78 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



TRUE BLUE. 



The Hand of the Dyer, and His Dyes. 

 Ceylon is not a great dyo-produeing country, 

 There is. as in every land, a small, localised, 

 manufacture of vegetable and earthy dyes, just 

 as there is a small production of local yarns 

 and textiles. There is, however, no pro- 

 duction for export purposes, whilst the 

 small import trade in dye stuffs is limited 

 almost entirely to anilines of the fiercest and 

 most deadly order. Generally, however, Cey- 

 lon imports her dyed and printed goods, 

 cotton or silks, from abroad. The gay and often 

 startling reddhas, the veittes of the Jaffna folk, 

 the sulus and loongies of the Malay, ara de- 

 signed, woven, and dyed in England, and Ger- 

 many. The old dyeing industries are dead. In 

 this Ceylon is not by any means singular. Ex- 

 actly the same state of things is noted in every 

 other country, and not in the East alone. The 

 old vegetablo dyes, with their beautiful delicacy 

 of shade, their permanence, are now little used. 

 Their preparation was often tedious and trouble- 

 some. They could not be produced as cheaply 

 as the now Western chemical dyes could be 

 bought inthe bazaars. The now dyes nowjshine in 

 the carpets of Persia, and Turkey Central Asia 

 and India, and glow in the gay fabrics with which 

 the world decks itself. They do not glow for 

 long, however, the majority of these aniline and 

 alizarin dyes. Unlike vegetable products they 

 are all fugitive and some are only less so than 

 others. This is known to all who buy the em- 

 broidered goods of Kashmir. Beautiful for a 

 spell, they soon go dingy, drab, dirty brown 

 for ever. 



Ceylon is not a great dye-producing country, 

 but there is, however, no reason why it should 

 not become one. There was a time when it did 

 not count as a tea-producing territory, and when 

 the rubber brought here experimentally by Wick- 

 ham was regarded in the light of an interesting 

 botanical curiosity rather than anything really 

 6erious. Indeed Ceylon can, if she will, not 

 only produce natural dye of the best, but 

 market it at a price low enough to encourage 

 the dyer to educate himself in the use and 

 nature of true, fast, dyes, and to give his clients 

 honest value for their money, a thing they 

 seldom get now. Ceylon, whilst performing 

 this philanthropic work, can make gains that 

 will content even those accustomed to the 

 wonderful dividends that many of our fine tea- 

 cum-rubber companies have been yielding. She 

 can grow indigo to profit, even as she grows 

 tea, and she ought to do it. She has soils and 

 aspects variable enough, and rainfall and water 

 supplios good enough, on the average, to permit 

 her to do so. She has colonists with the need- 

 iul brains and energy, and sd will be saved 

 from the deadly sins that beset and killed the 

 industry in India. She will, as she must, if 

 she is to do any good to herself and to the 

 world, work on modern lines, avoiding blind 

 leaders who would let her fall into the ditch. 

 She can glow good indigo, and produce at once 

 a true blue dye, and immense quantites of the 

 very best manure, just the very kind that is 

 wanted by her light, open, but rather thin 



soils, manure that has the double advantage 

 of being magnificently rich and healthy, and at 

 the same time cheap. The day comes when the 

 matter will be considered very seriously. 



But it will not be enough for Ceylon to 

 grow her indigo, and to put it upon the 

 market in a form that will prove attractive 

 to the dyers. That will be but a portion 

 of her task. If the work is not done completely 

 she will not only be denied her just profits, 

 but will run the risk of suffering losses that need 

 not be suffered. Having produced her dye she 

 must educate the dyers to its use ; must force 

 the sales upon the market ; must, above all, 

 educate the great cloth buying public. This 

 means that Ceylon must begin by learning all 

 about the matter herself, appreciating it in all 

 its bearings. The public for all that it likes 

 good clothes and prefers to have good value for 

 money, and that may of the feminine half of it 

 make something like a cult of dress, is lament- 

 ably, ludicrously, ignorant about dyes. People 

 do not know the alphabet of the matter. As 

 for natural ndigo, synthetic indigotine, alizarin 

 or logwood blues, neither dames nor dress- 

 makers know much more than their babes of 

 the differenc s and characters of these. The 

 dyers know better, and so do some of the 

 dealers, but the hand of the dyer is subdued 

 to the dye in which he works, and he and 

 the dealer give the public what is most easily 

 sold at the largest profit. The public, who 

 would soon be content with margarine, if 

 only it could be sold as butter, buy, and 

 go their ways. They have short memories. 

 Lamenting their faded garments and house fur- 

 nishings, they content themselves with remark- 

 ing with a sigh that " there is no such thing as 

 a fast blue." They have reason for this philos- 

 ophy under present conditions, but they forget 

 the past, and the stuffs that gave warrant for the 

 saying "true blue.'' 



The vast majority of blue cloths, and yarns 

 now on the market are dyed not with a natural 

 indigo but with what must be styled trash. 

 There is no sense in lamenting over the fact, 

 whilst accepting it, or abusing the chemists and 

 dyers, who sell whatever the public will buy. 

 The only way is to make an honest dye and sell 

 it so as to kill out the trash, while educating 

 the public up to it. Ceylon can do this if she 

 enters the indigo trade, as she can and ought. 

 She will do it by carrying on a strong and in- 

 telligent campaign on the market and in the 

 press. The matter is easy enough,, needing only 

 inte)ligence,honesty and determination, all quali- 

 ties to be found in abundance here. Let us 

 glance briefly at the matter, which ought to in- 

 terest even those who have not any intention of 

 touching indigo, since all may at some time want 

 to buy blue cloth. Into the history of the virtual 

 killing of the Indian indigo industry by the Ger- 

 man chemists, who took up and developed the 

 English invention of synthetic dyes we need 

 not enter here. We have already outlined it. 

 Suffice to say that the chemists succeeded in 

 making and marketing a real indigotine, got 

 from tar arid other waste. This was a true 

 chemical indigo, containing the identical atoms 

 that went to make the Behar dye. It lacked 



