Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1908-06-10
MANUFACTURE
 OF WOOD PULP
Nearly Four Million Cords oi Wood Used Last Year In tile Manufacture Of Paper, or Twice as Much a> That I'>cd In the Year I~99.

Washin@t0n. June A preliminary report of the consumption of pulp wood anl the amount of pulp manu- factured last yelr has just been issued by the Bureau of the Census The afsH vance statement is mane from the sta tistics collected by the Census Bureau in cooperation with the Uritel States Forest Service.
 Many of the figures bring on. inter cstin@ facts which shows the rapid growth of the paper making and allied industries during the last decade. Nearly four million cords of wood, in exact numbers, 3.362 ,660 cords, were used in the United States in the manu- fracture of pulp last year, just twice as much as was used irl 1899, the first year for which detailed figures were available. More than two and one half million tons of pulp were produc- ed. The pulp mills used 300,000 more cords of wood in 1907 than in the previous year.
 The amount of spruce used was 6S per cent of the total consumption of pulpwood, or 2,70O,000 cords The in creased price of spruce has turned the attention of paper manufacturers to number of other woods, hemlock rank ing next, with 576,000 cords, or II per cent of the total consumption More than per cent was poplar, and the re- mainder consisted of relatively small amounts of pine, cottonwood, balsam and other woods.
 There was a marked increase Ids. year in the importation of spruce, which as always been the most popu- lar wood for pulp. For a number of years pulp manufacturers Of this country have been heavily importing spruce from Canada, since the availa- ble supply of this wood in the north central and New England states, where most of the pulp mills are To- cated, is not equal to the demand, Figures show that the amount of this VdludD1c DulDNOOu lOuSHC Ihto ,iii'' country was more than two and one- half times as great in 1907 as in 1893. In 1907 the mportations were larger than ever before, being p per cent greater than in 1896. The spruce i'm ports last year amounted to more than one-third of the consumption of spruce pulpwood. Only a slightly greater amount of domestic spruce was used than in 1906.
 larger quantities of hemock were used by the Wisconsin pulp mills, and the report shows that the Beaver State now ranks third in pulp production, New York and Maine ranking first and second respectively Poplar has been used for a long time in the manuiac- ture of high grade paper, but the sup ply of this wood is limited and the consumption of it has not increased rapidly.
 Wood pulp is usually made by either one of two general processes, mechan ical or chemical. In the mechanical process hnt WOou, dlttl DtllS cut lhlo suitable sizes and marked, is held against revolving Srindstones in a stream of water and thus reduced to pulp In the chemical process the parked wood is reduced to chips and cooked in large digesters With chem icals which destroy the cementinS material of the tibers and leave prac- tically pure cellulose. This is then washed and screened to render it suit able for paper making. The chemic- als. ordinarily used are either bisul- phite of lime or cauStic sOda.A little over half of the pulp manufactured last year was made by the sulphite process, and about one-third by the mechanical process, the remainder be- ing produced by the soda process. Much of the mechanical pulp, or ground wood as it is commonly called, is used in inc making of newspaper. It is never used alone in making white paper but always mixed with some sulphite fiber to give the paper strength. A cord of wood ordinarily yields one ton of mechanical pulp or about one-half ton of chemical pulp.