20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



After exhausting the list of plants that may be termed com- 

 mercial fiber substitutes, in different countries where they grow, there 

 still remains a much larger list of species that are chiefly interesting 

 in a scientific enumeration of those plants which produce in their 

 stalks, leaves, or seed vessels what may be termed fibrous substance. 

 My own catalogue of the fibers of the world already foots up over 

 one thousand species of plants, and the complete catalogue for all 

 countries might extend the list to a thousand more. 



In considering the undeveloped fibers of the United States, it will 

 be seen we should only recognize the actual commercial forms which 

 we do not produce, but which may be produced within our borders, 

 or such native growths as may be economically employed as their 

 substitutes, and which possibly might be brought into commercial 

 importance. 



The hemp industry is already established, though it should be 

 extended in order to recover its lost position among American rural 

 industries. Where in the past we produced forty thousand tons of 

 hemp in the United States, we now produce less than a fifth of this 

 quantity. The cultivation of flax in the United States before the 

 days of the present factory system was so widespread that it was of 

 national importance. Its manufacture was largely a home industry, 

 however, conducted by the fireside, and, as in ancient Greece and 

 Rome, the work was performed by the women of the household. 

 With the advent of the factory system came competition; the house- 

 wife laid aside her spinning wheel, the clumsy home-made loom fell 

 into disuse, and the farmer grew no more flax for fiber. Then the 

 flaxseed industry was extended, and after the close of the war a 

 large demand sprang up for coarse fiber for the roughest of uses— for 

 bagging and upholstery, in connection with hemp — and hundreds of 

 little tow mills came into existence in the Middle and Western 

 States. 



The introduction of jute opened another chapter, and the decline 

 of this crude attempt at a flax industry is recorded. Meanwhile 

 some line flax was produced, but the extension of spinning and 

 weaving establishments made a larger demand for this fiber, which 

 was chiefly imported. Land in the old flax-growing States became 

 more valuable for other crops, especially with the low prices brought 

 about by foreign competition, and gradually the flax culture in the 

 United States became a thing of the past. 



In recent years similar causes have served to operate against the 

 industry in foreign flax countries where old and plodding methods 

 are still in vogue, with additional factors in impoverished soils and 

 high rental for land, and the cultural industry abroad is declining. 

 With the opening of new and fertile Western lands in this country, 



