Flaxseed Production, Commerce, and Manufacture in the United States

Excerpts from the Introduction: The flax plant is the source of two extremely valuable economic products—the one a fiber derived from the straw and noted from time immemorial the world over for its strength, beauty, fineness, and length of staple; the other, a seed rich in an oil of such superior drying qualities as render it an indispensable ingredient in paint and varnish, and in the manufacture of linoleum, oilcloth, printer's ink, patent leather, and a few other products. The full value, however, of both straw and seed from one and the same crop has never been realized on a large scale in practical agriculture. As a business proposition, therefore, flax is almost universally raised either chiefly for the fiber or exclusively for the seed, either as a source of raw material for the linen factory or for the linseed oil mill. And, with the exception of Russia, which is an important producer of both seed and fiber, the principal flax-producing countries of the world have become distinctly divided along these lines. In the European countries, with Russia as the prime factor, flax is cultivated chiefly for the fiber; in the United States, Argentina, and British India, which with Russia produce the world's commercial crop of flaxseed, the plant is cultivated almost exclusively for the seed. In the United States, as will be seen further on, there has been a gradual conversion from one system of cultivation to the other. The Department of Agriculture, through its Office of Fiber Investigations, in 1898, published a report on the possible utilization of flax straw. Nevertheless the economic value of the flax crop of the United States to-day is represented almost entirely by the seed; the straw, with a few unimportant exceptions, is a total waste.