The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1891-07-10
THE FIBRE EXHIBIT AT THE EX-
POSITION.

increase the production of vegetable
fibre in this country will receive a
strong stimulus from the display of
fibrous plants and their products at
the Columbian Exposition.
Group 9 of the Official Classification
includes all of the vegetable fibres,
such as cotton, hemp, flax, jute, ramie,
in primitive forms, and in all stages of
preparation for spinning, substitutes
for hemp, cocoanut fibre and all SINH
lar substances.
This country grows annually about
one million acres of flax, and a very
large acreage of hemp, and these two
are our principal fibre producing plants
with the exception of cotton.
Our imports of textile grasses and
fibres now amount to about 25S, 900
tons per annum, valued at about four
teen million dollars. There seems to
be no good reason why large part of
the above sum should not be paid to
home producers, which would be the
case if more attention was paid tothe
production of vegetable fibre in this
country than has been done in the
past. Heretofore flax has been grown
by the farmers of this country almost
entirely for seed, a part Of the straw
going to tow or paper mills and bring
ing on an average not more than $3.50
to $4.OO a ton, the remainder, land much
larger part, being burned or wasted.
To what extent flax may be profitably
grown, both for seed and fibre, is one
of the vexed problems which it is hop
ed the exhibit at the Exposition will
throw some light upon. Investigations
show that the average humidity of the
flax producing sections of this country
is the same as that Of Belgium and
other parts of Europe, where the
production of fax for fibre is the chief
industry of the farming population,
and the exhibit of flax from those
countries will no doubt prove very in
teresting and valuable to American
farmers.
Fibrelia, a new product from com
mon flax straw, promises to have an
important bearing on textile interests
in the future. BY process of mani
pulation the staw is reduced to short
staple very closely resembling cotton
or wool, and when mixed with. either
is said to add materially to the value
Of the product in beauty and strength.
1t is claimed that twenty-five per cent
of fibrelia mixed with seVenty-ffve per
cent. of wool made into brOadcloth
gives a product much more valuable
than if made of wool alone.
The area devoted to the cultivation
Of American hemp has of late years
been extended into states north of the
Ohio River, and recent experiments
encourage the hope that Sisal hemp
may be protitably grown in Florida.
Among other fibre plants now at
tracing considerable attention, espe-
cially in the temperate sections of the
United States, where there is not a
great amount of rainfall, is ramie, a
plant indigenous to Java and China,
and FROM which it is exported in large
quantities to France, Germany and
England and manufactured into linen
and silks. California has appropriated
S., 900 to purchase ramie roots fog free
distribution and as bounty for mer-
charitable ramie. The fibre of this
plant receives and retains, the most
brilliant dyes; is very repugnaRt to
moths, and it's tensile strength is forty
per cent. greater than fax. 1t ranks
next to silk as textile fabric. When
cultivated it grows luXuriantly in the
Southern States and in Southern Cali
fornia, land the only difficulty attending
the product is that machine which
will effectualy separate the;fibre from
the stalk has, not been produced, al
though a number of machines have
been invented for the purpose an6 will
be exhibited at the Exhibition.
The exhibits of hemp, flax, iute, IA
ME, ETC., at the Paris Exposition in
1878, and at the Centennial in 1916
were very interesting and complete.
and it is the purpose of Chief Bucha-
nan of the Agricultural Department,
to make this group at the Columbian
Exposition equally so, and fully illus,
trative of the progress made in later
years in the cultivation of fibre plants
and the methods of preparing the raw
materials for market.