52 THE JUTE FIBRE OF COMMERCE. 



failing resource of that most humble, patient, and- despised of created beings 

 — the Hindoo widow, saved by law from the burning pile, but condemned 

 by opinion and custom for the remainder of her days literally to sackcloth 

 and ashes, and the lowest domestic drudgery in the very household where 

 once, perhaps, her will was law. This manufacture spares her from being 

 a charge on her family ; she can always earn her bread. Amongst these 

 causes will be discerned the very low prices at which gunny manufactures 

 are produced in Bengal, and which have attracted the demand of the whole 

 commercial world. There is, perhaps, no other article so universally 

 diffused over the globe as the Indian gunny-bag. All the finer and long- 

 stapled jute is reserved for the export trade, in which it bears a compara- 

 tively high price. The short staple serves for the local manufactures ; and 

 it may be remarked, that a given weight of gunny-bags may be purchased 

 at about the same price as a similar weight of raw material, leaving no 

 apparent margin' for spinning and weaving." 



The gunny-bag or cloth is sent from Calcutta to Penang, Singapore, 

 Batavia, and the whole of the Indian Archipelago, for packing pepper, 

 coffee, sugar, &c. ; to the west coast of South America, for nitrate of soda, 

 borate of lime, regulus of silver, &c. ; to the Brazils for coffee and cotton, 

 and to the States for packing cotton only ; in fact, it is superseding all 

 other materials for this purpose. Thus it finds its way to Liverpool or 

 London, and is sold to the wholesale dealer with the sugar, coffee, pepper, 

 &c. When again disposed of to the retail grocers in the country, the bags 

 are purchased from them by other people to make the bottoms of mats, — 

 they buy jute to make the surface, — and these mats are sold all over the 

 country. There are some people who make a good trade even by buying up 

 the bags that have held the sugar, and selling them again to the ginger- 

 beer or "pop" manufacturers, who first boil them to get out all the 

 saccharine matter to sweeten this popular beverage, and then dispose of 

 the bags to the matmakers. 



I have been informed by a gentleman who has just returned from India, 

 that the moment you step out of the palanquin, the bearers at once commence 

 spinning "jute-root" into gunny, which is sold to make into bags. The demand 

 for the gunny-bags has been so great, that a London company has established 

 a large manufactory in Calcutta to make this bagging, and about 300,000/. has 

 been already expended. With English ingenuity, steam power, and native 

 labour, a most extensive and new business has sprung up. The writer has 

 examined some of the bagging made by this company, and the equality is 

 far superior to any of the same kind that is manufactured in England : 

 there is no chance, however, at present of these bags coming into competi- 

 tion with those manufactured in Great Britain, as the demand is so great 

 for local consumption and for export to other countries. Immense 

 numbers are used in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies ; and in Man- 

 chester large quantities of these gunny-bags are sold to the paper-makers, 

 and for repacking. 



Messrs G. and J. A. Noble state that while the quantity of jute imported 



