Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1924-09-03
ABOUT PAPER.
What Would Happen if Supply Sud-
denly Wiped Out?

utnlN w Iptu out
CIR. $. kellogg, in National Editorial
Association BulletinD
We are so used to having paper
that scarcely ever do we realize what
it means to us. People who dig
through ancient history and still
more ancient history tell us
man has passed through stone and
bronze age into a steel age. We are
passing into a paper age. If you have
any doubt of that, think what would
happen if some great catastrophe
should wipe out all the paper that
there is in the world. Civilization
would be in utter chaos by to-mor-
row. We absolutely depend upon
paper for every kind of purpose, par
ticularly for business purposes, since
probably % per cent OF our business
is done through paper and not
through cash or actual exchange of
commodities,
Paper is now so cheap and album
dant that we don't think about the
time when it was not, and yet the
memory of a great many men can go
back to that time
1t is only within the last fifty years
that the world has begun to
have enough paper. There
never was enough until pro-
cesses were developed for max
ing paper out of wood instead of rags
TO show that We are now in
paper age, such figures as we can OBJ
tain from official sources indicate
that on the 1920 basis the per capita
consumption of paper in Russia was
six pounds. At the same date in
Japan it was twelve pounds; in Ger
many forty-fve pounds; Scandi-
nayia, thirty-three pounds; Great
Britain seventy-siX pounds; and in
the United States, $50 pounds
More specifically, in addition to be-
ing paper age, we can say, l think,
that we are in a newspaper age. In
1880 the per capita consumption of
news print paper i'll the United States
was three pounds. In 1898 it was
nine pounds. BY 1919 it had grown
to thirty-five pounds and in the year
1928 it was fifty pounds.
bn 1928 the amount of news print
paper used in the United States was
100000 tons. If spread out into
one continuous blanket it would
cover an area equal to the combined
areas of New Jersey, Massachusetts
and COnnecticut-som over
l 100000 acres. 1t would also
make a strip 400 feet wide running
from here to the moon,
The requirements for completely
self-sustained modern news mill are
very much greater than the ordinary
man realizes | mean plant
equipped to make its own ground
wood, its own sulphite and then
equipped to take the two and put
them into sheet paper with all mod
ern improvements and at the modern
rate of production. Such a plant re-
quires about $4,000 investment for
every ton of daily capacity to make
paper. A plant with a capacity of
| 100 tons daily on that basis means
100000 of investment. That in
cludes nothing for production of a
| supply of raw material. Coupled up
with this hypothetical plant there
ought to be the ownership of suf-
ficient producing forest to supply
that plant with 10000 to $4,000
cords of wood yearly. This might re-
quire an additional $5,000,00O, MAX
ing $10,000,000 investment alto
! gether, or an investment of 100000
/ per ton for every ton of daily
/ capacity.
Now you see something of the
magnitude of the problem of manu-
featuring paper. We must take some
thought as to the future of our raw
material. Among the paper manu-
facturers in the United States and
Canada and the newspaper publish
! ers there is more intelligent, a
livelier interest in the problems of