406 FLAX 



A board, consisting of nobles and gentry, was appointed to sit in Dublin, under the 

 title of ' Trustees of the Linen and Hempen Manufactures,' and ample means were 

 placed in the hands of members for the purpose of encouraging the trade. Five and 

 twenty years afterwards a similar institution was established for Scotland ; and in 

 both cases much good was done, though tho principle on -which they were founded 

 could scarcely bo justified in rightly-regulated economy. Foreign flax seed was 

 largely imported into Dublin and Dundee, and bounties awarded to growers of tho 

 largest and finest lots of fibres. But tho breadth of lands under that crop north of the 

 Tweed never exceeded 10,000 acres, or little more than one-fourth of tho area sown 

 at that time in Ireland. In 1809 there were only 5,000 acres in all Scotland against 

 35,000 acres in Ireland, but of that aggregate 23,000 acres were raised in Ulster. 

 There were 148,000 acres sown in that county in 1815, and about the same extent of 

 area in 1820, while in 1825 tho sowing occupied 139,400 acres. After tho dissolution 

 of the Linen Board in 1828 no reliable record of crops was kept, and until 1847, 

 when a regular system of agricultural statistics was got up in Ireland, all was left to 

 mere conjecture. In tho meantime the imports of foreign flax into the United King- 

 dom had been making enormous progress. We give the figures for different periods 

 of the first half of tho present century : 



Year Cwts. 



1801 . . . . . . . 273,720 



1821 498,653 



1831 936,440 



1841 1,346,843 



1851 1,194,184 



Flax-spinning by machinery has accomplished wonders for flax-growers. Some 

 attempts had been made to produce linen yarn by water-power in Lurgan, so early as 

 1717. A carpenter, Thomas Turner, of that town, who was much patronised by Louis 

 Crommelin, invented a machine to spin flax and for which the Board of Trustees 

 awarded him 100/., but the death of the inventor took place before the work had been 

 brought to perfection. Louis Paul, a Birmingham blacksmith, tried his hand at a 

 machine in 1740, and John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse of Darlington brought 

 out in 1787 a still superior invention. But until John Marshall, son of a Leeds shop- 

 keeper, took tho matter in hand, all had proved complete failures. Tho Leeds mill 

 was commenced about the close of the past century, and some time afterwards the 

 trade was started in Dundee. These mills imported Irish flax very largely, and this 

 gave fresh stimulus to growers in that island. Ireland had been trying the new 

 principle of yarn spinning for some years, and although the Board of Trustees paid a 

 premium of '301. for every spindle erected, no permanent good resulted. Tho bounty 

 system ceased in 1828, and two years afterwards T. and A. Mulholland, of Belfast, 

 erected in that town their famous York-street mill, which, like that of the Marshall s 

 of Leeds, gradually grew into gigantic proportions. In 1833 there were nine flax- 

 spinning-mills at work in Belfast, thereby creating an immense increase in the con- 

 sumption of raw material. Imports of foreign fibre were not keeping up to the 

 requirements, and about that time a number of Belfast spinners and linen merchants 

 began to feel that a famine in flax would arise if extra exertions were not made to 

 extend homo-growth. In 1841 a society was formed for that purpose, and so well did 

 it do the work that tho breadth of land which for that year was only 83,750 acres 

 had been extended in 1844 to 122,680 acres. But tho great good effected by tho 

 Flax Improvement Society did not end there. Besides that enlargement of area, 

 the farmers were taught by experienced instructors bettor modes of preparing tho soil 

 and a more careful system of choosing seed. Tho effect of these lessons was to im- 

 prove the skill of growers so much that the article produced was superior in quality 

 uud the yield equally improved. 



A terrible prostration of energy in tho ranks of Irish agriculturists followed tho 

 famine of 1847, and the breadth of flax lands was narrowed one-half. For some 

 seasons afterwards this state of affairs continued, the total area in 1849 only extending 

 to 60,070 acres. But, as better days set in, a groat improvement took place in flax- 

 growing, and in 1852 there were 137,000 acres under tho crop ; the succeeding season 

 showed a much wider area, 174,529 acres having been sown. Then came a reaction. 

 and in 1857 the breadth was only 97,720 acres. By this time tho demand for lirst 

 flax had been rendered still greater in consequence of the extension of spinning-mills 

 in Dundee and Leeds ; so that, besides tho homo requirements, Irish farmers had a 

 stirring appeal for further supplies made to them from tho sister isle. All this 

 cry for more flax did not fall unheeded on tin? cars of the people i-n^airrd in the 

 different departments of the trade. After tho final suppression of tho Sepoy nmtinv, 

 the tide of public interest had set strongly towards India, and much attention was 



