No. 149.] 421 



• 



industry is the tedious and expensive preparation of it for the 

 spindle and loom. Donelan says now that by his new patent 

 process, he can prepare it for one cent a pound, by chemical and 

 mechanical processes combined, and that the flax is, at the same 

 time bleached ! One ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory. If 

 Donelan's patent can do this, no man can estimate the importance 

 of it to agriculture. There is another invention just now, in 

 England, that of the Chevalier Claussen, whose patent method 

 prepares flax in short staple, similar to that of cotton. He can 

 obtain it also from the China grass, from hemp, from old tarred 

 ropes and from bamboo. I do not believe in his success. Large 

 associations are now formed and forming in Ireland and Scot- 

 land ; in the latter country (mine) we are not apt to be tickled 

 with new inventions. 



One of the noblemen of Ireland has a grand plan to secure food 

 for the people. In one establishment at Rochdale I saw about 

 fourteen hundred flax looms at work ; they used one-third cot- 

 ton with two-thirds flax. I have no great confidence in the value 

 of that sort of cloth ; I do not consider it durable nor worth more 

 than one-half of a fabric made of pure flax. I here show you 

 examples of my own manufacture ; one of which is called in 

 Rochdale union goods, of cotton warp and flax filling. I sell for 

 ten and one-half cents a yard ; the other, pure flax, for twenty 

 cents a yard. The union goods are not, in my opinion, worth 

 putting on your back. In dry spinning we use the fibre nearly 

 five feet in length ; in wet spinning, of the fibres cut into short 

 lengths, we make indifferent cloth, not saleable. The Chevalier's 

 mode of making short staple of flax will make poor linen ! I 

 perhaps bear hard on the Chevalier ; yet such are modern dis- 

 coveries, how can we place boundaries to progress 1 



When flax shall become a great crop, as is very probable, how 

 beautiful will be the scene of great fields of it in lovely bloom — for 

 its flower is truly so. "What admirable increase of comfort, of 

 enjoyment to all men in the use of soft, yet strong, the clean and 

 silk-like flax, as white as snow. Some persons seem to fear that 

 these new uses of flax will injure, by competition, our worthy 

 growers of cotton. I have no fear of that. The fine cotton of 



