The following appeal, issued by Zenas Crane and his associates to the people of Worcester in 1801, shows how great was the scarcity of rags at that time, and helps to complete the history leading up to the erection of the new mill at Dalton:

♦A rag famine♦

AMERICANS!

ENCOURAGE YOUR OWN MANUFACTORIES, AND
THEY WILL IMPROVE.

LADIES, SAVE YOUR RAGS.

As the subscribers have it in contemplation to erect a paper-mill in Dalton the ensuing spring; and the business being very beneficial to the community at large, they flatter themselves that they shall meet with due encouragement. And that every woman who has the good of her country and the interest of her own family at heart, will patronize them by saving their rags and sending them to their Manufactory, or to the nearest Storekeeper—for which the Subscribers will give a generous price.

Henry Wiswall,
Zenas Crane,
John Willard.

Worcester, Feb. 8, 1801.

♦The Butler mills of early days♦

A few years later, but yet early in the life of the nineteenth century, Zebediah Butler, Sr., and his son, Zebediah Butler, Jr., were interested in a paper-mill at Hubbell’s Falls, Vt., and it was here that Oliver Morris Butler, elder brother of J. W. Butler, learned his trade—here, too, J. W. Butler was born. The paper made was of the kind now known as Straw Wrapping. Later this mill became the property of James I. Cutler, and Oliver Morris Butler went south to Lee, Massachusetts, to perfect his knowledge of the paper industry, there having been erected at Lee a large and modern plant representative of the latest and best ideas then known to the art of paper-making. In 1840 Oliver Morris Butler returned to Hubbell’s Falls, and, being unable to collect certain obligations due him, took paper in part payment—this particular invoice of finished paper he brought west to Chicago. The venture, while not profitable, is yet of much interest, as it practically marks the beginning of the present J. W. Butler Paper Company.

♦The Butler mills the first in the West♦

In 1841 Oliver Morris Butler moved west into Illinois, locating at St. Charles, a town about thirty miles from Chicago and situated upon the Fox River. Here he immediately built a wrapping-paper mill; later, and upon the opposite bank of the same stream, he erected a print-paper plant, the first of its kind west of Pittsburg. It is also recorded in the Atlas Biographical Dictionary that Simeon and Asa Butler, members of another branch of the Butler family, made the first letter-paper, the product of an American mill, that was used in the Senate of the United States.

♦The great Fourdrinier machine♦

The desire for improvement in material conditions, for better implements and better methods, has marked every stage of man’s advance. The same spirit that led primitive man to seek a better and more convenient medium of expression than the cumbersome bowlder or the carved obelisk, manifested itself again, centuries later, in the untiring zeal with which manufacturers sought to improve a product that may be considered the final successor of the bowlder and the obelisk. The beginning of the century saw many improvements in the methods of paper-making. In 1804 Messrs. Henry and Seely Fourdrinier, enterprising and public-spirited stationers doing business in England, brought to a good degree of perfection the great machine which bears their name, and which is described at some length in a subsequent chapter dealing with the methods of modern paper manufacture. The machine had been invented, though not perfected, a year or two previously, by a Mr. Roberts in France; in 1805, Mr. Donkin, the engineer of the Fourdrinier Brothers, who had built the machine, further improved it by altering the position of the cylinders so as to dispense with an upper web. By this change the process was so simplified that the work of six vats could be done in twelve hours. These improvements were made in a paper-mill at Two Waters, England; but the machine that can now do in a day the work that formerly required three months was not immediately introduced into this country.

♦Many new mills♦