456 FLAX 



Dutch assistants and the French women having been offered largo premiums for 

 spinning, great stimulus was given to the culture of fine flax. In 1718, M. Crom- 

 .jnelin, with the assistance of James Turner, a Lurgan carpenter, succeeded in effecting 

 considerable improvements in the mechanism of the wheel then used by spinsters. 

 This machine, we need scarcely state, was that which succeeded the ancient distaff and 

 spindle. The leader of the Iluguenot colony had previously purchased some hundreds 

 of spinning wheels in France, and when these came to hand he had them distributed 

 among the women and girls most celebrated for ability in producing fine yarn. But 

 in the French wheels he found it necessary to make certain changes in order to adapt 

 them more especially to the wants as to the peculiar ideas of the spinners. On the 

 improved wheel, however, the native Irish as well as the French settlers spun yarns of 

 a degree of fineness far exceeding anything ever before seen in Ulster. 



We have no authentic data on which to found a correct opinion of the area under cul- 

 tivation in Ireland during M. Crommelin's directorship. Mr. Dobbs, who wrote in 

 1728, says there were then grown in the different provinces 30,000 Plantation, say 

 about 47,000 English acres. Towards the close of the century the breadth had been 

 largely extended, and the imports of foreign flax, which did not exceed 50,000 cwts. in 

 1700, had increased to 260,000 cwts. in 1799. 



A new era was then setting in on the flax manufacture. The Messrs. Marshall of 

 Leeds had successfully established the enterprise of spinning that fibre by mechanical 

 power, and from that time rapid improvements were made in the finish of material 

 for the spindles. The preparing process known as hackling was then in a comparatively 

 backward state ; but, as the new system of producing yarns extended to Scotland and 

 Ireland, the inventive genius of the different sections of the British Isles was called 

 into play, and before the first half of the nineteenth century had gone by every single 

 department of the trade showed its evidence of progress. Among the leading makers 

 of hackling machines we have the Messrs. Lowry of Manchester. To Mr. George 

 Lowry the trade is indebted for the invention of that great improvement, the 

 vertical wheel hackling machine. Then wo have Messrs. Combe and Barbour, 

 S. Cotton and Co., and Mr. George Homer of Belfast. Each of these makers has 

 contributed some special improvement in easy working and simple mechanism, 

 and several of them show a high rate of yield of lino per cent, compared with other 

 machines. 



Flax-spinning by steam-power had been preceded by the same system, but in which 

 the works were driven by water ; and these works, generally on a small scale, wore 

 attempted in various parts of the isles of Britain before the end of last century. To 

 the Messrs. Marshall of Leeds, the Messrs. Baxter of Dundee, the Messrs. Murland 

 of Castlewellan, and Messrs. Mulholland of Belfast, the trade is indebted for the first 

 effective introduction of the steam-driven flax-spindle. For a long period, however, 

 the enterprise of mill-spinning in the higher numbers of yarn was confined to Leeds, 

 and in the coarse numbers to Dundee. In 1828 the mill at Castlewellan, Co. Down, 

 was started by the brothers Murland, and in 1830 the first bundle of flax yarn pro- 

 duced in Belfast was turned off the spindles of the brothers Mulholland. In 1869 

 there wore in England and Wales 437,623 spindles ; in Scotland, 256,228 spindles ; 

 and in Ireland, 894,273 spindles. Forty-four years ago 1830 the imports of 

 foreign flax into the United Kingdom amounted to 944,500 cwts. ; and in 1873 

 2,194,473 cwts. were landed. In the meantime, Ireland had become the chief source 

 of home supply, Great Britain having gradually contracted her breadth of flax-lands 

 until the total area for 1873 was narrowed to 14,683 acres, the vast proportion of 

 which was grown for seed rather than for fibre. In course of last year there were 1 22,432 

 acres of land under flax in Ireland, producing an aggregate of 406,950 cwts. of 

 marketable material. From various causes, but more especially unfavourable seasons 

 and neglect on the part of some growers of preparing the soil with due care, as well 

 as want of care in selecting the seed, the yield of flax-lands in Ulster fell off consider- 

 ably. In the famous season of 1853 the average produce was 41 stones to the acre. 

 That rate of yield fell off until in 1869 only 19 j stones were raised, and in the disas- 

 trous season of 1871 the average had declined to about 15 stones to the acre. This 

 caused the utmost depression in farming circles, and the very unguarded assertion 

 made by a member of the linen trade that Ireland was ' flaxcd out' began to be looked 

 upon as a practical truth. But in the season of 1873 flax crops in most parts of tho 

 country were abundant in yiold, and superior in quality. Many of tho more skilful 

 flax growers in Down raised 80 stones to tho Plantation acre, and'in other counties 

 equally largo produce was reported. 



We have thus given full details of tho flax and yarn trades down to 1874. Under 

 tho head of LINEN wo shall note tho latest improvements in tho make of goods and the 

 mechanism of steam-looms. 



Our trade in flax will be seen by the following tables ; 



