Flax Americana by Joshua MacFadyen

Author:Joshua MacFadyen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2018-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.8 Proof Paints, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, 1923

Most rural consumers were reluctant to colour and protect every surface in their homes, at least until the 1920s. Even in 1936, when the Canadian National Parks Branch acquired the house that would be “Green Gables” in the Prince Edward Island National Park, they found that this ordinary Maritime dwelling had “no paint on the house, just whitewash, and no trim of any colour.” The branch possessed extensive resources for property enhancement, but if there had been no reason to draw attention to the shade of this National Heritage Place’s trim, they might have stood by their original assessment that “the exterior does not actually need painting.”100 L.M. Montgomery herself felt differently about the general appearance of Cavendish in the interwar period, noting in 1924 that “Cavendish is getting so shabby. Almost all the houses are unpainted and dowdy. Times are hard, of course, but I fear there are other reasons – indifference, the dying out of the old families.”101

The flax propaganda of the 1860s demonstrated the very limited correlation between the activities promoted by farm journals and what actually happened. In the countryside, farmers were faced with a barrage of logic intended to convince them to apply paint as an investment. It is not clear when rural people began to pay much attention to campaigns like “Clean-up, Paint-up, Fix-up” and “Save the Surface,” but before 1920 defending wood from the sun was a selective strategy at best.

Chemically Pure: Regulating Paint

Up until the twentieth century, the world of colour was limited to small objects, high-traffic surfaces, and vehicles. Nevertheless, multinational paint and linseed oil companies like Sherwin-Williams promised to “Cover the Earth,” and in the large industrialized cities it would seem that their industry was on its way to doing just that. The paint industry underwent major transformations between 1850 and 1920, and the failure of price fixing and the increasing importance of scale in the paint and oil industries led to another development in the flax-paint side of the commodity web. Manufacturers began to employ chemical researchers and technicians to improve the performance and uniformity of their products and, more importantly, to minimize wasted batches. The new demand for scientists and other researchers in the web was not only about increasing efficiency but also about standardizing refined linseed oils for a growing number of applications and an expanding variety of paint products. Thus, the role of chemists in paint and oil research and regulation deserves special attention. The Progressive Era debates over product purity prompted some consumers to argue that integrated paint manufacturers had disconnected them from paint-making processes. Oil and paint companies responded with a range of marketing and regulation efforts of their own.

In the mid-nineteenth century, white lead varied considerably in quality, and when apothecaries prepared it ground in oil, customers had more difficulty determining the quality of the product until it was applied as paint. In 1869 Canadians could choose between thirteen varieties of “Colors in Oil,” including five grades of white lead.

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