Linen . ained its superior reputation, put it tome : Irish flax grows well on the field, but it is shame-lessly disgraceful how it is brought to the market. TheIrish grower must aim at larger yields and better quality,and so get its full value. There is no reason why 25 percent, better quality and yield should not be easilyobtainable, and the farmer would have so much moreprofit. But the farmer is unconsciously wasteful inevery stage. Flax in retting should not require loadingwith stone, or men having to go into the water to removeit from the retting ponds. In so trampling the tenderflax in it
Linen . ained its superior reputation, put it tome : Irish flax grows well on the field, but it is shame-lessly disgraceful how it is brought to the market. TheIrish grower must aim at larger yields and better quality,and so get its full value. There is no reason why 25 percent, better quality and yield should not be easilyobtainable, and the farmer would have so much moreprofit. But the farmer is unconsciously wasteful inevery stage. Flax in retting should not require loadingwith stone, or men having to go into the water to removeit from the retting ponds. In so trampling the tenderflax in its newly-retted condition they destroy its qualityirreparably. Often the steeping is more at fault thanthe scutching, though the latter calls for much improve-ment. The mills tend to make too much tow and notenough fibre—a verdict fully confirmed by the annualGovernment reports and by experts. Retting is really a bacteriological process calling treatment, yet we have relied on the un- 196. The Future of Linen sophisticated farmer to accomplish it—well, just by ruleof thumb. Surely it is safe to presume that researchwill within a few years mean not alone improved quality,but much reduced cost in this process alone. Statistics,especially on theoretical reasoning, are not always con-vincing, but while it seems going a little too far to agreethat were the processes of retting and scutching improvedby scientific research, linen would be in a position tocompete with cotton, still there is some possibility of thatachievement. Moreover, just as there are a multitude of avenues,each of which may lead to the cheapening and im-provement of flax if scientifically explored, so thereare a multitude of other similar golden secrets stillhidden in the other stages of linen making, to the un-locking of which scientific research must prove the opensesame. The various stages through which flax passes in itsevolution into linen can be summarised thus : Preparing,with scutching and
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidlinen00moor, bookyear1922
