FLAX PRODUCTION.

BY JOHN HYDE.

The total area of land devoted to the cultivation of flax in the United States in 1889 was 1,318,698 acres, or 2,060.47 square miles, the production of flaxseed 10,250,410 bushels, the production of fiber 241,389 pounds, the amount of flax straw sold or so utilized as to have a determinable value 207,757 tons, and the total value of all flax products $10,436,228.

Although there has been no period when the value of the flax products of the United States has amounted to one-half of one per cent of the total value of the agricultural products of the country, there has never been wanting a small cluster of states in which flax culture was for the time being a matter of considerable importance, while general interest in such culture has always been kept alive by the vagaries of its geographical distribution. Flax production is, in fact, one of the curiosities of American agriculture, just as for 3,400 years of authentic history it has been one of the most interesting features of the agriculture of the old world.

From early colonial days there has come down but little information of a statistical character concerning either flax or hemp. The cultivation of one or the other of these products was, however, made compulsory in Massachusetts in 1639, in Connecticut in 1640, and in Virginia, where the domestic manufacture of linen thread was likewise compulsory, in 1662, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other colonies making similar enactments. In 1729 1,813 bushels of flaxseed, · valued at the equivalent of $1.14 per bushel, were exported from Pennsylvania to Ireland and Scotland, and within the next 25 years the flaxseed exports of Connecticut alone attained an annual value of £80,000, representing in all probability not far from 400,000 bushels of seed.

Not until 1849 are there found available any general statistics of flax production in the United States, but at the Seventh Census either flaxseed or fiber was reported from every state and territory except Louisiana and Minnesota, though in all but a few states the production was insignificant. Ohio, Kentucky, and New York produced 57.38 per cent of the entire seed production, and Kentucky, Virginia, and New York 52.42 per cent of the entire fiber production of the country, Ohio producing two and one-half times as much seed and Kentucky more than twice as much fiber as any other state. Thus, at the very outset of any statistical review of flax production in the United States, the investigator is confronted by that remarkable tendency to geographical concentration which is an almost invariable characteristic of flax, notwithstanding its cosmopolitan character as a plant.

The census of 1860 dealt with a flaxseed production slightly in excess of that reported at the preceding census, but the production of fiber showed a falling off of 38.78 per cent. Three of the greatest flax-growing states of to-day, Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska, appear in the list for the first time, with a total of 131 bushels of flaxseed and 3,118 pounds of fiber. Of the total fiber production of the country, 50.86 per cent was credited to New York and Ohio, while Ohio and Indiana produced 63.83 per cent of the total amount of seed. Kentucky had fallen to the third place in the production of fiber, but the amount produced in that state was more than three times the present production of the entire country, although it formed but one-seventh of that of the period under consideration,

The close of the next decade witnessed the high-water mark of fiber production in the United States, the production of 1869 being to that of 1889 as 112 to 1. While this country has never yet been able to compete with foreign nations in the production on a commercial scale of the finer grades of flax, such as the Courtrai and best Dutch, and no less an authority than Mr. Charles Richards Dodge seems to doubt whether it ever will, at least so long as the preparation of the fiber requires such an expenditure of labor, care, and patience as the peasantry of Europe now bestow upon it, it enjoyed for some considerable time a fiber industry of no small importance. The manufacture of flax bagging, suddenly put an end to by the abolition of the import duty on jute butts, had doubled the acreage in flax within 3 years. During that period, 1866 to 1869, the proportion of the cotton crop baled with flax bagging increased from three-sixteenths to three-fourths, and the baling of the crop of 1870-1871, consisting of 4,347,006 bales, taxed to its utmost the capacity of every bagging mill in the country. Of the 27,133,034 pounds of fiber reported at the census of 1870 as the production of the previous year no less than 17,880,624 pounds, or 65.90 per cent, was produced in Ohio. New York and Illinois ranked second and third, respectively, with a combined fiber production of not quite 6,000,000 pounds (see table). In seed production Indiana again held the second place, Ohio leading, and Illinois standing third, the aggregate production of the 3 states being 75.93 per cent of the entire crop, contributed to by 33 states and territories. At this census California is found in the list of flax-growing states

for the first time.

The Tenth Census found the relative production of flaxseed and fiber practically reversed, the latter having shrunk to less than one-seventeenth of its then recent proportions, while the former was beginning to assume something of the importance it was destined so soon to attain. While New York was once more the center of the fiber industry, producing considerably over one-half of the total, the center of flaxseed production had moved westward to the Mississippi river, Illinois being well in the lead, with Iowa second and Indiana third, the production of these 3 states constituting 66.14 per cent of the total production of the country. At this time Ohio stood fourth, closely followed by Wisconsin and Kansas, and at a greater distance by Missouri, this second group of states producing 28.36 per cent of the entire crop. That portion of Dakota territory which has since been made the state of South Dakota, and which now leads the entire country in acreage devoted to flax, had little more than 2,000 acres thus cultivated, while the remainder of the territory, now the state of North Dakota, had only a little patch of yielding a crop of 50 bushels.

5 acres,

Although the change in flax production between 1869 and 1879 was one of great economic importance, involving as it did the almost total extinction of a most promising industry, it was not nearly so remarkable as that well-nigh complete transfer of the flax-producing area which has taken place during the last decade. Unfortunately the report of the Tenth Census on agriculture, like its predecessors, contained only, so far as flax culture was concerned, the statistics of production. and gave no information whatever concerning acreage. It therefore becomes necessary to make! production the sole basis of comparison, a proceeding that is far from satisfactory, as will readily be perceived when reference is made to the wide variation in the yield per acre, as shown by the census of 1890.

Proceeding, however, on this the only available basis of comparison, it is found that between 1879 and 1889 there was a decrease in the fiber production of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio of 65.57, 82.73, and 85.10 per cent, respectively, and in the flaxseed production of the same states one of 98.07, 98.76, and 75.46 per cent, respectively, Wisconsin also showing a decrease of 87.53 per cent in its flaxseed production, although its insignificant production of fiber showed a slight increase. On the other hand, the flaxseed production of Nebraska is found to have increased eighteenfold within the decade, and that of Minnesota twenty-seven fold, while South Dakota produced 67 bushels of flaxseed in 1889 for every bushel raised in the corresponding portion of Dakota territory in 1879. These states, with Iowa, the only state in the Union that ranked as a leading flax-producing state both in 1879 and 1889, contained at the latter date 79.82 per cent of the total flax acreage of the country, and produced 80.06 per cent, or slightly over four-fifths, of the total amount of flaxseed. The production of this group of states, moreover, exceeded by 1,035,613 bushels,