Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-08-18 | Page 33 | Thread Cards may Soon be Adopted

THREAD CARDS MAY SQDN BE ADOPTED Scarcity of Flax Throughout Through-out the World Is Being Felt in France. By HENEY G. WALES, Universal Service Staff Correspondent. PAivIS, July 20 (By Mail). Thread cards may 3oorr be adopted throughout the allied countries, owing to the scarcity of flax and the consequent lack of linen. Already in Prance and England it is difficult dif-ficult to find linen thread, and when the present retail stocks are exhausted spools of such thread will be sold only to persons having orders or cards showing show-ing that It is to be used on war work. Since the United States produces practically prac-tically no flax, but obtains most of its linen from Great Britain, it is believed that there will soon be a stringent curtailment cur-tailment on the amount of linen allotted for use in America, and that, when existing exist-ing supplies are reduced it will be neces-sarv neces-sarv to institute card systems there also. Although the available supply of flax has diminished by more than BOO per cent, the demand for linen has increased consistently. It is only recently, when the lack of linen thread has manifested itself in the manufacture of shoes, boots and other leather equipment for the allied al-lied armies and in the construction of aeroplanes, that the serious shortage in flax has been realized by the authorities. authori-ties. Before the war the entire world obtained ob-tained large amounts of flax from Hol-laml. Hol-laml. Belgium and the north of France. It has become more and more difficult to obtain shipments of Zeeland flax, which is not of the best quality, from The Netherlands, owing to the shipping situation sit-uation and German pressuro on the Dutch authorities. The Belgian flax fields I and those of the north of France notably no-tably the Courtrai region are in the handH of the invader. The Lys river, the scene of the German offensive toward to-ward Armentieres in April last, has long been used for the "retting" a coj;r"P.-tlon coj;r"P.-tlon of the word, rotting of the l.our-trai l.our-trai flax its waters possessing certain chemical qualities which acted on the straw of the plant Ideally, without harming harm-ing the flax fiber in the center. When the German occupation of Belgium Bel-gium and northern France cut off those two sources of supply from the allies, the flax industry in Russia was d eve oped and efforts made to produce a hiher grade of linen there. The principal Russian Rus-sian flax fields are located north of Moscow Mos-cow and east of Brest-Litovsk An , enormous enor-mous amount of acreage was put in flax in 1915 and 1916, and important steps were taken toward the cultivation of a high-grade flax. But with the overrun-nine overrun-nine of certain of the flax growing districts dis-tricts bv the Germans later and then the Bolshevik peace, this important supply from Russia has been cut off.