The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-05-11
BLACK CHEESECLOTH.
SUGGESTION MADE TO TOBACCO
 GROWERS
Related Travelling Man Seeking Or .
 ders-Absorbing the Sun's Heat.

l
 ders-Absorbing the Sums Heat.
 The fame of the experimental grow
 ing of tobacco under cheesecloth In
 Connecticut has spread even to the
 neighborhood of Troy, N. Y., and a
 drummer from that city arrived in
 Hartford last evening as the represen-
 tative of q large mill located in Valley
 Falls, near Troy, with the intention of
 getting a share of the business of sup
 plying cheesecloth to the growers. The
 story as it reached Troy was to the ef- feet that hundreds of acres were to be
 covered in Connecticut this year with cloth shades, and the travelling man arrived here lacking in knowledge of
 the tobacco season, but prepared to
 talk cloth to any growers who might wish to order 1t.
 l He soon learned however, that the cloth for experimental fields which may be planted in Connecticut this year, has all been ordered, and most of 1t is al- ready received on the farm. He was told by the people he met that he was about three months too late The di uliillST NtHl lO IOluOHUCh, IlcN tI tllG- less, and visited the DuBon farm, learn ling more about tobacco in short trip to the farm than he ever knew before. He took down the addresses of persons who will grow under cover and returned to-day to New York to report that a very promising field for cloths of loose mesh was opened in Connecticut, but that mills who care for any of the busi- ness must send their men out in Janu- ary rather than May.
 A representative of the Times who talked with this cloth man learned that the mill was putting out about four thousand yards day of the cloth like that which will be used on the large frames in Tariffville, But this cloth, it seems, is not the finished product of the mill but is merely fabric in the course of manufacture, and the heavy cheese cloth appearance Is only the founda- tion for a complete fabric which is used as foundation for the frames of wo- mems hats.
 The .cheesecloth, or as the drummer called it, the 1920 cloth, is made of white thread, but the next step in the manufacture is the dyeing of it black. It is then washed, when the dye takes on a bluish cast, and the travelling man intimated to some of the growers he met that the use of this black cloth might prove an improvement over the white, for he said that If heat and dampness were what was wanted be- meath the shade, the use of black cloth would result in the attraction of twenty per cent. more of the rays of the sum- and probably darkening of the growing crop, which would lead to less evaporation of the moisture in the ground.
 Reply was made to this that while the use of a black cloth might lead to the absorption of greater amount of the heat of the sum- It would probably not be practicable to use 1t because the plants needed the light that came to them through the white cloth and prob ably could not spare the amount of light that the black fabric would apparently cut off.
 It is not unlikely, however, that some one who Is experimenting with the growing of tobacco under shade will &C., cept this hint from the cloth maker (who knows nothing of tobacco grow ing) and use piece of black cloth over a small fragment of the frame and mo- t.ce what effect there is if any. It Is cls med that a dye known as a wash dye can be obtained which will not fade, and which is not soluble in water, so that there would be no danger of the discoloration of the leaves of the plant raised under the colored cover during the showers of the summer-Hartford Tirnac