Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1880-04-01

America--The First Discovery In a
Hornets Nest--Paper's Wonderful
Uses and Probabilities.
The common wasp. the terror of the
small boy in the country, was undoubt-
edly the pioneer N the paper business,
and to this despised and abused insect
the Herald is disposed to award ample
credit. The wasp made his paper, too,
very much the same way that his human
imitators do to day using often the very
same material and producing in his rude
way a species of paper nearly as deli
cate as the finest tissue grades. Who
will say, therefore, that nature is not a
| great teacherp Spiders were spinners
of intricate webs before cloth was in
vented, the silk worm disclosed to the
world a mine of industry and wealth
which it is impossible to estimate, and
the beaver gave to man his earliest and
most valuable lessons in dam building.
| 1t is recorded in history that in $40 B.
c., Numa, who lived 300 years before
Alexander, left several works upon papy-
rus, and that this is probably the earliest
authenticated use of this material. As
far back as 1900 years ago the Chinese
are thought to have discovered how to
make paper from fibrous matter reduced
to pulp in water. Alb 1ut the year 7O6
from cotton was established. In ISL
! the Spaniards manufactured from cotton
various kinds of paper scarcely inferior
in quality to those made from linen
rags. Linen paper seems to have been
first used in England about the year
l342, and it gradually supplanted that
made of cotton. The French erected
their first paper mills in 1914. and the
Germans began the manufacture at not
much later date. John Tate built the
first paper mills of England at Hart
ford in 1893. But France supplied Eng
land with most of her paper until Louis
XIV. drove out the Huguenot manu-
facturers, many of whom, after emigrat-
ing to England, began making fine
white quality Of paper, not produced be-
fore in that country, where from that
time the paper industry enlarged and
prospered until soon more than enough
of the material was manufactured to
cover home consum ption. The ancient
hangings of tapestry were superseded
about the year 1910 by wall paper of
beautiful designs.
In 1928 patent was granted to erect
the first paper mill in New England,
which went into operation in Milton,
Mass, in 1870, but was discontinued
after several years, and revived again in
1850. The first paper mill in the United
States, however, was erected near Phila-
delphia in 1890. The Milton mill is sup
posed to have been erected by Daniel
Henchman, an enterprising bookseller
Of Boston. About the year 1868 Christie
pher LeffingWell established the first
paper mill in Connecticut at Norwich
In ITO the number of paper mills in
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Della
ware was forty, and the value of their
annual product estimated at fIO0, 600.
At the beginning of the Revolutionary
war Massachusetts had three small
paper mills, New Hampshire none, and
Rhode Island one, out OF repair. Paper
was very scarce, and poor in quality.
The process pursued tor generations
in Europe was substantially followed
until 1859, when cylinders with sharp
steel blades for tearing rags-invented
in IIolland-began to be used in other
countries in pace of the slow-working
and tedious stampers heretofore en-
ployed to reduce rags to pulp. In 1890,
while tie wife Of an English papermaker
was busy with her usual washing, in
passing vat in which pulp for her husi
bands paper lay, in an advanced state
preparation, she accidentally dropped
therein a bag containing powdered
blue. The husband, however, made the
colored pulp up into paper, which proved
so superior IN quality that he obtained
four shillings extra for it in the London
market; and thus, curiously enough, the
process of blueing paper was discovered.
But the most important discovery, one
destined to develop an epoch in the his
tory of paper-making, came out in l779,
when Louis Robert. common orkman
in paper mill at Essonne, France, first
mastered the principle of making paper
in an endless web by machinery. But
it was reserved for Messrs. Henry and
Sealy Fourdrinier, wealthy London
booksellers and stationers, who, in 1904,
purchased the patent-right for Great
Britain, TO make the invention widely
known to the world and to greatly inn
prove it; and to-day the principal paper
machine used still bears the name
Fourdrinier. By the old hand process
three months were needed, dating from
the day the rags came into the mill, in
which to complete the paper ready for
delivery; by the Fourdrinier, the same
amount of work may be edone in a single
day John Ames, of Springfield. Mass,
in 1922 invented a celebrated cylinder
machine, which is now used in all
coarse papers.
1t is an indisputable fact that fully
one-third of all the paper used in the
world is manufactured in the United
States, and very large proportion of
this amount is produced from mills in
Massachusetts. After the Ames, in
Springfield, could no longer be called
the largest paper makers in the United
States, that honor fell to Platner &
Smith, Of Lee. At the present time,
however, HoIyoke enjoys the proud dis
tinction. The talk there is all paper,
the same as it is all ores and mines in
Leadville, or wheat in Chicago, or
politics in Washington. 1t was not
until as late as 1853 that the first paper
mill was erected in Ho.yoke, and to-day
she makes more fine writing paper
than any half-dozen cities and towns
in the world combined. The annual
product of the paper of the country
amounts to $40, 500 tons-about $3.50 tons
daily. 1t is estimated that, of wood
pulp paper alone, So, 900 tons per year
are made. The total exports of the last
fiscal year equaled $l,293,3l having
grown from the comparatively insignifi-
cant sum of $3,777 in 1860, while our
imports. on the contrary, havedwindled
down to the maximum of s. 1926. .460 in
1873 to q total amount of only $l35.4S
for papers of all kinds in 1878. Our
paper mills-927 in number-represen