No. 105.] 499 



9th. Is it worth my while to have a machine for dressing the crop 1 



If you can raise two hundred acres of flax, then you can afford to 



rot and dress it. One hundred acres will not pay a sufficient profit. 



10th. What is an average crop of flax in the United States per 

 acre 1 



About two hundred pounds to the acre if you let it all go to seed, 

 but four hundred pounds if you gather it in the blossom. Ireland ave- 

 rages five hundred and fifty pounds an acre, on one hundred thousand 

 acres. 



11th. Do you know how much it will cost to raise it per acre ? 



Twelve dollars an acre when housed. 



12th. What is the cost of dressing it 1 How much can one of your 

 dressing machines prepare in a day 1 



Three cents a pound, from the stack to the bale press. One of my 

 dressing machines with seven men, will dress in one day six hundred 

 pounds of flax, and so much tow is made by it, that it saves twenty per 

 cent of the flax by my operation ; and the same process answers for 

 hemp. Flax, when rotted in water heated to ninety degrees of Fah- 

 renheit, is done in three or four days. In raising flax, a part of a field 

 should be sowed thin for the seed. Common Flemish and French 

 dressed flax imported into England for forty years past, brings them 

 from four to eight hundred dollars a ton. This difference of value is 

 owing to the difference of qualities which are assorted, 



13th. Can flax and hemp be grown for a series of years on the same 

 ground, or is rotation necessary. 



I have known hemp grown on the same field perfectly well for 

 twenty years in succession. The hemp crop is from seven hundred to 

 nine hundred pounds per acre. I add lime to land for flax crop, but 

 not for hemp, When flax is not allowed to go to seed, it does not ex- 

 haust the soil one half as much. It exhausts about as much as the 

 wheat crop. Our corn and wheat in Missouri certainly exhaust our 

 soil. We have already found the necessity of deep plowing and sub- 

 soiling the land. It is better and cheaper far to me, to cradle flax 

 than to pull it by hand in the old way. We do not consider the rot- 

 ting and dressing flax an unhealthy business. We raise about 50,000 

 tons of hemp per annum. 



[Senate, No. 105.] 32 



