of Portland's business men gave us freely of their time and counsel in conducting the financial affairs of the company. It was our hope that, beginning in a modest way, carefully studying the methods employed in each flax-growing country and proving by experiment their adaptability to conditions prevailing in our own, we could finally merge into a company, which would offer to home capital a safe and remunerative investment.
"The cotton crop has made the South; why not the flax crop make the Northwest?" was our plea, for surely flax and linen are quite as important as cotton.
By investigation we found that linen is protected by the highest rate of duty, from 44 to 65 per cent, while raw material, in shape of fiber, had received no consideration. The attention of the Dingley tariff being called to this unjust discrimination, Senator Hoar became our champion and urged the justice of our claim. Notwithstanding the allied interest of the linen trust was quickly on the ground to defend its protected privileges and to assert its claim that flax cannot be grown in the United States, our claim was recognized, and in the readjustment raw fiber received from $10 to $60 duty per ton.
When the finished fiber was ready for sale, samples were forwarded to Eastern mills, and the contemptuous reply was received, that "the stuff was not worth 3 cents a pound." The Fiber Bureau also came under the displeasure of the trust, and was therefore abolished. Up to the time of the work on the Pacific Coast the bureau had been considered harmless. However, Mr. Dodge, chief of the bureau, was sent to the Paris Exposition. He took with him some of the despised 3-cents-a-pound fiber, and received for it the bronze medal. This recognition was supplemented by many requests from foreign manufacturers to furnish their mills with fiber.
We had gone through four years of hard work; we were then looking for development through a foreign firm, one that had tested our fiber in various grades of linens and found that it met all requirements. It was the intention of this company to further our work, but severe domestic affliction occurring at this time in the family of the head of the firm, the plans were retarded.
At this juncture, in behalf of an Eastern company, Mr. Bosse, a foreign expert of great reputation, pre-empted the field. He supposed that he was engaged in a legitimate enterprise, and was surprised to find he was wanted merely as a tool to prevent the development of the industry. After some months of work and much expenditure of money, he was told to abandon the field, and was offered heavy remuneration to write a report that flax cannot be grown profitably in Oregon. Mr. Bosse was too honest to lend himself to such a scheme. Aided by capital which has taken great interest in the work inaugurated by the Woman's Flax Association, he has devoted his efforts to the work of development. Mr. Bosse, being familiar now with the conditions, and realizing all the discouragements encountered by the association, asserts that it would have been well nigh impossible for him to
