishing material for many large spinning-mills.
Whatever sanguine people may think, other things besides skilful cultivation and an easy process of preparing the fibre will determine whether nettle crops will be profitable; or, to put the matter in another way, whether a great industry is likely to be established by the manufacture of nettle-cloth. There is no difficulty in cultivating or in dressing flax, nor any lack of demand for it; yet shrewd Scotch farmers have found out that other crops are more profitable, and therefore the blue-blossomed flax fields which many of us saw in our boyhood in Central Fife and the Lowlands of Scotland have entirely disappeared. If nettle-cloth is ever to be anything but a curiosity, it will require to have attractions in quality and price which will enable it to compete with other textiles. During the American civil war, the jute-mills of Dundee were turning out many thousands of yards of cheap but serviceable fabrics to be used instead of calico, because the cost of the latter had gone up a little. For some of the purposes to which it was applied, the jute did as well as the cotton. But the war having ended, calico of a certain ‘make’ and quality became once more a trifle cheaper than its rival, and so jute was quickly beaten out of the field again. This is an example of the kind of battle which any fibre new to commerce will have to fight, unless it possesses some property of quite exceptional value.
To many persons, it seems a pity that we cannot utilise a plant which yields something useful. But the nettle is by no means the most striking example of a native plant which might be and yet is not used in the arts. One or two species of fern, such as the common bracken, are greatly more abundant in this country than the nettle—whole hillsides in many districts being covered with them. Yet although a very serviceable paper can be made from ferns, paper manufacturers prefer to send to the shores of the Mediterranean for a species of wild grass to supply their mills. For several years past, an ingenious Glasgow chemist has been trying to make a marketable gum or jelly from the common seaweed, thrown up in great abundance on the western coasts of Scotland. We hope he may succeed; but meanwhile we are sending elsewhere for what we require of seaweed jelly—even to far Japan. The peat-mosses of Ireland—and of Scotland too, for that matter—would furnish an endless number of beautiful paraffin candles, if some great Company with limited liability would only take the business up—and make the candles at a trifling loss per pound.
Some of our readers will probably suppose that we have given them a too humble estimate of the value of the common nettle as a textile material. There is no denying the fact that the tenacity of its cortical fibres is scarcely if at all inferior to those of flax or hemp. But how to grow, spin, and weave them into a saleable cloth, is a problem which has not yet been solved. Just now, there is a partial revival of what may be almost called the ancient art of manufacturing hand-made paper for printed books. In these days, too, many of the fair sex have apparently discovered that embroidery when worked by hand is really more interesting and beautiful than when it is done by a machine, supposing that in both cases the design is of nearly equal merit. It seems also to be dawning on many persons that earthenware dishes painted by the fingers have, even when a little dauby, a kind of attraction about them not possessed by those which have their patterns printed from an engraved copper-plate, and are therefore all rigidly alike. Possibly, ‘fashion’ may carry matters a little farther in this direction, and revive the use of textile fabrics spun by the distaff and spindle, and woven on handlooms. But by the help of machinery, the labour of one woman can nowadays make clothing for more than a thousand others. A hundred years ago, nearly every woman had to spin the material required for the clothing of her family; but at that same time, or at least not long before it, those in the upper ranks had a knowledge of many useful and ingenious arts which they no longer possess. If it were possible but in part to resuscitate the state of matters which obtained in these old days, before spinning-jennies, or powerlooms, or lace-making machines were dreamed of, there would be fully more hope than there is of people keeping themselves warm by an external application of the stinging nettle, in a less heroic way than we are told the Romans did of old.
Nettle-cloth is undoubtedly an excellent fabric, but—Will it pay the manufacturer? The answer to this is, Not yet.