152 REPORT—1862. 
amounts to £105,000 per week, or £1,365,000 per quarter, or £5,460,000 per year. 
This estimate is likely to be doubled before Christmas next, and, including trades 
dependent upon the cotton manufactures, the loss of wages may be taken at £200,000 
Pe week. ‘This grievous calamity falling upon an industrious, high-spirited, and 
itherto independent class of people, has found them comparatively unprepared to 
meet the great emergency. Mice who had saved a little money in sayings-banks, 
building-societies, and cooperative associations, have stinted themselves of the 
actual necessaries of life rather than withdraw the whole of their hard-earned 
savings. Others less provident, or haying large families of young children, have 
been compelled immediately on the cessation of work to apply for relief. Seeing 
the great distress occasioned by a short supply of cotton, the important question 
arises, have we any available substitutes? The substitutes for cotton, or admix- 
tures, which have been proposed during the last few years may be stated as fol- 
lows :—Flax, the product of Linwm usitatissimam, from nearly every country in the 
world ; hemp, the product of a kind of nettle, Cannabis sativa, chiefly from Europe 
and Asia; jute and bast, the inner bark of a species of lime orlinden tree, Corchorus 
capswaris, from India; New Zealand flax, a bulbous plant of the lily kind, Phor- 
mium tenax, from New Zealand; China grass, a nettle of China, India, and the 
Indian Islands, affording the valuable rhea-fibre; nettle-fibres, obtained from the 
common stinging-nettle, and other species from the East; Sunn hemps, obtained 
from leguminous plants, of species allied to the broom, clover, beans, and peas ; 
silk cottons, or Baraguda cotton, the product of a large tree, Bombaz ceiba, in South 
America; pineapple fibre, the produce of the pineapple leaves, from the tropics of the 
Old and New Worlds; plantain-leaf, from which is obtained Manilla hemp, the 
roduct of Musa textilis, from the tropics; aloe-fibre, or agave, a bulbous plant from 
outh America, the large leaves of which produce abundance of fibre. In the 
‘ Jurors’ Report upon the Great Exhibition of 1851,’ and the special papers in the 
‘ Journal of the Society of Arts,’ Dr. Royle’s work on ‘ The Fibrous Plants of India,’ 
or the reports of Dr. Forbes Watson on the ‘Fibres of India,’ a large number of 
fibres are mentioned as cheap, suitable, and sufficient for clothing the natives 
of several countries entirely independent of the fibre of the cotton-plant. A fibre 
said to be new, and stated to be available in very large quantities, at a reasonable 
rice, has been forwarded to the author by a foreigner, who refuses to communicate 
is supposed secret, except upon impracticable terms. Samples of this fibre have 
been freeiy submitted to the merchants on ‘Change in Manchester and Liverpool, 
and obtained general appreciation for their attractive appearance. They are long 
in the staple, somewhat mixed, silky, and fairly white to the eye, but somewhat 
harsh and rough to the touch. The samples show great delicacy in the shades of 
dye in the wool. It is stated to be very suitable for mixing with wool, silk, or 
cotton, or to be worked alone; but no sample of weaving has yet been sent by the 
inventor. An establishment has recently been founded in Manchester with the 
object of testing all fibrous materials and ascertaining the purposes for which they 
may be used. Samples were recently shown, and an offer made to supply forty 
bales per week during the next twelve months, of a fibre said to be suitable for 
mixing, which was strong, of good colour, and of a length and uniformity of staple 
suitable for cotton machinery, thus presenting the three main conditions required 
in a substitute for cotton, The price of this fibre, which appears like a mixture of 
jute and rhea, is said to be less than half the present price of Surat cotton. To 
all inventors, discoverers, and pioneers in the large and fertile fields of fibre fabri- 
cation or adaptation, we venture to recommend that they should avoid secresy, 
and avail themselves of the power of patenting their improvements, so that no 
unnecessary delay may occur in putting to the test of practical experiment every 
intelligent suggestion that may appear in any degree likely to afford relief to the 
fearful distress now prevailing in the cotton districts. The general feeling appears 
to be that no new fibre is likely to be a substitute for cotton, but that several of 
stings DrenOeest may be useful and valuable admixtures with cotton, silk, wool, flax, 
and alpaca. 
In further illustration of the extent of the distress in the cotton districts, Mr. 
Chadwick furnished tables compiled from the Reports of the Committee for the 
Relief of Distress in the Manufacturing Districts, dated March 30, 1863. 
