Flax Industry in Ireland.

Manawatu Herald, 11 August 1903, Page 2

Flax Industry in Ireland.

It may be mentioned that the flax grown in Ireland is an annual plant of the genus; limm, consisting of a single slender stalk. —Flaxweed is the Linaria vulgaris of botanists, sometimes called wild flax , or toad-flax. — Our New Zealand flax is classified under another heading by naturalists, and termed phormium, or flaxlily, and therefore included in the genera of plants which produce flowers of great beauty and variety of colour. It is estimated that a capital of £70,000,000 is invested in the flax industry in Ireland. The Belfast manufacturers cannot get enough Irish flax to keep their mills going, and are obliged to import a great part of their supplies from Russia, Holland, Belgium and other places. One of the largest spinning mills is the York-street mill in Belfast, at which considerably over one thousand people work regularly. The cultivation of flax goes back to the very earliest times. Egypt was the great flax-growing centre. The mummies found in ancient Egyptian tombs are invariably wrapped in linen. Joseph, when he went out from Pharaoh, was arrayed in vesture of fine linen; and Solomon brought linen yarn out of Egypt. The peculiar purity attached to linen comes from the fact that' it is the natural product of a plant, and is not like wool, taken from animals How linen is manufactured is very interesting to tell. Much care, and watching, and labour is given to hundreds of hands that have to gather and prepare it for use. On a fine day in July if one takes a walk along a road in the county Down, in the north of Ireland, he will see fields of flax waving in the sunshine. The plant has a pretty blue flower with long stalks and the blossoms are very delicate. When the proper time comes the flax is pulled in then gathered up, and left to steep in water for nine days. After this it is taken out of the water and thrown on the fields to dry. During the process of drying a sickly overpowering odour rises in the air. The stalks turn a dull yellowish-brown colour, and of course the pretty blue flowers wither up and dry. Women and children, assisted by a few men, are employed to watch and turn until dry enough to cart to the spinning mills As to the process of linen-making, the flax stems, when dried, undergo “ breaking,” to prepare them for the scutching, process. While passing between the rolling machine, the brittle woody parts of the stems are broken, and the better the breaking is performed, the leas will be the amount of scutching required. Inthermills, which are usually driven by water power, the scutching is done by a series of vertical wheels Then comes the process of heckling, which is to separate the flax into two portions—the “line,” which is the long and best portion, and the “ tow,” which is the short and ravelled portion. In the process of tow-comb-ing special machinery is used and attended to principally by women. After heckling, the flax “ line ” is sorted and spun into yarn, which comes out an ugly greyish colour. A peculiarity in flax-spinning is that for all the fine yarns the,fibre is spun wet. Dry spinning is, however, adopted for coarse and heavy yarns. The yarn has then to be woven, when it comes out in long breadths, unsightly in colour, and of very unfinished appearance. It is unbleached, and the process of

bleaching takes time and trouble First it has to steep in water with bleaching powder and lime, then the long breadths are wrung out and stretched on the fields to dry. The linen soon begins to get beautifully white,- In the month of September, the fields in the north of Ireland, all about Lisburn, Portadown, etc , are literally white with linen.- The bleaching is a most important feature in the preparation of linen, and it employs hundreds of hands. At a small factory at Portadown where fine handkerchiefs are made, nearly all the workers—about 500—are women and girls. Their wages average from five to eight shillings a week. Some are able to earn ten shillings, but these are exceptions Many of them are daughters of small farmers living in the country, who help with harvest work in summer but work at the mill during the winter and spring. They begin at half-past eight a.m. and work till half-past six with an interval of an hour for dinner. In April the fresh flax comes in, so that is the busiest time.