FLAX 455 



V. One system of cut tow machinery for No. 25's to 40's. 



1 breaker card, 4 feet diameter, 6 feet wide, doffed by combs. 



1 finisher card, with P. Fairbairn and Co.'s patent rotary gill drawing frame 



attached. 



1 screw gill second drawing frame, 3 heads each, 4 bosses per head. 

 1 screw gill third drawing frame, 3 heads each, 6 bosses per head. 

 1 screw gill patent disc regulating roving frame, 72 spindles, 1 2 spindles per head, 



6x3^ inches bobbins. 



3 spinning frames of 220 spindles each, 2 inches pitch = 660 spindles. 

 Production about 36 bundles, or 240 Ibs. of No. 30's per day. 

 The reeling is generally carried on in the attic above the spinning room, and the 

 number of reels required is about the same as the number of spinning frames. 



Summary view. 



There are 3,200 spindles long line, producing 196 bundles, or, 890 Ibs. of yarn per day. 

 1,152 long tow, 78 800 



2,320 3 cut line, 115 310 



660 cut tow, 36 240 



7,332 spindles 425 bundles 2,270 Ibs, of yarn per day. 



A more effective system of economy, as well in the finish of raw flax as in the make 

 of yarn, has been satisfactorily carried on for years past. 



The old mode of hand-scutching, as was usual in farming circles in earlier times, 

 had many drawbacks. It was not only very costly, but exceedingly wasteful. No 

 matter how well skilled may have been the operators, or how careful they were of the 

 flax straw, serious damage was often done to the fibre in course of the scutching 

 process ; the actual weight of material produced having rarely exceeded twenty per 

 cent, of the original produce. 



Nearly two hundred years ago the native Irish, as well as the various settlers from 

 England and Scotland who had become nationalised in every peculiarity of taste and 

 habit, were still plodding on as their fathers had done in the ancient track. Lands 

 were only partially prepared for flax culture ; and, although a few of the more forward 

 growers retained the traditional desire for improvement handed down from the days 

 of Lord Strafford, the general rule was to take little more pains in the management 

 of the flax crop than was then usual in relation to corn or root culture. About that 

 time the cruelty of Louis XIV. was thinning France of some thousands of its Pro- 

 testant people. Persecution waved the flag of intolerance, Tyranny held its carnival, 

 and whole districts were depopulated. Many of the fugitives fled to Ireland, and the 

 greater number of those French exiles had been connected with manufacturing in- 

 dustry. Dublin, Waterford, Portarlington, and Limerick welcomed numbers of these 

 people, and in the north, Lisburn and Lurgan formed the respective resting-places of 

 others. After the battle of the Boyne large accessions were made to the ranks of 

 the Huguenots, and King William, having taken great interest in the well-being of 

 the settlers, induced Louis Crommelin, a gentleman of immense experience in the linen 

 manufacture, to leave his asylum in Amsterdam and come over to Lisburn, where he set 

 him at the head of the people. A number of Hollanders had also settled there, and those 

 men, being well skilled in the art of flax-growing, were placed in farms which the lord 

 of the soil had given at low rents, and which lands were set apart for the special 

 culture of flax. With the native population of that wide district of Ulster, the 

 Dutchmen and Huguenots formed amicable brotherhood. Difference of creed and of 

 country was never permitted to create social warfare, and the result was that the im- 

 provements in the mode of cultivating the flax grounds, as suggested by the foreigners, 

 were readily adopted by the Irish, many of whom, in the course of a few years, showed 

 by their skill and forethought how much they had profited by the lessons of their 

 teachers. M. Crommelin, as director of the linen manufacture, watched with intense 

 interest every phase of progress, and with the means placed in his hands for that 

 purpose rewarded to the utmost of his power the leaders of his industrial army. 



The law enacted in 1701 for the encouragement of the Irish linen trade not having 

 "been carried into effect, a new Act was passed by Queen Anne in 1711, and a number 

 of nobles and other gentry were appointed to form a Board, the head-quarters of 

 which was in Dublin. This body immediately set to work, and in the first instance 

 commenced operations by directing special attention to the growth of a quality of flax, 

 finer and more silky in texture than any that had ever before been raised in Ireland. 

 Better machinery for scutching purposes had been introduced by M. Crommelin ; his 



