FIBER CROPS 



393 



of the fiber flax grown in the United States and Canada is retted by spreading 

 the straw carefully and evenly on the ground, where it is exposed to the 

 weather for two to four weeks. After retting, it is raked up, tied in bundles, 

 and taken to the mills, where it is broken, scutched, and hackled. In each 

 of these operations it is picked up and handled in small handfuls, and some 

 of the processes, especially hackling, require a high degree of skill. Numerous 

 machines have been invented to pull flax, spread it for retting, break it, and 

 scutch the fiber, but none of them has given sufficient satisfaction to be gen- 

 erally adopted. Until machines are devised to take the place of hand labor, 

 and reduce the cost of the preparation of flax fiber, there is little probability 

 that the industry in this country can be increased in competition with other 

 crops which may be cultivated with greater profit." 1 



497. Production. While one of the most important fiber 

 crops of the world, flax is 

 grown in America chiefly for 

 its seed, the large production of 

 which in the United States and 

 Argentina has made this one of 

 the principal oil-producing 

 plants. The principal flax seed 

 producing states are North Da- 

 kota, Minnesota and South Da- 

 kota. While in the United States 

 flax is a secondary crop, in Ar- 



World's average production, 9 years, 



gentma it is one of increasing 78,824,4-co bushels 



importance. In the year 1902-3 Dia g r am showing the percentage of the 



world's production _;. flax-seed by 



the acreage of flax in Argentina countries for an aver*-r of 9 

 was nearly equal to that of vears - 1896-1904 



maize, and about one-sixth the 



total acreage of farm crops in the same country. In the same 

 year the acreage in the United States was 3,233,229, and in 

 Argentina, 3,221,400 acres. 



"Flax, that devourer of the richness of the land, is a .crop which, necessarily, 

 must be of a nomadic character; it cannot become a staple crop in farms 

 worked in a regular manner, because it would absorb all the strength of 

 the soil, and quickly produce sterility. In such cases it can only be grown 

 at intervals of five years, after a methodical rotation of crops calculated to 



. S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook 1903, pp. 391, 392. 



