THE RESULTS THAT WILL ACCRUE FROM NEW ZEALAND FLAX.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 October 1869, Page 5

THE RESULTS THAT WILL ACCRUE FROM NEW ZEALAND FLAX.

Ix would be useful to have an idea of the future magnitude of this industry in New Zealand, so we furnish a few rough guesses in the hope that some experienced party will take the matter in hand. There are, it is said, about seventy millions of acres of land in this Colony. We will assume that one acre in seventy has flax upon it; thus we obtain one million of acres of land provided with flax, only needing machinery to make them productive of an important article of export in a very brief period. We have known a gentleman in our own district to have been impressed with the notion of having a flax mill, and within seven weeks from the thought striking him a mill was in opeiation. There is hardly any other undertaking that would yield such an immediate result. Let us, instead of dealing with a million, content ourselves with basing a calculation upon 500,000 acres. It is thought an acre will yield a ton of dressed flax, but we will state half the quantity, and the result is 250,000 tons of dressed flax for export. We will assume that only £2O per ton is the colonial market price, at which it will yield to the Colony five millions of pounds sterling. Divide the quantity produced by 200 tons as the average annual product of a mill, and estimate the cost of such an establishment at £IOOO, and it will be seen that£ 1,250,000 would be the capital so used upon machinery, materials, and labor. We have heard that an ordinary mill requires 2C hands ; according to this statement 50,000 people would be employed immediately in and about flax mills. Allow half to be married, with the average household of five persons, and the population that would be immediately engaged in dressing flax. Suppose the average consumption of flour to be slbs. per person weekly, and a million of bushels of wheat would be required to furnish the bread. Take 3ibs. per week of meat per person as used, and the weekly consumption of cattle weighing 600ibs. each would be 750, or 39,000 beasts annually. Now, think of the indirect demand, for we have only considered the flax dressing class, but we should remember the demand for carriage by cart and by rail, and the services of parties engaged in other pursuits which would be absolutely necessary, too numerous to mention in detail, and some notion of the importance of flax-dressing as a permanent pursuit operating through wealth in the most wholesome manner upon the future of New Zealand may be partially realised. The Colony’s immediate future begins to show itself as likely to far surpass the expectations of those who, as sanguine young men, took an active part in bringing the Wakefield theory of colonisation into operation in these islands. Surely the time has arrived when respect for the memory of the able and benevolent Edward Gibbon Wakefield should be evinced by establishing some institution with which those who knew him well know he would like to have had it associated.—Wairarapa Mercury .