Where Old Magazines Go.
If the resins are not thoroughly dissolved away the paper turns brown in the course of time. Naturally enough, the wood-pulp makers let the solution of resins run off and become a nuisance, but they, too, are learning that there are glucoses and pyroligneous acids and all manner of riches to be obtained from the solution of the vegetable matter, to say nothing of the possibilities of a sort of gum or glue which is softened both by heat and by moisture.
And just a word about an economy found necessary by the magazines and newspapers which take back the copies the newsdealer does not sell. These "returns" were hard to get rid of. Paper is mean stuff to burn in quantities. So far as the texture of the wood-pulp paper is concerned, it might be used to print on again, but how are you going to remove the ink? Let the ink stay on and use the pulp over again for pasteboard boxes. And that's what becomes of the newspapers and magazines that nobody buys.
If you will look over journals devoted to concrete and its wonders, you will see a good deal about the concrete made out of slag. And there was a neat little point made when it was discovered that about two cents a pound could be saved in the manufacture of iron by freezing all the moisture out of the atmospheric air before it was heated for the blast. But the best is yet to come. Quite a little bit of money has been made in this country from the manufacture of iron. What do you say to the proposition to make the iron itself a mere by-product to something even more valuable?