OCR Text |
Show Germans Can't Make Irish Linen. The Germans havr mpt hfIr Tuna in -iiir: uciinail.1 imt IMCt UlCll jeilU III one field of Irish manufacture, we are happy to say. Having devoted years of enterprise under a high protective tariff to the purpose of beating Irish linen, they have given up in despair. They reluctantly confess, according to the Berlin correspondent of the London Lon-don Daily News, that the reichstag must provide them with the Irish climate cli-mate if they, are to compete successfully success-fully with the best products of the Belfast Bel-fast looms. In a petition to the reichstag reich-stag on the subject of the tariff, the underlinen manufacturers state with regard to the various fruitless attempts made in Germany to produce linen equal In quality to Irish linen, that in former years the opinion was held that the better quality of the Belfast linen was due to the superior methods employed em-ployed in the manufacture. Now, however, how-ever, it is known 'to be the fact that the quality is to a considerable degree attributable to the peculiarity of the Irish climate. The comparative warmth and the dampness of the air, and the fogs, form the principal factors in the Meaching process, which cannot be made up for in any way in Germany. The German linen mills have established estab-lished this fact by very expensive and difficult experiments. One firm brought over about twenty Irishmen, hoping to produce a fabric similar to the Irish linen, but all to no purpose, and attempts at-tempts to make up for the want of natural warmth and fog by a chemical chem-ical pr'ess similarly failed. "Erin's tear" has on this occasion proved a valuable commercial asset. |