Jute

The Sanskrit word for fibre is jhat. In the Indian province of Orissa a tall, reedlike plant called jhut has long been cultivated for its fibre, which is used in making sackcloth and twine. But the best place in India for jute growing is the neighboring province of Bengal, whose alluvial plains between the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers produce at least 85% of the world's crop. Last week while U. S. farmers were harvesting a bumper crop with combines (see p. 15), Bengali farmers with sickles were beginning to cut more than 2,000,000 acres of jute. When it is processed and packed into about 10,000,000 bales of glossy fibre, probably the biggest output since 1931, a good half the crop will go. to the burlap mills of Calcutta, the rest to mills in Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Great Britain and the U. S.

Fabrics made from jute were unheard of in Europe before 1835, when the first jute yarns were turned out by flax weavers in Dundee, Scotland. Twenty years later most Dundee weavers had given up flax for jute and an Englishman had shipped the first jute spinning machinery to Calcutta. British merchants were not slow to recognize the possibilities in Bengal's ideal climate and magnificent supply of cheap labor (Bengal, with about 50,000,000 inhabitants, is the most densely populated province in India). Working farms of two or three acres apiece, Bengal natives took more land out of rice, on which they live, and planted it with jute. Like cotton, this crop requires arduous cultivation in the hottest season of the year. Most fun for broiling Bengali is "retting"--soaking the cut stalks in pools to ferment the gum out of the fibres, after which the farmers work waist deep in water at stripping the fibres from the stalks.

Dried, rolled up in drums, sold to middlemen who are noted experts in Oriental extortion, all jute is drawn by bullocks or floated down India's muddy rivers to the colonial city of Calcutta. There it is either bought by British manufacturers or made up for export by pukka ("reliable") balers. Most famed British name in the jute trade is that of Sir David Yule, an extraordinary Scotsman who died in 1928 after making a fortune of $100,000,000 in Calcutta. His dislike of things European relented enough to let him marry an Englishwoman but never to live in England. Since his death, plump, inscrutable Lady Yule and Daughter Gladys ("the richest girl in England") have lived quietly at St. Albans cultivating their private zoo. Their friend, the Duke of Windsor, borrowed the Yule yacht Nahlin for his cruise last summer. When the Yules visited Manhattan last May they avoided socialites and reporters with equal discrimination, went for long walks in Central Park.

India's jute trade, which the female Yules abhor, was seriously tied up last February when the native workers in 40 out of 69 burlap mills went on strike. Coaxed back to work in May, they are still sore, may strike again this summer. Majority of these mills are British, but one of the largest and most elaborate belongs to the big U. S. jute twine maker, Ludlow Manufacturing Associates, whose main plant is at Ludlow, Mass. This company, which has been making jute products since the Civil War, now has assets of $25,700,000 and last year made a profit of $1,918,000. In the U. S. jute is one of the big four cordage fibres. Others: hemp, sisal, cotton.

Present Calcutta price for jute is 3 3/4-c- per lb.; for burlap, 3 3/4-c- per yd. Of all burlap imported from India, about 35% goes for automobile accessories, furniture wrapping and backing for linoleum and carpets. Ford Motor Co. used to buy 1,000,000 yds. a month for Model T upholstery. But the principal use for burlap is in sacks. In 1930 U. S. sack manufacturers made 525,000,000 burlap bags, sold them for $45,000,000. Last year production was 438,000,000 bags, sales $35,000,000. It takes about 1 1/3 yds. of burlap to make one average sack, and nothing is better or as cheap for sacking grain, flour, feed, potatoes, rice, nuts, wool, ore, coffee, spices, cottonseed meal. Largest U. S. sack company is Bemis Bro. of Boston. Oldest and second largest is Chase Bag Co. of New York.

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