The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1908-11-05
PAPER FROM coRNsTALkS.


: and of the bureau Of plant industry o
the Department of Agriculture a
Washington believe hat they at las
=, have solved the problem of a cheaper
: paper that will dispense altogethel
with the use of wood fiber. The new
material, from which already five
grades have successfully been made
is the ordinary constalk, and officials
of the department predicted that the
new product, when made on a larger
scale, will be at least so per cent
cheaper than the print paper now
made from wood pulp.
That paper can be made of corn
stalks is not news. 1t has long been
known hat all woody fiber is essen
TALLY alike, and that one form of it
is preferable to another to the paper
maker only because its treatment for
his purposes is more convenient or
less expensive.
What is news, however, and pos
sibly as great news, in some ways,
as has come for many a day, is the
confident announcement by the Wash
ington chemists that they have discov-
cred a commercially practicable meth
cd of turning cornstalks into the
product for which civilized man has so
many and such important uses.
The two bureaus have been work
ing on the problem for years, but not
until this week have the results been
50 positively successful as to permit
Of any announcement. The first
practicable samples of the new paper
have been manufactured by DR.. II. S.
Bristol and his assistants at the new
laboratory on Pennsylvania emu
DR.. Bristol has already carried his
experiments to the point of making
the paper in five shades.
One grade is dark gray, thick and
heavy, like parchment, and almost as
tough as sheepskin. Then there is a
lighter shade of the same character,
two shades of yellow and one of
white.
The white paper is made from the
hard outside shell Of the stalk and
the yellow grades have a much longer
fiber, and resemble paper made from
linen rags or cotton. 1t is very soft
and pliable.
Millions of tons of cornstalks will be
available for this new manufacture,
according to the Department of Agri-
culture. At present the stalks are an
nually destroyed in enormous quanti-
ties to get them out of the way, or
else simply turned under the soil with
a plow to add slightly to the fertiliza-
ton of next years crop.
The process of manufacturing the
new invention is much easier than
that involved in reducing wood pulp
to paper. The chemists have used in
their experiments the soda cooked"
process, which has been found to be
the best for making the finer grades
of wood pulp paper. But the corn
stalks only need about 2R hours of
cooking in this process against the
13 or IA hours needed to soften the
wood pulp.
So far as the e paper has been
made only in a laboratory without
special machinery or the wholesale
production necessary to insure cheap
ness, but the department is going to
experiment at once on a larger scale,
and believes that the price of white.
paper as we'll as the other grades will
be reduced to a startling degree.
The estimates of the department
are based on the present cost of wood
pulp paper, which is $13 a ton. With
wood costing eight dollars a cord, that
is the price of the paper. With corn
stalks costing about SIS per ton, adj
ding in the cost of bringing the bulky
material to the Washington labora-
TORY, the cost mas been about S14 a
ton. There is no doubt in the minds
of department chemists that increased
production will cut the cost in half.
mo special growth of corn is need
ed" said one Of the chemists recently.
I'VE have used the ordinary stalk
from the Virginia fields, and the kind
that is destroyed in Texas, Tennessee
and elsewhere in wasteful quantities
each year can now be turned to use.
Not only will the cost of paper be
greatly reduced, but the farmer will
have an added asset in a by-product
that ought to net him a neat sum
each year."
The department will at once take
steps to have the manufacture of the