It is stated by several authorities that in the year 1712 Peter the Great of Russia visited Dresden, and was so pleased with the process of paper-making as he witnessed it there that he secured workmen and sent them to Moscow, where they erected a paper-mill with many valuable royal grants and privileges. The following year, 1713, saw a revival of the industry in England, where it had again gone to decay, and where Thomas Watkin, a stationer of London, brought it into great repute in a short time.
♦Rapid advancement in America♦
In 1714 a Mr. Wilcox, who, it is stated, furnished paper to Benjamin Franklin, erected a paper-mill in Delaware. The date of the erection of this mill is given by another authority as 1729, and the place Chester Creek, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where paper was still made by hand as late as 1870. It may possibly have been a second mill that was built by Thomas Wilcox at that time, in which case there would be no conflict of authorities. The manufacture made rapid strides in this young and growing country, so that in 1770 there were forty paper-mills in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The advance among the leading nations of Europe during the same period was equally rapid. The manufacture was introduced into Massachusetts in 1717, and into Norwich, Connecticut, in 1768, but the progress in New England was not so rapid as in the states where it had been first established.
A bill which came before the New York Legislature in 1724, but failed of passage, introduced the policy of protection for infant industries, in an exceedingly narrow and discriminating sense. The beneficiary of the bill was William Bradford, doubtless the same man who owned the quarter interest in the first Pennsylvania mill, and by its provisions he and his assigns were to be encouraged to make paper, while all other persons were to be prohibited from manufacturing it in the province during a period of fifteen years.
♦Pulp from stone♦
Man’s untiring endeavor, his constant effort through the centuries to find something better suited to his needs, had in a figurative sense succeeded in turning stone into paper. It remained for two apprentices of Rittenhouse, who erected a third paper-mill in Pennsylvania in 1728, to advance the claim that this could be done literally, that stone, the primitive material on which had been carved the first written characters of the race could be converted into a paper resembling asses’ skins. We have no means of knowing what the so-called stone was, nor what process was followed, but it is safe to assume that both material and methods were similar to those employed at the present time in the manufacture of asbestos papers.
♦A state grant♦
The year 1728, which marked the establishment of the third mill in Pennsylvania, was a notable one in the annals of paper-making. It is stated that in that year William Bradford owned a mill at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, which is supposed to have been the first one in the state, while in the same year the General Court or Legislature of Massachusetts granted a ten-year patent to a company for the exclusive right to manufacture paper. By the terms of this grant the company was to make at least 115 reams of brown and 60 reams of writing paper in the first fifteen months, and to increase a certain amount each year until the annual product of the various qualities should be not less than 500 reams a year. The mill established under this patent went into operation at Milton, one of the small towns near Boston, in 1730. It was erected by Daniel Henchman, an enterprising stationer of Boston, and is supposed to have been discontinued owing to the impossibility of securing a skilled workman, though in 1731 Henchman produced before the General Court samples of paper made at the mill. In the following year another stationer of Boston, Richard Fry, who was also bookseller, paper-maker and rag merchant, returned thanks to the people for gathering rags, of which he had already received several pounds weight, in response to a request in a previously published advertisement.
♦Crude methods and machines♦
During these early days of the industry both methods and machinery were crude. It was not until 1750 that wove molds came into use and did away with the roughness of laid paper. Six years later engines were introduced to facilitate the process of reducing the rags to pulp, which had previously been accomplished by pounding, while in 1759 cylinders provided with sharp steel blades were invented in Holland for the same purpose, and soon came into general use, taking the place of the heavy stampers, which had required a great expenditure of power in their operation.