Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1860-04-14
FIBRILLA.


M. ALLEN. Its object is to present the new
phase Of industry which seems likely to be oc-
casioned by the use of "fbrilia" as n material
for raiment instead Of cotton. What this fbrilia
is we do not fully understand, except that it
may be produced either from fax or hemp, and
is SO much like cotton that even experienced
cotton growers have taken it for such. 1t may
be interviewer with either silk or wooden and
add strength to them both. And what is more
remarkable still, small part of the soil of New
England is capable of producing a crop of it
equal in amount to all the cotton raised in the
United States.
The value of such product would be beyond
conception. There is no conceivable limit to
the amount of population which the territory of
New England, poor and ungenerous as its soil
is, might not be made to support through its
means. When flax is raised, as it now is in
the States of Ohio and Indiana, merely for the
seed as food for fatting cattle, it can be imag-
ined what an immense stimulus its culture would
give to industry when we consider that it not
only presents means Of enrching the soil from
which it springs, but it gives an unbounded
scope to commerce and manufacture. 1t is one
of those elements of that triform unity of hui
man industry AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURE,
and COMMERCE, which seems to lie at the foun-
daton of them all and give healthy and equal
stimulus to them all. 1t is not like cotton, which
takes nutriment from a quick and easily ex-
hausted soil and returns nothing thereto but the
oil of its own seeds. The fax after yielding
its fbrilia for the purpose of clothing human
beings, then fattens beeves for human food with
its seeds, and thus furnishes not only material
for footwear in their hides, but presents the
only sure resource for recuperating and sustain
ing the soil An economic attempt was once
made to feed negroes on cotton seeds, with a
kind of perpetual motion sort of object, in
which every thing was to be taken from the soil
and no compensation made in return. 1t was
an ingenious attempt to overcome the compen-
sation system which has been established by Ma
ture; but it is needless to say that the plan
would not work. The negroes who were fed
on the seeds, died, we believe, under the expe-
riment. 1t is not probable that cattle, even,
could survive such food but if they could,
there is not enough of it produced for the pur.
pose of fattening them.
There is, in fact, no food more nutritious for
cattle than the oil cake which is the residuum
from the manufacture of linseed oil from flax
seed. 1t is an article of first Importance in
England, where the produce of the land is
needed to great extent for supplying vegeta-
ule rood Tor tie lnnauitunus rIax seed Is
brought from the skirts OF the Himalaya Noun
tains to England, is there manufactured into oil
which supplies the markets of the United States
for the painting of our wooden houses, and the
oil-cake remains at home for the use of stock
growers And this latter use alone would prob
ably pay all the expenses of manufacture and
transportation; for every ton of seed, besides
its beef-making properties, is probably equal in
value to a ton of guano as means of fertiz-
ing the land
The author of the address truly remarks that
no State can run all to commerce or manufac-
lures without producing biased, one-sided re-
suit. A State given to COMMERCE. needs AG-
RIcuLTURE and MANUFACTURES to enable it to
keep its proper balance. AS much of the labor
OF State as possible should in all cases be
spent upon the products of its own soil in order
to keep the progress sound and healthy.
non-observance of this principle is precise
ly the great radical fault Of the southern system
of agrculturei and it is one Of the first practi-
cal evidences that proves the wrong of the sys-
ten of save-labor. The demand for cotton, or
some other material for undertaking, is al
ready greater than can be supplied by the pres
ent awkward and shiftless mode of tilling the
land in the cotton-growing States. A system
of rotation OF crops is needed there as well as
it is in the free-labor States; and to this end
small farms and free-abor become necessary
If it shall turn out that the material called ibri-
liza can be produced to the extent which the au-
thor of the address says that it can, there is no
possible means of estimating the consequences
to which it may lead 1t opens up a new era
in the history of the world-an era of unbound
ed enterprise, increase of population and wealth
At this moment, when our nrabe public lands
are about being wholly taken up and no longer
offer stimulas TO enterprise. discovery arises
that promises to render our old fields as fertile
and as inviting as the new. 4 new ware Of
emigration may thus pass over the country. be.
ginning at the ea.board and extending west
ward adding still greater increase of popula.
ton than the first.
In this point of view it is not impossible tina,
some of our public domain which has hitherto
been considered as nearly barren might be rem
dered productive; for in some parts of this do.
main as in Utah, for instance. fax grows in q
native state. Along the lower tanks of the
mountains the land seems TO be mostened suf
hcientiy by the dissolving SHOWS to produce &
growth of fax without the aid of rain Wheth
er the potash of the soil might not however af
feet injuriously it's fibre is question that still
remains to be decided.
One thing appears to be pretty certain, thai
If substitute for cotton can be produced il
the free-labor States, then the migration of free
labor towards the slave States would be great,
retarded and diminished, and the Authorization
Of the southern part of the Union would 90 OF
n,nra ranidly thon II hac 1ona baf,ro Nu:.l