In growing cotton in America seeds are sown in April, and the beautiful yellow flowers with a red center bloom about June or July, followed in August by the pod. This splits open and is ready for picking by September and October. The plants are grown in rows four feet apart and are set one foot apart in the row. Clean cultivation is absolutely necessary, and in first-class plantations all weeds are kept out. The plant needs a rich deep soil.
HEMP AND CORDAGE
There are a variety of plants which furnish products known as hemp, but commercially only three are of much importance, the plant universally known under that name, the Manila hemp, and sisal. All of them are used chiefly for cordage.
The hemp of the ancients is a tall annual related to our nettles, with rough leaves, and a native of Asia. For centuries an intoxicating drink was made from the herbage of this plant, and this with the narcotic hashish, which is made from a resin exuded by the stems, obscured the fact that Cannabis sativa is a very valuable cordage plant. The coarse fibers are found in the stem, and these are cut and retted, the retting or rotting process separating the fibers from the waste portions of the stem. The fibers are so long and coarse that only cordage, ropes, and a rough cloth are made from them, but enormous quantities are raised for this purpose, especially in Europe. As hashish is now a forbidden product in many countries, due to its dangerous narcotic effects, the hemp plant is more cultivated for fiber than for the narcotic. But in the olden days hashish had a tremendous vogue in the Orient and was known at the time of the Trojan wars, about 1500 B.C. Fiber from the plant was almost unknown to the Hebrews, and it was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that it came into general use. It is now probably as important as sisal, but not as Manila hemp, the most valuable of all cordage plants. The hemp is diœcious and the female plants are taller and mature later than the male. Two cuttings are therefore necessary in each field.
The Manila hemp is derived from a banana (Musa textilis), that is a native of tropical Asia and is much grown in the Philippines. While the fruits of this plant are of very little or no value, the fiber from the long leafstalk is the best cordage material known. Also the finer fibers near the center of the stalk are made up into fabrics, which are rarely seen here, but are said to be almost silky in texture. As a cordage plant, however, Musa textilis is now easily the most important, and from a commercial point of view the Philippine Islands is the only region to produce it in quantity. It has been tried with not much success in India and the West Indies. Methods of extracting the fibers are still very primitive, as it is nearly all scratched out by natives with saw-toothed knives made for the purpose. After the fleshy part of the leafstalk has been separated from the fiber this is merely put out on racks to dry. The finished product has so much value for large cords and ropes that the fiber makes up about half the total exports of the Philippine Islands. Its great strength may be judged from the fact that a rope made from it, only about one inch thick, will stand a strain of over four thousand pounds. No other fiber is anywhere near this in strength and yet of sufficient length to be of use as cordage. There are still thousands of acres suitable for its culture in the Philippines, but the extraction of the fiber awaits some inventive genius who will make a machine for that purpose. Many have tried, but so far the primitive scratching out by natives is the only method in use and it is admitted that it wastes nearly one-third of the fiber. The so-called Manila or brown paper is often made from old and worn-out ropes of Manila hemp, but, as in the case of cordage itself, adulteration with cheaper fibers is common.
From Yucatan, the Bahamas, and some other regions of tropical America comes the most valuable American cordage plant, known as sisal. The fiber is extracted from the thick coarse leaves of a century plant, known as Agave sisalina or Agave rigida, which looks not unlike the century plant so common in cultivation. The plant belongs to the Amaryllis family and is native in tropical America. Thousands of acres are planted to sisal in Yucatan and a machine for scratching out the fiber is in general use. The plant produces each year a crown of eight or ten leaves from three to five feet in height, each tipped with a stout prickle. Unlike the common century plant of our greenhouses there are no marginal prickles on the leaves of the sisal. After extraction the fiber is stretched out on racks to dry and is then ready for manufacture into rope.
JUTE
During the late war the Germans were reported to be sending flour and sugar to their armies pressed into large bricks for the want of bags to ship them in the ordinary way. Gunny sacks, or jute bags, as they are more often called, are made literally by the hundreds of millions, as practically all sugar, coffee, grains and feeds, and fertilizers are shipped in them. Jute is a tall herb, a native of the Old World tropics, but suitable for cultivation in many other tropical regions. Practically all the world’s supply now comes from India, probably because of the cheapness of labor rather than any peculiar virtue of the soil or climate of that country. The plant has been experimentally grown in Cuba with entire success, but labor conditions made cheap production of the fiber impossible.
The jute plant, known as Corchorus capsularis or C. olitorius, grows approximately six to nine feet tall and is an annual, often branching only near the top. They are not very distantly related to our common linden tree. At the proper maturity the whole plant is harvested and the stems are tied into bundles ready for the retting process. Of all fiber processes this is the most difficult, largely because no machine or chemical has yet been found to