AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 205 



arrived in the Islands in due course but never was 

 carried nearer to the competition nor the prize and 

 the idea of growing ramie in California was for the 

 time abandoned. In 1880 other inventors of ramie 

 machines and processes appeared and in 1890 still 

 others. The latter group gathered influence enough 

 to secure the passage of a state law in 1891 creating 

 a "department of ramie culture" which undertook 

 official promotion of a machine for fiber extraction 

 and of ramie culture to provide the raw material. 

 The result was a boom for venders of ramie plants 

 and the filling of much ground here and there with 

 roots from which the growth was worthless because 

 no device nor process came through profitably. In 

 later years other promoters have operated with other 

 machines and ramie plantations, but no industry has 

 been established nor notable product marketed to 

 this day. The growth of the ramie plant in Cali- 

 fornia is excellent and immense areas are suited to 

 it, but sound inducements toward its production have 

 not yet appeared. 



Rising to public notice with about the same fre- 

 quency and at about the same dates were agitations 

 for local production of flax fiber by manufacturers 7 

 agents, and their appeals for help to establish a new 

 industry induced the importations of a collection of 

 European fiber flaxes. These grew well but there 

 was no industrial outcome, as no one wished to buy 

 the fiber and the seed crop was not so good for oil- 

 making as the variety currently grown for that pur- 

 pose. This undertaking was followed by a related 



