In another particular flax has the advantage over cotton. While the latter, under the ordinary course of cultivation in South Carolina, yields but one bale to four acres, and in virgin soil rarely more than one bale to two acres, flax yields in good soil from five to eight hundred pounds of fibre to the acre, which may be converted into flax-cotton by modern machinery; and as the product has but three per cent. waste, while cotton loses eleven per cent. in its manufacture, the flax-cotton which is produced from a single acre is the equivalent of one to two bales of cotton.
With these important advantages, namely, its adaptation to a northern climate where the white man can labor, and a capacity for yielding so large an amount of fibre, flax holds a high place in the list of textile materials.
Flax can be raised with very moderate expense up to the time of harvest. If the soil is free from weeds, it requires little more preparation, care, or expense for its culture than wheat or barley. But from this point onward a large expenditure of labor is requisite, which greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle by skilful and long-continued labor.
To insure the best quality, it must be pulled and bound in bundles before it is entirely ripe, thus impairing the value of the seed, while the edible and nutritious portion of the stalk is lost or injured in the water.
For many years it was spun on the little wheel, but of late years improved machinery has been applied at Belfast, Leeds, Dundee, and other cities of Great Britain; yet nearly a third of the value is lost in the broken filaments, which are reduced to tow in its preparation for the spindle. With a fibre at least as fine and delicate as that of cotton, its full value to the world will not be demonstrated until it is effectually cottonized.
In its present state, however, it has come into very extensive use. More than eighty thousand tons were, in 1859, imported into Great Britain, and many acres are there devoted to its culture. The consumption in that country is estimated to exceed one hundred and sixty thousand tons, a quantity equivalent to eight hundred thousand bales of cotton. In addition to this, ten millions of bushels of flax-seed are annually crushed in Great Britain, a large portion of which is drawn from India.
The culture of flax was introduced into this country early in the last century by the Scotch, who crossed over to Ireland under Elizabeth and Cromwell, and soon after the siege of Derry transferred their arts and their industry to this country. Several colonies of these were planted in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and a large colony was established at Natfield, New Hampshire, upon a tract twelve miles square, one of the best sections of the State, situate in the area between Manchester, Lowell, Lawrence, and Exeter. Here every farmer cultivated his field of barley and flax, here every woman had her little wheel, and the article formed the currency of the place;—notes were given payable in spinning-wheels. Girls were seen beetling the linen on the grass; and when the harvest over, the men mounted their horses, and with well-filled saddle-bags threaded the by-roads of the forest to find a market in Boston, Lynn, Salem, or Newburyport. Fortunes were thus accumulated and a flourishing academy and two Presbyterian societies are now sustained by funds thus acquired by the Pinkerton family. But as the wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms. The town of Derry, once the great seat of New-England manufactures, is now principally distinguished for the Stark, Rogers, and Reed it gave to the French War and the Revolution, for the Bells, Dinsmores, Wilsons, and Pattersons it has given to the halls of legislation, and the McKeens, McGregors, Morisons, and Nesmiths it has furnished to commerce or the Church.
At the present rates of labor, the culture of flax cannot be revived in this region until the mode of curing and dressing it is cheapened; and there is reason to hope that this revolution is at hand.
At the present moment flax is raised both in India and Ohio for the seed alone. An acre of ripened flax yields from ten to twenty bushels of seed, and each bushel affords nearly or quite two gallons of linseed-oil. The well-ripened seed is most prolific in oil.
It has been supposed by some that flax exhausts the soil. It is undoubtedly true that it does best under a rotation of crops, and that the ingredients it withdraws from the soil should be restored to preserve its fertility. But the reduction of the plant to ashes shows that its chemical components can be restored at a cost of three dollars per acre, while the properties withdrawn by the seed can be easily supplied by returning in other fertilizers the equivalent for half a ton of flax-seed. If the oil-cake be consumed upon the farm, little more than the above and its product in manure will be required.