COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE AND PROTECTION 187 
duties, tho repeated in tariff acts to our own days in a curiously 
perfunctory fashion, have been without effect. On the other hand, 
flax seed — as distinguished from the fibre to which the term flax 
is commonly applied — continued to be steadily produced. The 
explanation is identical with that which solves the beet sugar 
riddle. Flax fibre is a garden or handicraft product; flax seed is a 
grain crop. The first is a product of intensive agriculture, the 
second of extensive agriculture. 
In the growing of flax for fibre we find the same characteristics 
as in beet culture, but even more marked. “Horticulture rather 
than agriculture — soil brought to the best garden tilth — seed 
sown preferably by hand — the field hand-raked — treading with 
boards attached to the feet and hand-spading — weeding by 
hand,” — these are the terms used in describing the processes for 
growing the plant. Harvesting is done by hand; the plant is 
pulled up, not cut off. “Rippling” and “retting” follow; then 
comes ‘‘scutching’ — a succession of laborious hand processes. 
Quite different is the practice in growing flax for seed. Here the 
object is to get not long and fine fibre, but the maximum number 
of flowering heads that will bear seed. Virgin soil is best. All 
the modern farm apparatus is used in preparing the soil and plant- 
ing the seed. In harvesting, machinery of the kind familiar in 
the United States, drawn by horses or tractors, quickly cuts the 
standing plants. Power machinery then threshes out the grain. 
Flax seed is therefore, like wheat, suited to the frontier : easily 
produced by extensive culture, satisfactory in quality and homo- 
geneous notwithstanding rough and ready processes, transported 
and marketed cheaply. Hence it has been a characteristic pioneer 
product in the United States, and its geographical center has shifted 
westward across the continent with the movement of the frontier. 
During the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early 
part of the twentieth it was grown in great quantities in various 
other virgin districts of the temperate zone — not only in the 
Northwest of the United States, but in Argentina and Canada 
also, the methods of production in the last two regions being 
copied from those which had developed in the United States.