PAINTS, DYES, AND VARNISHES 



the market. Before the restrictive legislation against 

 home manufacture could be repealed, the French and 

 German color-makers had gained a lead which the Eng- 

 lish manufacturers have never been able to overcome. 



This legislation against alizarine manufacture was a 

 repetition of somewhat similar legislation in several 

 countries, a few centuries earlier, to prevent the importa- 

 tion of indigo, long known to the East, but just then 

 becoming known in Europe. Its brilliant color took 

 the fancy of the wearers of colored silks as a satisfactory 

 change from the prevailing reds and yellows which were 

 the popular dyes of the time. The cultivation of the 

 woad plant, and its manufacture into a yellow dye, 

 constituted an enormous industry in many European 

 countries, particularly Germany and England. The 

 introduction of the strikingly beautiful dye, indigo, 

 menaced every branch of this industry, and such pres- 

 sure was brought to bear upon the legislators that strin- 

 gent laws were passed forbidding the use of indigo for 

 dyeing purposes. In the "free" city of Nuremberg, the 

 crime of dyeing a fabric with indigo was, until the be- 

 ginning of the eighteenth century, punishable with death. 



This famous dye is obtained from a plant that 

 flourishes in the tropical regions of both hemispheres, 

 the species Indigofera tinctoria being native to India, 

 while Indigofera anil is the species of Central America 

 and the West Indies. The dye-stuff is obtained from 

 the plants by causing them to decompose in water. 

 The pigmentary matter settles as a blue deposit, which 

 is collected and carefully dried. 



Just at the present time the same element that 

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