434 
riably used. Byghis process the cloth is generally three or four months 
in bleaching, and the lyes are very mild and moderately used. To this 
fact the reputation which Silesian linen enjoys in this country is perhaps 
largely indebted. The country people are the manufacturers of the 
linen as well as the cultivators of the flax, the former being still carried 
on, as it was centuries ago, in the primitive method, with little aid from 
machinery. The flax is grown by small farmers, spun on the common 
hand-wheel by their wives and daughters during the winter, and woven 
in the houses of the peasants, chiefly by farm laborers when not engaged 
in field work. It affords but a scanty subsistence, but is, nevertheless, 
the chief occupation of the country people. It is found, however, that 
the intermixture of agricultural and industrial pursuits is not conducive 
to good farming, and it is only in the purely agricultural districts that 
the better and more profitable system of culture prevails. The peas-- 
antry, such of them as are owners of small farms—and many of the 
farms are from eight to twelve acres only—are in one respect richer 
than the large land-holders. They are generally not in debt, while the 
great estates are most of them mortgaged to about 50 per cent. of their 
value. 
The vast consumption of linen by both belligerents of the late war 
in this country, and also of the late French-Prussian war, stimulated 
an active demand and very remunerative trade in the flax-producing 
and linen-manufacturing countries of Europe. A reaction succeeded 
those wars, and the acreage under the plant has been so much reduced 
that the production is scarcely equal to the requirements of the trade. 
Russia is the great flax-producing district of Europe, while Silesia is a 
leading linen-manufacturing country, especially for the finer fabrics. 
The production of flax in Silesia is wholly inadequate to the demands 
of the linen-manufacturers of the. province, who are largely dependent 
upon Russia for their supplies of the raw material. Although the eul- 
tivation of flax has been much increased in Russia of late years there 
is but a slight available surplus for exportation; for there, as in Silesia, 
the flax manufactures constitute a very important textile industry. 
The cultivation of flax is increasing in France and Belgium, but not in 
the ratio of the demand for home consumption. The production in the 
United States in 1870, according to the ninth census, was 27,133, 000 
pounds of flax and 1, 730, 000 bushels of flax-seed. But here flax is cul- 
tivated almost exclusively for the seed. The following translation from 
the Paris Annals of Commerce contains some interesting statements 
respecting the culture of flax and manufacture of linen in Silesia: 
Of all the industries of Silesia, that of flax, the oldest in date, is at the present day 
the most important. From time immemorial Silesia has produced famous linens, and 
not long since she exercised in Germany a kind of monopoly for the fabrication of this 
tissue. In the province of the Rhine important towns, as Brilefeld, manufacture 
linen almost exclusively, and their products bear a striking resemblance to those of 
Silesia. The annual sum total which this employment produces is far from being 
unimportant, since the last statistics, published in 1871, for the three districts of 
Reichenbach, Schweidnitz, and Waldembourg alone, that constitute the division 
called “ L’Eulengebirge,” manufactured about 500,000 pieces of linen. Seven millions 
fifty-six thousand pounds of flax were employed, five million six hundred thousand 
pounds of tow, and fifty thousand shocks of linen yarn, a shock being about sixty 
pounds, were produced. 
Although “ L’Eulengebirge” is the principal seat of the industry of Silesia, it is. not 
the only one; the product is also manufactured in the mountainous districts of the 
Austrian frontiers, which are called the “ Riesengebirge,” and which extend as far as 
“T/Eulengebirge.” There, in most of the villages, the major part of the population, 
men and women, and even children, devote themselves exclusively to this industry, 
In “ L’Eulengebirge,” in 1871, there were 15,326 weavers and 13,164 hand-looms, 3,047 
of whieh were used in the linen manufacture, 8,705 in the cotton manufacture, 589 in 
