The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1886-06-19
CLOTH FROM NETTLES.
A RAW MATERIAL CHEAPER AND
TOUGHER THAN ANY.
A Yankee Substitute for Chinese See'
sucEer-Suits Maize OF Rami-Enu-
meration OF the Virtues
of NettIe Fiber.
rPhiledelnhia Press ]

Philadelphia Press
Mr. Felix Fremsry, a well known Prus-
sian savant and inventor, is stopping IN this
city He has mission. 1t Is to revolu-
tioniza the textile industry in the Unitel
States.
Il am native Of Aix-la-ClapsIe" said
Mr. Fremery, land have devoted my life
principally TO the study of botany. am
not unknown in this country, since l took a
prize at the Centennial exposition for an oil l
to lubricate vegetable woods in course of
preparation for the spinning process
you know the seersucker cloth so popu 4
lar for summer wear in your country. How |
light and strong it Is, and what pretty ma
terial too You know, l suppose, that it Is |
made from the fibers of the Chinese nettle. /
The process is a very peculiar one. The |
Chinese until 1851 alone possessed the secret !
of freeing the 6bers of the plant from the /
resinous gum holding them together These |
fbers are then, not spun, but cut into long, |
narrow strips, and glued together at the
ends with a species of glue unknown to us. |
1t is in all probability animal glue, mixed
with a certain per cent. of har1 wax This |
process preserves the peculiar gloss of the
fiber which causes some people to mistake 1t
for silk If the cloth were spun it would lose
its luster.
ain Rhode Island seersucker cloth is imi-
tated in cotton There is doubt that 1t
could be manufactured here in large guam
titles out of the fiber of the American nettle
The rami or rhea of China or India grows all
through the southern states and portions OF
California. The material is known in Eng
land as China grass.
"a gentleman sent me from Altoona, Pa,
! a few years ago for some cuttings of the
! American wild nettle. Urtica postulata is
| its Latin name 1t grows in great abundance
! all through the Allegheny mountains. ex
| perimented with it, and became convinced
/ tlsCtI-
! tute for flax have a nursery garden of
! these cuttings now at Aix-la- Chapells.
"In the course of my experiments noticed
that the thread produced from the fiber was
was similar to that of flax, but CLOS Ter AMI
more like silk in appearance. 1t can be pro-
duced very cheaply, the plant being
! perennial one-that is to say, it does not
have to be replanted every year. These
cuttings came to me ten or twelve years ago
found that the fiber of the American nettle
was finer and stronger than that of Euro
pean growth-Urtica dioica.
| @At this moment there are ten twelve
! manufactures in Germany where the fabric
is prepared to be made into clothing, hand
kerchiefs. stockings shirts, toweling, lace
curtains, and many hundred species of tex
tile articles. 1t completes with wool on &C
count of its greater strength and cheapneSs."
"This material takes every fast color, just
as wool does, and its Introduction would not
require any change to be made in machinery.
These discoveries of mine are covered by
several patents in the United States,
Another use to which it may be applied is
for sail-cloth ropes, or cordage. There are
numerous varieties of the wild nettle in
this country. One of the commonest kinds
in the South, where it grows side by side
with the rami, is the Bacheria urtica, of
which there are more than I'D varieties.
Gan Hungarian named Neumann has at
fuofo
of this material. The daily production aver
ages about $4,000 pounds. Neuman started
another mandatory near Dusseldorf, in
Rhenish Prussia, but had to fly the country
on account of some trouble he got into with
a government official. He was convicted Of
SANDER and sentenced to one years imprison-
ment. But for this trouble he would be
doing we'll, as the government had, up to
this time, helped him by every means in
their power supplying him gratuitOusly
with large quantities of nettles from East
Prussia.
$40 you see this piece of red wool? Well,
it doesn't happen to be wool at all, though
4 ANYBODY who didn't know it might be will
ing to swear it was 1t is nettle fiber from q
place / know near Newark, n. j. This
piece of gray cloth you see was made of the
same stuff; so were these handkerchiefs, and
these stockings, too. They are almost indie
structible l wore pair of trousers made
of the cloth several years; wore them at
work in my garden, but they seem practic-
ally indestructible, and have been washed a
dozen times Most of these articles were
: manufactured for me at Passaic, n. j. The
gray cloth came from the Germania mills in
Holyoke. This cheviot cloth can be washed
twenty times without injuring the material
1t would be splendid for workingmen's
clothes
Z Though possessing so great power of re-
sistance to the action of water, a lint can be
manufactured of American nettle fiber SUI
S perior to the best cotton as an absorbent
V See, drop this piece of nettle-grasS lint III
this tumbler of water In an instant it has
become saturated with the fluid and sinks to
the bottom.
"These nettles grow in prodigious quantity
all through the Jersey swampS This year
the yield on my place near Newark was 20 tx
25 per cent of pure fiber from this dried stock,
e The nettles must be cut about the end of Sep
e TENDER, when the sap begins to ripen in accord
o ance with the laws of your climate here Oh
course, as one goes further south the nettleS
: will ripen earlier. There is no market fol-
a the American nettle fiber. but it could b.
- Toada q TrOGta bile article of export -