The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1909. THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13839, 26 February 1909, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1909. THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

While no expenditure seems to lie too great when its object is the erection of business premises or the provision oi' social and domestic conveniences in cities and towns, the equipment of factories, the building of harbours, and the like, it is very difficult to persuade people to apply capital and brains to the improvement of. the means of dealing with the national resources , of the country, whence the wealth upon which the whole community must live has to be drawn. A step in this direction is proposed by a Christchui'''h syndicate, which has acquired a lease of 30,000 acres of bush in Wostland, with the . intention of converting the soft woods growing upon it into puip for paper-making. This is good news on the face of it. AYhether entirely good depends upon the rate at whicji the timber will bo 'cleared,' to satisfy the greedy maw of the grinding machine. There is some talk of the American pnlpers grinding up forests faster than they are growing, and hastening too much the day of timber famine in the land. There is another direction in which capital and enterprise might be profitably applied to a. natural product of New Zealand, an 1 that is the cultivation of phormium tenax, and the development of appliances for extracting and preparing its excellent-fibre for other uses than those to which it is now applied. There are to-day one or two flax mills running in South Canterbury, stripping, drying and scutching wild flax, "obtained at random wherever it can be found; and presumably the industry pays. But wild" flax is nut to be compared with cultivated, as a source of fibre, except that it can he obtained at less cost for the raw material—for a mere royalty instead of rent and cost of "ulti-vat-ion. The Maoris of the North Island are, or used to be, experts m flax, and they selected different varieties for different purposes and cultivated them. The . difference which cultivation makes in the growth of flax can be seen by comparing the specimens grown for ornament in the shrubberies of Caroline Bay with the average flax-bush seen about the i >untry in.similarly dry situations. Something is being done by the Agrieul-

'tur.il Department in the way oF experimenting on tho growth of phormium at one of tho State fiirms in the North Island, and the last Report of the Department gives some results of '.

first cutting and milling of the' cultivated plants. Ten named varieties and one collection of "wild" ilax wcr? treated. The cutting was 'done in different ways, from the usual ivay of millers, which removes all the leaves, to leaving the younger leaves of each fan to grow into euttablo flax next year. Cut in the usual way, the yield of green loaf would have been about 40 tons per acre. The different varieties required different weights of green leaf—from S.I to 10..0 tons — t.) produce a ton of (ihre, and the average of tho whole represented a yield of about 2.2 tons of scutched fibre per acre. This surely should be a profitable return for milling and. the simple cultivation that the flax received. There are many blocks and patches of land in South Canterbury whereon flax formerly grew luxuriantly that.might with advantage lie devoted to the growth of flax once more. Expansion of the flax industry by cultivation of the plant is not the. only possibility, and at present prices iftir the fibre it may not be a sufficiently attractive proposition. What-is required to give the industry a fillip is the invention of machinery or process, or a combination of both, that will reduce the fibre from the hard coarse ribbon that runs from end to end of the leaf to a softness at least equal to that of jute; and getting it fined down : ti that extent, it would doubtless bo easy to get it finer .still. That then! is a good deal of inventive genius in New Zealand the Patents Gazette bears witness; but it is too much applied to fiddling things that do not count at all in the field of wealth production. There is a great field awaiting the application of mechanical ingenuity and. knowledge of the structure of phormium fibre, in the reduction of the fibre to a spinnable and weavable softness. The uncivilised Maori, woman managed to split up the natural fibre and make soft clothing stuffs of it. The best' we can do is tn take the fibre whole, and twist it into ropes and binder twine. The comparison is nor, creditable to us.