Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1905-11-04
Flows From the Many
New England Mills.
A Great AMI Growing Industry
Of this Section.
Depends Upon the Powers, Forests
and Railroads.

after so long eXcelling in education anC
literary production, should now provide
more paper than any other section OF
the country for the nations presses. II
is only a coincidence, of course, fOl
under modern conditions the manufac-
ture of paper must cater to as wide
markets and be carried on under as
favorable conditions and in as whole
sale a manner as the manufacture OF
iron and steel 1t is part and parcel
of that gigantic national induStrialiSm
which Knows no sectional boundaries
but seeks only the locations which en-
able il hest to compete in the markets
OF the world. Not the volume of New
England literature. but the spruce
woods for making pulp. the wealth of
water power the induStriouSnesS of
Yankee Workmen and the low freight
rates to other parts of the country are
the reasons why New England produces
80 per cent. of all the paper made in
the United States.
Many a New England town owes its
activity and prosperity. if not it's very
existence. to the location Of a paper
mill or two within its limits. This
suggests another peculiar fact about
the paper industry-it plants itself in
the small towns. Indeed it seems to
blend ideally with the picturesque con-
ncatncss which of necessity accords
with the making Of such a clean
product as plain paper. the use of
water power for the most part instead
of steam, the miles Of spruce forest
stretching back from the mill towns,
the millions of feet of pulp logs floating
down the rivers, all these things COM
bine to make the manufacture of paper
a natural and fl: dweller by forest and
stream, far away from the smoky at
mosphere of large cities and the dust
of incessant commerce.
But it is not within the usual order
of things to find a single industrial es-
Enlistment in settlement of $500
people, most of whom it employs itself,
and surrounded for miles by woods full
of deer and moose. turning out
product worth a million dollars year.
Yet such is the case with the largest
paper mill in the world at Millinocket,
Pcnohscot county, Maine. This mill
produces $50 tons of paper every
twenty-tCur hours. or $500 feet every
minute of 4 web of paper about four
feet wide. Nearly a mile of paper is
thus made every two minutes. In
other mills the snow white sheet runs
through the glstening steel rolls at
speed about equal to that of a railroad
train making thirty miles an hour.
And this mill is no more out of keep
ing with it's environment than were the
many Instead of supplanting the
forest, except in the clearing in which
il stands and its workers live. its ey-
istencC helps to preserve it. The COM
pany owning this huge mill. following
the ROW almost universal plan of east
crn paper companies, has bought up
several hundred thousand acres of tim
bcriand directly north of Millinocket,
which it cuts into only after the most
approved forestry methods In this
way it insures for its mill n steady
supply Of pulp wood which. if the for
est were cut down in the usual manner.
would in q very snort time have to be
Transported from 4 distance at a much
enhanced cost.
Three other typical paper making
towns. Rumford Falls. Maine. Berlin
Falls. New Hampshire, and Bellows
Falls. Vermont. whose very names
suggest wood pulp and water-power,
are, like Milinocket, also recent indus
| trial creations made possible by rail-
road connection with the rest of the
country and low through rates. Twelve
years ago the heart of the present town
of Rumford Falls was a bare rock in
| ,.ix-
| In order to get to it one had to drive
many miles over hilly country road
from the nearest railway station. Its
superb advantages as location for
| raper mills could not, of course, over
| come this utter lack of transportation
facilities, and American capitalists put
their heads together and built the Port
land and Rumford Falls Railroad, with
the result that now Rumford Falls is q
rapidly growing town of 1000 inhabi-
! tants. containing several of the largest
naner mills in the world besides a num-
! her of other industries which have been
attracted there by the building of the
railroad and the exploitation of the
water-power.
Such instances are but repetition
in old New England of what has been
going on in the New West ever since
i1S4O. An American with business
instincts and a vivid imagination
comes across some splendid nat
lural resources remote from the
large markets. He either builds
a railroad or he persuades some
previously built railroad to extend
branch line to the place he has discov'
+ cred. Then. regardless of the length o
haul. the railroad makes its rates low
enough to put down the goods produced
+ in this hidden Ell Dorado al prom
. in the largest markets of the world
The business expands rapidly, tow
, grows up. other industries game
? about, and shortly the typical Amer
: can town is evolved. whose trafhc De
comes gold mine for those VINO MAJ