297 



as rapidly as they had risen, and a spirit of despair settled down 

 on the ramie world of England and her dependencies. Factories 

 were closed, companies liquidated, plantations in India and else- 

 where were rooted up, and the whole subject was quietly disposed 

 of by manufacturers, in the statement " We have tried ramie and 

 nothing can be done with it." The loss of money, however, 

 rankled, and ramie became the bete noire, the skeleton in the cup- 

 board of British commerce. 



But while British manufacturers simply gave up ramie, or a few 

 small spinning factories were carried on on an unprofitable basis 

 for a few years longer, steady progress was being made on the 

 Continent in the effort to overcome, by scientific methods, the 

 difficulties of degumming without injury to the fibre, and to ascer- 

 tain the correct principles and processes of spinning. A new use 

 was discovered for the fibre, which gave a great impetus to ramie 

 spinning : this was the use of ramie in the manufacture of gas 

 mantles. What was required was an absorbent netting which 

 would absorb the mineral salts and be afterwards burnt away, 

 leaving the least amount of a perfectly white ash behind. Egyptian 

 cotton had been used for this purpose, but gas mantle manu- 

 facturers found, in a webbing made of ramie yarns, a material 

 which suited their requirements exactly. This discovery led to 

 a great development of the existing ramie spinning mills of 

 Germany and France, and to the perfecting of their processes and 

 machinery. 



The German mills then took up the manufacture of ramie 

 stockingette for underwear, of hosiery, and of knhted goods in 

 which the yarn used is mixed more or less with wool. In France 

 and in Switzerland the weaving of coarse linens for restaurants 

 has been carried on in a moderate degree, though the representa- 

 tive of Messieurs Favier in Paris told me that owing to the extra- 

 ordinary durability of these linens, made at one time by themselves, 

 they were boycotted by the buyers of the great French retail 

 houses, so that they consequently gave up weaving them, and con- 

 fined themselves to spinning. The making of plushes from ramie 

 has been also accomplished at Chemnitz; in Japan the blending 

 of ramie with silk has been successfully carried out ; in Holland 

 fishing nets are manufactured of ramie yarns, and both in Sweden 

 and in the United States stockingette for underwear is made on 

 frames, of imported yarns : in Germany and France ramie yarns 

 are used in a limited degree as weft on woollen or cotton yarns 

 to give brilliancy to fabrics ; and sail cloth for yachts has also 

 been made on a small scale. 



I think I have mentioned what had been done in the use of ramie 

 in various textiles till I started with the avowed intention of 

 manufacturing pure ramie fabrics warp and weft ; the known diffi- 

 culty being to weave with a pure ramie warp, for though the fibre 

 is of surprising strength, the strongest yarn breaks at the knot 

 with the greatest facility, and it does not stand well the shock of 

 the loom at the opening of the shed. 



