ANNUAL REPOET—AGRICULTURE. 
29 
In some of the states the decline was much greater than this. 
Flax Crop of 
Connecticut .... 
Maine. 
New Hampshire 
Indiana. 
Illinois. 
Missouri. 
Kentucky. 
1850. 
1860. 
17, 920 
1,187 
17,081 
2,997 
7,652 
1,347 
584,469 
97,119 
160, 063 
48,235 
627,160 
109, 837 
2,100,116 
728, 234 
While, on the other hand, but two states and one territory 
showed an increase, namely : 
Crop of 3850. 1860. 
New York. 740,577 1, 518,025 
Ohio. 446,932 882,423 
Utah. 550 4,343 
But again the scale turned after 1860, when the coming of 
the war of the rebellion put a check upon the production of 
cotton, and so increased the price of what little could be ob¬ 
tained, that the whole world went in quest of substitutes. 
We are at the date of this writing without the census tables 
of 1870 for the country as a whole, and are, therefore, without 
the data for a demonstration of the increase! production 
beween 1860 and 1870, which we feel sure was made in all 
the northern states. 
Crop of Pounds. 
Wisconsin in 1850 .. 68,393 
Wisconsin in 1860 . 21, 644 
Wisconsin, census of 1870. 497, 398 
The difficulty hitherto has been in the great difference in 
the price of labor in the flax-producing countries of the old 
world and in America—a difficulty that can only be effectually 
overcome by the introduction of improved machinery and 
processes for the manufacture of linen fabrics. Great improve¬ 
ments in these particulars have been made already, but much 
more yet remains to be done. 
Some years since, while the prices of certain fabrics were 
so very high, the attention of machinists and chemists was 
strongly turned to the discovery of means by which the linen 
