The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

Within the last twenty years, a new export from India, in the shape of Jute and its fabrics, has grown up from insignificance into commercial importance, and is now among the chief exports of the country. This article demands our particular attention, as it requires but four months for its production, furnishes a very large supply of textile material, is raised at one-fifth the expense of cotton, and has been sold in India as low as one cent per pound.

Jute is generally grown as an after-crop in India upon high ground, and flourishes best in a hot and rainy season. The seed is sown broadcast in April or May, when there is sufficient rain to moisten the ground. When the plant is a foot and a half high it is weeded. It rises on good soil to the height of twelve feet, and flowers between August and September. The stems are usually three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The leaves have long foot-stalks, the flowers are small and yellow, and the capsules short and globose, containing five cells for the seed. The fruit ripens in September and October. The average yield in fibre to the acre is from four hundred to seven hundred pounds. When the crop is ripe, the stems are cut close to the root, made up into bundles, and deposited for a week in some neighboring pond or stream.

The process of separating the fibre from the stem is thus described by Mr. Healy in the "Journal of Agriculture for India";—

"The native operator, standing up to his middle in water, takes as many of the sticks in his hands as he can grasp, and removing a small portion of the bark from the end next the roots, and grasping them together, he with a little management strips off the whole from end to end, without breaking either stem or fibre. He then, swinging the bark around his head, dashes it repeatedly against the surface of the water, drawing it towards him to wash off the impurities."

The filaments are then hung up to dry in the sun, often in lengths of twelve feet, and when dried the jute is ready for the market.

The color at first is a pure white, but gradually changes to yellow. The fibre, which is fine and delicate, is tubular, like that of flax and cotton, and is easily wrought; but its tenacity is not equal to that of other textile materials, although it is substituted in many fabrics for wool, flax, and cotton. A large portion of the crop, which already exceeds two hundred thousand tons, is exported to England as it comes from the field, and is there used in the manufacture both of wool and cotton to cheapen the fabric. The vigilant eye will often detect it in woollen manufactures, in shawls, and even in sail-cloths; but when spun with cotton or wool, it is very difficult to discover its presence.

A few years since, there was a great reduction in the price of plaid shawls from England, which took the dealers by surprise, as the cost was previously supposed to have reached the lowest point; but a close examination of the threads elicited the fact that the manufacturer had adroitly twisted in with his wool a liberal allowance of jute, costing but two or three cents a pound when wool cost thirty, and thus reduced the price of the fabric.

By the use of shoddy in the manufacture of woollens, and of jute in both cotton and woollen fabrics, the English artisan saves many millions of pounds both of wool and cotton. In those districts of India where British skill and commercial enterprise have checked the manufacture of muslin and calicoes, the Hindoos of all classes find in the culture and manufacture of jute employment for all, "from the palanquin-bearer and husbandman down to the Hindoo widow, saved by the interposition of England from the funeral pile, but condemned by custom for the residue of her days literally to sackcloth and ashes." The fine and long-stapled jute is reserved for the export trade, for which it bears a comparatively high price; the residue is spun and woven by these classes as a domestic manufacture; it is made into gunny-cloth, which is circulated through the globe, forms the bagging for our corn, wheat, and cotton on their voyage to distant ports, and finally makes its last appearance as paper.

The long stems of the jute are highly esteemed in India; they resemble willow wands, are useful for basket-work and fencing, for trellis-work and the support of vines, and to make a charcoal which is valued for the manufacture of gunpowder.

The export of jute from India to England for 1859 was sixty thousand tons. The export of gunny-cloth from India to the United States in the same year amounted to several millions of pieces.

Why should not this valuable plant be introduced into America? It requires the same season and soil as our Indian corn, and would doubtless flourish in the rich alluvial lands of the West, and furnish a very cheap and useful domestic manufacture for our Western farmers.

The term Linen is doubtless derived from Linum, the classic and botanic name of flax. In Holy Writ, Moses called down the hail upon the growing flax of Lower Egypt, and Isaiah speaks of those "that work in fine flax." According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians wore linen. Plutarch informs us that the priests of Isis wore linen on account of its purity, and mentions a tradition that flax was used for clothing "because the color of its blossom resembles the ethereal blue which surrounds the world"; and he adds, that the priests of Isis were buried in their sacred vestments. An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated from flax.

Flax is sown in the spring and harvested in the summer, and requires but three months for its growth. While cotton grows in hot climates only, flax grows both under the tropics and in temperate climates, and as far north as Russia, Ireland, and Canada; and while at the South it runs mostly to seed, the best varieties are produced in Normandy, Belgium, and Poland.

In another particular flax has the advantage over cotton. While the latter, under the ordinary course of cultivation in South Carolina, yields but one bale to four acres, and in virgin soil rarely more than one bale to two acres, flax yields in good soil from five to eight hundred pounds of fibre to the acre, which may be converted into flax-cotton by modern machinery; and as the product has but three per cent. waste, while cotton loses eleven per cent. in its manufacture, the flax-cotton which is produced from a single acre is the equivalent of one to two bales of cotton.

With these important advantages, namely, its adaptation to a northern climate where the white man can labor, and a capacity for yielding so large an amount of fibre, flax holds a high place in the list of textile materials.

Flax can be raised with very moderate expense up to the time of harvest. If the soil is free from weeds, it requires little more preparation, care, or expense for its culture than wheat or barley. But from this point onward a large expenditure of labor is requisite, which greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle by skilful and long-continued labor.

To insure the best quality, it must be pulled and bound in bundles before it is entirely ripe, thus impairing the value of the seed, while the edible and nutritious portion of the stalk is lost or injured in the water.

For many years it was spun on the little wheel, but of late years improved machinery has been applied at Belfast, Leeds, Dundee, and other cities of Great Britain; yet nearly a third of the value is lost in the broken filaments, which are reduced to tow in its preparation for the spindle. With a fibre at least as fine and delicate as that of cotton, its full value to the world will not be demonstrated until it is effectually cottonized.

In its present state, however, it has come into very extensive use. More than eighty thousand tons were, in 1859, imported into Great Britain, and many acres are there devoted to its culture. The consumption in that country is estimated to exceed one hundred and sixty thousand tons, a quantity equivalent to eight hundred thousand bales of cotton. In addition to this, ten millions of bushels of flax-seed are annually crushed in Great Britain, a large portion of which is drawn from India.

The culture of flax was introduced into this country early in the last century by the Scotch, who crossed over to Ireland under Elizabeth and Cromwell, and soon after the siege of Derry transferred their arts and their industry to this country. Several colonies of these were planted in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and a large colony was established at Natfield, New Hampshire, upon a tract twelve miles square, one of the best sections of the State, situate in the area between Manchester, Lowell, Lawrence, and Exeter. Here every farmer cultivated his field of barley and flax, here every woman had her little wheel, and the article formed the currency of the place;—notes were given payable in spinning-wheels. Girls were seen beetling the linen on the grass; and when the harvest over, the men mounted their horses, and with well-filled saddle-bags threaded the by-roads of the forest to find a market in Boston, Lynn, Salem, or Newburyport. Fortunes were thus accumulated and a flourishing academy and two Presbyterian societies are now sustained by funds thus acquired by the Pinkerton family. But as the wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms. The town of Derry, once the great seat of New-England manufactures, is now principally distinguished for the Stark, Rogers, and Reed it gave to the French War and the Revolution, for the Bells, Dinsmores, Wilsons, and Pattersons it has given to the halls of legislation, and the McKeens, McGregors, Morisons, and Nesmiths it has furnished to commerce or the Church.

At the present rates of labor, the culture of flax cannot be revived in this region until the mode of curing and dressing it is cheapened; and there is reason to hope that this revolution is at hand.

At the present moment flax is raised both in India and Ohio for the seed alone. An acre of ripened flax yields from ten to twenty bushels of seed, and each bushel affords nearly or quite two gallons of linseed-oil. The well-ripened seed is most prolific in oil.

It has been supposed by some that flax exhausts the soil. It is undoubtedly true that it does best under a rotation of crops, and that the ingredients it withdraws from the soil should be restored to preserve its fertility. But the reduction of the plant to ashes shows that its chemical components can be restored at a cost of three dollars per acre, while the properties withdrawn by the seed can be easily supplied by returning in other fertilizers the equivalent for half a ton of flax-seed. If the oil-cake be consumed upon the farm, little more than the above and its product in manure will be required.

The ashes of the flax-plant have been analyzed. Dr. Royle, of England, a distinguished writer upon fibrous plants, assures us that the following compound will supply to one acre all that the plant requires, and leave the land as fertile as before the flax was gathered:—

lbs. s. d. Muriate

of Potash 30 cost

2 6 Common Salt

28 " 0 3 Burned

Plaster of Paris

34 " 0 6 Bone-

Dust 54 " 3 3

Epsom Salts 56 "

4 0 10 6

It has been ascertained by the microscope that wool, cotton, hemp, jute, and flax are composed of minute fibres, each of which forms a hollow tube, and there is a close resemblance between the tubes of each,—the tube of the cotton, however, collapsing as it ripens. These tubes in the jute and flax are closely cemented together, and the term Fibrilia has been applied to fibres of the plant when reduced to a short staple like cotton. The process for effecting this result is very accurately described in a work just published, entitled "Fibrilia." The patentees of this invention claim that their process, in the space of twenty-four hours, converts the flax and tow, as they come from the threshing-mill, into an article which may be spun and woven by the same machinery as cotton. The article produced and lately exhibited at public meetings resembles cotton in its appearance and qualities, with the advantage that it wastes less in the manufacture, has more lustre, and receives a superior color. The patentees and their friends further claim that this cotton can be raised in all temperate latitudes, at the rate of 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 soil should be foul, no weeding would be required, while the breaking would cost little more than a second threshing, and a second crop of turnips can be taken from the same soil.

From the patent brake and the picker the linten is carried to a retort, which may hold from five hundred to three thousand pounds of fibre,—the capacity of one hundred cubic feet being required for each thousand pounds; and the retort, which may be made from boiler-plates, costs from three hundred to fifteen hundred dollars. Here the linten is put into a hot bath of air forced through heated water, and thus charged with moisture, which softens the filaments and diminishes the cohesion of the fibres. After this air-bath, pure water of the temperature of one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty degrees is admitted into the retort, and the linten is immersed in it for five or six hours.

After this steeping process is completed, the water is let off from below, and pure water admitted from above under pressure, until the color begins to change; the fibre is then steeped for three or four hours in a weak solution of soda-ash; the alkali is washed out by the admission of pure water alternating with steam, and, if necessary to complete the bleaching, a weak solution of chlorine is applied. All this may be effected without removing the linten from the retort. The product is then dried as in ordinary drying-rooms.

When dried, it is carried again through a set of cards, and a piece of machinery termed a railway-head, with positive draught, which can be set so as to give any length of staple, and to present the flax-cotton thus produced in any form required for spinning, either separately or mixed with cotton or wool, and thus adapted to the machinery used in the manufacture of either of these articles. The cost of this process, from the brake to the final production of the cotton, is set by the patentee, after leaving him a fair profit, at three cents per pound of cotton; and if we add this to the cost of the linten, and allow for freight and storage, the entire cost of the fibrilia is but eight cents per pound, or two-thirds of the present price of middling cotton.

The idea of modifying the filaments of flax and hemp so as to convert them into cotton is by no means a new one. As long ago as 1747 it was proposed to convert flax into cotton by boiling it in a solution of caustic potash, and subsequently washing it with soap; and in 1775 Lady Moira, aided by T.B. Bailey, actually converted some refuse flax into cotton by boiling it in alkali. The result was, that the fibres seemed to be set at liberty from each other; after which it was carded on cotton cards, spun, and woven as cotton.

The Chevalier Claussen, as recently as 1850, claimed to have discovered the process, and actually took out a patent; but his invention, which consisted in boiling the cut and crushed stems of the flax in a solution of caustic soda, turned out a failure,—the cutting, crushing, and boiling processes proving alike defective.

New discoveries are the result of repeated trials; perseverance usually prevails; and if States are to secede at pleasure and withhold their cotton, and no other good uses can be found for flax or hemp, why should not their fibres secede also,—be set at liberty and resolve themselves into a cotton state?

We might pass from the fibrous plants, and the metamorphosis of flax into cotton, to the Pinna, whose fibres grow in the sea on the coast of Italy, and anchor the huge shell-fish to the rock or the sand. These fibres are brought up by divers, and woven into beautiful fabrics. We might repeat the tale of the crab which lives with this shell-fish, and apprises his blind housekeeper of the approach of danger,—a tale confirmed by ancient and modern naturalists,—for there are strange doings in the sea as well as upon the land. We might also dilate upon China grass, which is manufactured in the East into delicate fabrics. But our limits compel us to defer these topics.

NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION

During the year 1831, up to the twenty-third of August, the Virginia newspapers were absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied the minds of intelligent American citizens:—What General Jackson should do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables,—Should South Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of Cabinet Ministers call on Mrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate, to turn over the drowsy files of the "Richmond Enquirer", until the moment when those dry and dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner. Then the terror flares on increasing, until the remotest Southern States are found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection,—until far-off European colonies, Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola, recognize by some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms,—until the very boldest words of freedom are reported as uttered in the Virginia House of Delegates with unclosed doors,—until an obscure young man named Garrison is indicted at Common Law in North Carolina, and has a price set upon his head by the Legislature of Georgia. The insurrection revived in one agonizing reminiscence all the distresses of Gabriel's Revolt, thirty years before; and its memory endures still fresh, now that thirty added years have brought the more formidable presence of General Butler. It is by no means impossible that the very children or even confederates of Nat Turner may be included at this moment among the contraband articles of Fort Monroe.

Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as "The Cross Keys". It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or "court-house", seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco-fields and "old-fields", horses, dogs, negroes, "poor white folks", so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so. One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married the widow of one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself her negroes also.

In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them,—a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and resolution. This was Nat Turner.

He was at this time nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on the second of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner,—whence his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic,—had then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner. He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joined to his great mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny. He had great mechanical ingenuity also, experimentalized very early in making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts which in later life he was found thoroughly to understand. His moral faculties were very strong, so that white witnesses admitted that he had never been known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And in general, so marked were his early peculiarities, that people said "he had too much sense to be raised, and if he was, he would never be of any use as a slave." This impression of personal destiny grew with his growth;—he fasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when he walked behind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the awe-struck slaves. They told him in return, that, "if they had his sense, they would not serve any master in the world."

The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong to the class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of human beings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The outlines are certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance, we know that Nat Turner's young wife was a slave; we know that she belonged to a different master from himself; we know little more than this, but this is much. For this is equivalent to saying that by day or by night that husband had no more power to protect her than the man who lies bound upon a plundered vessel's deck has power to protect his wife on board the pirate-schooner disappearing in the horizon; she may be reverenced, she may be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the agony lies. There is, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this young woman: the Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under the lash, after her husband's execution, to make her produce his papers: this is all.

What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be "more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county"; but it is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporary annals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court also stated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his master as "only too indulgent"; but this, for some reason, does not appear in his printed Confession, which only says, "He was a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me." It is very possible that it may have been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner's person look suspicious: he is described in Governor Floyd's proclamation as having a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, and a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, produced by a blow; and although these were explained away in Virginia newspapers as being produced by fights with his companions, yet such affrays are entirely foreign to the admitted habits of the man. It must, therefore, remain an open question, whether the scars and the knot were produced by black hands or by white.

Whatever Nat Turner's experiences of slavery might have been, it is certain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had brooded over them for years. To this day there are traditions among the Virginia slaves of the keen devices of "Prophet Nat". If he was caught with lime and lamp-black in hand, conning over a half-finished county-map on the barn-door, he was always "planning what to do, if he were blind", or "studying how to get to Mr. Francis's house." When he had called a meeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping, the poor whites at once became the subjects for discussion; he incidentally mentioned that the masters had been heard threatening to drive them away; one slave had been ordered to shoot Mr. Jones's pigs, another to tear down Mr. Johnson's fences. The poor whites, Johnson and Jones, ran home to see to their homesteads, and were better friends than ever to Prophet Nat.

He never was a Baptist preacher, though such vocation has often been attributed to him. The impression arose from his having immersed himself, during one of his periods of special enthusiasm, together with a poor white man named Brantley. "About this time", he says in his Confession, "I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a wonderful effect, and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and the blood oozed from the pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days he was healed. And the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptized, so should we be also; and when the white people would not let us be baptized by the Church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit. After this I rejoiced greatly and gave thanks to God."

The religious hallucinations narrated in his Confession seem to have been as genuine as the average of such things, and are very well expressed. It reads quite like Jacob Behmen. He saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the skies, the sun was darkened, the thunder rolled. "And the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, 'Behold me as I stand in the heavens!' And I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes. And there were lights in the sky, to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were; for they were the lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary, for the redemption of sinners." He saw drops of blood on the corn: this was Christ's blood, shed for man. He saw on the leaves in the woods letters and numbers and figures of men,—the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May 12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him and proclaimed that the yoke of Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the Serpent when the sign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831: this was the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay his enemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from his lips, and then he confided his plans to four associates.

When he came, therefore, to the barbecue on the appointed Sunday, and found, not these four only, but two others, his first question to the intruders was, How they came thither. To this Will answered manfully, that his life was worth no more than the others, and "his liberty was as dear to him." This admitted him to confidence, and as Jack was known to be entirely under Hark's influence, the strangers were no bar to their discussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation: one can imagine those terrible dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods, and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night, and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed. "It was agreed that we should commence at home on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to."