four to
eight hundred pounds per acre, and profess within the past year to have
manufactured twelve thousand pounds.

These statements have been confidently made at public meetings in
the State House of Massachusetts, and it is understood that a mill
containing one hundred looms, half of which are now in operation, has
been erected at Roxbury, under the direction of gentlemen who are
familiar with the manufacture. Should the same results be obtained on a
large scale which have attended the manufacture of the first few bales,
the first step in a great revolution will be effected.

By the process of Mr. S.M. Allen of Boston, the great outlay of labor
which has usually attended the culture and preparation of flax is
avoided. When the plant has attained its full height of twenty to thirty
inches, and its seed is ripened, it is harvested like grass with a
mowing-machine, dried like hay or oats in the field, and then carried
to the threshing-mill. After the seed is separated, the stalk is
transferred to a patent brake, moved by two or four horses, and costing
from three to four hundred dollars. This machine is composed of several
sets of fluted iron rollers, between which the stalk passes from one set
to another, the rollers gradually diminishing in size, but increasing in
rapidity of motion, by means of which the woody texture of the plant is
effectually broken and separated. The filaments are then carried through
a coarse card or picker. The shives are thus separated, and two tons of
stalks reduced to half a ton of linten, which may be either taken at
once to the retort or baled for shipment. When the flax is thus reduced
by the farmer to linten, the article is reputed to be worth to the
manufacturer four cents a pound, or at least twenty dollars for the
product of an acre yielding a single ton of flax-straw.

According to this statement the farmer would realize from his crop at
least as follows:--

Estimated value of seed, 14 bushels,
at $1.25 $17.50
Estimated value of 500 lbs. of linten,
at 4 cts. 20.00
Estimated value of 3/4 of a ton of shives
from unrotted stems, valuable for
cattle, at $8.00 per ton 6.00

Produce of an acre $43.50

And this produce would be realized with little more labor than a crop
of oats or wheat, returning less than twenty-five dollars to the acre.
Unless the soi