Paper industry

“ The first man to make a continuous web of paper was Nicholas Louis Robert, a Frenchman who received a reward of 8,000 francs from his government for his invention. Robert’s patent rights were acquired by the Fourdrinier Brothers (Henry and Sealy) , of England. They developed and perfected the machine and to them is ascribed the honor of founding the modern paper industry.
USES OF PAPER
Paper is more commonly and extensively used to-day than any other product of manufacture and is employed for an astonishing variety of purposes, ranging from milk bottles to suits of clothing. ”

“ An increase of such phenomenal proportions as indicated by these figures makes tremendous demands upon allied and tributary industries, but the increase in the production of paper of the variety required has been sufficient to meet these demands. These conditions, however, affect only125 one branch of the industry. The increase in the publication of books, together with the multiplicity of commercial and industrial uses to which paper may be put, as briefly outlined in the preceding chapter, explain an expansion that would otherwise be inexplicable. ”

“ THE CONSTITUENTS OF PAPER The technique of paper-making varies greatly in accordance with each particular product. In fact, so wide is the range of paper products, that the different branches of paper-making severally require knowledge so special that an artisan in one branch might be as useless in another as if it were an entirely different industry. The coating of paper, for example, is an absolutely different trade from that of paper-making. ”

“ If its mechanical aspects are over emphasized it must fail to appeal to intellectual scholars, since it cannot sufficiently stir their imaginations to command interest.
The printing and publishing industry stands among the six largest from the point of view of annual value in dollars—in this country—and has, of course, boundless possibilities for good and evil. ”

“ Newsprint has been the miracle of the industry. Despite all of the schemes which have been published stating the many ways in which the newspapers were curtailing their consumption and saving paper, the demand is to-day as strong as it ever was. The mills are shipping more than 100 per cent. of their production—drawing from their reserve supplies, so that these have dwindled to a dangerous degree. It would be hard to name a real quotation for newsprint at the present time for the only lots to be had are not those in the hands of jobbers who are asking as much as they can get for their stock. ”

“ The competition between merchants has extended to their methods of sampling, and no important dealer today is without a well arranged Catalog and price list, giving complete data as to the standard sizes, weights, and grades, etc., and also substantial sample cabinets, which are distributed to paper buyers.
A comparatively recent development in the paper business, is the exploitation of “mill brands.” That is to say, a mill manufactures and stocks in the most merchantable sizes, a grade of paper. ”

“ And as the demand for the thicker and more tenacious and pliable papers is comparatively limited, and the manufacture of each of its branches, to some degree a special business, there are much fewer machines for making it, and much fewer makers of it than there are machines for making ordinary paper and makers of it. ”

“ The Jobber unquestionably occupies a permanent and important position as the distributor of paper, not only because he affords a centralization of information and92 stocks, which is more economical than if every manufacturer had to maintain separate channels of distribution, but also because he relieves the Printer of the necessity of tieing up a large amount of money in paper. In earlier times, when there were but few kinds and a small consumption of paper, the situation was very different, and there was no need for the middle man. ”

“ The products in question are manufactures of paper, as contradistinguished from paper, because completed paper, as produced in paper mills, is but one of the tangible ingredients, the other products (sizing of a particular description, water-color paints, wool flock, and the like) being materials entirely foreign to the art of the paper maker, and that complete merchantable paper is employed simply as the material, and is subjected to elaborate mechanical processes, involving the employment of machinery entirely unknown to the paper maker's art, and operated by workmen who are not paper makers ”

“ Still, paper is a much more convenient material for rapid work; and it is an infinite absurdity not to secure the goodness of its quality, when we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among the many favours which I am going to ask from our paternal government, when we get it, will be that it will supply its little boys with good paper. You have nothing to do but to let the government establish a paper manufactory, under the superintendence of any of our leading chemists, who should be answerable for the safety and completeness of all the processes of the manufacture. ”

“ The atmosphere has been becoming more and more charged with the character of the printing business. Now may be felt the tremour and heard the sound of moving presses. Printing houses, dealers in "litho inks," linotype companies, paper makers, "publishers and jobbers of books," "photo engraving" establishments are all about. Here is a far-famed publishing house the sight of which takes you back with a jump to your boyhood, your youthful, arrant, adventurous reading. Those were the happy days when the flavour of Crime was like ginger i' the mouth. ”

“ During the past two years there has been even a greater proportionate increase. Considering the126 fact that ten years ago the exportation of paper was practically unknown, it will be quickly seen that we are fast forging to the front and taking the position in foreign fields which, as the leading paper manufacturing country of the world, we now fully merit. Our products are generally at a premium in foreign markets, and American genius, enterprise, and versatility are everywhere recognized. ”

“ It is not reasonable to suppose that congress assumed that the manipulation or treatment of particular paper, in the completed condition in which produced at a paper mill, by mere surface coating,-a process which did not change its form, but only increased the uses to which such paper might be put,-had the result to cause the article to cease to be paper and to become a manufacture of paper, especially in view of the continued commercial designation of the article as a variety of paper, and its sale and purchase in commerce as paper. ”

“ The big paper-makers have killed the small paper-makers, because, as the trade advanced, it was found that the machine helped man, more than man helped the machine. And yet there are more hands employed in the making of paper now—even relatively to supply—than in the days of the small-mill men. ”

“ They alleged that the Company 45of Stationers was controlled by the booksellers and that they cheapened printing and impoverished the printers, that the Company of Stationers was so large that only old men could attain to the dignity of masters or wardens, and that only once in ten or twelve years was it possible for a journeyman printer to become a master printer. They claimed that a new Company would free the printing industry from these shackles, that it would improve the quality of printing, and that it would secure for the government better supervision of the output of the press. ”

“ The transition from the old ways of paper-making to modern processes was sudden. The century which gave6 them to us stands out in radiance against the dark ages of heavy toil at the vat and press.
First came the mechanic whose genius caused tons to be produced in the time that pounds were made of yore. Next came the chemist who developed unthought-of raw materials to supply the ever-growing demands of “papivorous” civilization, until it has been said with so much truth that ours is the paper age. ”

“ Directories, telephone books, circulars, and [145] advertising matter in general demand tons and tons of paper every year, and the printing of them provides employment for hundreds of printers. As time goes on, more and more business is annually transacted by mail. The country is so tremendous and the expense of sending out salesmen to cover it so great that merchants now do much of their selling from mail-order catalogues. ”

“ As this would throw a large number of men out of work, he further proposed a scheme for the relief of necessitous and supernumerary printers. He calculated that the twelve impressions of the Farewell Sermons, allowing a thousand copies to each impression, had yielded a profit, 'beside the charge of paper and printing,' of £3300, and he advised that this sum should be levied as a fine upon those booksellers who had sold the book, and be placed to a fund for the benefit of the suppressed printers, the balance of the sum required to be levied on other seditious publications! ”

“ Those observations, which are partly technical, because, without technicality, the view would be incomplete,—may give some idea of the skill required in the workman, and the expenditure demanded of the capitalist, to produce so simple a thing, as a sheet of paper. The most exact care, the most ingenious invention, the nicest work of hand, and the most complicated machinery, are essential to that superiority which the British manufacture of paper has at length established. ”

“ Not infrequently lawyers who found their professional services not yet needed in a country, where every man was practically a law unto himself, were drafted from the bar—take either meaning of the word—into editorial chairs. In a volume of this size mention can be made only of those printers who founded the first papers. Unembarrassed by stamp taxes and unhindered by censorship of the press, they faced other problems in transporting their plants and in getting their supply of white paper equal in every respect to the difficulties of the pioneers on the Atlantic Coast. ”

“ An understanding should exist with the printer that the matter must be set to save space wherever consistent, and any carelessness or neglect in this respect should be observed and effectually stopped at once. A saving of five pages in a catalogue by watching the size of cuts, their arrangement, the setting of the type, etc., if the issue should be say two hundred thousand, means a million pages of paper saved, outside of any saving in composition, presswork, etc. ”

“ If these societies will take into consideration the further duties and obligations that we are under to each other, and the importance of becoming self-sustaining, we wish to enlist their interest to aid us in making paper, by taking steps to collect the rags. We have an excellent paper mill here, and can make our own paper, as well as to send abroad and pay out our money for it, and then bring it here. We should cease importing paper, for paper-making is a branch of manufacture for which we have all the necessary facilities, and if we carry it on it will benefit us. ”

“ They are the invisible, rock-ribbed resting-place for the dazzling superstructure and the slim and peaked spire. Whether we procure a new press or a new dress, a new contributor or a new printers' towel, we must bank on the old subscriber; for the new one is fickle, and when some other paper gives him a larger or a redder covered book, he may desert our standard. He yearns for the flesh-pots and the new scroll saws of other papers. He soon wearies of a uniformly good paper, with no chance to draw a town lot or a tin mine—in Montana. ”

“ But not only does the printing industry excel all other industries in human interest, it excels them in the relative progress it is making. The latest available figures, published in 1905 by the Government, show that the capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of combination. ”

“ The government takes the same uncompromising position in regard to the fabrics used in printing its paper-money issues, and it will be quickly seen that the silk thread process above described is so great a variation from anything required in the mercantile world that it would be difficult to produce a paper at all similar without an ulterior purpose being at once apparent. ”

“ Chart Papers.—Largely used by lithographers for map and chart printing. Machine-made, the best qualities are all-rag, tub-sized, with smooth surface. Must be strong, pliable, tough, resistant to wear, and at the same time a good printing surface is essential. The manufacture is arranged so as to avoid subsequent stretch.
Cheque Papers.—Good quality of paper, specially made for strength, usually all-rag. Special watermarks may be employed, or protection from fraud is obtained by special printing. ”

“ In all parts of the subject, however, there is great room for skill; the thicker, more tenacious, and more sightly paper being produced in different degrees of excellence according as the proper 'stock' is used, as the paper-making machines are good, and as they are scientifically used. ”

“ In the 10th century the supremacy which parchment had gradually established was attacked by the introduction from the East of a new writing material made from a pulp of linen rags, and the name of the vanquished papyrus was transferred to this new rival. Paper-mills were set up in Europe in the 12th century, and the use of paper gained ground, though not very rapidly, until on the invention of printing, the demand for a cheap material for books, and the ease with which paper could be worked on a press, gave it a practical monopoly. ”