The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1916-09-14

ment. Paper OF all sorts IS scarce and
apparently getting scarcer. This is
especially true of the paper TIL news.
papers and the cheaper magazines are
printed on, which has scared in a man.
ner comparable to the sensational as
tensions performed by the prices of
dyes and chemicals. And paper today,
especially news print paper, is no
luxury. 1t is a necessitv of our daily
life.
The' briefest consideration shows
what part paper plays in the modern
scheme of things. You are continually
buying and using paper of one sort or
another. from the time you get up and
read morning paper at breakfast to
the time when you lay aside your book
or magazine and go to sleep at night
The amount of paper that a big city
consumes in day Is enormous. Raise
the price of paper fifty or a hundred
per cent. and score of industries are
vitality affected.
The price of paper has risen i'm
mensely since the European war began,
due partly to higher costs of certain
chemicals, but chiefly to the fact that
trade with Norway and Sweden is dis
organized, and from these countries we
have been importing great quantities
of wood pulp for paper manufacture.
If we have not felt the effects of the
situation to any great extent so far, it
is because the men who use the paper
in their business and pay the bills have
been holding on and hoping for return
of normal conditions.
In the meantime, we are beginning
to economize on paper in every possible
way. More waste paper is being saved
and sold to be used over again in manu-
facture than ever before. Advertisers
have actually been asked to hold down
the size of their advertisements in or
der to use as little paper as possible in
getting results. A Congressional inves-
tigation into the price of paper has
been held. Some of the less wealthy
periodicals are appearing printed on
paper of new and startling hue and sur.
face. The situation is unprecedented
IN the history of the paper industry.
If all this is simply a result of war
conditions, the general sentiment is
that we shall just have to weather the
stringency as best we can and be a
little more careful of our paper. But
it has been suggested that the present
high prices are at least in part a result
of increased demand as well as of the
cutting off of foreign supplies. In
which case the end of the war will not
settle the question.
:. And this view, which has led US to
take stock of our national resources,
has drawn attention to the immense
and little-knOwn stretches of paper
material in Alaska. Newsprint and
similar papers are made from wood
pulp. 1t is the steady depletion of our
timber lands that makes US dependent
on foreign countries for any pulp stock
at all. And in southern Alaska we
have, on governne nt land, as the prop
erty of the nation, one of the greatest
supplies of raw material for paper
making in the world.
1t is only recently that any attention
has been paid to these Alaskan national
forests. Great stretches of them are
still to be explored But we know that
they contain billions on billions of feet
of virgin timber. Nature seems to
have laid them out especially with a
view of keeping the American public
supplied with reading matter. They
are distinctively what lumbermen know
as pulp proposition. That is, they
would naturally and normally be work
ed for paper rather than lumber. The
trees are large, often running up to six
feet in diameter, but the quality of the
wood is not of the highest for building
purposes. They are capable, however,
of being worked into a paper equal to
the best.
Norway has made of herself a ex-
porter of pulp and pulp-wood. She has
done this because her own natural re-
sources are not of the most varied, and
on looking them over she found that
this particular industry was one for
which nature had fitted her She had
great stretches of timber of the grade
and species used in paper manufacture
She had large rivers plunglng down the
steep grades from the mountains to the
coast within few miles. and general
ing great power in their flow. Her
deep tiords run far inlandup the sunken
valleys of these rivers, so that deep-sea
vessels can load at the very mills. And
Norway ships pulp wood not only to
America, but through the Suez canal to
India and China.
Now in our own southeastern Alaska
The Celebrated South Bend Plow.
pt1y ono noun opd now for IN, tho