WHAT IS RAMIE?

Grey River Argus, 17 June 1933, Page 6

WHAT IS RAMIE?

“Professor Stuart Chase” (? America) “has been telling manufacturers about ‘Ra-inie’ and just a. little of his propln’cv suf I ices to show what changeful times we tire living in. ‘Ramie’ is a fibrous nettle, which can be grown with a 22-inch fibre, 1500 lbs to the acre (against cotton’s 150 lbs), two or three crops a year, and harvested like wheat by complete! v mechanised methods. From the stacks a full automatic process —no human hand assisting can prepare it for spinning. It makes a cloth seven times as strong a.s wool; it has a lustre like silk or linen, and takes dyes beautifully. It is stronger wet than dry. It can be made into light fine paper that can not be torn by hand. The cost of both textile and paper is far .below any competing commodity. It will ruin cotton, wool a.nd flax growing; it will ruin pulpwood, cotton, wool, silk. rayon, linen and paper manufacturing. It will cost a million jobs, and ruin farmers, manufacturers, insurance companies and banks. It will obliterate perha.ps, five billion dollars of purchasing power.’ “A few more discoveries of that kind, and we shall give up worrying about relief depots worrying the shopkeepers. The ‘New Outlook’ tells of further perils of progress. Air. Wayne Parrish declares that; “The technologist can easily produce a razor blade with a tungsten carbide edge at just 20 per cent, additional cost of a blade to-day. But the blade would last a lifetime. Tf it were produced, the plants which now make blades would have to close down almost immediately.” “So that under capitalism, millions fear progress because the immediate result is to throw them backward.”