The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-14
THE NEW TEXTILE MATERIAL

A Process Discovered That Makes the
 Ordinary Kettle Commercially Use-
 full and Opens Up New Industry
 for India.
 The remarkable development of the
 Rhea fibre throws for the moment all tariff differences between Bombay and Manchester into the shade The Indi- an government has long been aware
 that in this widely spread variety of
 the nettle family its provinces possess a source of unused wealth. Tn 1869 1t offered a reward of G5000 for the in vention of machine or process which should separate the delicate fibre from the bark at cost consistent with the requirements of commerce, An offer of 50,000 rupees was renewed in 1877.
 Various machines were submitted un-
 der these Inducements, but they failed
 in regard to the essential element of
 cheapness, and after many trials the
 offers were withdrawn. They effect
 ually attracted, however, the attention
 of experts in Great Britain, Europe and
 America. Rhea became recognized as
 one of the most valuable flores known to the ancient er modern world. Its
 use in Egypt, India. and China dates from before theadawn of history. Rhea
 cloth is unrolled from the mummies of the Nile and unearthed in the burial mounds of Assam The nets and lines
 spun from 1t had, for strength and dur
 ability, no rivals among the fishermen of Bengal and the Malay archipelago. AS China grass it won it's way at the beginning of this century into Euro-
 pean commerce.
 The difficulty is to separate the strong silky flores of the bark from the outer euticle and the tenacious gums in which they lie embedded. In the past, when labor was of little account,
 the wives or daughters of the hus- scraped and washed small quantities
 toll of many days each family pro-
 duced few handfuls of the much prized fibre,. But the cost of this
 manual process proved an insupera- ble difficulty in the adoption of Rhea for modern textile manufactures. Dr. Royle, an industrial adviser to the Indian office, showed that the Rhea flores "are exceeded by none in fine-
 ness, excel all others in strength, and may be fitly compared to the trunk of
 an elephant, which can pick up nee dle CT root up a tree" He declared that, if the difficulty of separating the fibre can be overcome, "the benefits to India and the world will be incalcula- l Ia la, tl,ia ln nI,a ists and machinists of Europe and America have during the past thirty years been endeavoring to solve. France and Germany at once entered the field with factories for the extrac- tion of the fibre. They worked it up into many forms, from ropes
 and sail canvas to plushes and dress | pieces resembling silk goods in ap- pearance. They failed, however, to l produce a filasse, or clean fibre, which should be at once cheap and service able. No machine or merely mechan- | ical operation eliminated the resins which yielded tine yarns, except at a cost prohibitive of their general use. | The chemists seemed for time to be | more successful They produced by | means of various reagents a filasse which was at once cheap and appar- ently sound. Beautiful fabrics were 1 woven on the continent, and the in-
 ventors laid out large capital in the belief that they had solved the prob | lem. But by the time the fabric came into the hands of the consumers, in- deed often before they passed from the l shops of the retail dealers, it was found l that the chemicals had injured the 1 fibre, and the goods were often re | turned to the makers. Process after | | process and machine after machine | failed to extract a Rhea fibre whict should be both durable and cheap.
 | The honor of solving the problem has | fallen to an English chemist, born, we believe, in India. MT. Gomess after
 many experiments elaborated a process
 which the Indian government is al
 length able to pronounce a complete
 success. ''The difficulties which pre-
 vously existed" says the official mem
 orandum lately issued by it's inspector
 general of forests, ''in regard % the ex-
 traction of the valuable textile fibre from the bark of the Rhea plants have