According to the Canadian Graphic of 1905, The Tavistock Flax Co., employed from fifty to one hundred hand in the summer and about twenty during the winter. They manufactured from twenty-five to fifty ton of live flax, besides upholstering tow and fine and coarse tow. During the forty years since its founding the business had passed through several hands and had been burned down twice before the Livingston firm acquired it.

Appel and Stock continued to plant flax on the rented fields of the farmers and to employ gangs and Indian families from the Reserves to pull it, thresh it, spread it out in the fields to ret, turn it with long poles, bundle it again and return it to the mill and sheds. Here the seed was cleaned and the stalks were scutched and bundled into silky bales to be made into thread and fine linen.

Just before World War II , flax was grown for seed only and frequently cut by binder, before the introduction of pulling machines from Czechoslovakia.

According to the Court of Revision records of 1933, the Stock Estate appealed the assessment of $1800, after 2- 1/2 lots had been sold. In 1934, at the request of J. Anderson & Son of Lucknow, the assessment was lowered to $1500. Later owners were Hesky Flax Company of Toronto and Mr. Rudolph Otto of Tavistock. With a decline in demand for linen and the oil paints being replaced by latex ones, the industry declined in our area. The huge sheds and the mill were dismantled and torn down. The site at the junction of William and Woodstock Streets, and bounded by Mill and Adam Streets, is bare except, for the Otto house and shop, Gord's Supertest and several other dwellings.

I remember ...
For pulling up to 600 or 700 acres of flax per season, on fields rented from the farmers, Mr. Stock used to hire loca l labour - old and young, men and women, boys and girls, anyone who wished to earn an honest dollar. Many families took advantage of earning cash money, rather hard to come by in the pre-War days. Mr. Jacob Hoffmann was in charge of field operations, and though only a small man, he wielded a wicked handful of flax over the stretched seat of your pants, if you dallied; he urged us kids to greater industry with a "roppt doch", if we lagged in the hot sun toward the end of the day. Mr. William Miller, the one-armed water-carrier, used to relieve the monotony of pull, pull, pull. We could waste a few delicious minutes at least at his "water-pail" as we stood in line.

About 80 of us formed the gang. We left the flax mill grounds at the corner of William and Woodstock Streets early in the morning to be on the job in the selected field by 7 a.m. We travelled in a wagon, with no springs, no rubber tires, with a canvas top and drop sid es in cases of rain , drawn by a fine pair of Clydes the property of Mr. Joseph Duval. His stable and livery barn were located just on the other side of Woodstock Street ; the team was driven by Mr. Elroy Diebel.

On arrival at the field we would line up along the fence according to our pulling ability, while Mr. Hoffmann paced off the width each one of us had to pull to reach the opposite end of the field. For a little man he had a very big "step." The fields of waving flax were a beautiful sight in the misty morning, but the work was back-breaking and dirty; the flax was often wet with dew and bristling with thistles that stung your hands, or seared to a rust brown by a bolt of lightning.

Mr. Alex Miller, the father of Wm. "Raney" Miller was " lead-puller" with two steps or a width of about two yards to strip. The rest of us started after him and soon were staggered along an uneven line, often dropping far behind, even though we had but a fraction of his width. He would pull the yard-high flax and hold it between his knees until he had enough for a bundle. He would then bind it with a tie of 7 or 8 stems of the flax, twist the end under and toss the tied bundle behind him. Other men would set up the shocks to ripen to a chestnut brown. We kids did not have the strength to keep up if we performed the whole operation ; so, we pulled the flax but laid it behind us in small bundles, with the seed ends all facing one way. Older men like Mr. William Schliuse, August Matthies, Henry Olies and "Yerk" Reidt would tie them. Sometimes we would hide thistles below the bundles, just to make it more interesting for these old men and relieve the monotony. Mr. Schliuse was sort of a hero to us; he was just a little man but tough; he used to tell us about his service as cook in the Russian army, where he often prepared the delicacy of roast horse-meat. His hands were so tough and calloused that to put us to shame for playing such tricks he would crush in his bare hands the thistles we palmed off on him. On rainy days when we finally were allowed to find shelter in the farmer's barn, we'd repay him by finding eggs for him to suck. Sometimes they were not too fresh. He would repay us by protecting us against the bullies in the gang.

It was quite an education in more ways than one. Our earnings helped the family budget, while we learned the vulgar vocabulary of four-letter words and the facts of life from some very efficient teachers. We learned that the inner bark of a cedar-post, when shredded, made fair tobacco, but that the cigars of porous elm root were superior - but it took a bold tongue to bear up to its acrid smoke. Since a crop of flax took so much fertility from the land, it was often sown on stump-land, which yielded a wealth of smokes.

Mr. Stock used to bring in Indian families from the Brantford Reserves to pull flax by the acre, not by the day - - I believe the going price was about $5 per acre - - the whole family would pull from dawn to dusk and camp right on the field. Mr. Stock or his men would keep them supplied with food from his general store. The old crones who sat and smoked all day used to welcome the dried mullein Ieaves we collected for them, for these, when shredded, made excellent fodder for their clay or corn-cob pipes. Smoking didn't seem to shorten their lives, for I'm sure some of them must have been close to a century. Among these Indians we had a particular friend in Chief Nash. who used to stay on after the pulling Rudolph Otto's machine-shop-. We used to teach him silly phrases in German and he would show us how to fashion bows and arrows out of the tough ironwood and the straight-grained ash: He could send one of the latter through the inch-boards of the flax mill, so that it stuck out six inches on the inside.

We would pull all; day from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. with one hour for the lunch which our mothers had packed into pails the night before. Then we would run for the wagon at the end of the day, ride the long way home, arriving there about 7 p.m. If the road was too hilly, it would be a little later, for we had to walk up the grades - - in order to spare the horses - - for Mr. Hoffmann had a fine regard for the poor beasts, who had had to stand in the barn all day, just to pull us home.

At least once a season, Mr. Stock or his clerk Mr. Richard Hansen, would bring us a real treat, an honest-to-goodness orange, rare in those days.

How much did our pay checks amount to, that we collected on Saturday nights at Mr. Stock's store from his book-keeper, Miss Louisa Mogk? The wage scale ranged from 25¢ a day for us kids to $1 a day for Mr. Miller and the top pullers. We must remember this was fifty or more years ago, and much trading was still done by barter with butter, eggs, "apple schnitz", lard, even rags; cash money was in short supply and we were proud to carry our envelopes home to our parents and have a share in the family bread-winning.

There were other compensations. Sometimes we would find oddities in the field , like a "double stem". We learned the names of all the weeds, we saw the power of God's hand in a patch of seared lightning-burnt flax, we saw the wonder of Creation in the shimmering green, gold-specked chrysalis of the Monarch Butterfly as it dangled delicately on its slender thread from the swaying flax. We also learned the worth and dignity of honest labour.