Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/836

 802 JUTE The guuny bags exported from Calcutta in the year 1877-78 numbered 79,384,000 ; in 1878-79, 82,635,000 ; and in 1879-80, 92,284,000. It will be seen that the exports of bags exceed the quantity sent into Calcutta by no less than 57,938,000 bags in 1877-78, 56,255,000 in 1878-79, and 71,796,000 in 1879-80. This is of course due to the large manufacture in Calcutta and the suburbs. The import trade of Calcutta in gunny cloth during the three years referred to was in round numbers as follows : 51,000 pieces in 1877-78, 70,000 in 1878-79, and 88,000 in 1879-80. Out of the total supply, that of power-loom manufacture was 43,000 pieces in 1879-80, as compared with 19,000 pieces in 1878-79. The hand-made pieces amounted to 45,000, as compared with 51,000 in 1878-79. The export of gunny cloth by sea was consigned as follows: 1878-79. 1879-80. Power- Loom. Hand- Loom. Total. Power- Loom. Hand- Loom. Total. To foreign ports ,, Indian Yards. 4.530,000 3,135,000 Yards. 57,000 17,000 Yards. 4,587,000 3,152,000 Yards. 5,210,000 1,658,000 Yards. 1,000 7,000 Yards. 5,211.000 1/165,000 Total 7,665,000 74,000 7,739,000 6,868,000 8,000 6,876,000 Besides the registered supplies mentioned above, the returns show a large quantity of power-loom gunny cloth, amounting to 664,000 pieces, sent up country from Calcutta mills without passing the port commissioners wharves. The gross total of gunny cloth exported from Calcutta was 54,731,000 yds. in 1878-79, and 61,468,000yds. in 1879-80. Formerly America was the largest customer for Indian jute manu factures, very large quantities of gunny having been consigned to the United States for packing cotton and other merchandise. That demand has, however, very largely fallen off, and now the Australian colonies and Burmah and the various East Indian ports are the principal places to which the manufactured articles are sent from Calcutta. European Trade and Manufacture. The occasional parcels of jute which were sent to the European market by the East India Company previous to the year 1830 appear to have been principally used for the making of door mats and similar purposes ; but the whole quantity was at that date, and, as will be seen by the table, p. 801, for several years thereafter, quite insignificant. Some part of these imports found their way to Abingdon in Oxfordshire, a town in which the manufacture of carpets, sacking, and cordage was extensively prosecuted, and to the manufac turers of that town is due the credit of being the first in Great Britain to experiment with the fibre, making it into yarn and cloth. In 1833 a quantity of dyed yarn was sent from Abingdon to Dundee, then an important centre of the heavier flax manufactures, and there it attracted a good deal of attention. Consignments were soon thereafter received direct at Dundee and experimented with, but little or no real progress was made for a considerable time, for jute forms no exception to the general rule that the intro duction of- new textile fibres is attended with many diffi culties before a successful issue is reached. The many unsuccessful attempts to convert it into yarn caused it to b e disliked by the manufacturer, and the bad reputa tion it had acquired as to strength and durability made it no favourite in public estimation. Indeed, so far was prejudice carried against it that some of the manufacturers banished the fibre entirely from their works, fearing it might prove prejudicial to their interests. Among the circumstances which added materially to the rapid develop ment of the jute trade, lying outside its natural growth owing to cheapness and other causes, were the war with Russia in 1854-56, which temporarily cut off the supplies of Russian flax and hemp, and the cotton famine which re sulted from the civil war in America in 1861-63. Leaving these circumstances out of account, however, the growth of the jute trade has been remarkable and steady, as will be seen by the following table, embracing a period of fifteen years from 1865 to 1880, during which no such cause as those alluded to above affected the trade. Details of Importation and Exportation of Jute into and from the United Kingdom, 1865-1879. Jute Imported. Yarn Exported. Manufactures Exported. Jute Exported. Quantity. Computed Value. Average Price. Quantity. Declared Value. Average Price. Quantify. Declared Value. Average Price. Quantity. Computed Value. Cwts.

t. ft.

d. Yds.

d. Cwts.

1865 2,108,942 1,774,992 16-83 4,944,230 82,141 3-99 15,400,459 311,540 4-86 417,981 351,801 1866 1,625,903 1,476,244 18-16 7,761,391 128,704 3-98 19,394,926 361,857 4-48 416,352 378,186 1867 1,582,611 1,414,321 17-87 7,520,911 117,028 373 26,743,187 455,396 4-09 366,793 327,057 1868. 2,182,521 1,936,230 17-74 8,108,101 126,045 373 43,081,322 706,966 3-94 415,266 368,549 1869 2,467,817 2,143,100 17-37 8,041,082 126,691 3-78 50,127,853 742,801 3-56 413,952 358,758 1870 2,376,690 2,326,910 19-58 12,669,948 196,465 3-72 51,920,808 789,657 3-65 425,712 416,843 1871 3,434,120 3,729,735 21-60 13,710,957 262,057 4-59 62,310,463 1,026,759 3-95 575,177 650,431 1872 4,041,018 3,954,698 19-57 12,715,969 261,239 4-93 84,452,457 1,486,484 4-22 755,120 724,659 1873 4,624,918 3,619,989 15-65 12,263,805 206,521 4-04 95,935,108 1,590,850 3-98 790,344 649,880 1874 4,270,164 3,553,179 16-64 15,724,988 245,784 3-75 112,810,415 1,679,766 3-57 716,631 603,619 1375 3,416,617 2,575,512 15-08 15,942,618 225,836 3-40 101,105,579 1,404,997 3-34 1,050,389 798,146 1876 3,825,259 2,804,597 14-66 16,709,239 226,813 3-26 120,813,966 1,558,256 3-09 933,667 704,904 1877 3,649,877 2,929,965 16-06 14,997,659 217,424 3-48 116,753,003 1,547,408 3-1 968,102 806,792 1878 4,242,382 3,236,825 15-26 12,234,600 181,076 3-55 122,961,200 1,588,901 3-10 1,013,497 792,176 1879 4,759,363 3,257,497 13-69 13,572,100 200,112 3-54 164,054,600 1,963,153 2-87 ], 117, 953 807,139 Manufacture. In their general features the spinning and weaving of jute fabrics do not differ essentially as to machinery and processes from those employed in the manufacture of hemp and heavy flax goods. Owing, how ever, to the woody and brittle nature of the fibre, it has to undergo a preliminary treatment peculiar to itself. The pioneers of the jute industry, who did not understand this necessity, or rather who did not know how the woody and brittle character of the fibre could be remedied, were greatly perplexed by the difficulties they had to encounter, the fibre spinning badly into a hard, rough, and hairy yarn owing to the splitting and breaking of the fibre. This peculiarity of jute, coupled also with the fact that the machinery on which it was first spun, although quite suit able for the stronger and more elastic fibres for which it was designed, required certain modifications to suit it to the weaker jute, was the cause of many annoyances and failures in the early days of the trade. Batching or Softening. The introduction of this pre liminary process constituted the first important step in the practical solution of the difficulties of jute spinning. The process, in a great measure, supplies artificially that in which jute is naturally deficient. The mode of batching originally adopted was to divide the rolls or heads, taken from the bale, into four or five parts, each being about what a hand could grasp. These divisions, called stricks, were doubled up with a slight turn at the centre, and laid out in the floor in double rows, the roots and crop ends of the stricks overlapping each other, in the centre of the batch ; each row when completed received a certain per-