The two fiber-producing plants most promising for cultivation in the central United States and most certain to yield satisfactory profits are hemp and flax. The oldest cultivated fiber plant, one for which the conditions in the United States are as favorable as anywhere in the world, one which properly handled improves the land, and which yields one of the strongest and most durable fibers of commerce, is hemp. Hemp fiber, formerly the most important material in homespun fabrics, is now most familiar to the purchasing public in this country in the strong gray tying twines one-sixteenth to one-fourth inch in diameter, known by the trade name “commercial twines.”

[Published in the] Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1913, pages 283-346.