FIBRE PLANTS 321 



the fertilizers are better prepared to enrich the 

 ground at once than if the seed had been spread, 

 and the crops had to wait until decay released the 

 plant foods. 



Cotton has often been grown at a distinct loss, 

 and the people, white and black, are only recently 

 lifting their heads in hope, in the Cotton Belt, 

 realizing that the grower may have the comforts 

 of life as well as the broker and the manufacturer. 

 Wisdom is spreading where ignorance once pre- 

 vailed to keep the hard-working people in a form 

 of slavery to worn-out methods on worn-out land. 



HEMP 



We all know hemp as a roadside weed, tall, 

 straight, with whorls of spreading, lady-finger 

 leaves, all pitching at a downward slant, the 

 flowers clustered at the bases of the leaves, as 

 happens with all members of the stinging nettle 

 family, to which hemp belongs. 



Wild hemp, as it grows escaped from cultivation, 

 and in its native region, western Asia, has poor 

 fibre. But in the hemp fields of Russia, Austria, 

 Turkey, Italy, China, Japan, and the United 

 States, it may reach ten, and even twenty feet in 

 height. The fibres of the inner bark, when prop- 



