301 



abundance of cheap labour, ramie can be better decorticated by 

 hand than by any machine. China does not ask for decorticating 

 machines, and the hand-stripped China grass — which is only ramie 

 stripped and debarked on the fields with Chinese care and labori- 

 ousness — will always command a higher price in the market than 

 any machine-decorticated fibre. Various machines claiming to do 

 all that is required are now on the market, and I have reason to 

 believe that a machine, the invention of a foreigner, which will be 

 introduced in the autumn of 1906* will give quite the best returns, 

 both in the matter of perfectly cleansing the fibre of the outside 

 brown pellicle and in the output it can produce per diem. 



The difficulty of the whole proceeding will be understood by 

 those who are not ramie experts if I briefly describe the process. 

 Ramie stems, when grown to the height of about 8 or 9 feet, are, 

 when matured, cut down, and the outer bark is at once stripped 

 off. This outer bark, which can be easily stripped off, much in 

 the same way as a willow cane is whittled, is found to consist of 

 two layers, namely, a thin outer, closely adherent, brown pellicle, 

 and an inner, thicker, white, bast layer. It is this bast layer which 

 is composed of ramie fibre. When it is stripped from the woody 

 stem in the green state it is full of a sticky gum. The object is 

 now to free the bast layer as much as possible of its soluble gums 

 and of its outer brown pellicle. 



This the Chinaman does by sitting in or near running water 

 while he rubs off the outer brown pellicle with a blunt bamboo 

 knife, and strips off the bast layer, washing away the soluble 

 gums at the same time. The long strips of fibre are then dried, 

 baled and exported, and obtain a price per ton in Europe out of all 

 proportion to the cost of cultivation and manipulation. In the 

 case where the ramie stems are decorticated by machinery, they 

 are sent, within three days of being gathered, to a central decorti- 

 cating station; or in large plantations to the mill on the estate. 

 The canes are first passed through corrugated iron rollers, which 

 break up the woody stem and pith, leaving long strips of the bark 

 more or less free from wood : these are then passed into a machine, 

 the principle of which is approximately, the same in all which have 

 been invented, namely that revolving steel blades pare off the outer 

 brown bark of the ribbons, very much in the same way as the 

 surface of a cloth is cut by a revolving cutting machine, and they 

 are finally brushed clean of all adhering particles of pellicle. 



The disadvantages of machine decorticating are— the initial 

 expense of the machine ; the delay in bringing the stems down 

 from the plantations, so that some of the gums undergo fermenta- 

 tive changes ; the smallness of the output of most of the machines 

 in use, and the fact that after all the fibre is not so completely 

 cleaned of its brown pellicle as in the case of hand stripping, nor 

 are the fibres left in such a perfectly parallel condition, which is 

 essential to avoid waste in the subsequent processes of spinning. 

 I do not deny but that machines for decorticating are absolutely 



* See paragraph below ou .Machinery, page 304. Editor. 



