34 FLAX CULTURE 



Q. How much enhancement of price would be 

 necessary to induce the farmers to bring it (the flax 

 straw that is now burned in the fields) to market ? 



A. That I cannot state. 



Q. As I understand, the reason it is not used by 

 the manufacturers, is that they can buy the material 

 in other quarters cheaper than they can get it of the 

 farmers of the West. 



A. Certainly. 



Q. Can you tell how much cheaper they can buy 

 it in that way? 



A. I cannot say, because there are so many grades 

 of flax. / am not very well informed in regard to 

 American flax. 1 



Very evidently not, and yet this is the 

 sort of testimony that is relied on to 

 keep the duty on flax. 



Mr. Sisson apparently forgot to say that 

 cheese dairying was replacing flax culture 

 in New York. He remembered only that 

 he handled half a million pounds of New- 

 York flax the previous year (1881). If 

 that is correct, he must have handled more 

 than half the crop of the State, as the 

 whole production of New York by the 



1 Rep. of Tar. Com., pp. 282, 283. 



