The story of paper-making

by Frank Osgood Butler

These various provisions and enactments furnish a striking object-lesson as to the value of paper, even to the public safety. The wisdom of these precautions soon became evident. Notwithstanding all the care that had been exercised, the supply ran low, and after advertising for paper, and ordering the people to produce all they had, it was found necessary, just before the battle of Monmouth, to send files of soldiers to search for the indispensable article wherever there was a likelihood of finding it. In the garret of a house in which Benjamin Franklin had once lived and had his printing-office were found about twenty-five hundred copies of a sermon by Rev. Gilbert Tenant, upon “Defensive War,” which had been printed by Franklin. These were used for musket cartridges and “wadding,” and in the battle that raged about old Tenant church, where fought representatives from every one of the thirteen colonies, mingling their patriotic blood upon the historic field, the sermon proved one of the most effective ever delivered. The Rev. Mr. Tenant, when he penned his discourse, probably had no idea that it would ever be delivered in so forceful a manner, just outside the doors of his church. The fact that these sermons were stored in the garret of Benjamin Franklin, printer, and held for payment, will perhaps call forth a rueful smile from the modern printer, who has himself had some experience of similar sort, the final outcome of which was not so satisfactory as this use of these old sermons must have proved to the patriot printer Franklin.

THE WASHERS AND BEATERS—[Pages 62] and [64]

♦Great scarcity of paper♦

As the war advanced, the scarcity of paper caused much inconvenience. It was on this account that the journal of the second session of the New York Assembly, in 1781, was not printed. In 1789, so it is stated, the paper-mill nearest to Albany, New York, was one at Bennington, in the state of Vermont. The product was frequently brought from the mill on horseback, and although it was very coarse and unbleached compared with the paper of to-day, it was so valuable that every torn or broken sheet was repaired with paste. This work was so neatly and deftly done that in old copies of the “Register,” preserved in the Albany Institute, the patching can be seen only by holding the paper to the light.

♦Appeal for rags♦

The first mill to be established in the northern part of New York was erected at Troy in 1793. About that time, or in 1801, the postmaster of the city issued a special plea under the heading, “Please save your rags,” in which he said: “The press contributes more to the diffusion of knowledge and information than any other medium; rags are the primary requisite in the manufacture of paper, and without paper the newspapers of our country, those cheap, useful, and agreeable companions of the citizen and the farmer, which in a political and moral view are of the highest national importance, must decline.” He then went on to show how, with sufficient rags, the paper-mills of the state could meet all demands; how the patriotic saving of rags had been inculcated and was practiced in New England, saving to Connecticut alone $50,000 a year, and how the thrifty New England housewife had reduced the methods of saving to a science, or rather to a fine art, and closed as follows: “The rich, who regard the interest of their country, will direct their children or domestics to place a bag or box in some convenient place as a deposit for rags, that none may be lost by being swept into the street or fire; the sales of which saving will reward the attention of the faithful servant, and encourage the prosperous enterprise of prudence.”

♦The establishment of the Crane mills♦

Zenas Crane, of Worcester, Massachusetts, seeking a favorable site for a paper-mill, visited Berkshire County in 1799, and finally decided upon a location on the south branch of the Housatonic, at Dalton. That small beginning was like the acorn from which springs the giant oak. It was the foundation of the great paper interest of that region, which has made the name of the beautiful hill county famous, both for the importance and extent of the manufacture and for the excellence and fineness of its products.

As we have already seen, the early paper-mills were greatly hampered by the scarcity of rags, and matters grew worse instead of better during the last fifteen years of the century. But the year 1800 brought some relief. Matthew Kooper, of France, who in the following year succeeded in making paper from straw and wood, invented a process by which 700 reams of clean, white paper were turned out weekly from such old written, printed, and waste paper as had previously been thrown away. In the face of a rag famine, such a process was a great boon to the paper manufacturer.