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During night time the water is pumped in to submerge the flax. After several 

 days depending chiefly on the temperature when the straw is about half-way retted, 

 the water is drained off and the flax carefully removed and spread on an adjoining 

 meadow as for dew retting. Here it is given an opportunity to complete the process 

 of decomposition. 



Some advantages claimed for the mixed method, as applied under Ontario con- 

 ditions, are: 



1. Fewer tanks, less equipment, and smaller meadow area required. 



2. Steadier employment for the workmen. 



3. Less danger of loss from spoiled flax. 



4. Fibre more uniform as to strength, spinning qualities, and colour. 



5. As water-retted flax is ordinarily spread on the meadow after removal from the 

 tanks it will be seen that there is no extra labour involved in mixed retting over that 

 entailed in complete water-retting. 



FESTAL OPEEATIONS IN THE MILL. 



BREAKING AND SCUTCHING. 



The care exercised in growing and retting a flax crop must be supplemented by 

 the skill of the mill- worker in breaking and cleaning it. The operation of removing 

 from the fibre the ligneous or woody part of the straw commonly called shives is the 

 test by which to judge the effectiveness of the preparatory operations. 



Properly retted flax of good quality gets rid of a great deal of its woody shive dur- 

 ing the operation of breaking. If under-retted, the shive clings to the fibre, and the 

 resultant excessive use of the scutching knives causes an excessive amount of tow and 

 breaking of the fibre. If the shives cling to the fibre in places after the scutcher has 

 done his best, the value of the flax is considerably reduced. Over-retted straw and 

 short mixed in a handful fall into waste at every application of the knives. Moreover, 

 wastage is easily caused on good flax when either the break hands or the scutchers are 

 careless or unskilled. As the function of the breaks is quite as much to reduce the 

 wood into shive uniformly as well as finely, it is important that the man who feeds the 

 break spread the flax out evenly. If this operation is properly performed, the handful 

 requires the least amount of work from the scutcher with the least maceration of the 

 fibre, and so entails the least amount of towage waste. The scutcher should choose 

 small rather than large handfuls, especially when the knives are speeded up high and 

 the flax is a trifle hard to clean. 8mall handfuls allow the scutcher most easily to 

 expose the centre of his "streak" to the action of the knives and to keep his streak 

 pulled up in order to avoid towage waste. In the reckoning of scutching efficiency, a 

 lower output may (within wide bounds) be quite easily productive of the greater profit 

 for the mill. Fibre scutched at 3 cents a pound is far preferable to fibre scutched at 

 1 cent a pound, if the former rate meant a loss of only 10 per cent tow and sold for 

 20 cents a pound, while the latter involved a towage waste of 20 per cent and brought 

 only 14 cents a pound. Such figures, by the way, might illustrate actual conditions 

 in Canada in 1915. 



GRADING. 



The best workers in flax mills, while constantly aiming at the production of a high 

 percentage of fibre, draw severe lines between qualities, and thereby create several 

 grades of fibre. Mixed qualities in a bale for export mean that the whole bale will be 

 paid for on the basis of the poorest fibre in it. The spinner judges of flax by its uni- 

 formity, strength, divisibility, cleanness, colour, and hackling qualities. Hackling 

 divides the fibres into the smallest filaments, and removes the tow and tangled por- 

 tions. As scutching is the test of previous operations, hackling is the test of everything 

 from the spinner's viewpoint. Flax that hackles 70 per cent into line is considered 

 good fibre. 



