Paper mill

“ The pulp mill does nothing but bleach the rag pulp and prepare for the machines in the other mills; while the super-calendering mill gives the paper an extra finish when ordered. There is practically but one series of processes by which the paper is made in the various mills.
It is a curious fact that America is not ragged enough to produce the requisite amount of stock for its own paper mills. Nearly all the rags used by the Denison Mills (and by others in various parts of the country as well) are imported from the old countries. All the rags first go through the "duster." ”

“ In those mills making the finest grades of paper, much of the process of thrashing, beating, dusting, and cleaning necessary in the ordinary mill is omitted. The cleanliness and brightness which are reached only at the “washer” and “beater” engines in the process of manufacturing the lower grades of paper from cheaper rags, prevail at every step in these higher grade mills. ”

“ The Paper trade is essentially a hand-to-mouth trade in all branches except the news print department. In general, purchases are made only as required, and fluctuations in price effect but slightly the demand. In short, an analysis of the production of the Paper Mills of the country, taking into consideration stocks on hand, is specially significant as an index of current trade conditions. ”

“ In the manufacture of newspaper the tendency during recent years has been to make the paper mill operations as mechanical as possible and to dispense with the preliminary operations which are essential for the manufacture of half-stuff, the chemical processes being left in the hands of the pulp manufacturers.
The manufacture of straw cellulose is now practically confined to Germany, but small quantities of the bleached straw cellulose are imported because the pulp imparts certain qualities to paper which improve it, notably in making cheap printing papers harder and more opaque. ”

“ Shakspeare, in the second part of his play of Henry the Sixth, the plot of which appears laid at least a century previously, refers to a paper mill. In fact, he introduces it as an additional weight to the charge which Jack Cade is made to bring against Lord Saye, “Thou hast most traitorously corrupted,” says he, “the youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar school, and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be [36] used, and contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill.” ”

“ One paper mill carries an enormous stock of high class engine-sized bond and bank papers in eighteen colours, and each of these in six substances. Bank papers are thinner than bonds, the usual substances being foolscap 7 lb., large post 11 lb., medium 13 lb. Here again the best papers are all-rag, tub-sized, and while a very good chemical wood, tub-sized, super-calendered bank paper is obtainable, papers of the best quality, such as "3009 Extra Strong," always command a high price, being extremely strong and durable. ”

“ Let us suppose that a person wholly unacquainted with the art of manufacturing paper, were to enter a paper-mill when the workmen are away, and the process of manufacture for a time suspended. At first sight he would probably find it difficult to persuade himself, that the piles of clean white paper, which attract his notice at one end of the building, are produced from the heaps of filthy rags which he sees accumulated at the other. ”

“ Thousands of patents have been granted for such inventions. With one modern Fourdrinier machine, and a few beating engines, a small paper mill will now turn out daily as much paper as could be made by twelve mills a hundred years ago.
In moulding pulp into articles of manufacture, satisfactory machines have been invented, not only for the mere forming them into shape, but for water-proofing and indurating the same. From the making of a ponderous paper car wheel to a lady’s delicate work basket, success has been attained. ”

“ I have before me estimates showing that machines already ordered for new mills and additions will add to the Canadian capacity something like four hundred thousand tons a year. Canada now has more than one hundred paper mills, and if all were run full time at full speed, they would turn out nearly two and one half million tons of paper in a year. The world’s largest ground pulp mill is at Three Rivers, in Quebec, the great paper-making centre I have mentioned in another chapter. ”

“ DIGGING out here in my back pasture lot, so I may find water for my cows when next summer's drought comes on, I have discovered one of the oldest paper mills in the world—a mill that was in good working order when Alexander went east for other nations to subdue, and one which had whole quires and reams in stock when men lived in caves and the human families exchanged calls with the monkeys. The land here is drift clay, which, mixed with sand and duly baked, makes fine building brick, and which raises such fine timothy hay that the new tariff does not bother me a mite. ”

“ Subjected to the beautiful and costly machinery of the paper-mill, the rags turn out an article of so much value that without it the world would almost come to a stand-still. Yet further, we have next the miner, who by his labour brings to the surface of the earth the metal required to produce the type for printing ”

“ It was a short step to decide to establish a paper-mill at home. There being no paper-makers in Germany, he secured the brothers Marco and Francisco di Marchia and their boy Bartolomeo in Italy and brought them to Nuremberg. He built his mill in the so-called Gleissmühle, which was situated not far from Nuremberg, near the present Hallerniese. Whether he built a new mill or only adapted an old grist-mill or oil-mill, of which we know nothing, he had to prepare new machinery for paper-making, including stamps, presses, and tubs, and sorting and drying rooms. ”

“ The common paper mill being limited by its number of vats, no advantage can be taken of the frequent accessions of power which generally happen in the course of the year, but, on the contrary, as scarcely any mills are capable of preparing stuff for twelve vats, every accession of power to the mill, where a machine is employed, will increase its produce without any additional expense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The nail mill, the paper mill, the screw mill, the brewery, the spinning and weaving mills, the calico printing mill, the pottery, and many other works and arts to fabricate useful necessary supplies out of our raw materials, will (including all our manufactures) be worth, in the whole of 1820, more than five times the value of our exported goods for sale in foreign countries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since that date a good deal of work has been done in connection with the fibre, but not until recently has the investigation been made of a sufficiently extensive character to enable paper-makers to form some conclusions as to the best methods of obtaining a reliable paper pulp. The researches of the writer in India go to prove that with any fibre it is necessary to take into account all the factors likely to affect the final cost of the paper pulp delivered to any given paper mill. ”

“ The beginning of the industry in America was almost coincident with the granting of patents for the manufacture of paper in England. A paper-mill was established by William Rittenhouse, a native of Holland, at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in the year 1690, one of the builders and owners being William Bradford, a Philadelphia printer, who was afterward the owner of30 the first printing office in New York City. It was through him that Benjamin Franklin, in 1723, received his first introduction to a temporary home, and employment, in Philadelphia. ”

“ These peddlers were the great dependence of the paper mills, for the finest paper is made from linen and cotton rags. When the rags reach the factory, they are carefully sorted. All day long the sorters sit before tables whose tops are covered with coarse wire screens, and from masses of rags they pick out buttons, hooks and eyes, pins, bits of rubber, and anything else that cannot possibly be made into paper. ”

“ The printers who in the aggregate consume large quantities of writing, catalog, and miscellaneous printing paper, but whose orders are composed principally of many small items, buy almost wholly from the paper jobbers. In localities far removed from the Mills, the jobber very naturally occupies a more conspicuous position than elsewhere, and his superior facilities for handling the business make him a stronger factor than in the markets adjacent to the mills, and enable him to handle much of the largest business to advantage. ”

“ In the case of common printings and writings, which form the great bulk of the paper made, the possibility of one mill competing against another, apart from the important factor of the cost of freight, coal, and labour, is almost entirely determined by the economy resulting from the introduction of modern machinery. ”

“ Publishers pay $2.10 per ton additional for that waste. .Mr. Pinchot says that for every tree that is turned into paper three are cut down. .A paper trade organ gives figures to show that of the pulp wood which reaches the paper mill, 15 per cent, is lost in barking, 10 per cent, of the remaining 85 per cent, is lost in the sulphite mill, and 5 per cent. i.> lost in grinding, and of the remainder 10 per cent, is allowed to run away in the section which converts the pulp into paper, so that only 69 per cent, of the wood which reaches the mill is turned into paper. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Machines of this type can make very thick sheets, and are used for making bristol boards, blanks, boxboard, strawboard, etc.
The number and arrangement of driers on any machine depends on the product to be derived. Fast-running machines, such as the large news mills are equipped with, have necessarily a large number of driers, as they turn off fifty tons or so a day and require a great drying capacity. Slow running machines, such as are used in fine writing-paper mills, need a much smaller number, as the average fine writing-paper machine produces little over three or four tons a day. ”

“ Allowing three hundred working-days a year to each mill, the total annual output possible would be 4,215,000 tons, which, allowing thirty thousand pounds to a car, would make 281,000 carloads.128 According to statistics gathered by the United States Commissioner of Labor for the first six months of 1898, the seven hundred and twenty-three plants, many of them having two or three separate mills, actually produced 1,733,019 tons of paper and pulp. ”

“ So all that has happened has been that machines have somewhat changed the character of women's work, and their chief effect, beyond the displacement of sewers, has been to prevent the taking on of some learners who otherwise might have been employed in certain branches of these trades.
Conclusions can be arrived at with more accuracy in respect of the paper-colouring and enamelling processes.
Paper colouring and enamelling hardly exists as a separate trade now. Paper is coloured or enamelled, as a rule, in the mill where it is made, and the processes are carried out by machinery. ”

“ An effort to equate these various features of weight and strength has been made by taking the best mill of the International Paper Company—the Hudson River—as the nearest approach to standard of 32 pounds weight and 11.50 pounds strength. That mill makes more paper than any other mill, with the possible exception of the Great Northern. It makes paper of good quality. It is well balanced with respect to power, to pulp capacity, and to paper making equipment. Its cost is low, averaging $27 per ton f. ”

“ So far as the manufacturers, or mills of various sorts, are concerned, there is one striking difference about the paper of woolen and worsted mills as against cotton mill notes which appear in the open market; cotton mill paper, except in the case of the strongest mills, usually bears the endorsement of the commission house which sells the mill’s product, but this is not as a rule the case with woolen and worsted mill paper. The reason is that a large number of the wool manufacturing establishments sell direct to wholesalers and jobbers, and have no close affiliation with a selling-house. ”