On the Cultivation of Flax. 



397 



affecting the supply of hands in any neighbourhood into which it 

 may be introduced. It must be taken into account that much of 

 the work can be done by women and children, and the scutching 

 may be executed by machinery, with a vast economy of labour, if 

 necessary. It will be readily seen that in the district where 

 labour is cheapest, the production of flax will be the most suc- 

 cessful, since it can undersell localities less favoured in this point. 

 For the same reason the small farmer or cottier can sell his flax 

 for less than the large farmer, since the otherwise unemployed 

 labour of his family will prepare his small patch of flax at a much 

 less cost than the hired labour for which the large farmer has to 

 pay. But the latter is placed in a more favourable position for 

 realising the full value of the seed, in feeding his cattle, and 

 hence the seed will be his primary object, while the fibre wdl be 

 the primary object of the small holder. 



. The trouble which flax gives, in the various processes which it 

 undergoes before it is ready for market, is often objected to. 

 This, however, will not be considered of weight by the careful and 

 enterprising, when they find that their profit increases in propor- 

 tion to the care and skill exerted in the different processes of 

 management. 



Where labour is plentiful, and the farmer sometimes finds a 

 difl^iculty in employing all the hands dependent on him — especially 

 the weaker ones — the dressing of flax by hand is of great import- 

 ance in affording them a productive employment; and it can be 

 done at any time when there is a dearth of out-door work, and 

 many poor women may be enabled to earn what will support them, 

 when, otherwise, they would be thrown as a burden on the parish.* 



The secondary advantages that would be derived from a general 

 extension of flax-culture in Great Britain and Ireland are very 

 important. The linen manufactures of the United Kingdom have 

 now attained such a perfection, through improvements in ma- 

 chinery, and the peculiar adaptation of the people to manufactur- 

 ing industry, that, in nearly every description of fabric, they have 

 gradually taken the lead in most of the neutral markets of the 

 world ; and the continental nations are only able to sustain their 

 home manufacture by hostile tariffs. There can be no doubt that, 

 if home-grown flax were substituted for the bulk of foreign, in this 

 manufacture, the quality of the fabrics could be much improved, 

 and would still further influence their sale. The duty on foreign 

 flax was reduced about 1825, and again, by Sir Robert Peel's 

 tariff, to a merely nominal amount. Notwithstanding this, the 



* In the Belgian ' EnquSte,' before quoted, is the following passage : — 

 " Dans ces hameaux 11 n'y a pas de pauvres. Le travail du lin occupe 

 toute la population pendant Thiver." 



