when the plant is finally produced commercially in the South it will be cleaned by an American machine.

The fact that ramie is grown in no country commercially on an extensive scale, notwithstanding the large rewards that in past time have been offered for successful machinery, demonstrates how difficult of solution is the problem. The present status of the ramic question may be stated in epitome somewhat as follows:

It is not cultivated as an industry because the growers have no adequate economical means of preparing the fiber for market. It is grown industrially in China, Japan, and to a slight extent in a few other Eastern countries. It is grown to an exceedingly limited extent also in portions of Europe and the French colonies in Africa, in some of the South American republics, and in the British colonies. The commercial demand for the fiber is exceedingly limited, because, first, it has. not been spun as economically as is desirable to make the industry profitable; and secondly, the real reason, because the supply of the raw material is so fluctuating and uncertain there has been no inducement for manufacturers to put large capital into factories and machinery.1

As there is no present large demand for fiber from the manufacturers, those who may have produced it in a limited way have found no market for their product. With a perfected and satisfactory decorticator the principal obstacle to success with the industry will disappear, manufacture will be encouraged, and, from present indications, nearly every country in the great family of nations where ramie will grow will then be producing fiber for the world's market.

It is said that the first attempt to decorticate ramie by machinery was made in India in 1816, a flax and hemp machine having been sent out for the purpose from England. Little was accomplished during the next fifty years, when the attention of inventors was called to the importance of producing a mechanical decorticator through renewed experiments with culture and the further introduction of the plant into several countries. The date of the revival of these efforts M. Favier fixes at about 1870. In America these efforts began at a much earlier period, for the machine of Dr. Benito Roezl was patented September 17, 1867, and it is said that hundreds of them were made at a foundry in New Orleans and offered for sale (at $225 each) the next year. The list of inventions from Roezl down to the present time is a long one, in which the United States figures conspicuously. And from Roezl to re

1 Exquisite samples of ramie manufacture were in possession of the Department of Agriculture as long ago as 1867, received from Messrs. Joseph Wade & Sons, Bradford, England. During the last forty years, up to the present time, there have been factories in operation at various times in different parts of Europe which have produced ramie goods, etc., in almost endless variety. And some of these factories have sunk fortunes in their experiments.

Attention also is called to an announcement which appears in the latter part of this chapter of the practical results of Mr. Charles Toppan's experiments in degumming and spinning this product in the New England States.

cent years the literature of the subject has been a record of asserted successes. Yet, what is a practical ramie-machine? And what has been accomplished in France, where they are laboring so indefatigably to produce the successful decorticator?

Here is a record made by one of the best French machines in actual field-trials in 1888. With a single machine it required twenty-five days to decorticate the product of a hectare, or 2 acres. With 20 acres, at this rate, it would have required two hundred days, and a farmer with one machine, decorticating three crops produced in a season, on 100 acres, would have to run the machine ten years, of three hundred working days each, to accomplish it. To state it differently, to decorticate at this rate the product of a single cutting on 100 acres, in one month of thirty days, would require eleven machines.

Mr. Hardy, ex-director of the botanical gardens, Algiers, calculates that a field of ramie over a year old, whose stems had reached a height of about 6 feet, would produce 48,000 pounds per acre of green stems and leaves, the leaves representing 20,400 pounds. This gives the weight of an acre of stripped stalks as 27,600 pounds. The best record of one of the prize machines at the Paris trials of 1889, working on green stalks with leaves, was about 132.8 pounds of stalks in eighteen minutes. At this rate it would require almost eleven days to decorticate the 48,000 pounds of stalks on an acre, or a year and eight months of three hundred working days to the year to clean a single cutting on 50 acres. Another prize machine decorticated 46 kilograms of stalks with leaves in eleven and one-half minutes. I was informed that there were 200 stalks in the bundle. Calling the time ten min. utes, to avoid the fraction, we have 1,200 stalks an hour, or 12,000 in a day. It is claimed that Louisiana ramie produces 250,000 stalks per At the above rate, working with one machine, ten hours a day, it would require twenty days and eight hours to decorticate the stalks on a single acre; and on 50 acres, with one machine, for a single cutting of ramie, it would require about three years and four months. It should be stated, however, that at an earlier trial, working on 36 kilograms, the decortication was finished in 2.35 minutes, which, after making due allowance for chips which were mixed with the ribbons, would reduce the time given above more than one half. In the eleven and one-half minutes required to decorticate the 46 kilograms of green stalks, 15 kilograms, or about 33 pounds, of wet ribbons were produced, equal to about 1,720 pounds, or 375 pounds of dry ribbons in a day. This shows that if it does require time to decorticate the 250,000 stalks on an acre of ground, a tremendous yield of fiber is produced, illustrating the productiveness of the plant in cultivation in a most forcible manner. See record on page 89.

acre.

The recent ramie literature is so voluminous that a tithe of the valuable points and suggestions presented could not be considered in the brief space of these few pages. It is my intention, however, to bring

together in one or two chapters for later publication as much of it as will prove of interest to the American students of ramie. In studying closely the recent American literature of this subject, one becomes aware of two things. That an array of interesting facts bearing upon many phases of the industry have been presented on the one hand; and that a great deal has been committed to "cold print," on the other, which amounts to useless reiteration of statements that were fresh a dozen years ago and which, it is to be regretted, are sometimes accompanied by other statements misleading and untrue.

I recall an exhaustive article on ramie which has lately had wide circulation through the South, in which a statement is made, evidently taken at random, from another source, to the effect that 250,000 tons of ramie ribbons are annually shipped to Europe from China, Japan, Java, etc.; and that a French firm (named) will contract for 10,000 tons of ramie monthly.

In a recent letter from Messrs. Ide & Christie, the London fiber brokers, discussing this very point of demand and supply, it is stated that ramie ribbons have at no time been shipped to Europe from any country in large quantity. Three to four hundred tons during the last five years would represent the maximum quantity brought from China, while India and other producing countries "have sent little more than sample lots and trial parcels." The largest lot of ramie ever received at any one time was in October, 1888, when 120 to 130 tons of ribbons were offered in the London market. There was nothing like competition for it, and I am informed that it was sold for "£8 to £9, less than half what it cost in China." I introduce these explanations at this time to illustrate the utter absurdity of the figures often given by careless writers (and as often referring to cost of production), and to prove also the truth of the statements made on a previous page regarding the present status of the ramie industry. I can but refer at this point to an article published about a year ago in the Kew Bulletin,' in which the writer says that " In a word, it is found that ramie fiber when produced

These are the editor's conclusions: "In order to understand the present position of the ramie industry it would be useful to adopt some kind of classification of the details connected with it. In the first place we have the mere business of cultivating the ramie plant, and of producing stems with the fiber in the best possible condition. This is purely the work of the planter. Secondly, we have the process or processes necessary to separate the fiber from the stems in the form of ribbons and filasse. It is necessary for many reasons that this should be done either by the planter on the spot or by a central factory close at hand. Thirdly, we have the purely technical and manufacturing process in which ramie filasse is taken up by the spinners, and utilized in the same manner as cotton flax and silk are utilized for the purpose of being made into fabrics.

"For our present purpose we may take it for granted that the cultivation of the ramie plant presents no insuperable difficulty. Also that if a suitable selection of soil is made, and the locality possesses the necessary climatic conditions as regards heat and moisture, there is no reason to doubt that ramie could be grown to greater or less extent in most of our tropical possessions. As regards the second stage, in which 20789-No. 1-6

is practically unsalable in the London market at the present time." The demand has improved, however, within a few months, and prices are firm.

The Department, at this date, knows of no large market in this country where ramie fiber could be disposed of by farmers were they to produce it in quantity. Yet farmers are urged everywhere by interested parties to take up its cultivation, and we are in receipt of letters almost daily making inquiries upon the subject. Scores of replies have been received, also, in answer to the Department's Southern fiber circular, from those who have grown botn jute and ramie in past years experimentally or in hope of profit. Some of the writers express disappointment that nothing personally practical has come out of their efforts, and by a few the matter is viewed in the light of a failure. A considerable number of the present inquiries come from those who know nothing of the past history of ramie cultivation in the United States, but who have been attracted to the subject by glowing accounts of the marvelous value of the plant as a textile, which have appeared in the columns of the press recently, and who are anxious to embark in its production. To these farmers its cultivation means the pursuit of a profitable new industry, and by holding out to such the golden promises that are frequently made in the journals of the day, only injury can result and the final establishment of ramie cultivation among the masses of southern agriculturists be retarded.

The object of making these statements is not to discourage farmers from going into ramie culture at all, but to induce them to take it up with their eyes open and to caution them to begin its cultivation on a small scale, until they know something about it by practical experience. Undoubtedly there is a great future for the industry, and the Department would encourage Southern farmers to make small beginnings in order to obtain needed experience. When a satisfactory and full demand for fiber can be assured, and the decorticator question is settled, it will be is involved the decortication of the ramie stems, the problem is by no means completely solved.

"On this really hangs the whole subject. The third stage is disappointing and unsatisfactory because the second stage is still uncertain, and being thus uncertain the fiber is necessarily produced in small and irregular quantities, and only comes into the market by fits and starts. It would appear that ramie fiber differs so essentially from cotton and flax that it can only be manipulated and worked into fabrics by means of machinery specially constructed to deal with it. Owing to the comparatively limited supply of ramie fiber hitherto in the market no large firms of manufacturers have thought it worth while to alter the present or put up new machinery to work up Ramie fiber. If appliances or processes for decorticating Ramie in the colonies were already devised, and the fiber came into the market regularly, and in large quantities-say hundreds of tons at a time, there is no doubt manufacturers would be fully prepared to deal with it. At present the industry is practically blocked by the absence of any really successful means of separating the fiber from the stems, and preparing it cheaply and effectively. This after all is the identical problem which has baffled solution for the last fifty years."-Bulletin of the Royal Kew Gardens, December, 1888, p. 298.

an easy matter to extend cultivation, and, if necessary, purchase machines for the decortication of the product. In spite of past discour agements there is a great deal that is hopeful. The very difficulties that have stood in the way of successfully establishing the industry have spurred to greater effort. The question is being studied from new points of view, and every aspect considered that may throw new light upon the subject, and new discoveries are constantly being made. Regarding the foreign trials Dr. Morris, the assistant director of Kew, has recently said editorially:

To those generally interested in ramie culture it may be mentioned that the trials of 1889 have proved much more favorable than those of 1888, and the subject is evidently ripening for solution in many directions not thought of before.1

In the United States a great deal has been accomplished that is encouraging. But we must study the subject more carefully in the future in special relation to our own country, developing the industry on purely American lines, with regard to the conditions peculiar to our soil, climate, labor, and finally the manufacturer's demand for the prod uct. We have yet a great deal to learn regarding the cultivation of the plant before we shall possess the practical knowledge, as it relates to this country, that the experimenters in France and the French and British colonies have obtained regarding its cultivation in these countries. It is one thing to grow ten acres of ramie stalks; another thing to produce such stalks that an even and uniform fiber may be obtained from the product of an entire field, and at different seasons. The result of studies in India some years ago suggested the suspicion that they might not have been experimenting at all with the plant which produces the celebrated "China grass-cloth," but with something that produces an inferior fiber. This is purely a suggestion, says one of these writers, "but it seems highly desirable that we should thoroughly examine all the plants met with in India which afford rhea-like fibers, as well as re-examine the plant from which the China grass-cloth is derived before much money be spent on experiments with new machinery." There are even two distinct forms of the fiber which come to the European market-from China-one bright and grass-like in appearance as viewed in bundle; the other darker, more greenish in color, and producing in manufacture indifferent results compared with the first. One of these grows in Southern regions and the other in the more temperate regions; one is used for fabrics, while the other finds employment in cordage and the coarser manufactures. I found great dissimilarity likewise in the filasse from stalks collected at the Exposition, grown in different remote regions, and run through the Favier machine at a private working in Paris. The American stalks produced a good fiber, equal to the French in appearance, but neither so soft or so silky as the filasse from stalks grown in Spain, though, possibly, the stalks may not have been fully matured.

Kew Bulletin, November, 1889, page 274.