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.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
CHAPTER XVI.—LIGHT HEARTS AND SAD.
The buzz of conversation continued as the party descended the broad staircase.
‘Rather bad of Phil to keep us waiting all this time,’ said Coutts as he gave Madge his arm.
‘Perhaps he could not help it,’ she suggested.