THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 22 November 1906, Page 2

THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

“ The flax industry is simply in its infancy,” stated Mr C. I. Fulton, chief Fibre Expert, to a Lyttelton Times reporter on Friday. T ‘(No one knows what it will devekp into at maturity. In 1,836 Mr John Murray wrote an account of the New Zealand flax indus.ry and printed in a book the paper of which was entirely made of flax. T lat paper is the nearest imitation of paichment I have ever seen. That is one of the lines of development. Another is in the making 01 linen and various kinds of fabric. When the Japanese representatives were here some little time ago I cook them round some Auckland rope walks. I knew that for the last 10 or 12 years Japan had been importing flax, and I asked them what she did with it. The reply was that it was used 1 for the making of handkerchiefs. This is very suggestive, especially when one remembers that Japan has not hdd our best quality flax by any means —merely seconds and thirds. We hope to do something, too, in the way of introducing flax-milling machinery. At present none of the machines dress the flax in a manner at all equal to handwork. They bruise the. fibre .too much and preclude all possibility of the finest class of work. The old Maori process was all handwork, purely and mechanical. They removed the cuticle and much of the fibre, too (which would be loss), but what they did leave was perfectly good and true. With handdressing you can reduce the fibre till it looks like a cobweb—till the eye gets tired of looking for thethread, so fine has it become;'' Think what this means in the manufacture ot fabrics, with a fibre 3ft to 12ft long or even longer,” He conceded that chemical processes would produce a silken texture. but weakened the fibre.